John Rawls (b. 1921, d. 2002) was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition. His theory of justice as fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system.

Patrick Riordan is deeply concerned with rational settlements of conflicts in the Phillipines today. He offers a reconstruction of John Rawls theory of justice as alternative adjudication wherein people can settle their differences by transcending their ideological and armed squabbles

ATheory of Justice, by Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls (1921–2002), has been widely hailed ever since its 1971 publication as a classic of liberal political philosophy — earning its author such praise as being called the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century, and receiving the National Humanities Medal in 1999.

My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a
higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say,
in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant."