Justice as fairness is a deontological view. Rawls deines deontological moral theories as nonteleological theories rather than nonconsequentialist theories because “all ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness” (TJ 26). The difference between deontological and teleological theories lies, then, not in the latter’s attention and the former’s lack of attention to consequences, but rather in the distinctive ways in which each relates the two fundamental concepts of anymoral theory, the ideas of the right and the good (TJ 21).

Rawls follows Frankena and deines teleological theories as those that specify the good independently of the right and then deine the right as that which maximizes the good (TJ 22). A theory is deontological, then, on Rawls’s view, if it either does not deine the right as that which maximizes the good or does not specify the good independently of the right. Rawls characterizes his own view, justice as fairness, as deontological in the irst way, since it does not define the right as that which maximizes the good, but rather in terms of mutually intelligible and acceptable relations between free and equal persons (TJ 26).

Of course, justice as fairness is also deontological in the second way; that is, it does not specify the good independently of the right.