| Description |
The decision making process of the Supreme Court has profound import for the daily lives of every citizen. The decisions the Court renders define the status of liberty, equality and justice in America. Even so, as Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe often points out, the exercise of judicial power in the United States is a rarely understood process. The goal of my Honors project has been to further understand the theory behind and the practice of the Supreme Court decision making process. I have undertaken two separate projects that examine the Supreme Court from two different yet interrelated perspectives. In this Philosophy project, I explore the philosophical explanations and justification for the practice of law. The objective is to establish a model by which to analyze the decision making process of the Supreme Court. In a separate project for the Communication Department, I add communication research to the philosophical model to further understand the Supreme Court decision making process. In developing the philosophical model for Supreme Court decision making, I have converged on a variety of theorist to provide a perspective for the condition of contemporary jurisprudence. I begin by surveying Ronald Dworkin's momentous work, Law's Empire. In this work, Dworkin supports a theory of law he calls integrity to principles of a fair political structure. For Dworkin, judicial decision making is a process of consistent application of principles--justice, fairness, and due process--to specific cases. Dworkin provides a compelling argument for his theory, but his method of dismissing competing theories raises doubts about the grounding of his claims. I have taken particular interest in Dworkin's dismissal of pragmatism in law. To provide an understanding of pragmatism in jurisprudence, as well as point out Dworkin's misconceptions, I have traced pragmatism to its historical origins. After doing so, I have examined the contemporary pragmatist discourse to sort out an understanding of what contemporary pragmatism has to offer jurisprudence. I am also concerned with how compatible Dworkin's theory of integrity is with pragmatism and jurisprudence. Finally, I look to Benjamin Cardozo's guiding force for principles as a method of overcoming the conflict between Dworkin and the Pragmatists. Cardozo provides for a method by which the principles Dworkin argues for and pragmatism seeks to justify can influence the administration of law. Based on these guiding forces, I conduct a pragmatic inquiry into Dworkin's first principle of a fair political structure, justice. The result is a model that describes and justifies, the Supreme Court decision making process. |
