A better way to think of it, as the philosopher Ronald Dworkin put it, is as a “gravitational pull” on judicial reasoning.

Role playing, performing our parts, is what we do; we can hardly blame one another for playing roles. Suppose, however, the role is flavored in such a way that the player can be described as ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...