Topic > Dworkin's View of Political Integrity - 639

When Dworkin introduces his idea of ​​political integrity, he begins by introducing his conception of three political ideals: fairness, justice, and procedural due process. According to his claims, a utopian society would only need these ideals to thrive because officials consistently doing what is perfectly right and fair would ensure consistency. In our system of ordinary politics, Dworkin believes that integrity must be accepted as the fourth political ideal, if we accept it at all. In his definition of political integrity, Dworkin argues that it should be used to treat similar cases equally, ensure equality before the law, run parallel to personal integrity, and require the state to act according to a single set of consistent principles. Simply put, the characterization of political integrity implies total equality before the law, since all laws are justified by the same principles. However, he feels it is important to state that it may well be that some integrity “breaches” are, on balance, better than the alternatives. Dworkin argues that we have two separate principles regarding political integrity. These principles, legislative and jurisdictional, seek to make laws morally coherent and allow them to be viewed that way. Furthermore, when he talks about political integrity, he makes two important underlying assumptions. These underlying assumptions are that we all, as a society, believe in political fairness and that we know that different people have different opinions on moral issues that everyone considers to be of great importance. Starting from these assumptions and principles, Dworkin presents an interesting vision of political compromise in the form of checkerboard laws. Checkerboard laws are laws that deal with…half of the paper…explained according to the current ideal of fairness. or justice, explaining his insistence on including political integrity as a further ideal. Dworkin argues that society values ​​political integrity for its own sake because of the resulting ability to have internal harmony without direct compromise. By accepting political integrity, he argues that political society becomes a special form of community that promotes its own moral authority to assume and employ a monopoly on coercive force. It promotes the idea that the community should be seen as a distinct moral agent in that social and intellectual practices that treat the community in this way should be protected. By integrating political integrity as an imperative aspect of the law, these practices are accepted without refuting our instincts through internal compromises, such as checkerboard solutions.