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Are There Any Rules?

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Abstract

The ``model of rules'' that Ronald Dworkin attacks is an absurdmodel of law, if rules are taken to be standards that have nounspecified counterinstances, and whose application isalways uncontroversial. Dworkin gives good reason to thinkthat there are no such standards or virtually none in (e.g.)English law. But the model of rules is not misconceived, asDworkin claims. Rather, it needs a better understanding of the idea of a rule. I argue that the view that the law of a community is a system of rules needs to meet an importantchallenge that Dworkin has raised for jurisprudence: to accountfor the fact that legal rights and duties are frequentlycontroversial. I give an account of social rules thatexplains why controversy over their application in particularcases is common, and can be deep. So controversy gives noreason to reject the model of rules.

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Endicott, T. Are There Any Rules?. The Journal of Ethics 5, 199–219 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012703223987

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012703223987

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