Do We Know How to Implement Rawls’s Liberal Principles of Justice?

Abstract In this paper, I argue that we do not know how to implement abstract principles of liberal egalitarian justice. Starting with Scheffler’s Rawlsian diagnosis of the retreat of liberal democracy in the United States, I argue that it may be due to our lack of knowledge about how to institutionalize a Rawlsian just liberal society. To illustrate the difficulty or challenge, I examine several policy proposals to help build human capital for property-owning democracy and argue that they can fail for various reasons. The main problem is that the changing ways in which diverse individuals respond to policies and interact with one another affect policy consequences, but their complexity surpasses our limited knowledge. The ignorance gives us reason to be patient with the slow pace of building an ideal liberal society, tolerant of those who are sceptical about interventions to implement liberal egalitarian principles, and open to policy experimentation and learning. I further argue that we should publicly acknowledge our ignorance about policy outcomes, as it can reduce political polarization, by moderating policy positions and interpreting policy disagreements as empirical rather than moral, and counter democratic backsliding.