This volume collects twenty-two published and unpublished chapters on a variety of topics related directly to human rights, justice, and the common good. The first nine date from 1970 through to 2007. They begin with a study — in dialectic with Dworkin's earlier lecture on the same themes — of the bearing of contemporary legal and political theory on the incorporation of a declaration of rights and freedoms in British law. There follow chapters on place of rights, and of duties to oneself, in Kant's moral and legal theory and some contemporary interpreters of Kant; on the application classical ... More

This volume collects twenty-two published and unpublished chapters on a variety of topics related directly to human rights, justice, and the common good. The first nine date from 1970 through to 2007. They begin with a study — in dialectic with Dworkin's earlier lecture on the same themes — of the bearing of contemporary legal and political theory on the incorporation of a declaration of rights and freedoms in British law. There follow chapters on place of rights, and of duties to oneself, in Kant's moral and legal theory and some contemporary interpreters of Kant; on the application classical conceptions of distributive justice to modern problems; on the emergence of the ideal of government limited by, inter alia, respect for human rights, and contemporary distortions of the ideal that are proposed by Rawls, Dworkin, and followers of theirs (not least in relation to marriage); on the place of civic virtues and respect for diverse persons in constitutional order; and two chapters on the great question of migration rights and the legitimacy of national boundaries preventing free and equal migration. Part Two groups three chapters on the justice of punishment, concluding with the mature statement of retribution's place as punishment's formative justifying aim, in engagement especially with Nietzsche's ‘genealogy of morals’. Part Three surveys just way theory in its historic development and current shape. Parts Four, Five, and Six each group three chapters: on autonomy, justice, and euthanasia; on autonomy, justice, and human reproduction; and on marriage in its relation to justice and the common good.