Dworkin One right answer PDF

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One of the ideas that are clearly associated with Dworkin's work is that the powers of adjudication inherent in the theory of 'law as integrity' gives the right answer to questions of law. Dworkin maintains this throughout his book 'Laws Empire'. In the preface, he argues that in most cases there are right answers haunted by the reasons and imagination. He asserts that the 'no right answer' proposition claimed by positivists is deeply persuasive in morality as well as in law. Even in the last chapter of the book he mentions that he has not asserted that there is one right way, only different ways to decide a hard case. Therefore, what Dworkin means by this is that most legal decision do have a unique, if not a right single answer. Nevertheless, it may be difficult sometimes to demonstrate the right answer in every situation. Many of Dworkin's critic presume that the right answer ought to be demonstrated in each and every single case. Dworkin, however contents that the right answer may be easily derived in some situations, while in other cases it may not be the case, but this does not necessarily imply that there is no right answer in such cases. So it does not follow that if something cannot be demonstrated, it cannot be right. According to Stephan Guest, it is sufficient to claim that there cannot be a right answer only because this answer cannot be proved or demonstrated. Dworkin's superhuman judge Hercules will accept the truth of the right thesis. His stating point will be at a community level: trough it's coercive statutes respecting the fundamental rights of all citizens to equal status and respecting the fundamental rights of all citizens to equal status and respect. Hercules will interpret legal material as far as humanly possible, in such a way that may be seen to yield general and concrete rights in a consistent and coherent fashion. At the pre interpretive stage he will have reached law as integrity, then proceed to the post interpretive stage. However, critics may question whether the judge within law as integrity model would use his political convictions to decide cases and given the difference, judges would not be able to have the same convictions and as such, would they have reached the same conclusion. For every route, Dworkin's idealistic judge endowed with Superhuman skills, learning, patience and Acumen, Hercules, took a General conception to a particular verdict, which another lawyer or judge who began in the same conception would find a different route and different place. However, if law as integrity allows for disagreement on the law, will it be able to provide a single right answer to a question of law.

But Dworkin does not seem to be addressing a method that would absolutely eradicate disagreement in law. Instead writing about this problem that the idea that there can be a right answer to a question that aesthetic or moral or social values, strikes many people as even stronger than the presumption of a right to answer queries concerning the meaning of texts and practices. Dworkin therefore confesses that his ambiguous description of the most general aim of interpretation might well reinforce, for many readers, the skeptical thesis, or theory that this is a philosophical mistake to suppose that interpretations can be right or wrong, true or false. Dworkin mentions that external skepticism to reject the view that there are right answers located in some transcendental reality. Referring back to Dworkin's ideal judge Hercules's method of adjudication, when a case comes before him, he must take into account both the dimension of fit and the moral substantive dimension. Being provided with a Superhuman wisdom, he may be able to declare the most justifiable outcome of the case. He ought not to quickly jump to a conclusion in haste because this will be against the dimension fit. He might look at extinct statutes and case laws as evidence of conception of law under which people had rights although they were not perfect in the sense that the same rights were conferred on all citizens. If Hercules does this, he discovers the 'law' and if he does not find integrity, he will fall to discover it. Therefore, Hercules is required by law as integrity to take into account the substantive dimension to find in law the right answer. In some cases This may be quite easy because the limitations of fit will render prolonged investigation into the substantive dimension unnecessary. But questions of law sometimes are very easy for lawyers and even for lawmen. It goes without saying that the speed limit in Connecticut is 55 miles an hour and that people in Britain have a legal duty to pay for food they order in a restaurant. Political morality must be understood in order to understand the substantive dimension of a case, argues Dworkin. Hercules must take into account all the components of political morality in order to find the right answer. These components are mainly justice fairness and procedural due process. The integrity of a community's conception of fairness requires that the political principle necessary to justify the legislatures assumed authority to be given full effect in deciding what a statute enacted by it means. Maintaining the integrity of a community's justice system demands that the moral principle necessary to justify the substance of its legislatures decisions be recognized in the rest of the law. Similarly, the integrity of its conception of procedural due process demands

that trial procedures which are perceived as striking the right balance between accuracy and efficiency in enforcing some part of the law to be recognized throughout a community, taking into account differences in the kind and degree of moral norm an inaccurate verdict imposes. A common man may use' fair' and 'just' synonyms and interchangeability. According to Rawls to the outcomes of a case would be fair if it it was arrived at by a process in which all those concerned had a proper say. Therefore, for Rawls the two terms are synonymous and therefore ' justice is fairness' in this context. Meanwhile in order to understand Dworkin's view of fairness in the context of Hercules's adjudication , it must be seen as synonymous and supported by a major opinion. Dworkin's ideal judge Hercules must pay attention to the idea of fit regarding a statue as preferable to other inference drawn from his legislative history. On the same way, Hercules ought to interpret the constitution in the context of contemporary views (idea of fit) rather than following the initial intention of its drafters. Thus, judge Hercules's job is to weigh up the three component of the substantive dimension that is justice, fairness and procedural due process, against one another in case they conflict and find the lowest common denominator, which in Dworkins eyes is the optimal political solution that fits the legal material. Judge Hercules may disregard constitutional or statutory provisions in articulating his general scheme of finding the 'right answer' while labelling them as 'embedded mistake'. Dworkin have given arguments for many liberal positions. For example, women have a right to choose abortion, everyone has a right to moral independence in the context of pornography and sexual lifestyles. Dworkin brushes aside external skepticism since it contradicts his claim that answers arrived at by integrity objectively right answers to questions of law. Dworkin argues, that it logically follows even if external skepticism is considered as a sound philosophical position, it is not threat to case of law as integrity or to Hercules and methods of education under it. However, what would happen if the answer produced by integrity are not objectively right. In this case, how will they be considered right in another context. Dworkin notwithstanding considered as such an answer to be right because the judge as a participant in legal practice considered them as right. Dworkin's most recent work seems to treat the issue of right answers an irritating discretion that the issue that there are right or best or true or soundest answers

or only useful or powerful or popular ones which are a notion of grand debates waste of important energy, should be set aside now. What could be taken up instead is how the decisions that is to be made in a case should be made and which of the answers will in any case be thought right or best or true or sound really truly are. According to Brian Brix, even though the quotation seems to be quite dismissive, it continues the theme that there are at least a few best answers to complicated legal questions, even if in some cases some are hesitant to call them the right answers. At this point one wonders, how would Hercules deal with the precedents. Dworkin argues that he may overrule any established principle in the case before him in order to arrive at a right answer. In doing so he must respectfully consider procedural due process justice and fairness. But the problem arises when the precedent that Hercules is not allowed to overrule by the virtue of the constitution. He may treat them unfairly as embedded mistakes and give them the narrowest possible construction. Moreover, earlier decisions which are neither overruled nor regarded as embedded mistakes ought to be seen as exerting a gravitational force on later decisions even when this later decisions lion outside their particular orbit. In cases where Hercules is confronted with a completely new question, he must try to look into other branches of law to find the right answer. Dworkin puts it as, long may not be a seamless web but the plaintiff is entitled to ask Hercules to treat it as it were. Then it is observed that why the judge is called Hercules. Hercules must construct a scheme of abstract and concrete principle that provides a coherent justification for all common law precedents and so far as these are to be justified on principal, constitutional and statutory principal as well. Harris however has summed up Dworkin's theory in following words: The trust of Dworkin's theory is that, whenever the materials can be read in different ways, judges should not simply give effect to their personal views. Instead they have a responsibility to apply their conviction about what the morality of the community is committed should be understood to entail, as long as this convictions 'fit' the legal materials, they reveal what the law is. This process is called law discovery and not legislation....