PT35.S2.P4 (Q25) - ronald dworkin

dcdcdcdcdc

Am a big fan of knowing that on RC questions there is always specific, identifiable evidence for why an answer choice is right/wrong. However, I am struggling on this question.

Question: ""The passage suggests that Dworkin would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?"

I chose B:

"Judges should not use their moral intuition when it conflicts with the intentions of those legislators who authored the law being interpreted."

Because of lines 7-11:

"their own moral convictions, even if this means ignoring the letter of the law and the legal precedents for its interpretation. Dworkin regards this as an impermissible form of judicial activism that arrogates to judges powers properly reserved for legislators."

The passage clearly states Dworkin thinks judges should not override legislators by applying their own moral intuition. Why is this not captured in choice B?

I understand that E is something Dworkin would agree with given that legal positivists don't accept moral guides whereas Dworkin suggests they play a role in law.

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-35-section-2-passage-4-passage/
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-35-section-2-passage-4-questions/

dcdcdcdcdc

Ok, circling back to provide some more info and possibly answer my own question:

I think the line citation I gave in support of B is not actually doing what I originally thought. That part of the introductory paragraph is characterizing Dworkin's view of natural law as being impermissible when that application ignores precedent and letter of the law. That is actually a very specific critique and applies only to natural law and the ignorance of precedent and letter of the law. That really harms B in my view because the choice discusses a conflict with original authors' of a law and their intent. It makes no mention of an ignorance of precedent or letter of the law.

Finally, the last paragraph of the passage demonstrates that Dworkin thinks law, though constrained by its own internal logic, can be improved upon by interpretation, based upon a moral intuition if need be. We even get a specific mention of "the original authors" in the last sentence. Moreover, we don't have a case of conflict between judge and author, but only a sense of "improving" or a different emphasis. The first sentence of the last paragraph notes that Dworkin points out a positivist "mistake" and this language further supports choice E that suggests the positivists have made an error.

brennan

Yep, your reasoning in your follow-up comment is correct.

In 7-11, we're (if we exaggerate only very slightly) talking about the view that judges should make rulings according to their own moral judgment basically whenever they want, which is further than Dworkin is willing to go.

In fact, Dworkin probably would agree that judges shouldn't override legislators. But he would argue that "overriding legislators" means overriding the actual laws they wrote (as well as the internal logic of the system of laws as a whole), rather than their intentions. Dworkin never claims (at least not according to this passage) that "intentions" are the correct way to interpret legislative activity.