Private Law Theory

ABSTRACT
What is the point of legal interpretation? Or what fundamental purpose (or purposes) should judges seek to accomplish when they exposit and apply legal texts? Ronald Dworkin and Joseph Raz, two of the most prominent legal philosophers in the last century, rarely agree. Yet both present this question as central for all genres of interpretation, whether art, history, or the law. Their core claim is that the criteria for determining whether the interpretation of any object is successful will necessarily depend on one’s view of the value of that object in the first place. Applied to law, this means there is an inescapable connection between a judge’s beliefs about law’s value and his or her approach to interpretive method.

This article exposits Dworkin and Raz’s ‘value theory’, addresses multiple objections-including the challenge presented by recent work on ‘interpretive choice’ – and then draws out the theory’s important implications for the enduring debate between more objective and less objective approaches to legal interpretation. The article has two parts. Part I develops and critically evaluates Dworkin and Raz’s strikingly similar general theory of interpretation (which is ‘general’ in the sense that applies across interpretive genres) before addressing several objections. One objection is that the theory vacillates between the value of an object and the value of the practice of interpreting that object. Another doubts whether it is possible to arrive at a sufficiently universal while still useful account of law’s value. A third, arising from recent debates about ‘interpretive choice’ among figures like Cass Sunstein, Francisco Urbina, and Richard Ekins, probes whether (or how) theories of law could possibly influence an interpreter’s choice of method. A fourth objection, advanced most forcefully by Stanley Fish in the Fish-Dworkin debates, questions whether interpreters can really reassess the value of an interpretive enterprise at all.

Part II of the article turns to Dworkin’s and Raz’s applications of their theory to law (i.e. their respective accounts of law’s value), and how their examples can help make sense of the divide between more objective and less objective theories of legal interpretation. Despite sharing a general theory of interpretation, Dworkin and Raz disagree about law’s purpose or value. For Raz, law’s value centers on providing authoritative solutions to the problems faced by a community, and he thus places significant emphasis on the will of the lawmaker. For Dworkin, by contrast, law’s primary purpose is connected with protecting individuals from governmental overreach by enforcing their rights against the majority; and Dworkin’s Hercules thus adopts a more flexible interpretive approach. These accounts present a classic illustration of two prominent theoretical families found in debates about interpretation and judicial decisionmaking. They also often cut directly against each other, one focusing on the lawmaker’s will, the other on the need to limit this will. If the value theory is correct, this conflict at the level of law’s value will lead to a corresponding divide downstream in the context of interpretive methods. This means that, despite the recent convergence between originalism and nonoriginalism, the debate about interpretive methods is one we should expect to endure.

Moore, Tyler, What is the Point of Legal Interpretation? (March 1, 2026), 21 FIU Law Review (forthcoming 2026).