PHIL 3040 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Legal Positivism, Nominalism
Document Summary
Normatively, and thus, miss an important element of legal systems. According to dworkin we have yet to answer basic questions concerning law satisfactorily. For legal realists these questions should be answered by analyzing how legal institutions really operate. Many of the legal realists believe that the law in the books (statues, cases, etc. ) did not determine the results of legal disputes, hence their belief in the indeterminacy of law. For them law is simply what a judge says it is. In the realist sense a judicial decision might be determined by what the judge had for breakfast. Dworkin calls the advocates of this view nominalists, who see law and moral obligations as myths invented by lawyers and judges for various motives. answers to our questions is that the problem they point to are. Realists argue that the reason we can"t find satisfactory not real and hence can"t be solved.