The Hard Cases that American Judicial System Facet

But the court as well found that it was unreasonable "to suppose that it was the legislative intention in the general laws passed for orderly peaceable, and just devolution of property" that they would see to it in favor of a legatee who murdered his ancestor to delineate his legacy.

Legal philosopher Ronald W. Dworkin is probably best known for his work researching the problems which swipe when resolve try to resolve hard cases. leaden cases embarrass those in which reasonable judges may differ or disagree on which law or statute to open as well as on what the remedy should be "whatever possible action of jurisprudence they hold." Most lawyers are well-known(prenominal) with the motto hard cases make bad law. But Dworkin took that maxim a step further when he attempted to formulate why cases may be hard to decide. Dworkin wrote that some cases face lift novel problems and, thus, a judge may not be able to apply any lively rule or reinterpret an existing statute which will justify a let onicular legal result. In situations where no single law, statute, or case precedent is clearly applicable to the case a judge is deciding, Dworkin believed that a judge should rely on arguments of principle, steady if doing so results in a political decision, especially where a decision based on principle will cheer some individual or group right. The thrust of Dworkin's article, Hard Cases, is that in hard civil cases such as the severe Steel case, judicial decisions should be generated by principle and

One example of the application of Dworkin's theory in real-life cases concerns the cases which arose come out of the Fugitive Slave Acts just introductory to the United States Civil War in the middle part of the 19th century. Judges who were personally opposed to the institution of thrall found themselves enforcing these acts, which returned runaway slaves to their masters, even those who were able to escape to states and territories where slaveholding was illegal.

In a book review on the subject, Dworkin was puzzle that these judges could uphold the acts when they personally found slavery to be offensive and contrary to their own moral standards concerning liberty. Dworkin also pointed out that the relevant law was not settled and that these cases were controversial.

This paper has turn to the problems which hard cases, as Dworkin saw them, present to the American judicial system. This paper focused on Dworkin's premise that judicial decisions which pick out hard cases should be generated from principle and not policy. Moreover, this paper showed how judges may make mistakes when they rely solely on existing policies to formulate their decisions and also explained why judges should rely on equitable principles whenever deciding hard cases.

Dworkin's famous example is that of the spartan Steel case. The plaintiffs factory was shut down when the defendant's employees accidentally eject an electrical cable that supplied power to the plaintiff. The plaintiff sued to recover the sparing loss resulting from the shutdown. Under a policy argument, judges energy ask whether it was economically wise to distribute liability for accidents in a fashion desired by the plaintiff. However, under a principle argument, judges would probably ask whether the plaintiff had a right to recovery.

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