Ronald Dworkin

So, Justice Kirby, I want to take us back to something Judge Oldham said earlier, which suggested – it sounded almost Australian – Because it was a version of change and stability that might resonate in some of your court's decisions and I think might give us some purchase on Brown.

So, you know, the famous legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin had a distinction between concept and conception.

The Australian High Court has rendered that as the difference between denotation and connotation.

So the meaning of words doesn't change, but what comes in and out of what You know, those words mean changes with the internet and the smartphone, et cetera.

And there's different theories of law.

I mean, my favorite legal theorist, who I unfortunately never got to meet, was a guy at NYU named Ronald Dworkin.

And Dworkin was what we call a legal positivist.

He said that there are right answers.

tradition.

Yes, I mean, Ronald Dworkin would make the distinction between procedural liberalism and substantive liberalism.

And I think that's quite useful in terms of what you're talking about.

I should probably engage more with liberalism, choir liberalism.

And yet the ability to complete their education, to graduate, to become the doctor or the physiotherapist or the whatever it is that they're trying to become depends so much not on their own abilities, but on the circumstances that they themselves had no control over.

And there's a wonderful set of philosophers from John Rawls to Ronald Dworkin who really try to make us think about luck as this and try to mitigate against what they call either option luck or brute luck.

So, brute luck is having a particular skin color that is beneficial in a particular society.

Option luck is making decisions that either work out well or work out badly.

And you could probably also add limit of government because that's the only system that can potentially help respect those rights.

So the way that I define liberalism draws very heavily on the American constitutional theorist Ronald Dworkin.

Dworkin defines liberalism in a very moral way as being about a commitment to equality first and foremost, then liberty.

And in my book, I also add solidarity or fraternity.

I think that's a little bit too narrow an understanding of liberalism.

In my book, I tend to frame Hobbes as an important proto-liberal thinker.

And I follow a lot of American theorists in saying Locke is really the first recognizable liberal political theorist.

And even if you wouldn't necessarily characterize the Glorious Revolution as... or exclusively a liberal revolution.