One of the basic beliefs that guides our political and legal systems is that human beings, who are alike in virtue of their humanity, ought to be treated alike, unless there is some relevant difference between them that would justify treating them differently. This is the fine ideal of equality to which I refer in the title. It is assaulted by egalitarians who suppose that since equality is good, more equality is better.

There are, of course, many differences among human beings. They differ in their characters, circumstances, talents and weaknesses, capacities and incapacities; in their moral standing, political views, religious convictions, aesthetic preferences; in how reasonable or unreasonable they are, how well or badly they develop their native endowments, how much they benefit or harm others, how hardworking or disciplined they were in the past and are likely to be in the future; and so forth. But there are two impersonal contexts in which such personal differences are irrelevant: citizenship and the law. The rights and obligations of citizenship are the same regardless of individual differences among citizens. And a law applies equally to everyone who is subject to it, although the severity of punishment for violations may take individual differences into account. In democratic societies, equality is one of the guiding ideals of politics and the law.

Equality, then, is the ideal that citizens should be treated differently only if there is some relevant difference between them. The ideal has two crucial implications. One is