Law philosopher Ronald Dworkin to give Meiklejohn Lecture

Internationally renowned legal scholar and philosopher Ronald Dworkin, professor of law at the NYU Law School and Oxford University, will give a Meiklejohn Lecture titled "An Ethics for Democracy" at 8 p.m. Monday, March 18, in Sayles Hall.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Ronald Dworkin, professor of law at the New York University Law School and Oxford University, will give a Meiklejohn Lecture on the topic "An Ethics for Democracy" at 8 p.m. Monday, March 18, in Sayles Hall. This lecture is free and open to the public.

"Professor Dworkin is an original and creative thinker; he is clearly one of the handful of distinguished philosophers of law writing at the present time," said Edward Beiser, associate dean of medicine and chairperson of the Meiklejohn Lectureship Committee.

Dworkin received a B.A. degree from Harvard in 1953, a B.A. from Oxford University in 1955, and an L.L.B. from Harvard Law School in 1957. He was associated with the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell and has taught law at Yale University Law School. He has served as professor of jurisprudence at Oxford and as a fellow of University College since 1969. Since 1975 he has been professor of law at New York University, a joint appointment with Oxford. He is also a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dworkin has published numerous articles in philosophical and legal journals and has written on legal and political subjects in the New York Review of Books. His books include Taking Rights Seriously (1979), A Matter of Principle (1985), Law's Empire (1986), A Bill of Rights for Britain (1990), and Life's Dominion (1993). Several of these books have been translated into major European languages, Japanese and Chinese.

He has served as co-chairman of the Democratic Party Abroad and is a member of the Council of Writers and Scholars Educational Trust, a member of the editorial committee for the Trust's journal, Index on Censorship, and of the Program Committee of the Ditchley Foundation. Dworkin has also served as a consultant on human rights for the Ford Foundation.