Law expert and liberal scholar
Ronald Dworkin, 81, an American philosopher, constitutional law expert and liberal scholar who argued that the law should be founded on moral integrity, died Thursday of leukemia in London, his family said.
Dworkin, a professor of law at New York University and professor emeritus at University College London, was one of the best known and most quoted legal scholars in the United States and also an expert on British law.
Dworkin was best known for the idea that the most important virtue the law can display is integrity — understood as the moral idea that the state should act on principle so each member of the community is treated as an equal.
A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Dworkin’s own works included “A Matter of Principle,” “Law’s Empire” and “Justice for Hedgehogs.”
He argued in his writings that acting with dignity and moral clarity could make life worthwhile.
“If we manage to live a good life well, we create something more,” he wrote. “We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands.”
Born Dec. 11, 1931, Dworkin grew up in Providence, R.I. He attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, received his law degree from Harvard in 1957 and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England.
He told the Guardian newspaper two years ago that he did not know how to judge his life’s work.
“I’ve tried to be responsible for my decisions and to make an authentic life,” he said. “When I was a Wall Street lawyer, I realized I didn’t want that life. So I went and did what I found most fulfilling, thinking about, arguing for the things that are hard, important and rewarding. I’ve tried to do it well. I can’t say if I’ve succeeded.”