The main aim of this paper is to explore whether the ordinary concept of fairness can be applied directly to advertising and, if so, what that application requires. After illustrating John Rawls’s idea of justice as fairness and the application of his theory of justice to advertising, the paper focuses on the origin of this idea by describing H. L. A. Hart’s analysis of the concept of fairness. The question of whether the concept of fairness that emerges from Hart’s analysis can be directly applied to advertising is then considered in the light of a discussion of the impact of advertising on consumer autonomy: can we say that, in some sense, certain types of advertising of goods or services impinge on their recipients’ autonomy and, if so, that the burden they impose benefits other market participants? An affirmative answer to this question means that the concept of fairness resulting from Hart’s conceptual analysis can be directly applied to these types of advertisements for goods or services and can be used to support restrictions on them.
