PT111.S2.P4.Q26

PrepTest 111 - Section 2 - Passage 4 - Question 26

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P1

Ronald Dworkin argues that judges are in danger of uncritically embracing an erroneous theory known as legal positivism because they think the only alternative is a theory that they (and Dworkin) see as clearly unacceptable—natural law. ███

Dworkin's perspective · Judges shouldn't embrace legal positivism
Dworkin thinks they might embrace legal positivism because they think it's the only alternative to natural law.
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Natural law · Says judges should interpret law by consulting own morals
Dworkin rejects this.
P2

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Legal positivism · Meaning of law is based on social conventions
Just like how meanings of words are based on social conventions. According to legal positivism, disputes about meaning of law should be resolved by figuring out what's actually the consensus about the meaning.
P3

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Dworkin's perspective · Actual behavior by judges and lawyers isn't consistent with positivism
We need a theory that is based on what judges and lawyers actually do.
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Dworkin's theory · Internal logic of law
Meaning of law should conform to the internal logic of law and the principles that law is based on, regardless of conventions. Principles might involve appeal to morals, but this isn't like natural law, because internal logic still matters.
P4

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Elaborate on Dworkin's theory · Positivist are wrong in focusing only on what people think law means
The internal logic of law constrains how we might interpret law.
Passage Style
Critique or debate
Show answer
26.

It can be inferred that █████ ████████████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ ████████ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███████████

a

Judges sometimes ought ██ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ████████ █████ ███████████ ██ █ █████ ███ █ █████ ███████████████

Anti-supported. Dworkin thinks that interpretation can sometimes involve judges’ moral intuition. But positivists believe that law and morality are completely separate.

7%
b

Disagreements about the ███████ ██ █ ███ ███ █████ ███████████

Anti-supported. We see here that legal positivists think disagreements about the meaning of a law can be legitimate, but only if the disagreement is over the underlying social convention.

8%
c

The ultimate standard ██ ██████████████ ██ ███ █████ ██ ███ ███ ███████ ███ █████ ██████████

Anti-supported. Dworkin thinks that legal interpretation should conform to the internal logic of the law. Legal positivists, on the other hand, think that the ultimate standard of legal interpretation is determining a consensus.

25%
d

The meaning of █ ███ ███████ ████ ████████ ███████████████ ██ ████ ████

Supported. Legal positivists believe that the meaning of the law is based on social convention, and disagreements about the meaning of the law should be resolved by determining a consensus. In other words, the meaning of a law derives from a consensus of jurists’ interpretations of that law.

39%
e

There is no █████ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ████ ███████ ████ █████████ █████ ███████████ █████ ██ ██████

Unsupported. We see here that legal positivists believe that there is no legal fact of the matter when there is no consensus. They don’t think that moral convictions should affect legal interpretation at all.

21%

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