Trying to Find the Balance

Kayla Frank

To draw the line between what is considered a principle and what is considered a rule, as Dworkin does, is to show the difference between ideals and facts, or at least logically backed thought. Principles are very nice oughts, they possess a kind of dream land quality that creeps towards moral debate, and starts grappling with right and wrong. Rules on the other hand tend to be more cut and dry, less arbitrary, and also keep more distance from moral questions. That is not to say that rules do not attempt to control behavior or that they favor certain actions over others, but that rules are more concrete and a great deal of the time are geared towards action. Rules have a plan; they offer a systematic approach to accomplishing the goal that may not be necessarily laid out within them, but they are fairly independently conclusive. Principles on the other hand have to be weighed. Some things are considered better objectives than others. This ordering of what is a more just or a more beneficial outcome can lead to inconsistency within the application of rules, but on the other side of that, always enforcing rules no matter the consequences hardly seems the best approach. Rules do not leave a lot of wiggle room. That being said about rules, I do not think that law should be without principle.

Reading Number Two (Response numero Uno)

I liked how our second reading, by Karl Llewellyn, followed kind of closely with how we were attempting to define law in class. I thought that Llewellyn made an important decision not to try and define law, but rather to talk about the sphere it encompasses and how that can be narrower or wider. By not defining law there is not a focus on excluding certain things, or aspects, from what the possibilities of law are. I thought there were some places where I had been following the same ideas as Llewellyn, like when he talked about how rules and rights are very much intertwined and how it is not simple to differentiate between the two, and then further to differentiate between the ideas of “rights.” The subjectivism within law is something that I had already considered, but that I really do not mind reading about, because I find it interesting how many different ways in this case even one very commonly used word can be conceptualized in an array of different ways, by many different people, which can then lead to many different enforced laws. I do believe my favorite part of the article, well as of yet as it is not finished, would be the discussion as to the fluidity or the malleability of the law, which I suppose is linked back to the subjectivism of law. The criticism that is not only present, but even expected when looking at a set of guidelines or rules that may be enforced very differently depending upon the judge or the community, is largely why it is so difficult to attempt to give law a definition. To define something that is under constant review, scrutiny, and modification is not an easy task; that being said as Llewellyn points out there are certain focuses that may lead to greater understanding of focal points that influence broader aspects of the law categorization.