What is sacred? Ronald Dworkin and his answers

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...