Robert Nozick, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The entitlement theory of justice in holdings is probably the place to start. A distribution is just if it arose from a just situation by legitimate means — that is the whole of it, stated simply.1 Three principles do the work. The principle of justice in acquisition governs how previously unowned things may come to be held.2 The principle of justice in transfer governs how holdings may pass from one person to another — through voluntary exchange, gift, and the like.3
And the principle of rectification addresses what is to be done when the first two principles have been violated somewhere in the historical chain.4 The theory is irreducibly historical. Whether a distribution is just depends on how it came about, not on what structural pattern it exhibits at a given moment.5 This is the decisive contrast with current time-slice theories — utilitarianism, Rawls's difference principle, any view that looks at who has what and asks whether the snapshot satisfies some structural criterion.
I reject all of those. A thief's victims could, in some possible world, have voluntarily given him exactly what he took; that possibility does not make him entitled to what he stole.6 Justice in holdings tracks actual history, not hypothetical histories that could have produced the same outcome. On equality: the entitlement conception makes no presumption in its favor.7
Writers observe that the wealthiest two percent hold more than two percent of the wealth, and proceed immediately to discuss redistribution — but whether the state must alter that situation cannot be decided merely by inspecting a distributional profile.8 It depends entirely on how the distribution came about. If it arose by legitimate processes, the parties are entitled to what they hold, and the profile, however unequal, is just.
What I believed in, then, is the moral primacy of persons as self-owning agents whose voluntary transactions generate entitlements that no patterned theory of justice may override.
The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 165–166
The first is the original acquisition of holdings, the appropriation of unheld things... We shall refer to the complicated truth about this topic... as the principle of justice in acquisition.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 165–166
The second topic concerns the transfer of holdings from one person to another. By what processes may a person transfer holdings to another?... we shall call the principle of justice in transfer.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 165–166
The existence of past injustice (previous violations of the first two principles of justice in holdings) raises the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice in holdings.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 167–168
The entitlement theory of justice in distribution is historical; whether a distribution is just depends upon how it came about.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, p. 168
The fact that a thief's victims voluntarily could have presented him with gifts does not entitle the thief to his ill-gotten gains. Justice in holdings is historical; it depends upon what actually has happened.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 167–168
The entitlement conception of justice in holdings makes no presumption in favor of equality, or any other overall end state or patterning.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 247–248
Writers note that in a given country the wealthiest 2 percent of the population holds more than that percentage of the wealth... They then proceed immediately to discuss how this might be altered. On the entitlement conception of justice in holdings, one cannot decide whether the state must do something to alter the situation merely by looking at a distributional profile.Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 247–248