Justice in Robes (PDF)

Synopsis

How should a judge's moral convictions bear on his judgments about what the law is? Lawyers, sociologists, philosophers, politicians, and judges all have answers to that question: these range from "nothing" to "everything." In Justice in Robes, Ronald Dworkin argues that the question is much more complex than it has often been taken to be and charts a variety of dimensions--semantic, jurisprudential, and doctrinal--in which law and morals are undoubtedly interwoven. He restates and summarizes his own widely discussed account of these connections, which emphasizes the sovereign importance of moral principle in legal and constitutional interpretation, and then reviews and criticizes the most influential rival theories to his own. He argues that pragmatism is empty as a theory of law, that value pluralism misunderstands the nature of moral concepts, that constitutional originalism reflects an impoverished view of the role of a constitution in a democratic society, and that contemporary legal positivism is based on a mistaken semantic theory and an erroneous account of the nature of authority. In the course of that critical study he discusses the work of many of the most influential lawyers and philosophers of the era, including Isaiah Berlin, Richard Posner, Cass Sunstein, Antonin Scalia, and Joseph Raz. Dworkin's new collection of essays and original chapters is a model of lucid, logical, and impassioned reasoning that will advance the crucially important debate about the roles of justice in law.

Copyright:

2006

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

320 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780674027275

Related ISBNs:

9780674021679

Publisher:

Harvard University Press

Date of Addition:

12/16/19

Copyrighted By:

Ronald Dworkin

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Law, Legal Issues and Ethics

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.