Reframing the claim to correctness from the right answer thesis

CLÉRICO LAURA; ALDAO MARTÍN

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; El legado de Ronald Dworkin; 2015

UBA, New York University

Reframing the claim to correctness from the right answer thesis: Robert Alexy's claim to correctness thesis has been addressed mainly as an answer to the concept of law issue (positivism vs no-positivism). In this presentation we will firstly argue that the claim is better understood in the dworkinian framework of legal adjudication. Secondly we will argue that Alexy's reconstruction of adjudication in terms of justification rather than interpretation poses a less controversial comprehension of Dworkin's right answer thesis. We conclude that: Though rigorous and theoretically flawless, Alexy's reconstruction of the law's claim to correctness among the general framework of rationality has backfired on him, leading many scholars (both critics and followers) to place him in the pantheon of Natural Law. This is why we think that he can learn something from Dworkin's more intuitive approach to actual legal practice. However, Dworkin's idealization of judges had backfired on him too, leading many scholars to dismiss his work as an overstatement on what a legal operator could achieve. This is why Alexy's concern with rational justification of the outcome of judges reasoning, in the framework of the whole democratic system, is a much adequate way to understand the Right Answer Thesis, replacing Judge Hercules with Judge Hypatia from Alexandria.