Quotes from “Two Concepts of Rules”

By John Rawls (1955)

• The judge and the legislator stand in different positions and look in different directions: one to the past, the other to the future. The justification of what the judge does, qua judge, sounds like the retributive view [of punishment]; the justification of what the (ideal) legislator does, qua legislator, sounds like the utilitarian view. . . . One’s initial confusion disappears once one sees that these views apply to persons holding different offices with different duties, and situated differently with respect to the system of rules that make up the criminal law.#
  InstitutionsJustice
• One way of taking the differences between ethical theories is to regard them as accounts of the reasons expected in different offices.#
  Ethics
• The decision whether or not to use law rather than some other mechanism of social control, and the decision as to what laws to have and what penalties to assign, may be settled by utilitarian arguments; but if one decides to have laws then one has decided on something whose working in particular cases is retributive in form.#
  JusticeInstitutions
• As one drops off the defining features of punishment one ends up with an institution whose utilitarian justification is highly doubtful.#
  EthicsJustice
• An institution which is set up to “punish” the innocent, is likely to have about as much point as a price system (if one may call it that) where the prices of things change at random from day to day and one learns the price of something after one has agreed to buy it.#
  EconomicsJusticeInstitutions
• Utilitarian (or aesthetic) reasons might properly be given in arguing that the game of chess, or baseball, is satisfactory just as it is, or in arguing that it should be changed in various respects, but a player in a game cannot properly appeal to such considerations as reasons for his making one move rather than another.#
  Institutions
• If one holds an office defined by a practice then questions regarding one’s actions in this office are settled by reference to the rules which define the practice. If one seeks to question these rules, then one’s office undergoes a fundamental change: one then assumes the office of one empowered to change and criticize the rules, or the office of a reformer, and so on.#
  InstitutionsLaw