Ronald Dworkin: Taking Rights Seriously

Ronald Dworkin: Taking Rights Seriously

Ronald Dworkin, a philosopher, jurist, and a scholar of the United States Constitutional Law was most known for his theory of law and his input on how the law should deal with controversial issues. To many he is believed to be the most important legal philosopher of our time. His beliefs are that people that believe there are moral rights, in the strong sense, should believe that their government should bear with breaking in cases that clash with rights. A strong sense is claims and rights, while a weak sense is privileges and liberties. In the beginning of Taking Rights Seriously, Dworkin enforces that his main idea is to interpret and defend a liberal theory of law based on individual rights. His main theses is the idea that individuals can have rights against the state that are more important than the rights created by legislation; citizens have moral rights against their government. I will summarize Dworkin’s main arguments on rights in his book called Taking Rights Seriously, analyze his claims, and evaluate his theory’s ability to unveil his believes on

The right to obey a law, according to Dworkin, is an associative obligation. Associative obligation is : the special responsibilities social practice attahces to membership in some biological or social group, like the responsibility of family of friends or neighbors” (1977:196). Any group of individuals that consider themselves a community cannot have expectations in occordence with a law, only a true community can. For example a group of white supremicists cannot say they belong to a whites only communities and have their own obligations that outweigh those to the government. In a true community the law gives us moral reason to stop us from perfoming acts prohibited by the law before the law was created. He believes that is associative obligation theory can answer many