 (1) What exactly is the original or object which is being interpreted in the case of law: the law as a whole?; certain aspects of legal practice?; statutes?; judicial decisions?; authoritative legal decisions?; legal texts? Raz 1996b claims that the primary objects of interpretation are the decisions of legal authorities. He reaches this conclusion as a result of his view that law is an institutionalised normative system wherein the institutions concerned operate by issuing purportedly authoritative directives concerning what ought to be done. According to Raz, then, the central role which authority plays in law means that when we come to interpret the law, what we are primarily seeking to do is to establish the existence and meaning of any purportedly authoritative directives of legal institutions, and it is, therefore, the decisions of those institutions which constitute the originals to be interpreted in the case of law. (See further the discussion of Raz's views in subsection 2.5 below). This stance can be contrasted with that adopted by Ronald Dworkin. The process of ‘constructive interpretation’ (Dworkin 1986, and see also the entry  interpretivist theories of law)  which plays such a central role in Dworkin's jurisprudential thought involves interpreters, ‘imposing purpose on an object or practice in order to make of it the best possible example of the form or genre to which it is taken to belong.’ (Dworkin 1986, p52). Moreover, in the case of legal interpretation, Dworkin appears to settle for the argumentative social practice of law as the original to be interpreted (Dworkin 1986, p63). This being so, for Dworkin, the object of legal interpretation appears to be broader than that adopted by Raz. For Raz, we interpret in order to establish whether any authoritative legal directives are currently in force and bear upon the legal issue at hand, and so we should look to the decisions establishing those directives in getting the interpretive process off the ground. Dworkinian interpretation, however, seems to have a more abstract and global feel to it, in the sense that it is the social practice of law as a whole (Dworkin 1986, 87–88), including the entire legal history of a given jurisdiction, as well as any data speaking to the point or purpose of legal practice in general, which constitutes the original to be interpreted.