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Long Live Ronald Dworkin

Ronald Dworkin was simply the greatest legal philosopher of our time. His philosophical acumen was far superior to his detractors. He had a beautiful mind that challenged the philosophic capacities of many American legal scholars who wasted their thoughts on lazy philosophical orientations (e.g., pragmatism, critical legal studies).  Many of his critics, to this day, still can't get it.  I, myself, owe a great deal of my orientation about jurisprudence to Dworkin.  I'm a Wittgensteinian first, to be sure, but I found a way to make these two have an intellectual offspring. When one looks at where the serious thinking is about law, all roads travel through Dworkin's thoughts. 

Is Originalism Dead?

There was an Originalism conference at Penn this weekend. I didn't go, but I e-mailed one of the participants, who shall remain nameless. I'm told that there was a great degree of criticism against originalism as a judicial philosophy, and that even Randy Barnett conceded that most of the action in disputes about the Constitution's meaning comes from non-originalist "construction," as they call it. I write for two reasons. There are two points I want to bring up, which I shall list in separate mails.