  One legal theorist who adopts exactly this approach, and so views interpretation in legal reasoning as ‘straddling the divide’ between identifying existing law, and developing and modifying the law, is Joseph Raz (see Raz 1996a and 1996b). According to Raz, the fact that interpretation has a role to play in both of these activities assists in explaining why we do not find a two-stage or clearly bifurcated approach to legal reasoning in judicial decisions. Judges do not first of all engage in legal reasoning in sense (a), having recourse only to legal materials, and then, having established what the existing law is and determined how far it can take them in resolving the instant case, then move on to a separate stage of legal reasoning in sense (b) which requires them to look to extra-legal materials in order to complete the job, because much of their reasoning is interpretive and interpretation straddles the divide between legal reasoning in senses (a) and (b). This point may assist Raz in defusing some of the criticisms which have been levelled at the legal positivist approach to legal reasoning such as that positivism's account is phenomenologically inaccurate because when we examine cases, we do not find two distinct stages to judicial reasoning, one to establish whether any legal rules bear upon the problem at hand, and one wherein judges effectively legislate to fill in the gaps when the legal rules ‘run out’ (see e.g. Dworkin 1977 &amp; 1986). As Raz himself notes, however (especially in Raz 1996b), this ‘straddling the divide’ approach may in fact seem to undermine the very ideas that there is a tenable distinction between legal reasoning in senses (a) and (b), and that there are gaps in the law. Interpretation appears to blur or even erase the line between the separate law-finding and law-creating roles which many legal positivists ascribe to judges, and the fact that courts always seem to be able to decide cases by interpreting the law may also seem to cast doubt on the idea that the law is incomplete, and hence that judges sometimes have to reach outside of the law in the adjudication process. Interest in the pervasiveness of interpretation in legal reasoning, and in the Janus-faced nature of interpretation may thus form part of the background which has led legal theorists like Dworkin to deny that the distinction between identifying existing law, and developing and changing the law, as understood by certain legal positivists, is a tenable or coherent one. That interpretation appears to operate at every stage in the legal reasoning process may also have influenced Dworkin's denial that there are gaps in the law, and his counter-claim, contra Hart and Raz, that everything which a judge is entitled to rely on in deciding a case is already part of the law (see Dworkin 1986).