It is concerned with how to allocate resources fairly among members of a society, taking into account factors such as wealth, income, and social status.
These have contributed to debates around the arrangement of social, political and economic institutions to promote the just distribution of benefits and burdens within a society.
From that precondition arises the need for principles to resolve competing interest and claims concerning a just or at least morally preferable distribution of scarce resources.
According to Rawls, the structure is based on principles about basic rights and duties that any self-interested, rational individual would accept in order to further his/her own interests in a context of social cooperation.
[5] Rawls presents the concept of an original position as a hypothetical idea of how to establish "a fair procedure so that any principles agreed on will be just.
[7] Rawls then argues that procedural justice in the process of negotiation will be possible via a nullification of temptations for these people to exploit circumstances so as to favor their own position in society.
The veil, on the other hand, does not conceal general information about the society, and the people are assumed to possess societal and economic knowledge beyond the personal level.
Bentham originally conceptualised this according to the hedonistic calculus, which also became the foundation for John Stuart Mill's focus on intellectual pleasures as the most beneficial contribution to societal welfare.
[10] Another path has been painted by Aristotle, based on an attempt to create a more universal list of conditions required for human prosperity.
[15] As Elizabeth Anderson defines it, "the positive aim of egalitarian justice is...to create a community in which people stand in relation of equality to others.
"[16] The main issue with egalitarian conceptions of distributive justice is the question concerning what kind of equality should be pursued.
[20] In Marxism-Leninism according to Vladimir Lenin the slogan "He who does not work, neither shall he eat" is a necessary approach to distributive justice on the path towards a communist society.
Post-apartheid South Africa is an example of a country that deals with issues of re-allocating resources with respect to the distributive justice framework.
[citation needed] Distributive justice is also fundamental to the Catholic Church's social teaching, inspiring such figures as Dorothy Day[29] and Pope John Paul II.
[30] Within the context of Western liberal democracies in the post-WWII decades, Friedrich von Hayek was one of the most famous opposers of the idea of distributive justice.
For him, social and distributive justice were meaningless and impossible to attain, on the grounds of being within a system where the outcomes are not determined deliberately by the people but contrarily spontaneity is the norm.
[33] Therefore, fostering a certain kind of security (the one that for him socialist economic policies follow) can entail growing insecurity as the privilege increases social differences.
Notwithstanding, he concludes that "adequate security against severe privation, and the reduction of the avoidable causes of misdirected effort and consequent disappointment, will have to be one of the main goals of policy".
[34] Hayek dismisses an organizational view that ascribes certain outcomes to an intentional design, which would be contrary to his proposed spontaneous order.
For this, Hayek famously firstly regards the term social (or distributive) justice as meaningless when it is applied to the results of a liberal market system that should yield spontaneous outcomes.
[35] Lastly, Hayek claims for the incompatibility between the free market and social justice, for, in essence, they are different kinds of inequalities.