Ronald Dworkin

Life and ideas

Ronald Dworkin was an American philosopher who taught at Yale, then at Oxford, where he succeeded Hart as Professor of Jurisprudence in 1969, and at New York University. In 'The Model of Rules' (1967) and Taking Rights Seriously (1977) he attacked Hart's positivism, arguing that judges decide hard cases by principles, such as that no one may profit from their own wrong, which are not identified by their pedigree but by their moral weight. Individual rights, he said, are 'trumps' against collective goals. In Law's Empire (1986) he argued that law is an interpretive practice: the judge, like a novelist adding a chapter to a chain novel, must find the reading that best fits the record and puts it in its best moral light. He also wrote on equality, free speech, abortion and the Constitution.