A Theory of JusticeSince it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic traditionjustice as fairnessand to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth