RC Question 24 Explanation
DISCUSSION: Dworkin has at least two goals. The first is given in lines 1-5. He provides an alternative to judges who think they only have two choices (natural law or legal positivism).
Second, Dworkin is providing cover for lawyers and judges. Lines 27-29 tell us that the way judges actually work is different from how legal positivism or natural law predicts they will work. The judges are wrong, according to those theories. So Dworkin provides a theory to explain their behavior: they are following the internal logic of the law.
___________
- Name one legal interpretation by a judge that Dworkin discusses.
You can’t, there are none….This is simply nonsense strung together using terms from the passage. The LSAT does this frequently, to catch those who don’t know what they’re looking for. - Dworkin doesn’t say that consensus has no place in the law. That’s a pretty strong statement. “Social consensus” might be important to the internal logic of the law.
- Same as B, this goes too far. Lines 41-42 even say that Dworkin sees a role for moral intuition in legal decision making.
- Lines 45-48 contradict this. Dworkin thinks the internal logic of the law is more important even than what the original drafters of a law thought.
- CORRECT. Lines 27-29 support this. Positivism contradicts the actual observed behavior of judges, so it isn’t a very good theory. A theory should explain results from the real world. Dworkin offers us such an explanation.
Option A seemed to me to be semi-supported in the passage, specifically lines 51-53: “Once we realize, as Dworkin does, that the law has an internal logic of its own that constrains interpretation, we open up the possibility of improving upon the interpretations not only of our contemporaries but of the original authors.” I considered A because, based on this sentence, it sounds like the theory might ultimately be used to reevaluate the interpretations of other judges and lawmakers. And that’s literally what A says.
I chose E because it was more explicitly represented in the passage, and because the sentence in lines 51-53 wasn’t presented as a *goal* exactly but more of a prediction. Also because “influenced by legal positivism” in option A kind of came out of nowhere.
But yeah, again, A is not nonsense.