I chose answer A both during the practice test and during blind review because I eliminated all other answers.
Is A wrong because it is talking about future actions one should perform which the author does not talk about? Also I was a little thrown by legal scholars which was not mentioned.
For Answer choice D, I was thrown off by the "evidence" portion of the answer. The author mentioned the poor reasoning being an issue and courts not applying it in the future but I didn't think that meant it was evidence that the rationale is questionable.
Please send help...
Thanks!
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- ohthatpatrick
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q6
If we were doing an LR question that said, "Which of the following principles most conforms to the author's argument?", what would we do?
We'd find the Conclusion. We'd find the Evidence. We'd prephase an "IF Evidence, THEN Conclusion" principle.
We can do the same here.
Where is the author's conclusion?
Her thesis appears (in the most famous place for RC main ideas) in the last sentence of the 1st paragraph.
CONC - the legal rationale for Shelly was problematic
why? what's the evidence?
EVID - the Court used a bogus attribution rationale, which would have dissolved the distinction between state actors and individual actors (which is why we haven't seen this attribution rationale cited since then). And the Court failed to call out the egregious part of restrictive covenants, which is not their enforcement mechanism but their racist substantive content!
So a correct answer might sound like,
"If the rationale threatened to dissolve a useful distinction, then it's problematic"
or
"If the rationale failed to call out the worst part of the thing it disallowed, then it's problematic"
or something like those.
ANSWERS
A) This is just an illegal reversal of what we want (and a reversal of D).
Principles have to take us FROM evidence TO conclusion.
This is starting FROM conclusion and going TO evidence.
B) The author definitely was NOT arguing that racist housing rules (the substantive content) should be considered for inclusion in a statute.
C) The first half of this is fine, but the second half should say something like "then that judicial decision is problematic".
D) Yup. We'd support this with lines 35-46, as well as the main point in line 12-13.
This takes us FROM something the author mentioned as evidence TO her conclusion.
It seems like you didn't see this part of the passage as belonging to the author's evidence, but that's what the 3rd paragraph's function was. In the 2nd, the author just lays out the Court's rationale. There's no pushback or opinion from the author (other than maybe lines 19-22). In the 3rd, she starts to explain why this rationale is problematic.
E) The first half here is kinda okay, but the second half doesn't match with anything. The author's conclusion is that "the stated rationale is problematic", not the (presumably) next idea of "so, we should come up with a new rationale".
Hope this helps.
We'd find the Conclusion. We'd find the Evidence. We'd prephase an "IF Evidence, THEN Conclusion" principle.
We can do the same here.
Where is the author's conclusion?
Her thesis appears (in the most famous place for RC main ideas) in the last sentence of the 1st paragraph.
CONC - the legal rationale for Shelly was problematic
why? what's the evidence?
EVID - the Court used a bogus attribution rationale, which would have dissolved the distinction between state actors and individual actors (which is why we haven't seen this attribution rationale cited since then). And the Court failed to call out the egregious part of restrictive covenants, which is not their enforcement mechanism but their racist substantive content!
So a correct answer might sound like,
"If the rationale threatened to dissolve a useful distinction, then it's problematic"
or
"If the rationale failed to call out the worst part of the thing it disallowed, then it's problematic"
or something like those.
ANSWERS
A) This is just an illegal reversal of what we want (and a reversal of D).
Principles have to take us FROM evidence TO conclusion.
This is starting FROM conclusion and going TO evidence.
B) The author definitely was NOT arguing that racist housing rules (the substantive content) should be considered for inclusion in a statute.
C) The first half of this is fine, but the second half should say something like "then that judicial decision is problematic".
D) Yup. We'd support this with lines 35-46, as well as the main point in line 12-13.
This takes us FROM something the author mentioned as evidence TO her conclusion.
It seems like you didn't see this part of the passage as belonging to the author's evidence, but that's what the 3rd paragraph's function was. In the 2nd, the author just lays out the Court's rationale. There's no pushback or opinion from the author (other than maybe lines 19-22). In the 3rd, she starts to explain why this rationale is problematic.
E) The first half here is kinda okay, but the second half doesn't match with anything. The author's conclusion is that "the stated rationale is problematic", not the (presumably) next idea of "so, we should come up with a new rationale".
Hope this helps.
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- AshH953
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Vinny Gambini
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Re: Q6
So stupid of me to get 2 Qs wrong on the first passage... But getting this one wrong and reading Patrick's awesome explanation as always makes me realize that I've not yet grasped LR skills, so I would write it down for any who made the same mistake as I did.
I used the 3rd sentence in the 3rd paragraph as evidence for AC A. It reads like 'Primarily for this reason, later courts didn't cite it.' On first sight it looks like just paraphrase of AC A! However, the sentence immediately preceding it, namely the reason, is actually illustrating the absurd consequences of applying Shelley decision. Therefore, the para structure is: Main conclusion - premise 1 - intermediate conclusion 1 - intermediate conclusion 2 - premise (example) 2. Lower courts' refusal to apply is the intermediate conclusion that supports the 'problematic' argument, not the other way around.
I used the 3rd sentence in the 3rd paragraph as evidence for AC A. It reads like 'Primarily for this reason, later courts didn't cite it.' On first sight it looks like just paraphrase of AC A! However, the sentence immediately preceding it, namely the reason, is actually illustrating the absurd consequences of applying Shelley decision. Therefore, the para structure is: Main conclusion - premise 1 - intermediate conclusion 1 - intermediate conclusion 2 - premise (example) 2. Lower courts' refusal to apply is the intermediate conclusion that supports the 'problematic' argument, not the other way around.
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