SOC 3730 Midterm: Midterm Review

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 3730
• Professor: Michelle Dumas

Document Summary

John rawls (distributive justice): social contract belong to this tradition of the social contract; people give up their immediate desires in order to have social order. Ex: we agree not to hit people even though it makes us feel better so that we can have order and feel safer: fairness we cannot have justice without fairness. Offices, positions/positions of power, etc. , must be open to everyone under conditions of fair and equal opportunity: utilitarianism means that we do what is best for the greatest number of people. The creation of new law opposite traditional norms is deemed impossible in principle : embodied in feudalism or patrimonialism, legal-rational authority, empowered by a formalistic belief in the content of the law (legal) or natural law (rationality) The people must believe that leaders have legitimate authority: obedience is not given to a specific leader, but a set of uniform principles, rationality is involved in deciding who becomes the leader.