Truth, Ethics and Legal Thought—Some Lessons from Dworkin’s <i>Justice for Hedgehogs</i> and Its Critique

Abstract

This paper reconstructs some of the core elements of Dworkin’s epistemology of ethics. To understand why, for Dworkin, questions of legal philosophy lead to moral epistemology, the main points of Dworkin’s last restatement of his theoretical account of law are outlined. Against this background, the paper critically assesses the merits of Dworkin’s criticism of current prominent forms of skepticism and what it teaches us about the epistemology of legal thought.

Keywords

• legal epistemology
• skepticism
• error theory
• cognitivism
• non-cognitivism