-Aquinas, - says Jean Porter, -gets justice right.- In this book she shows that Aquinas offers us a cogent and illuminating account of justice as a personal virtue rather than a virtue of social institutions, as John Rawls and his interlocutors have described it -- and as most people think of it today.

Porter presents a thoughtful interpretation of Aquinas's account of the complex virtue of justice as set forth in the Summa theologiae, focusing on his key claim that justice is a perfection of the will. Building on her interpretation of Aquinas on justice, Porter...