In legal dilemmas and tragic cases the identification and application of the correct and relevant norms able to solve the controversy is extremely difficult. In this essay I argue that the argumentative patterns chosen in the adjudication process play a major role in grounding the legal decision, even if this may move us far from the usual depiction of judicial discretion as a choice between equally legitimate alternatives. Grounding on the philosophical significance of the relationships between law, tragic and the phenomenon of undecidability as well as on cases from different jurisdictions, I claim that it is possible to argue for a “right to justification” in legal dilemmas.