PHL271H1 Chapter 108-121: Ronald Dworkin "Law's Ambitions for itself (1985)" Notes
Document Summary
Argues that these changes are guided by the law itself. There is a higher law, within and yet beyond positive law, toward which positive law grows. Changes guided this way by the law itself are also improvements, and that law purer is law better. That such changes are not really changes at all, but discoveries of an underlying identity, so that a judge who announces a new rule may be actually describing existing law more accurately. Practical claim figures on the political justification of what judges do in hard cases. All recognized the obvious fact that law changes through adjudication (judgement) and explicit legislation (body of laws) Judges describe the law as different from what people had taken it to be before, and they use their new description to decide their cases. Seems unfair for judges to change law during litigation, it should only change if it is self-realized.
