Product Description

In this reprint of Law's Empire,Ronald Dworkin reflects on the nature of the law, its given authority, its application in democracy, the prominent role of interpretation in judgement, and the relations of lawmakers and lawgivers to the community on whose behalf they pronounce. For that community, Law's Empire provides a judicious and coherent introduction to the place of law in our lives. Previously Published by Harper Collins. Reprinted (1998) by Hart Publishing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #68803 in Books
• Published on: 1998-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 484 pages

Review
As an advocate Dworkin is tirelessly fluent and endlessly inventive... and this is a surprisingly fraternal book, open, busy, engaging and teeming with ideas. It will give many readers a great deal of pleasure and instruction. John Dunn Times Literary Supplement September 2002 Laws Empire stands out for intellectual deftness, elegance and surprisingness. Alan Ryan New Society September 2002 Laws Empire is a rich and multilayered work ... unusually accessible for a work dealing with abstract questions at such a high level. It is an ambitious book, and it does not disappoint the expectations appropriate to a major work by an important thinker. Thomas Nagel London Review of Books September 2002 Breaks new ground in a way that is both provocative and convincing. D.D. Raphael Times Higher Education Supplement September 2002

About the Author
Ronald Dworkin is the Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College,London. He was formerly Professor of Jurisprudence at University College, Oxford, and he remains Professor at New York University.

Customer Reviews

Legal philosophy for a judge
Dworkin's Law's Empire offers a theory of law based on Dworkin's idea of interpretation. Dworkin is concerned to maintain the judicial victories for liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s, and this book is an elaborate effort to explain why those liberal decisions are legally correct. (This is not a criticism by the way - theorists should have an agenda; otherwise they are not engaging with the world.)

Judges, for Dworkin, must make the law the best it can be, from a moral viewpoint. This involves them interpreting law so as to promote its morally principled coherence. (Quite how we discuss morality is left somewhat hanging in the air).

Like all of Dworkin's work, the focus is on a normative theory of what judges should do. There is a more than naive faith in judicial power (true Dworkin realises full well that judges make mistakes, but there is little emphasis on the genuine practical constraints, much less the incompetence and even outright dishonesty of some judicial opinions). Dworkin rarely deals with the empirical questions as to why judges do what they do, much less what constrains judges and judicial institutions to act (e.g.) to repress certain viewpoints. Therefore his normative theory irritates many critics. For this reader however it seeems important to remember that we need both a normative theory of what law should be, as well as a more critical theory of what it is actually doing. To attempt to understand law without understanding BOTH those elements is misleading or even potentially dangerous. At the end of the day, Dworkin is trying to offer constructive advice, and that enterprise should not be dismissed out of hand.