PHIL 3040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Hermeneutics

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 3040
• Professor: Omid Shabani

Document Summary

Dichotomy of finding the law or making the law misses an important distinction between arguments of principal and arguments of policy. Arguments of principals justify a political distinction by showing that the decision respects or secures some individual or group rights. Arguments of policy justify a political decision by showing that the decision advances some social goal or a collective good. Dworkin argues that a judicial decisions are made in hard cases by principle and not by policy by reference to individual and group rights and not by reference to a collective goal of the community. The two arguments against adjudication based policy: in democracy laws ought to be made by elected representatives, new law"s applied retroactively create duty after the fact. The same arguments are not effective against law making based on principle because concerning the first argument judges cannot make law based on policy but they can base law in principles based in rights.