Final and Right Answer
Let us start, however, with some basic concepts of the one right answer doctrine. First of all, two basic notions have to be kept separate - i.e., the final and the right answer.
The former is a necessary condition for every well-functioning legal system. The use of legal power simply presupposes that at a certain stage of the legal procedure the system produces an enforceable decision in each single case. In this regard, the final solution is an essential part of the rule of law principle (Rechtsstaat).However, the final answer is not necessarily the right, or, even less, the only right one. When speaking about the one right answer, certain formal and substantial criteria of rightness necessarily have to be defined. In this regard, at least two different versions of the one right answer can be identified.
According to the strong version, the one right answer always exists and can also be detected in each single case (Aarnio 1997, 217). The answer is “hidden” somewhere in the legal order, and the skill of the judge or scholar is to make explicit that which is already implicit. This kind of a doctrine is only valid on an assumption of a closed legal system. The conclusion is always deducted from axiomatic and evident premises. The idea of a closed legal system was represented in the extreme doctrines of the rationalistic natural law, as well as the conceptualist doctrinal study of law (Begriffsjurisprudenz). Traces of such thinking can hardly be found in the present Western legal theory.
A. Aarnio, Essays on the Doctrinal Study of Law, Law and Philosophy Library 96, DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1655-1_19, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
The weak version accepts the existence of the one right answer but admits that it cannot always (maybe not ever) be detected. This version has been represented by several positivistic doctrines.
For instance, nearly all the scholars in Finland in the 1970s agreed with this view. As Jerzy Wroblewski has pointed out, the basis of this version is mainly the idea of a gapless legal system. That was the reason why Wroblewski only saw the one right answer as a useful ideology that helps lawyers to orientate in their practical work. From a theoretical point of view, that ideology, according to Wroblewski, turns to be a problematic one (Wroblewski 1974, 33, 1992, 265). It is true that the judge or scholar could consider it important to have the right answer as a guideline, although we as human beings perhaps do not succeed in finding the right answer. Still, we assume that it is “there”. Otherwise - some could say - all legal decision-making, as well as DSL, would become blind and arbitrary.Especially the strong but partially also the weak version is connected to the syllogistic form of legal reasoning. When chosen in a certain way, the first and second premises give the impression that the conclusion is “certain”. There are, however, a lot of problems intertwined with the weak version. First, we meet the problem that, according to Charles Peirce, is called the fallibilistic dilemma (Popper 1963; Niiniluoto 1983, 80). Even in cases where the right answer can be found in principle, it is not necessarily possible to know that it has been found. Yet, if one does not have this kind of knowledge, the one right answer-assumption is a very weak practical guideline for a judge or a scholar. They never know that they know. Even more problematic, however, is the existence of the one right answer. What does it exactly mean to speak about such an “existence” in a legal context?