Ronald Myles Dworkin FBA QC (/ˈdwɔːrkɪn/; December 11, 1931 – February 14, 2013) was an American legal philosopher, jurist, and scholar of United States constitutional law.

Dworkin had taught previously at Yale Law School and the University of Oxford, where he was the Professor of Jurisprudence, successor to philosopher H. L. A. Hart.

He was a frequent commentator on contemporary political and legal issues, particularly those concerning the Supreme Court of the United States, often in the pages of The New York Review of Books.

He graduated from Harvard University in 1953 with an A.B., summa cum laude, where he majored in philosophy and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year.

He then attended Magdalen College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where was a student of Sir Rupert Cross and J. H. C. Morris.

Upon completion of his final exams at Oxford, the examiners were so impressed with his script that the Professor of Jurisprudence (then H. L. A. Hart) was summoned to read it.

Dworkin then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 1957 with a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude.

[10] While clerking for Hand, Dworkin was offered a clerkship with Justice Felix Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court.

[14]Dworkin's opinion of Hart's legal positivism was expressed in its fullest form in the book Law's Empire.

[15]One of Dworkin's most interesting and controversial theses states that the law as properly interpreted will give an answer.

The key difference with respect to the former is that Rawls' veil of ignorance translates almost seamlessly from the purely ideal to the practical.

Dworkin's Judge Hercules, on the other hand, is a purely idealized construct, that is, if such a figure existed, he would arrive at a right answer in every moral dilemma.

[citation needed] In her book on Hans Kelsen, Sandrine Baume[18] identified Ronald Dworkin as a leading defender of the "compatibility of judicial review with the very principles of democracy."

[19] Dworkin has been a long-time advocate of the principle of the moral reading of the Constitution whose lines of support he sees as strongly associated with enhanced versions of judicial review in the federal government.

Dworkin's theory of equality is said to be one variety of so-called luck egalitarianism, but he rejects this statement.

While working for Judge Learned Hand, Dworkin met his future wife, Betsy Ross, with whom he would have twins Anthony and Jennifer.

Dworkin died of leukemia in London on February 14, 2013, at the age of 81,[9][23] survived by his second wife, two children, and two grandchildren.

The award citation of the Holberg Prize Academic Committee recognized that Dworkin has "elaborated a liberal egalitarian theory" and stressed Dworkin's effort to develop "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".

In 2006, the Legal Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico honored Dworkin with the Héctor Fix-Zamudio International Award.

[30] On November 14, 2012, Dworkin received the Balzan Prize for Jurisprudence in Quirinale Palace, Rome, from the President of the Italian Republic.

The Balzan Prize was awarded "for his fundamental contributions to Jurisprudence, characterized by outstanding originality and clarity of thought in a continuing and fruitful interaction with ethical and political theories and with legal practices".