Justice as fairness: Rawls in the boardroom

In the first of two articles about fairness, Daniel Taylor explores how John Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness can transform governance from a technical exercise into a moral discipline that listens hardest to those least heard.

There are certain books that sit at the foundation of our thinking in a way that reshapes the ground beneath us. For political philosophy in the late twentieth century, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) was such a book. Its opening sentence – “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought” – reads almost like scripture.

Rawls is often treated as a figure of the academy – a thinker to be admired but rarely applied – but I want to suggest something different: that Rawls gives us not just a theory but a set of tools for how we might think about the governance of public-purpose organisations.

Chairs, chief executives and non-executives who carry the burden of public responsibility should not imagine that Rawls belongs solely to philosophers cloistered in seminar rooms. His ideas offer a compass for how we might listen to stakeholder voices, weigh competing interests, and shape institutions that deserve legitimacy.

To put it plainly, Rawls helps us ask not only is this decision efficient? or is it legal? but also is it fair? And, more precisely, fair to whom? Yet governance frameworks are designed for good decision-making, not necessarily fair decision-making. That tension is where the moral work begins.

The Rawlsian framing

Rawls’ philosophy is sometimes reduced to two deceptively simple principles:

• Equal basic liberties: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of basic liberties compatible with similar liberty for others.

• The difference principle: Inequalities are permissible only if they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.

What makes this radical is not only the content but also the method Rawls uses to justify it: the veil of ignorance. Imagine we must design the rules of a society without knowing our own place within it – our wealth, class, education, or health. We might be a cabinet minister or a child in social care. Behind this veil, Rawls argues, rational people would design a system that protects the worst-off, because we might end up among them.

This thought experiment is both abstract and profoundly practical. It asks: if we were stripped of our privilege, would the system still feel just? Governance, then, is not only a matter of structures and reporting lines; it is a matter of empathy institutionalised and fairness embedded in decision-making.

Governance and the limits of fairness

Governance is not, at its core, a system designed for fairness. Its architecture exists to ensure that the best decision is made – in the best way, with the best possible information, at the timeliest moment. The discipline of governance is procedural, not distributive; it is about clarity, rigour and accountability rather than equality of outcome.

Yet this is precisely where the Rawlsian challenge bites. Decisions taken through good governance often have a majority interest or benefit; they are designed to serve the maximal good purpose or deliver the greatest overall impact. But this utilitarian tendency can obscure or even exacerbate the experience of those at the margins. Fair process does not always yield fair consequences.

Some will argue that fairness is not the business of governance at all – that boards exist to ensure legality, solvency, and performance, not to adjudicate moral balance. Their duty, in this view, is fiduciary, not philosophical. And there is truth in that caution; fairness pursued without discipline can descend into paralysis or partisanship.

But to exclude fairness altogether is to hollow governance of its purpose. Between technocracy and sentimentality lies a space where disciplined judgement and moral imagination meet – and that, properly understood, is where good governance lives.

Why this matters for public-purpose organisations

Public-purpose organisations – NHS trusts, regulators, local authorities, charities – do not exist to maximise profit. Their legitimacy depends upon public trust, and public trust depends upon perceived fairness.

Yet fairness is not evenly distributed. NHS waiting lists do not fall equally across demographics. Regulatory interventions often land hardest on those least able to navigate them. Austerity, as so many have shown, had a disproportionate impact on the poorest communities.

When boards meet to make decisions, they usually weigh risks, finances, and compliance. But how often do they ask: Who bears the costs of this decision? Which stakeholder voice has been silent in this room? Would this choice still feel just if we ourselves were among the least advantaged?

Here Rawls offers not an academic indulgence but a discipline – a way of reframing governance around distributive impact and legitimacy.

The veil of ignorance in the boardroom

Let’s try a thought experiment. Picture a board meeting about a proposed service reconfiguration. The business case is well argued; the financial model stacks up; the regulator is content.

But then imagine you had to consider the proposal without knowing whether you were a senior consultant in the trust, a patient from a deprived community who relies on buses to reach the hospital, or a carer juggling three jobs. Would the decision still hold?

Consider a board of an NHS trust debating whether to centralise specialist services. The clinical case is clear and the financial argument compelling. Yet closing a small local unit in a deprived area would force patients to travel further for treatment. In the boardroom, the debate centres on quality metrics, capital investment, and workforce efficiency. Outside, it is experienced as a question of belonging – whether the institution still serves this community or only those with cars and confidence to navigate the system.

Governance at its best holds both truths at once: the logic of improvement and the politics of place. Fairness, in this sense, is not just about outcomes but about whose experience counts as legitimate evidence.

Stakeholder voice: the Rawlsian imperative

Much is made of stakeholder engagement in governance. Too often, however, it becomes a procedural tick-box exercise: a consultation after decisions are made, or a public meeting with carefully managed questions.

Rawls reframes this. Stakeholder voice is not merely a matter of communication; it is intrinsic to legitimacy. To ignore it is to risk the charge that decisions are made only for those already well-placed.

A Rawlsian approach to stakeholder voice demands three things:

1. Prioritisation of the least heard. A fair process deliberately seeks out the marginalised: the patient whose first language is not English, the service user without digital access, the local community without lobbying capacity.
2. Weighting of impact, not just numbers. Fairness is judged by impact on the least advantaged, not the average. Ten stakeholders mildly inconvenienced are not equivalent to one stakeholder severely harmed.
3. Institutionalisation of empathy. Stakeholder engagement should not rely on goodwill alone. It should be embedded in process – through distributional impact assessments, fairness tests in board papers, and exercises that imagine perspectives from the bottom rung.

Governance as moral imagination

Rawls once said that justice is the virtue of social institutions as truth is of systems of thought. For those who govern public-purpose organisations, this is not an abstract claim. It is a daily challenge.

To govern is to decide whose voice counts, whose burdens weigh most heavily, and whose hopes are realised or deferred. Rawls teaches us to do this not from the vantage point of privilege but from a standpoint of fairness.

Governance that aspires to Rawlsian fairness is governance that institutionalises empathy, not as sentiment but as structure. If boards can achieve that – if they can act with the empathy of a novelist and the principle of a philosopher – then perhaps we will have taken a step closer to justice as fairness.