Dworkin and His Critics with Replies by Dworkin
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2006.00579_8.x |
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
iod, focusing on victims was focusing often on smaller ripples, refracted through
quite di¡erent forcescolliding elsewhere, yet impinging on what mightbe said in
relation to victims. I am not sure that Rock’s overall thesis ^ that there will be a
framework of rights for victims in relation to support and criminal justice ^ still
holds. Maybe this re£ects my pure cynicism about the reactionary potential of a
systemwhich has managed for some 25 years since adopting apolicy of inform-
ing victims about the result of the case not to produce a satisfactory way of so
doing. But I would be delighted if Rock were able to look back in another ¢ve
to ten years, perhaps taking a rather wider focus than the national, to see if his
thesis were to be proved correct.
Joan na Sh apland
n
Justine Burley(ed),Dworkin and HisCritics with Replies by Dworkin,Oxford:
Blackwell, 2004, xxiii þ412p p, hb d60.00, pb d19.99.
Ronald Dworkin’s in£uence on legal philosophy is in some ways puzzling. No
series of lectures on jurisprudence can ignore his tremendous presence and he is
one of the most cited and read legal philosophers alive. Yet this wide readership
has not translated into more than a small number of disciples. It is quite rare to
¢nd anyone in the ¢eld identifying herself as a ‘Dworkinian’. Indeed, Andrea
Dworkin may well have the larger following, however less her pro¢le.
This peculiar reception of Dworkin’s legal philosophy is quite apparent in Jus-
tine Burley’s collection Dworkin and His Critics. After her introduction, the collec-
tion is composedof seventeen di¡erent chapters plus Dworkin’s responses at the
end.T he chapters are arranged in several parts. Part one deals with‘Equality, Lib-
erty, and the Good Life’ and includes critical examinations of Dworkin’s latest
book, SovereignVirtue. Dworkin’s contributions to thinking about egalitarianism
in this book may well be his best, and this section is the biggest in size and num-
ber of contributors. Parts two and three deal with‘JusticeApplied’and ‘Abortion,
Euthanasia, and Assisted Suicide’, covering Dworkin’s work in Life’s Dominion as
well as the applicationof his views in medical ethics more generally. Itis not until
wegettopartfourofthecollection,‘TheReachof Law’,thatweatlastgetto
critical assessments of Dworkin’s famous views on legal philosophy.The ¢nal part
contains Dworkin’s response to the essays. Instead of discussing all areas of the
book, I will focus on the essays on legal philosophy in this fourth part.
The ¢rst thing tonote about this section is how it is di¡erentfrom the previous
three sections. Only a handful of chapters in these earlier sections are abbreviated
versions of previously published material. In fact, only three of these articles
appeared elsewhere in the same or similar form. However, in starkcontrast, three
of the fourarticles in this section on legal philosophyappeared elsewhere ^ only
JeremyWaldron’s essay has not ^ making one wonder if Burley had greater di⁄-
n
Centre for Criminological Research, Universityof She⁄eld.
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14 0 rThe Modern LawReview Limited 2006
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