  For those who regard equality as a requirement of justice, the question arises, whether this is a timeless unchanging or instead a variable requirement. Michael Walzer is one who appears to take the latter view. According to Walzer, a society is just if and only if its practices and institutions are in accord with the shared values and cultural understandings of its people. Democratic egalitarianism becomes a requirement of justice in modern societies, because this egalitarianism is an underlying important element of people's shared values and cultural understandings (Walzer 1983). But this appearance may be misleading. Walzer may hold that everyone at all times and places has an equal moral entitlement to be treated according to the shared norms and cultural understandings of one's people or group. Walzer may also hold that everyone at all times and places has equal rights against gratuitous assault by people just seeking fun, whatever the local people's shared beliefs on this matter happen to be. At any rate, we can identify clear exemplars of theorists who regard equality of a certain sort as a timeless unchanging moral requirement. John Locke holds that everyone at all times and places has equal natural moral rights that all of us ought always to respect (Locke 1690). The contemporary moral philosopher Thomas Scanlon holds that all people everywhere equally have the moral right to be treated according to the outcome of a procedure: what constitutes morally right and wrong action is set by the principles that no one could reasonably reject (Scanlon 1998). It is a further question, to what extent this procedure issues in different non-rejectable principles in different times and places featuring different circumstances.