Marcus Arvan has posted Foundations of a Nonideal Theory of Justice on the Internet. Here is the abstract:
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This paper systematically extends John Rawls’ original position to nonideal theory, showing how it is both reasonable and rational for the parties to a nonideal-theoretic stage of the original position to prioritize a class of “nonideal-theoretic primary goods” over the satisfaction of Rawls’ principles and priority relations (contrary to Rawlsian orthodoxy). I show that there are at least three nonideal-theoretic primary goods, and that the parties to the original position have sufficient reason to agree to certain priority relations among them. Next, I show that the parties rationally ought to agree to a general principle for distributing these goods, and by extension, to three lexically ordered corollary principles for distributing each of the three specific goods discussed. Finally, I argue that these principles fare well in reflective equilibrium.