Editing Social contract (section)

===John Rawls' ''Theory of Justice'' (1971)===
Building on the work of Immanuel Kant with its presumption of limits on the state,<ref>• Gerald Gaus and Shane D. Courtland, 2011, [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/  "Liberalism"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180908003440/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ |date=2018-09-08 }}, 1.1, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp; • Immanuel Kant, ([1797]). ''[[The Metaphysics of Morals]]'', Part{{nbsp}}1.</ref> [[John Rawls]] (1921–2002), in ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' (1971), proposed a contractarian approach whereby rational people in a hypothetical "[[original position]]" would set aside their individual preferences and capacities under a "[[veil of ignorance]]" and agree to certain general principles of justice and legal organization. This idea is also used as a [[game theory|game-theoretical]] formalization of the notion of fairness.