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A coup d'tat in law's empire: Dworkin's Hercules meets Atlas by R. P. Peerenboom is a Social Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

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In Law's Empire, Ronald Dworkin advances two incompatible versions of law as integrity. On the strong thesis, political integrity understood as coherence in fundamental moral principles constitutes an overriding constraint on justice, fairness and due process. On the weak thesis, political integrity, while a value, is not to be privileged over justice, fairness, and due process, but to be weighed along with them. I argue that the weak thesis is superior on both of Dworkin's criteria: fit and justifiability. However, the weak thesis must be amended to allow for coherence in policies as well as in principles: the social consequences of legal decisions must be taken into accotint. Hercules, the mythical reigning jurisprude in Ronald Dworkin's Law's Empire, 2 presides over what appears to be a foreign land. One usually thinks of the Anglo-American legal system as an organ of justice. But in Dworkin's judicial fiefdom, the ideal judge Hercules decides not according to what would be most just, but rather what makes the law and the legal system "the best it can be". On Dworkin's conception of the law as integrity, judges are obligated to decide cases in a way which makes the law coherent

Who reads A coup d'tat in law's empire: Dworkin's Hercules meets Atlas?

Author

R. P. Peerenboom

Publisher

Springer Netherlands; Springer-Verlag; Kluwer Academic Publishers; Springer Science and Business Media LLC (ISSN 0167-5249)

Published

1990

Language

EN

Field

Social Sciences