Dworkin's Legal Interpretation Of The Theoretical Study

When American government and legal system fell into legitimacy crisis in the middle of 20^th century because the mainstream morality was dramatically impacted, Dworkin has to rethink "what law is " and trys to rebuild the destroyed mainstream morality in order to defend liberalism as the ruling political theory in U.S.A. It must be minded that "what law is " is a foundermental question in western legal theory history, to which different people has given different answers with their different views on historical background and theoretical logic. As a contemporary liberal, Dworkin is confronted with the law-morality question which derives from "what law is" because the inherent logical predicament of liberalism has made this transformation. By comparing classical and modern political philosophy, it's easy to see that since classical political philosophy concerns devising the best political system in pursuit of the sovereign goal: goodness, their discussions of politics and law also accords with it. Evidently, law's legitimacy question is beyond the scope of classical political philosophy and wholly attracts the concern of modern liberal theorists, because in modern liberal logic, legitimacy takes the priority over goodness and people independently dominates their moral lives, which means they can question the legitimacy of community and its law simply in accordance with their inner moral beliefs. Therefore, law-morality question is at the bottom a question of law's legitimacy grounds.Legal positivism gives their answer to this question as a ruling theory in Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, ie. law is value free and law ought to be detached from morality. Legal positivism provides the rule of recognition for law's ground which has been admitted by law-making procedures or conventions. Strictly speaking, the law's ground in this mean can not be equal to law's legitimacy ground for it mainly relates to formal legitimacy. In fact, people in reality feel hard to equally treat law's formal legitimacy and essential legitimacy, and can not obey law, at the same time freely criticize law just as positivism has encouraged them to do. The civil movement in 1960s has given a good example because Martin Luther King holds that everyone has the right of disobedience just on the basis of their moral beliefs. So, law's legitimacy ground depends on morality no matter in the terms of theory or practice, which constitutes the basis of Dworkin's whole theory. But a more important question is how to provide legitimacy ground for law, which determines the above claim can or can not be established and becomes the only task of Dworkin's law interpretation theory.Dworkin's law interpretation theory mainly concerns two questions. The first, how to realize the abstract idea's formal structure in special context and build up a path by which the abstract moral goal is able to be made real, by which Dworkin tries to make methodological guidance for people who are keeping quarrelling but don't know how to correctly do quarrel. The second, facing the real crisis of liberalism, Dworkin has to think how to keep the plural moralities at stableness. He finds the key to this question lies at mainstream morality, because mainstream morality is able to defeat moral nihilism, keep plural moralities at stableness and cast solid ground for law's legitimacy with the support of consensus provided by mainstream morality.Dworkin uses concept and conceptions as his basic theory tools. As some consensus, concept works as a platform, from which the more specific views can derive. Dworkin gives two tests for every interpretive conceptions, one is fit ,which can guarantee people's interpretations pointing at a same project, the other is justification, which can chose the best interpretation by comparing each conception in the terms of moral compelling. In Dworkin's theoretical logic, a right answer is unavoidably to be produced. Certainly, if law interpretation can be put into practice, it must has a premise that people's law issues includes moral considerations, because only this kind of legal issues demonstrates that people's moral-pursuing activities are still going on and Dworkin's law interpretation theory, which concerns how to correctly discuss law and how to realize moral goals, can therefore be of actual effect. In fact, Dworkin holds that people's legal practice is just constituted of this kind of issues.When applying Dworkin's law interpretation theory to the issues about constitutional questions, the legitimacy question of political system has to be considered. The legitimacy question in this sense means to demarcate community's power and people's right. Dworkin's answer emphasizes people's right prior to community's power, and at the same time admits power to properly interfere people's private lives only in view of the whole interests of community. Dworkin's discussion about abortion issue may well be a demonstration. Dworkin's law interpretation theory also covers how to correctly think obligation and democracy, which constitutes his new view on democracy. According to this new view on democracy, what community desires is just what people desires, so, all the political activities including law based on this consensus are legitimate.Dworkin's law interpretation theory subjects to the theoretical project of modern American liberalism, which aims to find an approach to properly accommodate plural moralities. To do that, Dworkin can't appeal to moral authority or moral dogmatism of any forms and has to find possible method that leads people to moral consensus. In Dworkin's view, the question of method is the real key of law's legitimacy. He feels confident of the goal in his theory building and his whole law interpretation theory.This essay puts Dworkin's law interpretation theory in the logic context of liberalism and chooses the inherent predicament of liberalism as Dworkin's basic question. By examining the logic line in Dworkin's law interpretation theory, this essay aims to make plain the special content, creative value and practical guiding effect of it.