A Theory of Justice is a work of
political philosophy and
ethics by
John Rawls. It was originally published in 1971 and revised in both 1975 (for the translated editions) and 1999. In
A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the problem of
distributive justice (the
socially just distribution of goods in a society) by utilising a variant of the familiar device of the
social contract. The resultant theory is known as "
Justice as Fairness", from which Rawls derives his two principles of justice:
the liberty principle and
the difference principle.