Is Raz’s Critique Correct?—Dworkin’s Interpretive Theory and the Justification of Legal Authority

If evaluated solely by Raz’s criteria, Dworkin’s interpretive theory of law indeed faces a crisis of authority justification. This controversy stems from their divergent understandings of the nature of authority. By drawing on Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics to interrogate the rational foundation of prejudice, the rational essence of authority is re-exposed. Authority is a rational and free activity, tied to recognition, and manifests as the possibility of being justified through reasoning. Dworkin’s methodological approach provides a robust justification for legal authority, which manifests in three key dimensions. First, the very act of interpretation demonstrates recognition that authority constitutes a rational activity, thereby affirming that the establishment of legal authority represents a voluntary, autonomous, and reason-governed enterprise. Second, the interpretive theory of law correlates with the be-earned character of authority across three constitutive aspects: its susceptibility to justifiability, its normative demand for justification, and its substantive realization through justificatory practices. Third, the substantive content of interpretive theory corresponds to the epistemic features of authoritative justification—including its informational properties, scope of application, communal dimensions, and capacity for adaptive rationalization. Consequently, contra Raz’s critique, Dworkin’s theoretical framework successfully provides a coherent account of legal authority’s justificatory foundations.