The First Principle: The Liberty Principle
The first and most important principle states that every individual has an equal right to basic liberties, Rawls claiming "that certain rights and freedoms are more important or 'basic' than others". For example, Rawls believes that "personal property" – personal belongings, a home – constitutes a basic liberty, but an absolute right to unlimited private property is not. As basic liberties, they are inalienable: no government can amend, infringe or remove them from individuals.
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls articulates the Liberty Principle as the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others; he later amended this in Political Liberalism, stating instead that "each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties" (emphasis added).
Read more about this topic: Justice As Fairness
Famous quotes containing the words liberty and/or principle:
“An educational method that shall have liberty as its basis must intervene to help the child to a conquest of liberty. That is to say, his training must be such as shall help him to diminish as much as possible the social bonds which limit his activity.”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)
“Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of the kind best appreciated if most days are the same.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)