On Moral Dimension Of Law

In the history of human civilization,development of thoughts and diversity of disciplines derived from social changes and the evolution of ethical thought as well as the development of law became interacted with each other.Ethical thoughts and law consciousness,deep rooted in society, contributed to the generation of a new discipline—legal ethics.Although people have various views on legal ethics in the academic world,yet it is an unshakable topic in terms of study on the relation between law and morality;what's more,there is a new trend of studying legal ethics in modern times and such kind of study is on the rise.Dworkin is a renowned philosopher in the Western academic circles,whose thought of legal ethics is famous all over the world.What an exquisite works of art in the field of legal ethics!Dworkin's legal ethics was established under the lasting struggle against legal positivism.Overcoming the demerits of legal positivism,he holds that law and moral are not completely separated and that constraint of law lies in its certain unique moral values.Therefore,he thinks efforts to completely separate law from moral are in vain and useless.It indicates that Dworkin attaches great importance to connection between law and morality and that he advocates lawful problems should be resolved from the perspective of the nature of morality.As far as Dworkin is concerned,"moral demands"and"ethics"should not be realized by balloting on specific moral problems rather by asking such questions as"what is law".Dworkin's legal ethics focuses on the problem"what is law"and gives answers from different perspectives.First,in terms of connotation of law,there is no absolute limit between law and morality and the former contains moral principles. Dworkin criticizes thoroughly"legal rule theory"in legal positivism when he obviously proposes his principle theory.He maintains that law compromises rules as well as a series of legal principles which come from morality and are legal expressions of morality.These principles are embodied as moral ideologies such as equality,freedom,rights and kindness because law is a"virtuous"one that pursues goodness.Equality, freedom,rights and kindness are basic categories in study of law and are fundamental principles of rule of law.To some degree,the spirit and life of law is to pursue and maintain these principles;otherwise it will become"the law of the jungle"and excluded"vicious law".Second,from the process of distinguishing law,Dworkin thinks that we should interpret laws,especially understand constitution from the aspect of morality,through a constructive interpretation,so that it is in line with morality.Dworkin believes morality is an appropriate interpretation of laws and this kind of interpretation is active but limited. Thus,Dworkin proposes standards of interpretation"based on morality and accommodated to existing rule of laws",rationally constraining judges with the entire virtue of law.At last,from the specific application of law,we should make legal judgments,which,Dworkin thinks,are only the extension of moral judgments.Through his demonstrations of such issues as civil disobedience,reversed discrimination,life and races,we can better understand Dworkin's awe of law and respect for morality.Law develops during the process of people's reflection on them;however,what really accounts is how to ensure the validity of law in face of contradiction between law and the morality.Dworkin believes when law is contradicted with people's moral consciousness,the moral significance of law should also be respected.To deal with the crises of validity of law,we should keep conforming to the moral ideology of law in accordance with relevant principles.In short,what Dworkin has established is a legal ethic system with a core of morality,which is also a blueprint made by him through great efforts:an ideal world of practically safeguarding people's rights with the theory of principles and rights as a basis,by means of law interpretation and with a core of moral principles and with ideologies of freedom, equality,rights and kindness.This dissertation aims to analyse in an all-round way the connotation, ideological features and practice approaches of Dworkin's legal ethics so as to explore the interaction between law and morality,thus better serving modernization in China.