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More About This Textbook
Overview
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.
Editorial Reviews
Georgetown Law Journal
Law's Empire is a challenging, important, and richly textured work of legal philosophy written in the vivid and commanding style that Dworkin's readers have come to expect… [It offers] both a conception of law that explains what our law is and an underlying political theory that explains why we should conceive of our law in that way… Dworkin seeks, ultimately, nothing less than a kind of unified field theory of moral justification: a theory that would unite—or at least connect—personal morality, legal justification, and political legitimacy.
— Silas Wasserstrom
Journal of Philosophy
Ronald Dworkin is America's leading legal philosopher… [Law's Empire bears] testimony to his eminence, evidencing his analytical ingenuity, powerful imagination, and elegant conceptualization. No subject ever seems quite the same after one has read Dworkin's treatment of it.
London Review of Books
Rich and multi-layered… The first sustained, full-length treatment of [Dworkin's] general theory of law… It is an ambitious book, and it does not disappoint the expectations appropriate to a major work by an important thinker. Dworkin has developed a complex and powerful system of ideas, and they are expounded here with the clarity and elegance to which his readers are by now accustomed.
— Thomas Nagel
Washington Post Book World
Refreshing and rewarding… Law's Empire is Dworkin's framework for the analysis of critical issues in law; and such are the elegance and power of the book that one who has read it may find it hard to return patiently to the stale and shallow categories…in which so much argument about the role of judges is nowadays conducted.
— Edwin M. Yoder, Jr.
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
In this first full-length exposition of his theory of law, Dworkin, who teaches jurisprudence at Oxford University and New York University, maintains that society should ensure for all its members a legal system that functions in a coherent and principled manner. In prose accessible to the lay reader, he discusses at length several views of American constitutional law such as ``passivism'' and ``framers' intention.'' Rejecting both conventionalism and pragmatism, he advocates law as integrity which holds that propositions of law are true if they derive from justice, fairness and procedural due process in accordance with the community's legal practice. Citing examples, he further argues that law should be more than a collection of formal guidelines and that it should uphold more abstract moral principles, distinguishing between issues of policy and matters of principle affecting rights of the individual. Uniting jurisprudence with adjudication, Dworkin sees each judge as a link in a chain of law of which his or her judgment becomes a part. (May)Library Journal
Dworkin (Jurisprudence, Oxford; and Law, NYU) sets out a theory of how judges determine what the law is and its application in hard cases where no set tled or clear rule of law disposes of a matter, testing his theory in common law cases turning on statutes and con stitutional cases. He posits that propo sitions of law are correctly established not because they represent a consensus or an efficient means to social goals, but because they answer the require ment that a political community act in a coherent, just, and principled manner toward all of its members. An exceed ingly complex work which echoes cer tain of his previous writings, this vol ume will be of primary interest to scholars with an intense disciplinary in terest. For subject collections. Merlin Whiteman, Dann Pecar Newman Ta lesnick & Kleiman, IndianapolisProduct Details
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Meet the Author
Ronald Dworkin is Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law and Philosophy at New York University. He is the 2007 recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize.
Table of Contents
1. What Is Law?
Why It Matters