Gerald Dworkin

Who is Gerald Dworkin?

Gerald Dworkin is a professor of moral, political and legal philosophy. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. He has also taught at Harvard, MIT, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has been a visiting Fellow of All Souls College, the Australian National University, and the Hastings Center. He was the Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. In 2006, he was a Distinguished Visitor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he gave a series of lectures on Paternalism.

His main areas of research include the nature and justification of autonomy, paternalism in the criminal law, and the issue of which acts may legitimately be criminalized by the state.

His most recent book is a defense of physician-assisted suicide. In it he argues that doctors who approve of withdrawing patients from life support at their request, or administering pain-relief medication that is foreseen to kill the patient, or who approve of terminal sedation, are inconsistent if they condemn physician-assisted suicide. This book has been published in Spanish and Korean language editions.