Conclusion
Chess is a game that develops the chess-playing intelligence (Fernandes 1996, 499).
This paper attempts to show how the contemporary theoretical legal debate became a “methodological debate” and how Ronald Dworkin’s thinking holds a central or noteworthy position in this debate.
The methodological nature is expressed in several ways. It manifests itself by means of the incorporation of a series of contemporary philosophical questions regarding the concepts of objectiveness, certainty and truth.The 1986 publication of Dworkin’s Law’s Empire was a new milestone for this agenda. In the book, Dworkin develops some of the ideas introduced in several previous essays, the principal among which were republished in the book A Matter of Principle. In it, Dworkin introduces his interpretive theory of law. To do so, he develops a detailed analysis of the concept of interpretation that is its cornerstone.
For Dworkin, there are many kinds of social action. Some social actions are driven by conventional interests or objectives. Others, however, are driven by values and demand interpretation from agents. The interpretation of values requires interpreters to recognize a distinctive kind of point. Dworkin’s favorite example to illustrate the idea resorts to the analysis of literary interpretation. In this kind of interpretive practice, which is commonplace among literary critics, interpreters oppose interpretations that assume some kind of aesthetic hypothesis. Similarly, Dworkin argues that law requires a evaluative interpretive type of practice and this, in turn, requires interpreters to formulate, even if provisionally, a political and justice hypothesis. This is why Dworkin abandons the chess metaphor. Chess is a social practice that does not involve the existence of a evaluative point. Law has grammatical characteristics that are essentially different from those of chess, and to insist in the comparisons would involve insisting in a philosophical mistake.
An important corollary of the development of the interpretive theory of law as formulated by Dworkin, as well as of the concept of interpretation he uses, consists of the refutation of countless conventionalist theories of meaning and the introduction of a theory of controversy, which appears to be essential to an accurate and appropriate understanding of the legal phenomenon.
For Dworkin, when two interpreters become involved in an interpretive dispute about evaluative concepts (later renamed interpretive concepts), they must share some identification practices and paradigms to enable identification of the values involved. This sharing, however, is frequently not enough to establish a convention to eliminate dispute about the best way to interpret the meaning of a certain value. The interpretive endeavor therefore involves a second moment at which rivaling conceptions of a single concept may compete in an effort to provide the best interpretation. That one that shows the best fit and that best recognizes the evaluative appeal in question must be recognized as the best (correct) conception of the concept. Clearly, the best interpretation does not depend solely on the existence of a social convention that recognizes it as such, even if it does require some manner of shared practices and a common “form of life”. What it demands is the existence of better supporting arguments or justifications (better fit and attention to the evaluative appeal) and that they may be reconstructed by means of the shared practices that provided their reference at an initial interpretive moment. The analysis of the concept of courtesy attempted to illustrate how the interpretive activity for “interpretive concepts” takes place.
More on the topic Conclusion:
- Conclusion
- Conclusion
- CONCLUSION
- Conclusion
- Conclusion
- Conclusion
- CONCLUSION
- CONCLUSION
- CONCLUSION
- Conclusion