Ken Kress

Therapeutic jurisprudence and the resolution of value conflicts: what we can realistically expect, in practice, from theory

This article assesses the criticisms of therapeutic jurisprudence that it cannot resolve value conflicts, especially between autonomy rights and therapeutic values, or, less radically, that it has not provided a general method for resolving conflicts. Grounded in general jurisprudential principles about conflict resolution, including novel developments respecting the meaning of weighing and balancing, the article rejects the criticisms as unfounded. The article also develops and critiques arguments maintaining that therapeutic jurisprudence cannot resolve certain value conflicts because the values are incommensurable. The argument is illustrated by examples concerning the right to refuse treatment, and jurisprudential analyses of that right.

The Interpretive Turn

Ronald Dworkin is the most original, provocative, and prominent American legal philosopher. We can be grateful that his latest work, Laws Empire, gives us a sustained exposition of the theory of law which Dworkin has been developing in essays over the past twenty years. 1 Laws Empire is a rich, imaginative, and fertile book. It vigorously advocates Dworkins views on law, politics, and interpretation at multiple levels, from the abstract propositions of political and legal philosophy to the concrete details of controversial cases at law. Dworkin has an unusual ability to present abstract and complex issues in accessible language, although that very accessibility regrettably may cause some readers to fail to appreciate the full subtlety and complexity of his thought. Dworkin canvasses a huge number of issues, even for a book of some four hundred and fifty pages. Many of these discussions concern points not previously addressed by Dworkin; others represent novel presentations of familiar claims. Among the more notable features of Laws Empire are a strikingly original discussion of political obligation as grounded in community; extended treatment of adjudication in common faw, statutory, and constitutional cases; a number of discussions of moral and legal skepticism, including a brief attack on critical legal scholarship; a partially new posture toward the status of evil legal systems; a discussion of law and economics; an extension of Dworkins familiar claim that judges do and should create a morally coherent, principled scheme of law (though in a slightly weakened form) to legislatures when they deal with matters of principle; a theory of literary, artistic, social, and legal interpretation;

Legal Reasoning and Coherence Theories: Dworkin's Rights Thesis, Retroactivity, and the Linear Order of Decisions

Coherence and holistic theories of truth maintain that a proposition is true if it fits sufficiently well with other propositions held to be true. Philosophers developed coherence theories in an attempt to avoid inadequacies in foundationalist accounts of truth and justification offered by traditional empiricists. The empiricist program to construct a theory of knowledge that explains all truths as inferences from general first principles and particular experiences has proven to be difficult.1 There are serious objections to all of the major attempts. 2 Led by Professor W.V.O. Quines powerful arguments,3 coherence and holistic theories of knowledge and justification predominate in current Anglo-American philosophical circles, and foundational empiricist theories are on the wane.4 Coherence theories are more easily charac-