Justice Aharon Barack Photo Joav Galay

Professor Ronald Dworkin - Photo Brett Mickelson

Ronald Dworkin on Law As Integrity Rights as Principles of Adjudication
Gaffney, Paul
"This study provides a comprehensive examination of the legal theory of Ronald Dworkin, arguably the most original and provocative philosopher of law that America has produced this century. Dworkin's work represents an effort to synthesize the moral commitments of the natural law tradition with the hermeneutical character of post-modern philosophy. The result is an interpretive theory of law, focused on the essentially moral character of hard case adjudication. Judges strive to be principled and consistent in their resolution of legal disputes, thus manifesting an implicit commitment to the ideal of Integrity. This book clarifies and probes the moral, epistemological, and metaphysical commitments of Law as Integrity. A full discussion is presented on the pillars of Dworkin's program: his understanding of rights as "trump cards" which privilege the individual claim over the group policy; the critique of legal positivism; the history of a legal institution according to the analogy of a chain novel; and the insistence upon a theory of adjudication that is both constructive and yet faithful to the deepest intentions of legal documents. Most importantly, this volume indicates which of these claims are most fundamental in Dworkin's system, what tensions exist among the claims, and how the project of Integrity can be furthered."(Retrieved May 5th 2009 from http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=834&pc=9) Pages: 232 Year: 1996

Aharon Barak, recently retired President of the Supreme Court of Israel and a towering figure in constitutional, administrative, criminal and international humanitarian law, is also a close colleague of the Faculty of Law and widely admired in the Canadian legal community. Justice Barak holds the highest academic honours in Israel, along with 15 honourary degrees from universities in Israel, Europe, the United States and Canada. He has also won the International Justice in the World prize, granted by the International Association of Judges.
He has been Professor at Harvard and Yale Universities in the U.S, University of Oxford in UK, and at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Ronald Dworkin is an American legal philosopher, and currently professor of Jurisprudence at University College London,the New York University School of Law and at the University of Oxford. His theory of law as integrity is one of the leading contemporary views of the nature of law.


Photo credit: enthompson.unl.edu/

Ronald Dworkin
Professor of Philosophy, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law
Department of Philosophy
5 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
Phone: (212) 998-6000
Fax: (212) 995-4179
Email: ronald.dworkin@nyu.edu
BA, Harvard, Oxford; LLB, Harvard

RONALD DWORKIN, Professor of Philosophy and Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law. He received BA degrees from both Harvard College and Oxford University, and an LLB from Harvard Law School and clerked for Judge Learned Hand. He was associated with a law firm in New York (Sullivan and Cromwell) and was a professor of law at Yale University Law School from 1962-1969. He has been Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford and Fellow of University College since 1969. He has a joint appointment at Oxford and at NYU where he is a professor both in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Dworkin is the author of many articles in philosophical and legal journals as well as articles on legal and political topics in the New York Review of Books. He has written Taking Rights Seriously (1977), A Matter of Principle (1985), Law's Empire (1986), Philosophical Issues in Senile Dementia (1987), A Bill of Rights for Britain (1990), Life's Dominion (1993), and Freedom's Law (1996). Several of these books have been translated into the major European languages and Japanese and Chinese.

photo credit:
Holberg Prize, 2007
To Ronald 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" (Holberg International Memorial Prize, 2007).

"As a judge, I do not have a political platform. I am not a political person. Right and left, religious and secular, rich and poor, man and woman, disabled and non-disabled – all are equal in my eyes. All are human beings, created in the image of the Creator. I shall protect the human dignity of each of them. I do not aspire to power. I do not seek to rule. I am aware of the chains that bind me as a judge. I have repeatedly emphasized the rule of law, and not the rule of the judge."
Justice Aharon Barack


Photo credit: Law School NY

Ronald Dworkin
by Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law, New York University School of Law

A new book, Reading Dworkin Critically, describes Ronald Dworkin as "probably the most influential figure in contemporary Anglo-American legal theory." A scholar whose work often is called "monumental" and "landmark," Dworkin is probably one of the two or three contemporary authors whom legal scholars will be reading 200 years from now. New York University School of Law students study with him today.

In Dworkin's view, every legal interpretation reflects an underlying theory about the general character of law; he assesses three such theories. One, previously influential, takes the law of a community to be only what the established conventions of that community say it is. Another, currently popular, assumes that legal practice is best understood as an instrument of society to achieve its policy goals. Dworkin opposes both views, arguing that the most fundamental purpose of law is not to report consensus or provide efficient means to social goals, but to be ethical; that is, to meet the requirement that a political community act in a coherent and principled manner toward all its members.

Perhaps Dworkin's best known book is Law's Empire, which received the prestigious Coif Award from the American Bar Association as the best book written on law over a three year period and the Ames Prize of the Harvard Law School for the best book on law over a five-year period. In the book, Dworkin depicts Hercules as a judge of superhuman intellectual power and patience who accepts and applies law as integrity. Dworkin asks how judges decide what the law is in difficult cases. By showing that judges must interpret--rather than simply apply--past legal decisions, he produces a general theory of what interpretation is and why one interpretation is better than others.
Retrieved May 6th, 2009 from:
http://www.thersa.org/events/speakers-archive/d/ronald-dworkin