REVIEWS
| Date | 01 November 1992 |
| Published date | 01 November 1992 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1992.tb00950.x |
REVIEWS
Stephen Guest,
Ronald
Dworkin,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
1992,
ix
+
320
pp, hb
f30.00,
pb
f14.95.
Ronald Dworkin is the fifth and latest title in the Jurists: Profiles in
Legul
Theory
series, edited by Twining and MacCormick. The inclusion of Dworkin in this series
hardly requires justification, for he is undoubtedly one of the most innovative, prolific,
dynamic and charismatic legal philosophers of our time. There are also more mundane
and practical reasons for claiming that a comprehensive restatement of Dworkin’s
work to date is long overdue. For one thing, his voluminous writings are contained
in a disparate collection of journal articles, published essay collections and books,
some of which are not to be found in even the most well-endowed of law libraries.
For another, although Dworkin’s style is usually plain and direct, his arguments
can sometimes be difficult to trace through the morass of pre-emptive counter-
arguments which he addresses to putative critics. Dworkin writes like a man who
can see the objections coming, has heard them all before, and wants to show that
they are misplaced before any time is wasted in thrashing through them once again.
One feels some sympathy for Dworkin here, since he has had critics who did not
listen and/or would not hear. On the other hand, Dworkin is not always too careful
to point out where he has modified his arguments in response to well-founded
criticisms. And, of course, much of Dworkin’s work is just plain difficult to
understand. With apparent ease he weaves morality, political science, ethics and
economic theory into his jurisprudence to arrive at striking, and sometimes counter-
intuitive, insights which tax the comprehension of his students and critics.
Guest has undertaken the ambitious project of ‘advanc[ing] a comprehensive and
coherent interpretation of Dworkin’s positions in legal and political philosophy’ and
has produced an account which both accurately summarises Dworkin’s thought and
makes a contribution to jurisprudential debate in its own right. Dworkin’s theory
of law as integrity
is
firmly anchored in his (innovative and idiosyncratic) moral
and political philosophy,
so
that understanding his jurisprudence entails engaging
in these wider debates. Guest provides a reliable map to enable lawyers to explore
this unfamiliar territory. He is a convert from legal positivism and Ronald Dworkin
is a record of his Road to Damascus. Can you be persuaded to
see
the light, too?
As Guest’s project is tied up
so
closely with Dworkin’s own, he lays himself
open to some of the criticisms which Dworkin himself has attracted. In particular,
Dworkinian jurisprudence is unsociological in the sense that its narrow focus on
judicial decision-making leaves no room for an analysis of law as constitutive of
social relations or a theory of law as power. Guest gives the possibility and importance
of
sociological analysis very short shrift before directing our attention back
to
the
courtroom. There are also some dubious references to
‘
Anglo-American legal and
political culture’ (p
13),
although Guest shows himself to
be
more alive than Dworkin
to the important differences between
UK
and US experiences of citizenship, especially
along the dimension of political participation which is
so
fundamental to Dworkin’s
jurisprudence and political theory.
However, these weaknesses may be in Dworkin’s and Guest’s application of
Dworkinian methodology rather than in the methodology itself. For if we take
Dworkin at his word, and accept that his theory of law is Protestant in the sense
that anyone can join the interpretive community and ‘have a
go’
(indeed, justice
process officials have a duty to do
so),
then it ought to follow that an investigation
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