Abstract

The article explores whether and to what extent Nozick’s entitlement theory and Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness may provide a normative ground for affirmative action policies. As will be shown, the two authors may offer two divergent theoretical foundations for affirmative actions. While Nozick’s libertarianism may conceive them as reparation or redress to past injustices, in Rawls’s liberalism they may be motivated by the political ideal of a more egalitarian society.