  It is interesting to compare Raz's stance on the reasons why legal reasoning is necessarily interpretive with Ronald Dworkin's views on this topic. Rather than being based on the view that in ascertaining the content and meaning of the law, we should look to authoritative social sources, Dworkin's contention that legal reasoning is necessarily interpretive rests on an account of law which expressly repudiates the Razian understanding of law as source-based. According to Dworkin, the view that law is to be identified by reference to authoritative social sources yields a grossly inadequate account of the argumentative nature of legal practice, and of the nature and depth of disagreement within it (see Dworkin 1986 ch.1). He contends that an adequate account of these features of legal practice can only be gained when we understand that law is an interpretive concept, i.e. that it is a social practice wherein a certain interpretive attitude has taken hold. The attitude in question comprises two components: the assumption that the practice does not merely exist, but has a purpose or point, and the further assumption that the rules of the practice are not necessarily what they have always been taken to be, but rather are sensitive to, and can be revised in light of, its point (Dworkin 1986 ch.2; also, the entry on  interpretivist theories of law).  For Dworkin, then, it is these features of the social practice of law: that members of that practice dispute and disagree about what the best interpretation of the rules of the practice are, in light of its point, which dictate that legal reasoning is necessarily interpretive. Once the interpretive attitude has taken hold amongst the participants in a social practice, the only way to understand it adequately is to do as the participants in that practice do: i.e. join the practice and make the same kind of interpretive claims concerning the point of the practice, and what the rules of it are in light of that point, as they do. For Dworkin, this point holds good for the activities of judges and legal theorists alike: anyone reasoning about the law is required to treat it as an interpretive social practice and offer interpretations of what it requires in light of the purpose or point which they assign to it.