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Law's Empire

Hercules
Pieter paul rubens, ercole e i leone nemeo, 02.JPG
Law's Empire introduced Dworkin's Judge Hercules as possibly modeled on some members of the Burger court. Image from Hercules fighting the Nemean lion
by Peter Paul Rubens

Law's Empire is a 1986 text in legal philosophy by the late Oxford scholar Ronald Dworkin which continues his criticism of the philosophy of legal positivism as promoted by H.L.A. Hart during the middle to late 20th century. The book notably introduces Dworkin's Judge Hercules as an idealized version of a jurist with extraordinary legal skills who is able to challenge various predominating schools of legal interpretation and legal hermeneutics prominent throughout the 20th century. Judge Hercules is eventually challenged by Judge Hermes, another idealized version of a jurist who is affected by an affinity to respecting historical legal meaning arguments which do not affect Judge Hercules in the same manner. Judge Hermes' theory of legal interpretation is found by Dworkin in the end to be inferior to the approach of Judge Hercules.

Much of the twentieth century in legal philosophy has been characterized by the confrontation of legal positivism with natural law theory as being among the most prominent legal theories seen in the century. One major proponent of the Anglo-American version of legal positivism was H.L.A. Hart, a professor at Oxford University, who was a teacher of Dworkin's and whom eventually Dworkin would come to strongly disagree with. To challenge the prevailing schools of legal interpretation and legal philosophy in the late twentieth century, Dworkin invented the personage of Judge Hercules to represent a version of legal philosophy which he saw as effectively answering many of the shortcoming he had come to identify with Hart and other legal schools prominent in his time.

Dworkin's approach in the book is to present his argument in ten chapters with one summary chapter added at the end of the book titled, "Law Beyond Law". The book is original in its format compared to conventional approaches to academic studies in the law by introducing the personage of Judge Hercules early in the text to answer many of the legal theories which Dworkin wishes to discuss as to their being insufficient to meet the requirements of late 20th century jurisprudence. In Dworkin's perspective, the prevailing climate of legal theory at the end of the 20th century was understood by him as being represented by the deficiencies of many competing and contradictory legal theories being presented by the legal academy. The ten chapters of the book build their logical argument sequentially and in growing complexity of exposition where each chapter is dependent upon the logical demonstrations made in previous chapters in order to establish the rationale and comprehension at work in the mind of the legal personage represented by Judge Hercules.

The Preface of the book is used by Dworkin to state his primary concern in this volume concerning his approach to the philosophy of law. Dworkin states concisely: "We are subjects of law's empire, liegemen to its methods and ideals, bound in spirit while we debate what we must therefore do." The "empire" of the law is expansive for Dworkin and includes not only the domain of jurisprudence but extends fully into the domain of politics and sociology, including the philosophical domain of morals, ethics and even aesthetics as these affect the lives of all individuals of society.


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