Abstract

Much recent work exploring a liberal theory of equality focuses on the questions of distributive justice and is thus relevant to a narrow range of legal questions. Equality, Responsibility, and the Law redresses this imbalance, reserving a single final chapter to questions of resource allocation and spending the other seven chapters on questions of equality relating to tort and crime. The book addresses a huge set of questions and—like some of the best work in philosophy—it gives the same answer to all of them at an abstract level. It thus provides a coherent interpretive scheme for some of the most vexed terrain in the philosophy of law. The aim is to provide a way of looking at questions of responsibility in relation to both civil and criminal law and then explore the implications of this theory for the distribution of scarce resources. This is a Herculean task—and it is useful to think of the author as playing the role of a Dworkinian judge attempting to find a theory that gives integrity to the legal systems of Britain and North America. The dust jacket’s emphasis on legal luck hits an important theme of the book, but also obscures the extent to which this work concerns the justification of virtually every decision within common-law systems.