A landmark work of political and legal philosophy, Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously was acclaimed as a major work on its first publication in 1977 and remains profoundly influential in the 21st century. A forceful statement of liberal principles - championing the legal, moral and political rights of the individual against the state - Dworkin demolishes prevailing utilitarian and legal-positivist approaches to jurisprudence. Developing his own theory of adjudication, he applies this to controversial public issues, from civil disobedience to positive discrimination. Elegantly written and cuttingly insightful, Taking Rights Seriously is one of the most important works of public thought of the last fifty years.

Tort Law beyond the forms of action : achieving the goal of the anatomy of Tort Law / Christine Beuermann -- Elements of torts / James Goudkamp -- Culpability and compensation / Sandy Steel -- Peter Cane on torts / Stephen D Sugarman -- Constitutional rights, moral judgment, and the rule of law / TRS Allan -- Participation and the duty to consult / Janet McLean -- Controlling administration : the rise of unilateral executive power in the United States / Jerry L Mashaw -- Administrative compensation : bypass or dead end? / Carol Harlow -- Tort and regulation / Donal Nolan -- Regulating relationships : the regulatory potential of Tort Law revisited / Jenny Steele -- Thinking about Doctrine in Administrative Law / Leighton McDonald -- Administrative tribunals : an essay about the legal imagination of administrative law scholars / Elizabeth Fisher -- Cane as law reformer : Götterdämerung or House of Cards? / Mark Lunney -- Philosophical and judicial thinking about moral concepts : Cane's critique of philosophical method twenty years on / Anthony J Connolly.

This book celebrates the scholarship of Peter Cane. The significance and scale of his contributions to the discipline of law over the last half-century cannot be overstated. In an era of increasing specialisation, Cane stands out on account of the unusually broad scope of his interests, which extend to both private and public law in equal measure. This substantive breadth is combined with remarkable doctrinal, historical, comparative and theoretical depth. This book is written by admirers of Cane's work, and the essays probe a wide range of issues, especially in administrative law and tort law. Consistently with the international prominence that Cane's research has enjoyed, the contributors are drawn from across the common law world. The volume will be of value to anyone who is interested in Cane's towering contributions to legal scholarship and administrative law and tort law more generally.

What is law? What is it for? How should judges decide novel cases when the statutes and earlier decisions provide no clear answer? Do judges make up new law in such cases, or is there some higher law in which they discover the correct answer? Must everyone always obey the law? If not, when is a citizen morally free to disobey? A renowned philosopher enters the debate surrounding these questions. Clearly and forcefully, Ronald Dworkin argues against the “ruling” theory in Anglo-American law—legal positivism and economic utilitarianism—and asserts that individuals have legal rights beyond those explicitly laid down and that they have political and moral rights against the state that are prior to the welfare of the majority. Mr. Dworkin criticizes in detail the legal positivists’ theory of legal rights, particularly H. L. A. Hart’s well-known version of it. He then develops a new theory of adjudication, and applies it to the central and politically important issue of cases in which the Supreme Court interprets and applies the Constitution. Through an analysis of John Rawls’s theory of justice, he argues that fundamental among political rights is the right of each individual to the equal respect and concern of those who govern him. He offers a theory of compliance with the law designed not simply to answer theoretical questions about civil disobedience, but to function as a guide for citizens and officials. Finally, Professor Dworkin considers the right to liberty, often thought to rival and even preempt the fundamental right to equality. He argues that distinct individual liberties do exist, but that they derive, not from some abstract right to liberty as such, but from the right to equal concern and respect itself. He thus denies that liberty and equality are conflicting ideals. Ronald Dworkin’s theory of law and the moral conception of individual rights that underlies it have already made him one of the most influential philosophers working in this area. This is the first publication of these ideas in book form.

This perceptive study investigates the different ways in which the state deals with various social groups through the mechanisms of space. By means of case studies involving three social groups within Israel's multicultural society - the Sephardim, the Bedouin-Arab minority and the ultra-Orthodox community of Jerusalem - the different roles played by political space in legal analysis are revealed and analyzed. Issachar Rosen-Zvi then unearths the unifying logic underlying the disparate legal treatment of political space, brought to light by the case studies. The law treats political space differently depending on the social group involved, an attitude that, the author argues, can be traced back to early Zionist thinking. He concludes that a reform of local government law is required, to correct the segregated system of political space and the separate and unequal distribution of political power and economic resources that accompany it.

The rise of China signals a new chapter in international relations. How China interacts with the international legal order--namely, how China utilizes international law to facilitate and justify its rise and how international law is relied upon to engage a rising China--has invited growing debate among academics and those in policy circles. Two recent events, the South China Sea Arbitration and the US-China trade war, have deepened tensions. This book, for the first time, provides a systematic and critical elaboration of the interplay between a rising China and international law. Several crucial questions are broached. These include: How has China adjusted its international legal policies as China's state identity changes over time, especially as it becomes a formidable power? Which methodologies has China adopted to comply with international law and, in particular, to achieve its new legal strategy of norm entrepreneurship? How does China organize its domestic institutions to engage international law in order to further its ascendance? How does China use international law at a national level (in the Chinese courts) and at an international level (for example, lawfare in international dispute settlement)? And finally, how should "Chinese exceptionalism" be understood? This book contributes significantly to the burgeoning and highly relevant scholarship on China and international law.

Taking Rites Seriously is about how religious beliefs and religious believers are assessed by judges and legal scholars and are sometimes mischaracterized and misunderstood by those who are critical of the influence of religion in politics or in the formation of law. Covering three general topics - reason and motive, dignity and personhood, nature and sex - philosopher and legal theorist Francis J. Beckwith carefully addresses several contentious legal and cultural questions over which religious and non-religious citizens often disagree: the rationality of religious belief, religiously motivated legislation, human dignity in bioethics, abortion and embryonic stem cell research, reproductive rights and religious liberty, evolutionary theory, and the nature of marriage. In the process, he responds to some well-known critics of public faith - including Brian Leiter, Steven Pinker, Suzanna Sherry, Ronald Dworkin, John Rawls, and Richard Dawkins - as well as to some religiously conservative critics of secularism, such as the advocates for intelligent design.