Legal disagreements

Abstract

Legal disagreements A pluralist reply to Dworkin's challenge In this paper I analyse the problem of legal disagreements, initially raised by Ronald Dworkin against Hartian positivism. According to Dworkin, disagreements are pervasive, since law is an argumentative practice in which participants invoke normative arguments; Positivists, who claim that law depends upon agreement among oicials, have diiculties to make sense of the fact that lawyers frequently disagree. I irst present the main arguments in the debate; I then go on to distinguish diferent levels at which lawyers disagree. Taking these levels into consideration, I articulate a pluralist reply that shows that the fundamental positivist tenets remain untouched by Dworkin's challenge.