Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: An approach to justice -- The demands of justice. -- Reason and objectivity -- Rawls and beyond -- Institutions and persons -- Voice and social choice -- Impartiality and objectivity -- Closed and open impartiality -- Forms of reasoning. -- Position, relevance and illusion -- Rationality and other people -- Plurality of impartial reasons -- Realizations, consequences and agency -- The materials of justice. -- Lives, freedoms and capabilities -- Capabilities and resources -- Happiness, well-being and capabilities -- Equality and liberty -- Public reasoning and democracy. -- Democracy as public reason -- The practice of democracy -- Human rights and global imperatives -- Justice and the world.

This major philosophical work, by one of the world's leading public intellectuals, constructs a new theory of justice, not from abstract ideals or notions of what perfect institutions and rules might be, but from what the results of a system are practically, in the world.