Law's Empire: Dworkin's Core Argument

“Law as integrity asks judges to assume, so far as this is possible, that the law is structured by a coherent set of principles about justice and fairness and procedural due process, and it asks them to enforce these in the fresh cases that come before them, so that each person's situation is fair and just according to the same standards. [...] Rights are best understood as trumps over background justifications for political decisions: a right against the government means that the government may not act against the individual even if the general interest would be served by doing so. [...] The ==chain novel== analogy: a judge deciding a hard case is like a novelist writing the next chapter of a ==chain novel==, she must fit the existing materials while making them the best they can be. — Dworkin, Law's Empire (1986); Taking Rights Seriously (1977); SEP 'Ronald Dworkin'”