Multiple choice

The blanks in the following passage indicate deletions from the text. Select the completion that is most appropriate to the context. Contemporary legal positivism depends upon the methodological assumption that a theory of law may be conceptual without, at the same time, being normative. In point of fact this assumption is a composite principle. It makes the fairly obvious claim that a conceptual theory, which strives to be descriptive rather than normative, says what the law is not what it ought to be. A conceptual theory must be supplemented by a normative theory, and the arguments in favor of a particular content for law are couched in terms of the results which are expected to flow from proposed legal acts. It is never a part of an argument for what the law ought to be, in the positivist's view, that to be a law it must have a certain content. While the normative argument refers ultimately to agreed-upon ends, it does not assert that these ends_(6)_ Rather, that they are accepted and acted upon is merely a contingent matter. The second part of the methodological premise is more subtle: A conceptual theory such as legal positivism does not claim that the particular description it offers is uniquely correct. Proponents of legal positivism regard their study of law as 'analogous to the physicists' study of the universe: They have one theory of legal institutions _(7)_.

  1. and that is the only possible correct theory of law

  2. and someday, with sufficient work, that theory will be able to generate societal goals for us to pursue

  3. but that theory may, someday, be displaced by a better one

  4. although no theory of the physical universe is as reliable as the positivistic theory of law

  5. which is, however, strongly supported by the findings of modem science

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C Correct answer
Explanation

(3) The analogy to physical theory is highly suggestive. The physicist advances a theory which represents an improvement on existing theories, but he is aware that tomorrow another theory may be proposed which is more correct than his. So the legal positivist advances a descriptive theory, that is, a description of existing legal institutions, but new information or advances in theory may displace that theory.