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Judges Taken Too Seriously: Professor Dworkin's Views on Jurisprudence *
Author(s) -
TROPER MICHEL
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9337.1988.tb00012.x
Subject(s) - jurisprudence , argumentation theory , normative , epistemology , law , ideology , legal positivism , function (biology) , sociology , object (grammar) , philosophy of law , philosophy , political science , comparative law , linguistics , evolutionary biology , politics , biology
. The author analyses Ronald Dworkin's ideas about legal theory and legal philosophy, with particular regard to metatheoretical and methodological problems. He focuses on the questions of the function and the object of jurisprudence, and on those of the content and method of argumentation of jurisprudence. According to the author, Dworkin's theory is a normative theory, an ideology referred to the judicial practice. Although judges really make law, one can deny that they do. This strategy is the one judges traditionally employ when they say that they are merely applying the law‐giver's intentions or fundamental principles that existed long before the case they have to decide. It is that discourse, not rights, that Dworkin takes seriously.