This Review challenges the thesis and central claims of Ronald Dworkin’s new book, Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate.  In his book, Professor Dworkin posits that the quality of political discourse has severely deteriorated and calls for a renewal of reasoned argument based on shared values.  Dworkin focuses specifically on the values of equality and liberty, which he claims are shared by most, if not all, Americans, as the starting point for a reinvigorated national political debate.  However, Priel finds that Dworkin’s framework in fact implies the proposition that there can be no reasonable disagreement as to how we should resolve political issues (such as state-sanctioned same-sex marriage and the teaching of evolution in schools).

According to Priel, Dworkin seeks not argument but agreement with Dworkin’s conception of justice.  Thus, Priel states that Dworkin’s purported project to encourage more reasoned argument based on shared values rings empty and false.  Priel further questions Dworkin’s implicit assumption that Americans are in broad agreement about the primacy of liberty and equality as ethical values to the exclusion of almost all others.  He finds unpersuasive Dworkin’s claim that all political debates are essentially debates about conceptions of liberty and equality, as Dworkin has defined them.  Priel criticizes Dworkin further for not considering the possibility that his critics are making serious arguments and for selecting only the weakest counterarguments to test his position.  As Priel understands Dworkin, Dworkin believes that those who have arguments contrary to Dworkin’s have not properly considered what the fundamental values they hold really are.  Priel finds this elitist and inward-looking position to be contrary to the openly stated project of bringing reasoned argument back into America’s political climate.