CaseEthics
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Frameworks

Core framework

Social Contract Theory

Rules everyone could reasonably accept.

Guiding principle

Moral and political norms are justified when they could be agreed to by free, rational persons choosing terms of cooperation.

Key thinkers

Thomas Hobbes · John Locke · John Rawls · T. M. Scanlon

Strengths

  • Grounds legitimacy in the perspective of those bound by the rules.
  • Rawls' veil of ignorance models impartiality without utilitarian aggregation.
  • Provides a criterion for public justification.

Common objections

  • Non-contractors (future generations, animals, the severely disabled) get short-changed.
  • Actual consent is a fiction; hypothetical consent is contested.
  • Reasonable people disagree about what is reasonable to accept.

Mini-example

Would parties behind a veil of ignorance, not knowing their eventual role, accept a policy that lets employers surveil workers without consent? Probably not.