Life's Dominion

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Dworkin's landmark philosophical essay brings a new dimension to future debate about abortion and euthanasia. The conventional view of the abortion controversy hinges on whether a fetus is a helpless, unborn child with rights and interests of its own. Yet many people who oppose abortion, claims Dworkin ( Taking Rights Seriously ), actually do so for a very different underlying reason--their view that human life, in any form, has intrinsic, sacred value. To this New York University law professor, the critical question in Roe v. Wade is whether state legislatures have the constitutional power to decide which intrinsic values all citizens must respect. He defends a woman's right to free choice as a necessary implication of the religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment. As for euthanasia, the key issue, he argues, is whether a free society will seek to impose its collective judgment on individuals, or instead allow them to make the most profound spiritual judgments about their own lives for themselves. (May)

Library Journal

Today's debate over the proper place of abortion in an ethically committed society has proven every bit as divisive as was slavery in 19th-century America. Dworkin, an eminent lawyer and legal philosopher, believes that a new way of examining the central issue is now required. He argues that the key question to be resolved is how far society can go to impose a single official view upon personally held convictions of the inherent value of all life. Dworkin's analysis requires that the abstract moral principles set out in the U.S. Constitution be interpreted to insure equal concern for the dignity of all human life, and he analyzes other issues, such as euthanasia, in the same framework. Continuing the examination of moral issues raised earlier in Dworkin's A Matter of Principle (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1985), his new book can be favorably compared with other recent works about abortion such as Lawrence Tribe's Abortion : A Clash of Absolutes ( LJ 2/1/91) or Roger Rosenblatt's Life Itself ( LJ 3/15/92). While a difficult book, it is also an important one that should be read by as many concerned readers as possible. Highly recommended.-- Jerry E. Stephens, U.S. Court of Appeals Lib., Oklahoma City

Booknews

Dworkin (law, New York U. and Oxford) carefully sorts the threads of the legal and ethical controversies which concern the sanctity of life and explicates his interpretation of the Constitution as a system of abstract moral principles that must be reinterpreted, generation by generation. In doing so, he shines light that the polarized factions desperately need. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

William Beatty

Dworkin believes the argument in the U.S. abortion controversy over whether the fetus is a person is irrelevant and misleading. He reformulates the problem into a moral argument: the fetus has either detached rights because human life has intrinsic value or derived rights if it is indeed a person. He then asks whether the fetus is a constitutional person and says answers to the question depend upon whether the Constitution is viewed as directive of principles or of details. Euthanasia and abortion are similar in that the three main moral questions involved in both concern individual autonomy, an individual's best interests, and the intrinsic value of life. When the reasons are made clear why people care, first, about how and when they die and, second, about how the sanctity of life is understood and respected, confusion over these matters should disappear. Dworkin's approaches and arguments are logical and sympathetic; he has cleared a new field upon which all nonextremist disputants may contend productively. His own conclusion is that our society prefers individual freedom to coercion of the individual