NYU Law's Dworkin Wins $750,000+
A renowned law and philosophy professor at New York University has been awarded a prestigious prize for his scholarship. Its value is variously given as $750,000 or $800,000.
Ronald Dworkin, 76, who has a joint appointment at Oxford University in Britain, has won the Holberg International Memorial Prize for his “integrity of law” theory, reports the Associated Press. It melds the seemingly opposed 20th century theories of two opposing schools of legal positivism and natural law into a unified scheme that sees the legal system as comprised both of legal rules and moral principles.
Says the Norwegian awards committee on a Holberg prize Web site: “Ronald Dworkin has developed an original and highly influential legal theory grounding law in morality, characterized by a unique ability to tie together abstract philosophical ideas and arguments with concrete everyday concerns in law, morals, and politics.”
Says Dworkin: “Apart from my receiving it, which is obviously welcome, the prize itself is a good idea,” reports the New York Law Journal in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.). The prize “gives drama to the whole field of the humanities,” he says, “which are sort of neglected” under the Nobel Prize selection process.
Asked what he will do with the money, Dworkin responds “At times like this, one thinks of charity.”
