Interviewed in 1991, after more than a decade of Republican rule, liberal legal scholar Ronald Dworkin was asked whether he feared that, if the political tide changed, his model of an activist supreme court might be wielded by conservatives to strike down progressive legislation. Dworkin’s answer was revealing: yes, he had “nightmares” that it could happen; that placing his faith in the judiciary could be “betting on the wrong horse.”

He conceded that if this were to happen, it would weaken his faith in the principle of a powerful court overseeing a liberal interpretation of the constitution. But, he added, he wouldn’t be around to see that. And, he concluded, it was a gamble he was willing to take, because it was a structure worth preserving. He had elaborated this structure in his work in painstaking detail, advocating a principle of integrity centered on a “moral reading” of the constitution, which would be developed through the rulings of Herculean (liberal) judges.

Dworkin’s interviewer, human rights lawyer and academic Conor Gearty, then a strong opponent of judicial review, highlighted the precariousness of Dworkin’s apparently principled position in a system where political and judicial power were intertwined. He joked that perhaps Dworkin was willing to take the gamble in the hope he would be appointed to the Supreme Court by a future Democrat, President Mario Cuomo (father of the recent governor of New York). Gearty noted how grim prospects were from a progressive perspective: the celebrated constitutional right to abortion, protected since 1973 in Roe v. Wade, was in danger of being abolished over the next twelve months, the US Supreme Court having moved a long way from the liberal Warren Court of the 1950s and 1960s, and by the early 1990s having the numbers to overrule Roe.