Equality
Laws should be designed to protect people from governments by ensuring that people have enough freedom. Thus there should be laws that provide equality of freedom.
Expediency
Inequality in society tends to be rationalized by the need to properly incentivize people to act, even if these incentives create situations that most people see as unjust. In most cases, expediency tends to be at odds with perceived justice, with the issue of Wall Street bonuses being a clear example of how expediency can easily take the place of justice. Overall, expediency leans heavily on the need to reach a goal with minimum effort. It is the responsibility of people in charge to determine where shortcuts are justified and where they are not.
Justice
Mill’s first component on justice centers around the unjust nature of depriving another person of their “personal liberty and property” while the second component focuses on the unjust nature of laws meant to defend the privilege of a particular group in society.
“Legal right is deprived, may be rights which ought not to have belonged to him”
Tyranny of majority
Mills highlights the importance of guaranteeing freedom for all but especially minorities who are prone to harm by what he calls “tyranny of majority,” where a government superimposes its will on the lives of minorities in a society. He acknowledges that individuals are most suited to determine their own utility, which is why restricting the rights of individuals can be harmful to society at large.
The tyranny of the majority is derived from the tendency of societies to suppress dissent and force the conformity of people to the majority view. To resist a world where everyone is too afraid to highlight opinions that are different from the majority is a world where we emphasize individuality.
Freedom of expression
Mills stresses the importance of freedom of expression in society because he sees that as the only way people can correct their errors and thus arrive at truths. In most countries, this is still not the case, with the example of Germany jailing people for denying the Holocaust.
Definition of liberty
“By liberty, was meant protection against the tyranny of the political rulers.”
“The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”
Protection against prevailing opinion