One of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, John Rawls articulated a vision of a liberal state, focused on justice. His significant book wasA Theory of Justice.罗尔斯延续了洛克等人的观点，认为国家是社会契约的结果。Think of the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, …. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

The connection to Rawls is that last idea, that Governments are instituted among men for a purpose, and so their powers are limited by the original agreement or social contract. Like most modern theorists in this tradition, like Rawls, don’t bring in God as the source of the rights. They say the control a state has over its citizens, and the control citizens have over themselves, comes out of this social contract.

However Locke thought of it, modern theorists certainly don’t think of the social contract as an actual event; it is rather a framework for thinking about what’s fair and just: what would people agree to, if they were forming a state. Like a lot of philosophical idea, it needs counterfactuals for its proper expression.

Rawls vision of the social contract has a special twist. He thinks the deciders, the ones agreeing to the contract, should be behind a veil of ignorance. That’s where some listeners might be surprised. Usually if people are negotiating an important contract, you don’t want them to be ignorant. What was he getting at?

The veil of ignorance is a very clever idea Rawls had, to insure that the contract will be fair. The participants should be disinterested. That’s disinterested, not uninterested. Disinterested meaning having no stake in the outcome --- like a judge. But if the negotiators are ultimately governed by the state they’re creating, they have a stake in the outcome. How could they possibly be disinterested? The negotiators have to decide what rewards and duties the occupants of each role will have. But they don’t get to know which role they are going to occupy. So the negotiators will try to figure out a system so that, whatever role they individually end up playing, they can be sure of being treated fairly ---- the candlestick maker will know that his candlestick maker salary and candlestick maker duties are something that he has agreed to as fair, before he knew he was going to make candles.

一个人的第一倾向可能是争取平等。最保险的说法似乎是一切都应该是平等的;每个人都应该被同等对待。同样的薪水，同样的工作时间，同样的投票权，绝对平等。然而，罗尔斯并不这么看。平等原则是正义的第一原则。至于政治权利——投票权、财产权等等，没有例外。但还有第二个原则，他称之为“差异原则”。根据这种理论，只要对每个人都有利，某些工作就能获得更高的薪水和其他福利。

假设每个人都能做屠夫或面包师，但制作蜡烛真的很棘手，也很辛苦，它需要长时间的学徒来学习蜡和灯芯的特性。我们希望最优秀、最聪明的公民被吸引到困难但关键的蜡烛制造行业。谈判人员，在无知的面纱后面，不知道他们是否会成为蜡烛制造者。他们甚至不知道自己是否具备制作蜡烛所必需的特殊才能。不过，因为制作蜡烛是如此重要和如此困难，他们会同意，蜡烛制造者应该比屠夫或面包师得到更多的奖励。

So basically Rawls thinks the structure of the state will conform to the equality principle, with everyone having the same political rights, but some differences are allowed for special goods and services, if justified by the difference principle.

To tell us about some of the subtleties, and to tell us about the major objections to Rawls, we’ve got one of the major political philosophers of the 21st century, Stanford’s own Josh Cohen, a man who studied with John Rawls.