Nozick's Entitlement Theory and Libertarian Critique of Rawls

Robert Nozick, Rawls's colleague in the Harvard philosophy department, published Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 (Basic Books) as a direct philosophical challenge to A Theory of Justice, defending a libertarian alternative grounded in individual rights rather than patterned distributive outcomes. Nozick's "entitlement theory" holds that a distribution of holdings is just if it arose through a history of legitimate steps: a principle of justice in acquisition, governing how unowned resources may first become someone's property; a principle of justice in transfer, governing how holdings may be voluntarily exchanged, given, or bequeathed; and a principle of rectification, addressing how to correct past violations of the first two principles, including historical injustices such as theft, fraud, or conquest.