Page "Jurisprudence" Paragraph 53

In his book Law's Empire Dworkin attacked Hart and the positivists for their refusal to treat law as a moral issue.

Dworkin argues that law is an ' interpretive ' concept, that requires judges to find the best fitting and most just solution to a legal dispute, given their constitutional traditions.

According to him, law is not entirely based on social facts, but includes the morally best justification for the institutional facts and practices that we intuitively regard as legal.

It follows on Dworkin's view that one cannot know whether a society has a legal system in force, or what any of its laws are, until one knows some moral truths about the justifications for the practices in that society.

It is consistent with Dworkin's view — in contrast with the views of legal positivists or legal realists — that * no one * in a society may know what its laws are ( because no one may know the best justification for its practices.