Biography

Father of Jennifer Dworkin.

Legal scholar and Constitutional Law expert.

Irene Brendel's first husband was pianist Alfred Brendel.

[on prosecuting public flouting of the draft law for the Vietnam War] Society cannot endure if it tolerates all disobedience. It does not follow, however, nor is there evidence, that it will collapse if it tolerates some.

The government will not reestablish respect for law without giving the law some claim to respect. It cannot do that if it neglects the one feature that distinguishes law from ordered brutality. If the government does not take rights seriously, then it does not take law seriously either.

[2010] Against the opposition of their four colleagues, the five right-wing Supreme Court justices have now guaranteed that big corporations can spend unlimited funds on political advertising in any political election. The opinion announces and perpetuates a shallow, simplistic understanding of the First Amendment, one that actually undermines one of the most basic purposes of free speech, which is to protect democracy. The nerve of [this] argument - that corporations must be treated like real people is, in my view, preposterous.

[on the 'Affordable Care Act, 2012] It contains an unwitting insight. The national power to tax is not just a mechanism for financing armies and courts. It is an indispensable means of creating one nation, indivisible, with fairness for all. It's mandate is not just another example of economic regulation of an interstate industry like cars or steel. It does not impose a tax in the ordinary political meaning. It is best understood as in the long tradition of mandatory insurance for the sake of justice.

History has left exceptionalism behind. The world has, fortunately, moved beyond the capacity of any single nation to dominate the rest. If Americans do not come soon to accept that, frustration will roil our politics for a long time to come.