Pildes on Dworkin's Theory of Rights

Abstract

This note corrects a serious misrepresentation of the views of Ronald Dworkin on the subject of rights, in a recent paper by Richard Pildes. The note makes it clear that Dworkin's theory of rights is based on a conception of limits on the kinds of reason that the state can appropriately invoke in order to justify its action. The idea of “rights as trumps” is an expression of this conception. “Rights as trumps” does not, as Pildes believes, express an alternative view of rights (which Pildes argues against), in which rights protect certain key interests against any demands made in the name of the general good.