One of the Conlawprofs threw out "Rawlsian veil of ignorance" and ignorance was the only part I knew anything about, so I Googled on the words and came up with a lot of stuff, of which here's the Wikipedia explanation.
John Rawls was writing philosophy in 1971 when he came up with a thought experiment in which he asked, essentially, what kind of a world of justice and fairness would you invent that would apply to you assuming that you did not know in advance whether you would be one of the winners or losers in terms of ethnicity, parentage, smarts, education, talent, etc.
You would probably want to build in some protections in case you came out on the short end.
You might also want to inhibit the winners in the natal sweepstakes from walking off with all the marbles.
Since you are designing this brave new world from an original position of ignorance, your state of knowledge before the cards are turned over is called an original position. You are operating behind a veil of ignorance.
Hence, a Rawlsian veil of ignorance.
Here's the way I look at it.
There's what I know and what I don't know.
What I know is finite.
What I don't know is vastly larger, infinite.
I can remember in law school daydreaming in class about where some notion of fairness came from. I started thinking that some things you learned about fairness just from playing touch-football in the street, or softball in the schoolyard, as a kid.
You didn't go to law school to learn what was fair and just. You brought those ideas to law school from what you learned on the street and in the schoolyard and built on them.
How did I know this sort of daydreaming was respectable.
Holmes wrote a book on it that became famous and influential, in 1888, called "The Common Law." In it's opening paragraph he says something that has become famous, to the effect that "The life of the law has not been logic, but experience."
Rawls also wrote a book and once in a while, a Conlawprof throws out a term like "Rawlsian veil of ignorance," or "original position" and it stops you in your tracks until you look up what it means.
Am I impressed?
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this new idea now that I know about it.
Maybe I'll have to think about it. It's like the ultimate counter-factual. That's another term the Conlawprofs like to use, along with 'normative.'
Normative means "should," essentially.
If I say "We should have a rule in this situation that promotes fairness and justice," we call that a normative statement because it suggests norms that should be generated. Norm-ative. Should.
Only professors ever use the word 'normative.' That's how you can tell a professor from a real person, by catching him using "normative" in a sentence.
"Counter-factual" is another mind-game people with too much time on their hands sometimes like to play. They ask what would the country or the world be like if Lee had won instead of Grant, or Hitler over Ike. We can only speculate and thank our lucky stars. The fact is that Grant won, and Ike. The mind-game, or thought experiment, is counter-factual.
And that's the way it goes.