THE NATURE OF DWORKIN’S LEGAL THEORY Cover Image

ПРИРОДА ПРАВНЕ ТЕОРИЈЕ РОНАЛДА ДВОРКИНА
THE NATURE OF DWORKIN’S LEGAL THEORY

Author(s): Goran Dajović
Subject(s): Law, Constitution, Jurisprudence, Philosophy of Law
Published by: Правни факултет Универзитета у Београду
Keywords: Ronald Dworkin; Theory of law; Normativity; Descriptivism; Judicial decision-making;

Summary/Abstract: Ronald Dworkin has given the significant impetus to contemporary jurisprudence, with his original and comprehensive critics of the modern legal positivism. As an alternative to the positivism, he offered one specific kind of legal theory which is widely known as “interpretivism”. However, Dworkin’s substantive theoretical tenets are strongly influenced and “colored” by his fundamental epistemological belief that one legal theory is only “general part of adjudication, silent prologue to any decision at law” and that jurisprudents essentially have the same task as the courts of justice (and vice versa): to justify the exercise of coercive power by the state. Consequently, according to Dworkin’s view, this ultimate purpose of law plays important role in resolving particular legal disputes. Since the justification of state coercion is the purpose of legal practice, then the interpretation of past legal decisions (statutes, precedents, etc) must be as morally good as possible. Because it is the common task of jurisprudents and judges as well this viewpoint actually turned Dworkin’s theory of law into the theory of judicial decision-making. And all idiosyncrasies of his theory (normativity, rejection of the rule of recognition, parochialism, etc) stem from this peculiar account about the general role of legal theory.

  • Issue Year: 61/2013
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 166-179
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: Serbian