According to the publisher’s blurb, Life’s Dominion,1 Ronald Dworkin’s defense of abortion and euthanasia, is “lucid, imaginative . . . and brilliantly original.” In the “advance praise” printed on the dust jacket the president of the American Civil Liberties Union, Nadine Strossen, describes the work as careful, clear, path-breaking, and stunningly insightful, Susan Sontag says it is fresh, agile, and improving, and Joan Didion calls it a miracle. These good opinions, and Dworkin’s international renown—he is the author of three other books, a professor of law at New York University, and University Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford—will probably ensure a fairly wide readership. All the more important, then, that the book should receive at least one detailed critical assessment as well as the me-too mega-hype to be expected in such cases.
Life’s Dominion is made up of eight chapters: three on abortion, three on constitutional questions, and two on euthanasia. I will have most to say about the first two topics.
Where to begin? Let’s begin with Aristotle, who said “I love Plato, but I love truth more.” In an unrecorded aside he added “what is more, I admire ingenious ideas, but not as much as I admire clarity and consistency and logic.” Dworkin’s reasoning is very ingenious: it is also smudgy.
The main argument runs as follows:
From these six premises Dworkin deduces that it is morally wrong for governments to ban abortion; in
