Ananya Sivanandaraaj, Jindal Global Law School
Some say he was a legal positivist and some say he was a revived jurist from the natural school of thought. But, people don’t know which school he actually belonged to. Ronald Dworkin is an author whose understanding of law is considered as ‘interpretative jurisprudence’ in defence of the modern liberal democracy. He centers his theory around three important ideas of: Fairness, Due Process and Respect for individual Rights.1 His jurisprudence is known as ‘defensive jurisprudence’, because in the 70s, the authority of the government was limited so a large number of American people began to lose faith in the Government and started criticizing it vehemently. The United States Government was a representative government; a reflection of the wishes of the people of the US. The entire authority of the United States Government was dependent on democratic process and if it was found that some inroads are being made in the democratic process, the entire system would decline, making the people lose faith in the system.
One such event was the Watergate Scandal of 1973 up until which, people had immense faith in the democratic process. In the case of the Watergate Scandal, the Security guard in the apartment of Watergate gave information to the FBI that certain people have tried to spy on the office of the Democrat Candidate and that certain important documents and information were stolen. 2 It became a serious scandal, since the Nixon Administration continuously tried to hide their involvement in the break-in and then ended up resigning as he did not want to face any impeachment procedure. Post this scandal, faith in the democratic process was slowly deteriorating.
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