Editing Jurisprudence (section)

===Legal interpretivism===
{{Main|Interpretivism (legal)}}

American legal philosopher [[Ronald Dworkin]]'s legal theory attacks legal positivists that separate law's content from morality.<ref>Brooks, "Review of Dworkin and His Critics with Replies by Dworkin", ''Modern Law Review'', vol. 69 no. 6</ref> In his book ''[[Law's Empire]]'',<ref>Ronald Dworkin, ''Law's Empire'' (1986) [[Harvard University Press]]</ref> Dworkin argued that law is an "interpretive" concept that requires barristers 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 best moral justification for the institutional facts and practices that form a society's legal tradition. It follows from 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 truths about the moral justifications of the social and political practices of that society. It is consistent with Dworkin's view—in contrast with the views of legal positivists or legal realists—that {{em|no-one}} in a society may know what its laws are, because no-one may know the best moral justification for its practices.

Interpretation, according to Dworkin's "integrity theory of law", has two dimensions. To count as an interpretation, the reading of a text must meet the criterion of "fit". Of those interpretations that fit, however, Dworkin maintains that the correct interpretation is the one that portrays the practices of the community in their best light, or makes them "the best that they can be". But many writers have doubted whether there {{em|is}} a single best moral justification for the complex practices of any given community, and others have doubted whether, even if there is, it should be counted as part of the law of that community.