For this assignment we ask you (1) to give a summary of argumentation in the Opinion of the Court and in the Dissenting Opinion (2) to evaluate these two opinions and (3) to give your opinion on Dworkin’s analysis of the decision and his theory about legal principles (and try to relate Dworkin’s theory to Schauer’s analysis of the formal aspect of legal reasoning).
The opinion of the court decided that it could never have been the intention of the legislature that a person who murdered someone could be able to benefit from his or her own wrong doing. The court believed that the legislature would have prevented this particular case if they had thought of such a possibility. Since lawmakers do not always express their intentions perfectly on paper, judges must make a rational interpretation of the legislature’s intentions.
The Court also decided to establish an idea of “volenti non fit injuria”. The literal translation is, “to a willing person, no injury is done”, in other words, "one cannot benefit from one's own wrongdoing". The opinion of the court takes a natural law approach to the case. The opinion of the court determined that certain rights or values are inherent in or universally recognizable by virtue of human nature.
The dissenting opinion argues that the court is bound by the rigid rules of law, and is not within the proper jurisdiction to modify on the basis of integrity. The dissent opinion takes a textualism approach to interpreting the case and consults the actual language of the constitution. The legislature has now imposed exclusive statutory rules for the completing of wills. These exclusive statutory rules were implemented to ensure the validity and performance of the will.
The dissenting opinion finds reasoning for Palmer to receive his property, solely based on the letter of the law. Firstly, they claim that by permitting Palmer to be the respondent of the property, he was placed in a position that permits him to take advantage of that. There are strict and systematic statutory rules for the execution, alteration and revocation of the will, done to insure validity and performance. The purpose of those rules is to create safeguards when procuring a will and because there is no specific law to handle this type of incident, the courts are not authorized to impose a system of remedial justice.
If the murderer would be allowed to keep the inheritance of the victim he murdered, the law would be promoting injustice. Second to that, it also provides an incentive to murder. Neither of these options could have been within the intention of the legislature. This is why I believe the idea to deny him the right to the property and sentencing him to a certain amount of years is an appropriate sentence for the murderer. Normally, the court needs a stated or written law to apply to a particular case/situation.
When a situation arises that doesndoesn’t’t apply to any written or stated law, the court can apply principles to modify the law in favor justice. After all, the legislature can’t be expected to think of everything concerning certain circumstances when crafting laws, and an injustice should not result because it wasn't covered, especially where the injustice is so clear. The murderer has been sentenced to a punishment provided by a written law, yet the court increased his sentence while having no authority to do so.
Dworkin insists there is a necessary connection between law and morality. Dworkin focuses not specifically on legal systems as a whole but on how the judges interpret laws. “Dworkin focuses on the judge and uses judicial decisions in actual legal systems as his way of challenging the legal positivist side of law as defined by a set of primary rules identified by secondary rules of recognition.” (Schauer, 2009, p.) Dworkin emphasizes that the law consists not only of rules but also of principles. Rules are applicable in an all-or-nothing fashion, whereas principles have the extra dimension of weight such as morals and values.
Quintessential of this, is the case Riggs vs. Palmer that clearly illustrates the difference between law and principles. Indeed, although Elmer Palmer is rightfully entitled to the inheritance, the principle of “no man should profit from his own wrong” supersedes the aforementioned inheritance law. Dworkin also insists that what may seem of a change in the law is in fact a principle that was applied that has complemented this law all along. However when considering Dworkin’s and Natural law theory we can conclude the Elmer Palmer not only broke the letter of the law by committing murder but also altered the former policy of a will by going against underlying principles and morals.
The jurisdiction that the court has to apply such principles to laws is one of the main differences between common and civil law. Indeed, common law allows the modification of rules “on the basis of larger principles when it changes them on basis of the court’s understanding of changing social conditions. Moreover, he emphasizes that the court’s right to change preexisting rules in need of “large-scale change or small-scale modification” can be applied immediately as well as in future cases.
