“The relative complexity of the three theories can be manifested by displaying in summary fashion how each theory would interpret justice with reference to its common notes and the three privileged terms, [legality, utility and right]. All three agree that justice obliges us do to something that is good and that concerns another. Spelling out what it obliges us to do, we obtain the following: (1) It obliges us to obey the law. (2) It obliges us to do what promotes the social good. (3) It obliges us to render to each what belongs to him as a natural right.”
“The Positive Law theory is the simplest in that it asserts only the first proposition: Justice obliges us to obey the law, but not to promote the common good or render another his natural right as something that could be separate and distinct from obeying the law.”
“The Social Good theory asserts the first and second but denies the third, claiming as it does that there is no such thing as a natural right. Implicitly, it also claims that the first proposition depends upon the second, since the justice of a law is held to depend on its serving for the social good.”
“The Natural Right theory is the most complex of the three theories because it alone asserts all three propositions. The third, of course, is the controlling one, since it is implicit in both the first and second in the sense that it asserts them only on the understanding that neither [the first or the second] violates natural right.”