John Rawls was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice , Political Liberalism , The Law of Peoples , and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement .
Rawls was a recipient of the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's thought "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself." 1