Dworkin: A New Link in the Chain

Abstract

This book brings together nineteen of the articles published by Professor Dworkin over the last eight years, mostly in the New York Review of Books, but also in learned journals and collections. Three articles, none of them of major importance, have not been published before: Can a Liberal State Support Art? (pp. 221-36),1 On Interpretation and Objectivity (pp. 167-80),2 and Civil Disobedience and Nuclear Protest (pp. 10418).3 Several pieces published during the last few years are not included, of which the most important is an article on equality.4 The book lacks thematic unity, but it will be welcome as not only does it bring together many of Dworkin's influential articles, but it makes available to a wider audience several articles not widely known before. Of these, two are of particular importance. Principle, Policy, Procedure (pp. 72-103) applies Dworkin's general theory of adjudication, with its emphasis on individual rights, to issues of evidence and procedure whose sensitivity to the public costs of the judicial process seems to undermine Dworkin's apparent view that in adjudication, rights should take precedence over issues of public policy, such as administrative expedience. The second, Do We Have a Right to Pornography? (pp. 335-72) is not