Law's Empire

Book Description

With the incisiveness and lucid style for which he is renowned, Ronald Dworkin has written a masterful explanation of how the Anglo-American legal system works and on what principles it is grounded. Law's Empire is a full-length presentation of his theory of law that will be studied and debated--by scholars and theorists, by lawyers and judges, by students and political activists--for years to come.

Dworkin begins with the question that is at the heart of the whole legal system: in difficult cases how do (and how should) judges decide what the law is? He shows that judges must decide hard cases by interpreting rather than simply applying past legal decisions, and he produces a general theory of what interpretation is--in literature as well as in law--and of when one interpretation is better than others. Every legal interpretation reflects an underlying theory about the general character of law: Dworkin assesses three such theories. One, which has been very influential, takes the law of a community to be only what the established conventions of that community say it is. Another, currently in vogue, assumes that legal practice is best understood as an instrument of society to achieve its goals. Dworkin argues forcefully and persuasively against both these views: he insists that the most fundamental point of law is not to report consensus or provide efficient means to social goals, but to answer the requirement that a political community act in a coherent and principled manner toward all its members. He discusses, in the light of that view, cases at common law, cases arising under statutes, and great constitutional cases in the Supreme Court, and he systematically demonstrates that his concept of political and legal integrity is the key to Anglo-American legal theory and practice.

Customer Reviews:

Warning "Diatribe" coming.......2005-07-26

This book would have been fine had it been published 20 years ago before the saturation of critical theory. Now it just feels like a wounded discourse from someone who went to grad school in the 60's.

Principles revisited.......2001-12-04

Ronald Dworkin is one of the most prominent law philosophers in the common law tradition. Known both in America and Britain for his strong democratic positions, baptized by Duncan Kennedy `orthodox centrism', Dworkin is an acid critic of the paradigms of the contemporaneous jurisprudence.
Teaching law both in London and New York, the author unites the best of the old and the new world's linguistic and philosophical theories. He is well aware of the main `external' influences of law studies, such as the linguistics of Wittgenstein, the utilitarianism of Austin and Bentham, the categorical imperative of Kant, the dialectical approach of Habermas, and many more epistemic precursors of the modern law science. And from the legal benches he invites to debate scholars as Hart, Nozick, Rawls, etc.
This book follows his theoretical controversies initiated in A Matter of Principle and Taking Rights Seriously. Dworkin has the `humble' objective of deconstructing the base of the legal theory, forging a new conception of law itself. Facing the legal positivism creed (as in Kelsen) with the skeptical panorama (legal realism as in Holmes), this author proposes a third way of law interpretation with he calls `law as integrity'.
Integrity conception of law is inspirited in the third motto of the French Revolution: `fraternity'. Law is seen as a product of a `community of principles', as in the roman adage ubi societas ubi jus. For him any interpretation of the law, the common law or the Constitution must be impregnated with the will of integrity, noted as a commitment with the political morals of a given society in a given time. He sees the Constitution as the repository of the three biggest law principles: adjective due process, fairness and justice.
His works (as all things in life) owes applauses and reproves. Its strong points are the impact of his critics, surely shaking the base of the `obvious arguments' of law. Ancient myths as objectiveness and law fidelity of the judge had been collapsed. Notwithstanding the foregoing, what he calls a new proposal - `law as integrity' - is an old hermeneutic method of the jurist from the Romanist systems (as in Brazil, where I come from).
Law interpretation grounded in principles is a well-known method in other juridical, non-utilitarian practices. Long ago a Portuguese scholar named Canotilho constructed a method in which the mining (or creating) of the legal rule to a concrete situation is done in the light of the Constitution and its basic political principles, such as: equality, liberty, morality, good faith, inter alia. This kind of `principiologic' conception perhaps came from a tradition in which law and justice were reputed as equals, and principles were expressions of natural rights given by god or breed in reason.
Nevertheless, I am not trying to underestimate the Herculean (to use a metaphor from his book) work of Professor Dworkin, his bridges between the opposite notions - legal rule and precedents, conventionalism and skepticism, objectivity and subjectivity - are themselves diligent analysis of the law phenomena. I can also say - with no fear of overstating - he is an untamable critic and an intransigent adversary of any kind of academic (or even pragmatic) hypocrisy in law.

Principles revisited.......2001-12-04

You should read it, though you may hate it.......1999-03-13

This book is truly foundational: one of the few books of legal philosophy that almost every law student is encouraged to read. Many of its ideas are intriguing and illuminating. But the more deeply you think about it, the emptier it becomes. It is flawed by a failure truly to engage with the arguments it attacks, which are distorted or misrepresented until they seem too silly to be worth attention. Much turns out to be rather empty assertion. Some of the examples Dworkin uses are highly questionable; as a practicing lawyer I have become less and less convinced over the years that Dworkin really knows or understands the practices of adjudication that form the center of his book. He is like a person who, having once or twice visited a doctor and looked at a medical textbook, proposes a unified theory of surgery. Despite grand(iose?) claims, the argument does not deliver what it promises. On the whole, Dworkin's brilliance works much more effectively on a smaller canvas. His essays (especially those in Taking Rights Seriously) are far more convincing than this longer book. They have cut and thrust and dash; in the end, this is rather stodgy, rather worthy, rather smug.

A must read!.......1999-02-21

Dworkin does a fantastic job of explaining how judges decide cases, and in turn shed's light on the subject of how law pertains to the people. He does this by explaining other theories about the law, and then addresses thier flaws in logic. Then, as he develops the concepts and premises that all theorists seem to agree on, offers his his own theory in contrast, and allows the reader a chance to search for any of his own deficiencies.

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Absolute Classic
Tyranny of a minority
His Logic is Flawless
misleading title
A Clear Window on Rights

Taking Rights Seriously
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0674867114

Book Description

What is law? What is it for? How should judges decide novel cases when the statutes and earlier decisions provide no clear answer? Do judges make up new law in such cases, or is there some higher law in which they discover the correct answer? Must everyone always obey the law? If not, when is a citizen morally free to disobey?

A renowned philosopher enters the debate surrounding these questions. Clearly and forcefully, Ronald Dworkin argues against the "ruling" theory in Anglo-American law-legal positivism and economic utilitarianism and asserts that individuals have legal rights beyond those explicitly laid down and that they have political and moral rights against the state that are prior to the welfare of the majority.

Mr. Dworkin criticizes in detail the legal positivists' theory of legal rights, particularly H. L. A. Hart's well-known version of it. He then develops a new theory of adjudication, and applies it to the central and politically important issue of cases in which the Supreme Court interprets and applies the Constitution. Through an analysis of Rawls's theory of justice, he argues that fundamental among political rights is the right of each individual to the equal respect and concern of those who govern him. He offers a theory of compliance with the law designed not simply to answer theoretical questions about civil disobedience, but to function as a guide for citizens and officials. Finally, Professor Dworkin considers the right to liberty, often thought to rival and even pre-empt the fundamental right to equality. He argues that distinct individual liberties do exist, but that they derive, not from some abstract right to liberty as such, but from the right to equal concern and respect itself. He thus denies that liberty and equality are conflicting ideals.

Ronald Dworkin's theory of law and the moral conception of individual rights that underlies it have already made him one of the most influential philosophers working in this area. This is the first publication of these ideas in book form.

Customer Reviews:

Absolute Classic.......2006-07-29

Things are quite simple. If there is A contemporary debate in jurisprudence, it is the so-called Hart/Dworkin debate. It all starts with this wonderful book that cuts deeply and challenges the theory of legal positivism on many levels. As for the theory of rights, Dworkin is a proponent of one of the most coherent, interesting and complex articulations of liberalism. In short: to the extent that fundamental rights are in play, the "political majority" (if such a thing exists) does not have the moral right to tell members of the minority what to do with their own lives. Is not this a simple but powerful moral truth?

Tyranny of a minority.......2003-02-17

Dworkin's thesis is that a tyranny of a minority is better than a tyranny of the majority. His argument is based on rigorous logic. But Justice Holmes observed that, "The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience." Dworkin's theory is similar to those of Plato and Marx. But experience with the latters' theories has been negative. For an analysis of that experience, read Kark Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies.

His Logic is Flawless.......2002-11-25

... and this is a welcome breeze in the current political fog of an America drowning in six-shooters and visceral-response-teams. The Dworkin-challenge before us is the discovery of rights as emanating from the individual, and their use in daily life. This is where Dworkin may break down. Unlike Dershowitz's "Shouting Fire", for example, Dworkin does not write as if there is a human behind the logic who is actually extolling our necessary freedoms. Perhaps it is just me, but I'd like to hold on to and celebrate my rights and yours; I'd also like to affect change-- as would Dworkin, on a global scale. Though he sees humanity's natural path to decency, his writing "feels" far too cold to be effective.

Dworkin is provocative, complex and though-full. This work shifts between levels of abstraction and works toward grand theories of natural-law that will flip less talented contemporaries on their collective heads. Because our job as citizens includes the requirement that we think (far beyond our childhood systems of ordering the world), "Taking Rights Seriously" should indeed be taken to heart and mind. My instinct is to suggest that one supplement Dworkin with John S. Mill and Dershowitz. With a nod to Dworkin, I "think" the latter suggestion is well-reasoned.

misleading title.......2001-12-25

I have only read the first two chapters so far but mostly it is an attempt to discredit Justice John Marshall and his judicial review or judicial activism to cultivate individual rights or protect the common man from an abusive govt and the rich who have bought local and national politicians, with some nonsense about the priority of community or majority rules and principles. How dare the common man protest abuse by the majority!!! So much for freedom and the Bill of Rights. There is some suggestion that may redeem from the prospective that there maybe a better way to challenge injustice of the majority than use of judicial activism, but I haven't got that far yet.

A Clear Window on Rights.......2000-07-31

It is a brave author that attempts a new perspective on a topic that has been fodder for politicians and philosophers for thousands of years. Dworkin clears out the old cobwebs and provides insights and new perspectives for the 21st century. It is a must read for anyone serious about our dwindling rights in today's modern society. Well written, not an academic sleeping pill.

Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate

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CORAGE
Principles still matter
A Common Denominator for Political Debate

Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691126534

Book Description

Politics in America are polarized and trivialized, perhaps as never before. In Congress, the media, and academic debate, opponents from right and left, the red and the blue, struggle against one another as if politics were contact sports played to the shouts of cheerleaders. The result, Ronald Dworkin writes, is a deeply depressing political culture, as ill equipped for the perennial challenge of achieving social justice as for the emerging threats of terrorism. Yet this need not be. Dworkin, one the world's leading legal and political philosophers, identifies and defends core principles of personal and political morality that all citizens can share. He shows that recognizing such shared principles can make substantial political argument possible and help replace contempt with mutual respect. Only then can the full promise of democracy be realized in America and elsewhere.

Dworkin lays out two core principles that citizens should share: first, that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable and, second, that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her own life. He then shows what fidelity to these principles would mean for human rights, the place of religion in public life, economic justice, and the character and value of democracy. Dworkin argues that liberal conclusions flow most naturally from these principles. Properly understood, they collide with the ambitions of religious conservatives, contemporary American tax and social policy, and much of the War on Terror. But his more basic aim is to convince Americans of all political stripes--as well as citizens of other nations with similar cultures--that they can and must defend their own convictions through their own interpretations of these shared values.

Customer Reviews:

CORAGE.......2007-01-16

All americans should read this book. Ronald Dworkin has the corage to say the truth about the President Bush. And the truth is: YOU DID NOT HAVE DEMOCRACY.

Principles still matter.......2007-01-04

Only Dworkin can get you back to understanding just how important principles are to decision making. "Principles Matter" (his best work in my opinion), and now he applies that same logic to preserving democracy in a world where we are continously befuddled by mass media and political spin bent on stirring our emotions. Anything to keep you "tuned in" and riled.

His arguements are solid, as always. Even if you prefer other "principles", you have to respect his approach and where his values weigh in on critical decision making. Dworkin has a way of revealing to the reader just what principles he or she are applying and sometimes we come away horrified at your own logic, which, of course, we thought was flawless. This book helps us take stock of own own opinions and how we can be more constructive towards preserving the democracy we all believe we cherish. Somewhere we need a divisor to utilize against the bombardment of mass communication and political belligerence. This is an excellent beginning.

A Common Denominator for Political Debate.......2006-12-08

Having weathered another election cycle of verbal and emotional combat between the polarized "red" and "blue" electorate, one begins to wonder if there is any common ground for constructive political debate in our contentious democracy. In his new book, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin answers in the affirmative. He believes that there are certain principles on which both sides can agree. Problems, however, arise when these principles are applied to making concrete policy decisions.

Dworkin sets forth two principles of human dignity to which all parties can agree: 1) "that each human life is intrinsically and equally valuable," and 2) "that each person has an inalienable personal responsibility for identifying and realizing value in his or her life."

These principles are highly abstract and probably most parties would disagree on their application. The improvement in political debate here lies in the fact that debates can go back to a common starting point rather than having parties try to demonize and discredit each other as if they had mutually exclusive worldviews.

In the application of these principles to the policy on torture of enemy combatants, I found Dworkin's views recognizable because they coincide with my own. The use of torture is clearly at odds with any principle of human dignity and should be condemned. However, there are extreme and unique situations where torture may extract information that could save thousands of lives. How does one balance this against human dignity? Dworkin seems to suggest that we do a cost/benefit analysis - typical of legal thinkers. And I tend to agree. However, it is a problematic area and remains unresolved.

On the issue of capital punishment Dworkin tries to show two sides of the argument. Being a liberal, he is personally against capital punishment. On the other hand, he argues that death as punishment is not at odds with human dignity. A death penalty advocate would argue that there are issues of deterence and retribution that must be observed. Again this opens the debate to other sets of issues. Where does one draw the line on human dignity?

These two examples illustrate how difficult it is to achieve a substantive political debate as opposed to the disparagement and invective that we witness today. Dworkin's principles are hard to disagree with, and he clearly illustrates the problems we get into if we deviate too far from these principles. This book is an interesting and useful contribution to the need for civilizing our current political debate.

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Justice in Robes
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0674021673

Book Description

How should a judge's moral convictions bear on his judgments about what the law is? Lawyers, sociologists, philosophers, politicians, and judges all have answers to that question: these range from "nothing" to "everything." In his new book Ronald Dworkin argues that the question is much more complex than it has often been taken to be and charts a variety of dimensions--semantic, jurisprudential, and doctrinal--in which law and morals are undoubtedly interwoven. He restates and summarizes his own widely discussed account of these connections, which emphasizes the sovereign importance of moral principle in legal and constitutional interpretation, and then reviews and criticizes the most influential rival theories to his own. He argues that pragmatism is empty as a theory of law, that value pluralism misunderstands the nature of moral concepts, that constitutional originalism reflects an impoverished view of the role of a constitution in a democratic society, and that contemporary legal positivism is based on a mistaken semantic theory and an erroneous account of the nature of authority. In the course of that critical study he discusses the work of many of the most influential lawyers and philosophers of the era, including Isaiah Berlin, Richard Posner, Cass Sunstein, Antonin Scalia, and Joseph Raz. Dworkin's new collection of essays and original chapters is a model of lucid, logical, and impassioned reasoning that will advance the crucially important debate about the roles of justice in law.

Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom

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Not for the Pro-Life crowd.
carefully and closely reasoned investigation
not advised
False Rationalizations
An Excellent and Thought-Provoking Book

Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679733191
Release Date: 1994-06-28

Book Description

One of the country's most distinguished scholars presents a brilliantly original approach to the twin dilemmas of abortion and euthanasia, showing why they arouse such volcanic controversy and how we as a society can reconcile our values of life and individual liberty.

Customer Reviews:

Not for the Pro-Life crowd. .......2007-05-22

This book is one of the most amazing and critical inquiries into a socially relevant topic of the 20th century. The arguments are almost flawless, beautifully interwoven with examples, anecdotes and personally relevant stories spanning the whole spectrum of human emotion.

This book will not bore you. It will be quite interesting from a humanistic, legal and historical point of view. However, Ronald Dworkin is indeed a liberal philosopher who believes that liberal social policy (in regards to abortion and euthanasia) can coexist with one's belief that life is ever precious.

Naturally, conflicting and strict moral belief systems divide conservatives and liberals in regards to such hot-button issues. If you are truly willing to read this book with an open mind, you will not be disappointed and perhaps will become a better and more informed advocate. On the other hand, if you read this book while conceptualizing some circular reasoning debasing Dworkin's every word - in favor of a verse from the bible - this book is certainly not for you!

carefully and closely reasoned investigation.......2003-09-04

Not light reading or a polemic, but rather a carefully and closely reasoned investigation of how one comes to decisions about matters involving the taking of life, with particular emphasis on doing so under the US Constitution

< < < <...the American Constitution, understood as one of principle, provides a better form of government than any in which the legislative and executive branches of government are legally free to disregard fundamental principles of justice and decency. A constitution of principle, enforced by independent judges, is not undemocratic. On the contrary, it is a precondition of legitimate democracy that government is required to treat individual citizens as equals, and to respect their fundamental liberties and dignity. Unless those conditions are met, there can be no genuine democracy, because unless they are met, the majority has no legitimate moral title to govern.>>>>>

Starting with an in-depth look at the arguments about abortion, Dworkin moves out to wider considerations of euthanasia and suicide. He shows how many of the classic arguments in these areas are actually closer to each other than most participants would think or admit, and then shows where continued dialog and discussion might be useful, without asking either side to compromise basic principles. One of Dworkin's main concerns is to show that a principled interpretation of the constitution should be both a liberal and a conservative mandate. Even in the divisive issue of abortion, principled stand based on the inherent value of life helps both sides:

< < < < <
Of course, if we centered the abortion controversy on the question of whether a fetus is a person with a right to live, then one state's having the right to forbid abortion would not mean that another had the right to require it. But that does follow once we recognize that the constitutional question at stake is whether a state can impose on everyone on official interpretation of the inherent value of life. It would be intolerable for a state to require an abortion to prevent the birth of a deformed child. In the United States, no one doubts that such a requirement would be unconstitutional. But the reason why - because it denies a pregnant woman's right to decide for herself what the sanctity of life requires her to do about her own pregnancy - applies with exactly equal force in the other direction. A state just as seriously insults the dignity of a pregnant woman when it forces her to the opposite choice. That the choice is approved by a majority is no better justification in the one case than in the other. >>>>

Some further examples demonstrate the depth of his discussions, but can only hint at the fully developed arguments present in the book.
< < < < < <.. the distinction between the question of what acts or events are in some creature's interests and the question of what acts or events respect the sanctity of that creature's life.

< < < < <...the appeal to the sanctity of life raises here the same crucial political and constitutional issue that it raises about abortion. Once again the critical question is whether a decent society will choose coercion or responsibility, whether it will seek to impose a collective judgment on matters of the most profound spiritual character on everyone, or whether it will allow and ask its citizens to make the most central, personality-defining judgment about their own lives for themselves.

not advised.......2002-05-09

I was actually looking forward to reading this book. I came with an open mind and yet the poor writing and lack of credible arguments astounded me. How is this author a scholar and still able to write weakly biased material that is published by a major house?

I would recomend not reading this book no matter what your stance is on these topics. If you agree with the author, you may be blinded by your beliefs to embrace his scewed logic, and if you disagree, you will get a bad impression of the actual arguments his side could give.

False Rationalizations.......2000-08-27

Dworkin claims that accepting abortion and euthanasia is to somehow embrace the sanctity of all human life. What tripe. Whatever one thinks of these controversial issues, both involve killing as a means to problem solving. That hardly embraces life's sanctity unless language has lost all meaning.

An Excellent and Thought-Provoking Book.......2000-06-08

Amazingly, Dworkin offers a new take on the abortion dispute--and I think a correct one. I don't agree with everything he says, but this book sheds more light on these issues than any other that I have read. I would say that it is the best philosophical book I have read in a long while. Among the many things that I appreciate about this book is that Dworkin along the way also has interesting and insightful things to say about the philosophy of mind, the meaning of life, and the nature of human dignity. If you are at all interested in bio-ethics, the philosophy of the abortion dispute, euthanasia, or the meaning of life--read this book. I plan to re-read it soon.

Emerging Strategies for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain

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Emerging Strategies for the Treatment of Neuropathic Pain

Manufacturer: IASP Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0931092612

Dworkin and His Critics: With Replies by Dworkin (Philosophers and Their Critics)

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Dworkin and His Critics: With Replies by Dworkin (Philosophers and Their Critics)

Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0631197664

Book Description

Dworkin and His Critics provides an in-depth, analytical discussion of Ronald Dworkin's moral, ethical, legal, and political philosophical writings.As the first text to cover such a wide range of Dworkin's thought, it makes a substantial contribution to a number of ongoing academic debates over abortion, euthanasia, the rule of law, distributive justice, group rights, political obligation, and genetics. Underpinning Dworkin 's work are fundamental principles of political morality, discussion of which is a central focus of the book. The 18 contributors include Richard J. Arneson, G. A. Cohen, F. M. Kamm, Will Kymlicka, Philippe van Parijs, Eric Rakowski, Seana Valentine Shiffrin, and Jeremy Waldron.This collection of primarily new essays features substantial replies by Ronald Dworkin and a comprehensive bibliography of his work. Dworkin and His Critics, an interdisciplinary work, is indispensable for students, instructors, and scholars in the fields of philosophy, law, and politics.

Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality

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A Theory - And a Theory Only
Lazy Scholarship
an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equ
Impossibly Interesting

Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0674008103

Book Description

Equality is the endangered species of political ideals. Even left-of-center politicians reject equality as an ideal: government must combat poverty, they say, but need not strive that its citizens be equal in any dimension. In his new book Ronald Dworkin insists, to the contrary, that equality is the indispensable virtue of democratic sovereignty. A legitimate government must treat all its citizens as equals, that is, with equal respect and concern, and, since the economic distribution that any society achieves is mainly the consequence of its system of law and policy, that requirement imposes serious egalitarian constraints on that distribution.

What distribution of a nation's wealth is demanded by equal concern for all? Dworkin draws upon two fundamental humanist principles--first, it is of equal objective importance that all human lives flourish, and second, each person is responsible for defining and achieving the flourishing of his or her own life--to ground his well-known thesis that true equality means equality in the value of the resources that each person commands, not in the success he or she achieves. Equality, freedom, and individual responsibility are therefore not in conflict, but flow from and into one another as facets of the same humanist conception of life and politics. Since no abstract political theory can be understood except in the context of actual and complex political issues, Dworkin develops his thesis by applying it to heated contemporary controversies about the distribution of health care, unemployment benefits, campaign finance reform, affirmative action, assisted suicide, and genetic engineering.

Customer Reviews:

A Theory - And a Theory Only.......2002-03-25

I have for some time trying to find a good book speaking the liberal cause, as the few books I have read in this area were full of rhetoric while scant in logic - this in comparison with many serious thinkers and writers in the libertarian and conservative bent. I had high hopes on this book.

Professor Dworkin is no doubt a serious thinker and a very good writer. However, I am disappointed in his book. His theory in equality is well written but not well reasoned. It seems that the professor lives and thinks in the rarefied theoretical world, but tries to develop a theory that he hopes to put into practice for the real world.

Economists and demographists talk about a distribution as a manifested result of spontaneous transactions, such as the distribution income for a particular year. The professor's starting premises has to do with a notion of distribution of resources as an action, or the direct result of policies, by some dictating authority (the government). Although Dworkin tries not to make it sound like his views are socialistic, they in fact are.

Professor Dworkin takes great care to define his preferred notion equality to be distributional equality of resources. This immediately raises many problems: Who grants the control of resources? Where do these resources that are to be granted come from? Who decides what is a fair (equal) share, given the different needs of different people? What happens over time, when individual actions and choices create new inequalities? The professor is aware of these problems and theorizes on them. But no reasonable answers can be developed, except in small and/or theoretical cases such as a father in a position to will his assets to his off-springs, or what happens after a shipwreck on a desert island.

I did not finish reading the entire book - I could not justify spending time to continue after I concluded that foundation of his theory, as well as much of his "theorized practice" were so wholly academic that they placed serious limits on the usefulness of the theory itself. Anyway, in all fairness, you should give more weight to those who have read the entire book.

For those who seriously ponder on the related issue of equality, fairness and justice, I would highly recommend "The Quest for Cosmic Justice" by Thomas Sowell. You will be spared the tedious academic theorizing and get a lucid, well-reasoned dissertation on the subject.

Lazy Scholarship.......2001-06-03

Ron Dworkin doesn't work through his views very well if this book is characteristic of his thinking. In the first few chapters, he builds an imaginary world in which the government confiscates (read taxation)all resources in the nation and auctions them off evenly among the population. But auctions are just the beginning of his idealistic approach to political philosophy.

True, this portion of the book is theory, but his theories are fantasies. They're not realistic at all.

The second half of the book is his attempt to put into practice the idealistic proposals in the first half.

I found this book good as a text if you want to teach a class on contemporary political philosophy, but only if you are looking to get your students thinking about a large number of current issues and improve their critical thinking skills. If you're trying to give them examples of how to think or give a good representation of solid liberal political thought, I would pass this one by.

Let me give an example of Dworkin's bias and poor research. In Chapter 11, "Affirmative Action, Does It Work?", Dworkin's answer is a profound "YES!!" But to support his view, he uses one study and one study alone, Bowen and Bok's "The Shape of the River." He only mentions "American in Black and White" which, by the way, destroys his argument. The River study looks only at a very narrow sample, blacks in elite educational institutions. As a friend and fellow student said, "If I were to write chapter 11 as a term paper, it would have been returned to me with an extremely low grade or a request to support my view with more research." The reader gets the idea that either Dworkin couldn't find any other material which supported his view, or he was just lazy in looking. Which brings up another interesting facet of this book. It seems Dworkin came to the table with views and looked for materials to support those views. He does not come across as open and objective at all.

Sovereign Virtue gives the impression Dworkin may have sat down and knocked this out in a weekend or two without any peer review. If you're interested in philosophy, especially liberal democratic political philosophy, look elsewhere. Al Franken might even be a better choice, but less of a joke.

an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equ.......2001-04-21

With Sovereign Virtue, Ronald Dworkin finally presents his political theory in a form convenient for the general reader, stripped of the specialized arguments about jurisprudence on which he has built his reputation. The issue in Sovereign Virtue is not how judges should decide cases, but what kind of equality between individuals government should secure and maintain. For Dworkin, liberal egalitarianism strives to make the effects of personal choice dominate over those of individual luck. "When and how far is it right that individuals bear disadvantages or misfortunes of their own situations themselves, and when is it right, on the contrary, that others-the other members of the community in which they live, for example-relieve them from or mitigate the consequences of these disadvantages?" (p. 287). His answer is that "individuals should be relieved of consequential responsibility for those unfortunate features of their situation that are brute bad luck, but not from those that should be seen as flowing from their own choices" (p. 287). In this way, Dworkin claims to strike the right balance between collective and personal responsibility...

...if one makes it past the many pedantic issues Dworkin raises, one will finally come to the provocative, practical nub of his political theory: the distinction between fair and unfair differences in wealth. All philosopher's puzzles aside, Sovereign Virtue calls for a continuous redistribution of wealth much more massive than what is effected now. Dworkin gives no concrete figures, but he believes that "the wealth of everyone in a fair society would be much closer to the average than is true in America now: the great extremes between rich and poor that mark our economic life now would have largely disappeared" (p. 312). Only such a very large redistribution, he contends, would render persons tolerably equal in the extent to which their fates are determined by things beyond their control, but would also leave each person's fate sensitive to the choices he actually makes. Dworkin also argues for a universal health-care system, a more generous welfare scheme, greater regulations on campaign expenditures and contributions, and race-sensitive admissions policies. But all of these positions, with the possible exception of the last, issue directly from the fundamental inequity Dworkin sees in the free-market distribution of wealth...

...Are the advantages accruing to lucky owners of "wealth-talent" any different in principle from the advantages conferred by very selective universities to the lucky owners of the endowment of being black? As F. A. Hayek once noted, the free market does not recognize merit or desert in any objective sense, but simply the value others place on one's capacities or services. "Our problem is whether it is desirable that people should enjoy advantages in proportion to the benefits which their fellows derive from their activities or whether the distribution of these advantages should be based on other men's views of their merits" (Friedrich A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960], p. 94). But this problem is exactly the same as the one regarding university admissions, as Dworkin frames it...

...Sovereign Virtue, in general, contains an ingenious argument for a subtle conception of liberal equality, worked out over the course of a prodigious career. There are many impressive parts to Dworkin's argument that I have not mentioned for lack of space. Still, that argument is marked by several fundamental inconsistencies. Why should certain people enjoy the unmerited privilege of a rare and prestigious university education, but no one enjoy unmerited wealth? Why shouldn't entrepreneurial capitalists enjoy the equal benefit of Dworkin's liberal neutrality toward "life plans"? And why should inequalities of political influence receive more lax treatment under Dworkin's egalitarian principle than inequalities of wealth? Until Dworkin explains how these positions issue from consistent principle, we must consider his political theory a work of extraordinarily articulate prejudice.

Impossibly Interesting.......2001-02-24

If you're willing to expend the energy on Dworkin's dense, abstract prose in the first section, you'll be rewarded in the second section wherein he applies his abstractions to tough issues like national healthcare, and genetic manipulation. Dworkin sometimes sounds like an insurance analyst -- he tends to think in terms of spreading risk across populations. He also likes to build models to help conceptualize the distribution of risk and reward in society. These models, fully understood, provide a means of gauging all kinds of propositions: propositions about genetic experimentation, economic inequality, healthcare, to name just a few that he covers in the second section. The problem is that it takes a long time for Dworkin to set up these models that one begins to lose sight of just why such a conceptual tool might be worthwhile (for instance, a desert island where everyone arrives on an equal footing and the auction that ensues to distribute resources equally according to preference.) At the same time, there is something heartening about Dworkin's insistence that rationality can prevail, that reasonable people can agree on certain basic assumptions about the importance of public goods and ways in which these goods might be attained. One wants to believe that this is the case, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary, especially in our current political discourse, so polarized as not to admit any room for the intrusion of reason. A noble try, really. Overall, a tough book, but a rewarding one.

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A Matter of Principle
Ronald Dworkin
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
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ASIN: 0198255748

Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin

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Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0199274355

Book Description

Exploring Law's Empire is a collection of essays by leading legal theorists and philosophers who have been invited to develop, defend, or critique Ronald Dworkin's controversial and exciting jurisprudence. The volume explores Dworkin's critique of legal positivism, his theory of law as integrity, and his writings on constitutional jurisprudence. Each essay is a cutting-edge contribution to its field of inquiry, the highlights of which include an introduction by Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, and a concluding essay by Dworkin himself. This final chapter responds to the preceding essays and lays out Dworkin's own vision for the future of jurisprdence over the coming years.

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