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Ronald Dworkin’s Legal Philosophy

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Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy

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Introduction

Ronald Dworkin’s general theory of lawFootnote 1 centers on the issue of what determines the doctrine of a legal system. Take the following proposition: “In the state of Montana, it is against the law to discriminate in employment on the basis of a person’s political views.” This is a proposition about the doctrine or content of a particular legal system (hereafter, “legal proposition”). What, fundamentally, makes propositions of this sort true? Slightly differently, what facts, in general, determine the norms that a legal system has? Legal positivists have traditionally saidFootnote 2 that what fundamentally makes a legal proposition true is some social fact(s). For example, H.L.A. Hart has it that the social acceptance among officials of a common set of criteria for identifying law (what he famously calls a “rule of recognition”) is at the foundation of a legal system in that all other of its legal rules are law in virtue of satisfying these accepted criteria.Footnote 3...

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Dworkin developed his philosophical views on law over the course of 50 years, during which they evolved in important respects. Here I will attempt to distill general aspects of his legal philosophy that remained stable in his later work (essentially, Law’s Empire forward).

  2. 2.

    The proper characterization of legal positivism’s foundational commitments is currently in question. See, for instance, Kevin Toh, “An Argument against the Social Fact Thesis (and Some Additional Preliminary Steps Towards a New Conception of Legal Positivism),” Law and Philosophy 27 (2008).

  3. 3.

    H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 100–123.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 110. A quick note on a division in legal positivism. Both inclusive and exclusive legal positivism hold that legal systems have a social convention about the criteria of validity. They differ on whether these further criteria are necessarily nonmoral social facts. Exclusive positivists say that they are and that legal content is always purely a matter of social fact. Inclusive positivists deny this, and say that a legal system can have moral criteria settling further content, as long as the criteria are conventionally recognized. Dworkin’s challenge is to both versions.

  5. 5.

    Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 1–44. Justice in Robes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 223–226; Justice for Hedgehogs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 402–405. For useful framing and discussion, see Andrei Marmor, Interpretation and Legal Theory, 2nd ed. (Portland: Hart Publishing, 2005), 1–8.

  6. 6.

    Dworkin, Law’s Empire, 43–46.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., 52.

  8. 8.

    Though, as we will see, fit with pre-interpretive understanding is not a threshold requirement for Dworkin.

  9. 9.

    Dworkin, Law’s Empire, 49–73.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 52.

  11. 11.

    Ibid., 87–101; Justice in Robes, 1–35, 140–186, 223–240.

  12. 12.

    Law’s Empire, 87–101; Justice in Robes, 1–35.

  13. 13.

    Justice in Robes, 34–35.

  14. 14.

    Justice for Hedgehogs, 400–409.

  15. 15.

    See Law’s Empire, 49–65.

  16. 16.

    See, for example, Wil Waluchow, Inclusive Legal Positivism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Jules L. Coleman, The Practice of Principle: In Defense of a Pragmatist Approach to Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  17. 17.

    Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs, 123–188.

  18. 18.

    Law’s Empire, 90–96.

  19. 19.

    Ibid., 114–150.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 151–175.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 176–224.

  22. 22.

    Ibid., 225.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 225–275.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA

    Anthony R. Reeves

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  1. Anthony R. Reeves
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  1. Center for International & Comparative Law, University of Baltimore School of Law, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Mortimer Sellers

  2. Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften, University of Salzburg, Austria, Salzburg, Austria

    Stephan Kirste

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  1. Philosophy Department, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA

    Sally Scholz Ph.D

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Reeves, A.R. (2017). Ronald Dworkin’s Legal Philosophy. In: Sellers, M., Kirste, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_2-1

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