A Research On The Law Thoughts Of Dworkin's Interpretation Theory

This essay chooses a jurist named Ronald Dworkin, who is very famous at present in America, as the object of study. It mainly inspects the law ideology of the theory of interpretations, which is based on the theory of rights and the theory of principles. The book Law's Empire has epitomized such thought. In this book, Dworkin has criticized the legal concept of conventionalism and legal pragmatism and put forward the law as integrity. What is known as integrity refers to a kind of political moral principle that is to say a kind of unique political ideal. It contains the integrity principle in legislature and judgment. The integrity principle requires judge to pay attention when they pronounced on somebody, if the law principle is clear and definite the judge should follow the precedent to deal with the similar cases. If the law principle is ambiguous or equivocal, the judge can use average law principle not according to the rule. Even if there are some problems during using average law principle (for example when there exist many law principles) the judge can adopt much wider political moral principle or ideal which is beyond law range. Dworkin confirmed law culture and political moral principle have high administrative level consistency in British and American society. So the main task is to find and maintain the consistency, avoid from damaging the judgment of citizen rights and go on keeping the integrity of law in the new condition when judge deals with hard cases.However, as usual, the judge may find that there are over two mutual competitive political principles to be chosen. In this case, Dworkin suggested the judge to choose "The closest interpretation to the demand of abstract justice in his opinion". In other words, the judge should decide which elementary values gain the upper hand (such as freedom, equality, personal rights and so on). In this way, the interpretation rise up to a position of the utmost importance, and becoming the focal point of Dworkin's research demonstration. Just in this condition, the author named the law ideology in law's Empire as the law ideology theory of interpretation.The article is divided into three sections:Section I, Beginning with the basic problem that what's the law, Dworkin pointed out that the jurist in past time wasn't able to put forth the convincing theory. He mainly paid attention to the administration of justice course from the angle of the judge, and gave his opinion: The law is explanatory conception. Tracing back to the evolution history of heraieneutics, Dworkin proved the explanatory conception that he understood.Section II, From the opinion that is "the law is explanatory conception", Dworkin considers that there are three kinds of the opinions of it which stand for three kinds of legal idea, encompassing the conventionalism, the legal pragmatism and the law as integrity. Dworkin mainly criticized the conventionalism and legal pragmatism's legal idea, and argued the legal idea that is the most reasonable. That is the law as integrity.Sectionin, Law as integrity reflect on the integrity of legislating and judging Dworkin elaborately proved that the law as integrity not only fitted for, but also exclaimed sufficiently the constitutional political structure and the law practice of the United States.