Ronald Dworkin: Legal Philosophy and the Liberal Theory of Justice

Abstract

Dworkin did not adopt the theoretical standpoint afforded by the great classical and medieval traditions of natural law philosophy. Nevertheless, Dworkin challenged the analytical model of law constructed by the mainstream theorists of legal positivism, in addition to repudiating the utilitarian principles of political morality which the legal positivists had formulated as a normative justification for the modern rule of law. In the articles collected in the volumes Taking Rights Seriously (1977)¹ and A Matter of Principle (1985),² and in the systematic exposition of his legal philosophy provided in the full-length book Law’s Empire (1986),³ Dworkin developed a complex theory of law and society, which turned upon arguments concerning the logical structure of the procedures of judicial reasoning that organized the adjudication of hard cases in the civil law. These arguments exposed the fatal defects in both the conceptual and normative elements of the so-called ruling theory of law which Dworkin believed to run through the work of jurists such as Bentham, Austin, Kelsen and Hart.