ABORTION AND THE HALAKHIC CONVERSATION

law instead of making extra-legal policy choices. Every legal question, says Dworkin, has a"right" answer, which the judge derives by fashioning a theory of political morality with which to explain the rules and precedents of the legal system. The emphasis is upon the coherence of legal materials, upon"law as integrity": the judge seeks an answer which concords with the fundamental legal principles that explain the rules and precedents of the settled law. Dworkin's judge derives this picture of the law through a process akin to that of artistic interpretation. Like the literary or aesthetic critic, who seeks to make the best possible sense out of the work of art. so the Judge interprets the data of the legal system so as to understand it in its best possible light. While Judges, like critics, exercise different canons of interpretation, the activity of interpretation is defined by the immanent standards of the artistic practice. Hence, differences in legal conclusions are differences in interpretation and not conflicts in social or political outlook*

None of this has really worked. The general philosophical disillusionment with reason and its power to yield certain knowledge has worked its corrosive effects upon Jurisprudence. The criticism of Dworkin's writings from all sides- positivists.* pragmatists®” and left-wing critical scholars®- testifies to the suspicion that his"principles" and"interpretive theory" are but neutral labels for what remain, at bottom, policy choices. The feeling remains strong, particularly among the pragmatists and the adherents of the Critical Legal Studies movement* that indeterminacy is rife throughout the system, that legal reasoning is so flexible and legal theory is so ambiguous that the inventive judge may easily use them to Justify any result he or she chooses. And though this conclusion may appear extreme, it is evidence of what is truly at stake in this debate. Is there such a thing as"law", a unique manner of discourse which possesses its own intellectual integrity and yields properly"legal" conclusions which constrain the decisor's freedom to choose a desired answer? Or is legal reasoning an elaborate device to lend the appearance of value-neutrality to what is essentially political choice, so that “there is never a"correct legal solution’ that is other than the correct ethical or political solution to that legal problem"?%°