Dworkin in His Best Light

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

In Justice for Hedgehogs, Ronald Dworkin suggested that we set aside the familiar, “two-systems” picture of law and morality, and adopt a “one-system” picture in its place. From the start, many people interpreted Dworkin’s proposal as a striking departure from the views he’d defended in Law’s Empire. That’s not how Dworkin saw his own story, though. In his telling, Justice for Hedgehogs was merely a “supplement” to Law’s Empire, not a “substitute for” it. As Dworkin saw it, the one-system picture wasn’t a twist held back for his final chapter; it was the story he’d been telling all along. Of course, authors aren’t always right about the best reading of their work. In this case, though, we think it’s the standard story that’s wrong and Dworkin who’s right. In this essay, we marshal the textual evidence for that interpretation of Dworkin’s work. We aim to place Dworkin’s work in its best light, in other words—to show how the chain novel he wrote with himself hangs together.

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