Waldron holds a B.A. (1974) and an LL.B. (1978) from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a D.Phil. (1986) from Oxford University, where he studied under legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and political theorist Alan Ryan. He also taught legal and political philosophy at Otago (1975-78), Lincoln College, Oxford (1980-82), the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (1983-87), the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Boalt Hall School of Law at Berkeley (1986-96), Princeton University (1996-97), and Columbia Law School (1997-2006). He has also been a visiting professor at Cornell University (1989-90), Otago (1991-92), and Columbia (1995).

Waldron gave the second series of Seeley Lectures at Cambridge University in 1996, the 1999 Carlyle Lectures at Oxford, the spring 2000 University Lecture at Columbia, the Wesson Lectures at Stanford University in 2004, and the Storrs Lectures at Yale Law School in 2007. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998.

Waldron holds an adjunct professorship at Victoria University in his native New Zealand. His students at Columbia University would place kiwi fruit on the lectern he taught from as a humorous comment on his Kiwi (New Zealand) heritage.

Waldron is a liberal in both the general and American senses of the word, and a normative legal positivist. He has written extensively on the analysis and justification of private property, the political and legal philosophy of John Locke, and is an outspoken opponent of the American practice of judicial review, which he believes to be in tension with democratic principles. He has also criticized analytic legal philosophy for its failure to engage with the questions addressed by political theory. In recent years, he has also been a noted opponent of legal arguments which justify coercive interrogation techniques. He has been classified as a civil libertarian by Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule .

In 2005, Waldorn received an Honourary Doctorate from his Alma Mater the University of Otago.

Books

• 1984. Theories of Rights, edited vol. ISBN 0-19-875063-3
• 1988. The Right to Private Property. ISBN 0-19-823937-8, ISBN 0-19-824326-X
• 1988. Nonsense Upon Stilts: Bentham, Burke and Marx on the Rights of Man, edited vol. ISBN 0-416-91890-5
• 1990. The Law: Theory and Practice in British Politics. ISBN 0-415-01427-1
• 1993. Liberal Rights: Collected Papers 1981–91. ISBN 0-521-43617-6
• 1999. The Dignity of Legislation, Seeley Lectures. ISBN 0-521-65883-7, ISBN 85-336-1896-4 (Portuguese translation)
• 1999. Law and Disagreement. ISBN 0-19-924303-4
• 2002. God, Locke and Equality. ISBN 0-521-89057-8

Articles

• 2001, "Normative (or Ethical) Positivism" in Jules Coleman (ed.), Hart's Postscript: Essays on the Postscript to The Concept of Law. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829908-7
• 2003, "Who is my Neighbor?: Humanity and Proximity," The Monist 86.
• 2004, "Settlement, Return, and the Supersession Thesis," Theoretical Inquiries in Law 5.
• 2004, “Terrorism and the Uses of Terror”. The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 1, Terrorism (2004) pp. 5-35.
• 2005, "Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House," Columbia Law Review 105.
• 2006, "The Core of the Case Against Judicial Review," Yale Law Journal 115.