 Ronald Myles Dworkin at the Brooklyn Book Festival in 2008. | |
| Born | Ronald Myles Dworkin December 11, 1931 Providence, Rhode Island, U.S. |
|---|---|
| Died | February 14, 2013 (aged 81)[1] London, England |
| Era | 20th/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Jurisprudence, political philosophy |
| Notable ideas | law as integrity, fit and justification in law, right answer thesis, legal interpretivism, rights as trumps |
He was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University and Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, and had taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford.
An influential contributor to both philosophy of law and political philosophy, Dworkin received the 2007 Holberg International Memorial Prize in the Humanities for "his pioneering scholarly work" of "worldwide impact."
According to a survey in The Journal of Legal Studies, Dworkin was the second most-cited American legal scholar of the twentieth century.
His theory of law as integrity, in which judges interpret the law in terms of consistent and communal moral principles, especially justice and fairness, is among the most influential contemporary theories about the nature of law.
Dworkin advocated a "moral reading" of the United States Constitution, and an interpretivist approach to law and morality.
He was a frequent commentator on contemporary political and legal issues, particularly those concerning the Supreme Court of the United States, often in the pages of The New York Review of Books.
Dworkin was born in 1931 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States, the son of Madeline (Talamo) and David Dworkin.[5]
He studied at Harvard University and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and a student of Sir Rupert Cross.
After completing his final year's exams at Oxford, the examiners were so impressed with his script that the Chair of Jurisprudence (then H. L. A. Hart) was summoned to read it.
Dworkin then attended Harvard Law School and subsequently clerked for Judge Learned Hand of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Judge Hand would later call Dworkin the finest clerk he ever employed, and Dworkin would recall Judge Hand as an enormously influential mentor.
After working at Sullivan & Cromwell, a prominent law firm in New York City, Dworkin became a Professor of Law at Yale University, where he became the holder of the Wesley N. Hohfeld Chair of Jurisprudence.
---- THE OXFORD YEARS
In 1969, Dworkin was appointed to the Chair of Jurisprudence at Oxford, a position in which he succeeded H. L. A. Hart, and elected Fellow of University College, Oxford.
After retiring from Oxford, Dworkin became the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London, where he subsequently became the Bentham Professor of Jurisprudence.
He was Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at New York University School of Law and professor of Philosophy at New York University (NYU),[6] where he taught since the late 1970s.
He co-taught a colloquium in legal, political, and social philosophy with Thomas Nagel.
Dworkin had regularly contributed, for several decades, to The New York Review of Books.
He delivered the Oliver Wendell Holmes Lecture at Harvard, the Storrs Lectures at Yale, the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Stanford, and the Scribner Lectures at Princeton.
In June 2011, he joined the professoriate of New College of the Humanities, a private college in London.
Dworkin died of leukemia in London on February 14, 2013 at age 81.[8]
[edit] Law as rule and principle
Positivism's most significant critic rejects the theory on every conceivable level. He denies that there can be any general theory of the existence and content of law; he denies that local theories of particular legal systems can identify law without recourse to its merits, and he rejects the whole institutional focus of positivism. A theory of law is for Dworkin a theory of how cases ought to be decided and it begins, not with an account of political organization, but with an abstract ideal regulating the conditions under which governments may use coercive force over their subjects.[9]
He sets forth the fullest statement of his critique in his book Law's Empire.
Dworkin's theory is 'interpretive'.
The law is whatever follows from a constructive interpretation of the institutional history of the legal system.
Dworkin argues that moral principles that people hold dear are often wrong, even to the extent that certain crimes are acceptable if one's principles are skewed enough. To discover and apply these principles, courts interpret the legal data (legislation, cases etc.) with a view to articulating an interpretation that best explains and justifies past legal practice. All interpretation must follow, Dworkin argues, from the notion of "law as integrity" to make sense.
Out of the idea that law is 'interpretive' in this way, Dworkin argues that in every situation where people's legal rights are controversial, the best interpretation involves the right answer thesis. Dworkin opposes the notion that judges have a discretion in such difficult cases.
Dworkin's model of legal principles is also connected with Hart's notion of the Rule of Recognition.
Dworkin rejects Hart's conception of a master rule in every legal system that identifies valid laws, on the basis that this would entail that the process of identifying law must be uncontroversial, whereas (Dworkin argues) people have legal rights even in cases where the correct legal outcome is open to reasonable dispute.
While Dworkin moves away from positivism's separation of law and morality, his concept suggests that the two are related in an epistemic rather than ontological sense as posited by traditional natural law.
Suppose the legislature has passed a statute stipulating that "sacrilegious contracts shall henceforth be invalid." The community is divided as to whether a contract signed on Sunday is, for that reason alone, sacrilegious. It is known that very few of the legislators had that question in mind when they voted, and that they are now equally divided on the question of whether it should be so interpreted. Tom and Tim have signed a contract on Sunday, and Tom now sues Tim to enforce the terms of the contract, whose validity Tim contests. Shall we say that the judge must look for the right answer to the question of whether Tom's contract is valid, even though the community is deeply divided about what the right answer is? Or is it more realistic to say that there simply is no right answer to the question? (Dworkin, 1985, p. 119)One of Dworkin's most interesting and controversial theses states that the law as properly interpreted will give an answer. This is not to say that everyone will have the same answer (a consensus of what is "right"), or if it did, the answer would not be justified exactly in the same way for every person; rather it means that there will be a necessary answer for each individual if he applies himself correctly to the legal question. For the correct method is that encapsulated by the metaphor of Hercules J.
This metaphor of Judge Hercules, an ideal judge, immensely wise and with full knowledge of legal sources. Hercules (the name comes from a classical mythological hero) would also have plenty of time to decide. Acting on the premise that the law is a seamless web, Hercules is required to construct the theory that best fits and justifies the law as a whole (law as integrity) in order to decide any particular case. Hercules, Dworkin argues, would always come to the one right answer.
Dworkin does not deny that competent lawyers often disagree on what is the solution to a given case. On the contrary, he claims that they are disagreeing about the right answer to the case, the answer Hercules would give.
Dworkin's critics argue not only that law proper (that is, the legal sources in a positivist sense) is full of gaps and inconsistencies, but also that other legal standards (including principles) may be insufficient to solve a hard case. Some of them are incommensurable. In any of these situations, even Hercules would be in a dilemma and none of the possible answers would be the right one.
Dworkin defends his position saying that non-Herculean judges, much like everyday people, find their way and choose between options and values that were supposed to be incommensurable. Dworkin also argues that it is always possible to find out other rules or principles to solve the conflict between those we had in mind. The same counter-argument, however, regarding principles and moral standards that are incommensurable, would seem to apply to any further principles or rules we may discover in the process. In other words, the claim that there may always be more principles or rules to be taken into account proves nothing about the nature of those further principles, or about Dworkin's claim that the exercise, in the hands of the omnipotent Judge Hercules, will eventually come to a stop (when we have reached the right answer). In fact, the opposite conclusion could just as well be drawn from Dworkin's claim - that the exercise in question, under the guidance of such an omnipotent figure, would extend into infinity. Thus while a "right" answer may be available at any given stage, no final right answer would ever be arrived at by Hercules. Or, there is nothing to suggest one way or the other.
Dworkin's metaphor of judge Hercules bears some resemblance to Rawls' veil of ignorance and Habermas' ideal speech situation, in that they all suggest idealized methods of arriving at somehow valid normative propositions. The key difference with respect to the former is that Rawls' veil of ignorance translates almost seamlessly from the purely ideal to the practical. In relation to politics in a democratic society, for example, it is a way of saying that those in power should treat the political opposition consistently with how they would like to be treated when in opposition, because their present position offers no guarantee as to what their position will be in the political landscape of the future (i.e. they will inevitably form the opposition at some point). Dworkin's Judge Hercules, on the other hand, is a purely idealized construct, that is if such a figure existed, he would arrive at a right answer in every moral dilemma. For a critique along these lines see Lorenzo Zucca's Constitutional Dilemmas.[10]
Dworkin's right answer thesis turns on the success of his attack on the sceptical argument that right answers in legal-moral dilemmas cannot be determined. Dworkin's anti-sceptical argument is essentially that the properties of the sceptic's claim are analogous to those of substantive moral claims, that is, in asserting that the truth or falsity of "legal-moral" dilemmas cannot be determined, the sceptic makes not a metaphysical claim about the way things are, but a moral claim to the effect that it is, in the face of epistemic uncertainty, unjust to determine legal-moral issues to the detriment of any given individual.
Dworkin has also made important contributions to what is sometimes called the equality of what debate. In a famous pair of articles and his book Sovereign Virtue he advocates a theory he calls 'equality of resources'. This theory combines two key ideas. Broadly speaking, the first is that human beings are responsible for the life choices they make. The second is that natural endowments of intelligence and talent are morally arbitrary and ought not to affect the distribution of resources in society. Like the rest of Dworkin's work, his theory of equality is underpinned by the core principle that every person is entitled to equal concern and respect in the design of the structure of society. Dworkin's theory of equality is one variety of so-called luck egalitarianism.
The negative conception of liberty (represented by Isaiah Berlin) is however not satisfactory to Dworkin since it merely concerns itself with political processes (e.g. laws forbidding murder, limiting car usage etc.). In Dworkin's view liberty must be understood as entailing certain considerations of equality, since it is not possible to exercise one's freedom without a considerable amount of resources (e.g. participating in the democratic process by voting is not possible without having the food, health, time or knowledge to do so). Liberty is therefore not only a question of process, but must also contain elements of substance.
One further criticism that can be leveled from the Berlinian enterprise is that the so-called "flat" conception of liberty does not entail the liberty to murder - rather, murder (when it does occur) is only a consequence of natural liberty. When one is prevented from murdering, one's liberty is not infringed merely because one is prevented from murdering, but because (more fundamentally) one is prevented from acting at all, by being restrained, handcuffed, put into prison, etc. The fact that one is thereby prevented from murdering is, again, merely a consequence of one's liberty being infringed. Thus Dworkin's argument can be recast as a deep-level consequentialist one.
[
Dworkin is noted for his avid participation in public debates over law and issues of fundamental rights. He has been a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books.In September 2007, Dworkin was awarded the Holberg International Memorial Prize. The award citation of the Holberg Prize Academic Committee recognized that Dworkin has "elaborated a liberal egalitarian theory" and stressed Dworkin's effort to develop "an original and highly influential legal theory grounding law in morality, characterized by a unique ability to tie together abstract philosophical ideas and arguments with concrete everyday concerns in law, morals, and politics".[11]
The New York University Annual Survey of American Law honored Dworkin with its 2006 dedication.
In August 2011, the University of Buenos Aires awarded Dworkin an honorary doctorate.
The resolution noted that he "has tirelessly defended the rule of law, democracy and human rights."
0n November 14, 2012, he received the Balzan Prize for Jurisprudence in Quirinale Palace, Rome, from the President of Italian Republic. The Balzan Prize was awarded "for his fundamental contributions to Jurisprudence, characterized by outstanding originality and clarity of thought in a continuing and fruitful interaction with ethical and political theories and with legal practices".
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Books by Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977.- The Philosophy of Law (Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. by G. J. Warnock). Ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
- A Matter of Principle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
- Law's Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
- Philosophical Issues in Senile Dementia. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987.
- A Bill of Rights for Britain. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1990.
- Life's Dominion: An Argument About Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
- Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
- Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
- A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court, and American Democracy. Ed. New York: New Press, 2002.
- From Liberal Values to Democratic Transition: Essays in Honor of Janos Kis. Ed. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004.
- Justice in Robes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
- Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
- The Supreme Court Phalanx: The Court's New Right-Wing Bloc. New York: New York Review Books, 2008.
- Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.
- Religion Without God. Forthcoming
Secondary literature on Dworkin
- Allard, Julie. Dworkin et Kant: Réflexions sur le judgement. Bruxelles: Editions de l'ULB, 2001.
- Brown, Alexander. Ronald Dworkin's Theory of Equality: Domestic and Global Perspectives. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Burke, John J.A. The Political Foundation of Law: The Need for Theory with Practical Value. San Francisco: Austin & Winfield, 1992.
- Burley, Justine, ed. Dworkin and His Critics. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.
- Cohen, Marshall, ed. Ronald Dworkin and Contemporary Jurisprudence. London: Duckworth, 1984.
- Gaffney, Paul. Ronald Dworkin on Law as Integrity: Rights as Principles of Adjudication. Lewiston, New York: Mellen University Press, 1996.
- Guest, Stephen. Ronald Dworkin (Jurists: Profiles in Legal Theory). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.
- Hershovitz, Scott, ed. Exploring Law's Empire: The Jurisprudence of Ronald Dworkin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Hunt, Alan, ed. Reading Dworkin Critically. New York: Berg, 1992.
- Ripstein, Arthur, ed. Ronald Dworkin (Contemporary Philosophers in Focus). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Wesche, Stefen and Zanetti, Véronique, eds. Dworkin: Un débat. Paris: Ousia, 2000.
[edit] See also
- American philosophy
- Contributions to liberal theory
- Egalitarianism
- Legal indeterminacy
- Judicial activism
- Legal formalism
- Legal positivism
- List of American philosophers
- Equality
[edit] References
- ^ a b The Associated Press. "LONDON: US legal scholar Ronald Dworkin dies in UK aged 81 - World Wires". MiamiHerald.com. http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/02/14/3233930/us-legal-scholar-ronald-dworkin.html. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
- ^ "Ronald Dworkin". New York Review of Books. Nybooks.com. Accessed 29 September 2009.
- ^ Shapiro, Fred R. (2000). "The Most-Cited Legal Scholars". Journal of Legal Studies 29 (1): 409–426. doi:10.1086/468080.
- ^ Freedom's Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution. Ronald Dworkin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1996. Via Google Books.
- ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2013/feb/14/ronald-dworkin
- ^ "Ronald M. Dworkin - NYU School of Law - Overview". Its.law.nyu.edu. http://its.law.nyu.edu/faculty/profiles/index.cfm?fuseaction=cv.main&personID=19891. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
- ^ "The professoriate", New College of the Humanities, accessed June 8, 2011.
- ^ "Ronald Dworkin, Legal Scholar, Dies at 81". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/02/14/world/europe/ap-eu-britain-obit-dworkin.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0. Retrieved 14 February 2013.
- ^ "Legal Positivism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. 2003-01-03. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
- ^ "Oxford University Press: Constitutional Dilemmas: Lorenzo Zucca". Oup.com. http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Law/ConstitutionalLaw/?view=usa&ci=9780199204977. Retrieved 2013-02-14.
- ^ Holberg Prize Academic Committee; Holberg International Memorial Prize 2007: Ronald Dworkin
[edit] External links
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ronald Dworkin |
 | Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ronald Dworkin |
- NYU Law Faculty profile
- UCL Faculty of Laws profile
- Ronald Dworkin obituary by The Guardian
- New York Review of Books archive
- "Ronald Dworkin - Mr Justice", The Times Literary Supplement, 5 December 2007
- "Interpretation and Coherence in Legal Reasoning" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- "Interpretivist Theories of Law" at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Charles Blattberg's critique of Dworkin and John Rawls for failing to take politics seriously enough.
- Ronald Dworkin at the Internet Movie Database
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