A Matter of Principle

by Ronald Dworkin

Essays examine the political basis of law, legal interpretation, economic factors in law, reverse discrimination, and censorship

Genres: Philosophy, Law, Nonfiction, Politics, Legal

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Ronald Dworkin, QC, FBA was an American philosopher of law. He was a Jeremy Bentham Professor of Law and Philosophy at University College London, Frank Henry Sommer Professor of Law at New York University, and has taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford. An influential contributor to both philosophy of law and political philosophy, Dworkin received the 2007 Holberg International Memorial Prize in the Humanities for "his pioneering scholarly work" of "worldwide impact." His theory of law as integrity is amongst the most influential contemporary theories about the nature of law.

Reviews

[Soha Bayoumi]

This book is a collection of articles by Ronald Dworkin. It is a very interesting book to read in light of the crisis of liberal politics and theories in the eighties coinciding with the rise of the 'Reagan Revolution' and neoconservatism in general in the Anglo-American world. The book is centered around an attempt to define what liberalism is and is not in that context, to differentiate between 'constitutive' and 'derivative' positions of liberalism, as well as between 'matters of policy' and 'matters of principle'. If you don't allow yourself though to be swept by Dworkin's famously forceful style and fascinating rhetoric, you'll find that many of the distinctions he struggles to elaborate are arbitrary and rhetorical. All in all, the book is worth reading from a Critical-Theory point of view contextualising ideas and theories and examining the effect of political and economic circumstances on the elaboration of theories and knowledge.