Rawls and Economic Liberties

There is widespread agreement among political philosophers that there is a core set of civil and political liberties that ought to be given special protections by any state. In contrast, there is significant disagreement about whether (and which) economic liberties deserve the same level of protection and priority. To what extent should freedom in economic activities be protected by and from the government? To what extent is it justifiable for government to interfere with economic activities for the sake of equalizing opportunities and protecting the welfare of society’s vulnerable? John Rawls famously held that only a narrow range of economic liberties are basic liberties deserving special protections, though he never offered a full defense of that claim. In Free Market Fairness John Tomasi argued against Rawls, claiming it follows from Rawls’s own assumptions that we ought to protect a broad range of economic liberties as basic liberties. This paper attempts to provide the missing argument in favor of Rawls’s position in this debate and against Tomasi’s. First, I argue for a novel interpretation of Rawls’s criterion for basic liberties. Second, I use that interpretation to argue that Rawls was correct and consistent to exclude contract rights and productive property rights from the scheme of basic liberties.