Q15 - Which one of the following principles, if valid

[HadyEMatar]

I can understand why E would be correct. However, the question stem states "which one of the following principles, if valid, provides the politician with the strongest basis for countering the public advocate's argument."

How does B not do exactly that? By "clearly defining what the specific actions are that judges are to perform," this principle is taking away the basis for judges to have sentencing discretions. Basically, it can clearly define that a judge's role is NOT to decide what the sentence should be.

[timmydoeslsat]

I wish I could be of help on this question.

I narrowed it down to B and E.

I was shocked to see it was E.

Answer choice E:

Changes in a system of justice that produce undesirable consequences should be reversed ---> ~Feasible to ameliorate those undesirable consequences through further modification.


The conclusion of the public advocate is: It is imperative that the legislation instituting mandatory jail sentences be repealed.

Evidence for this conclusion?

Judges have no leniency.

+

Juries sometimes acquit a defendant only because the mandatory punishment is too harsh in its opinion. This means they do not return an accurate verdict.


The correct answer I feel has to be used in its contrapositive form for us to conclude ~Should be reversed, as this would be the strongest counter of the public advocate's conclusion of repealing the mandatory jail sentences.

However, this contrapositive is:

Feasible to ameliorate those undesirable consequences through further modification ---> Changes in a system of justice that produce undesirable consequences should NOT be reversed.

So we need a case of "feasible to ameliorate those undesirable consequences through further modification." I do not see any evidence whatsoever of feasibility.

[maryadkins]

The public advocate argues that the new policy should be repealed because of a backlash: juries will acquit guilty people because the new mandatory sentence is too harsh. In other words, it has bad consequences so the solution is extreme--to repeal!

The politician could counter this argument by driving a wedge between the problem ID'd by the public advocate and his or her proposed solution. Maybe there are other ways of addressing this backlash problem without repealing the new policy. (E) gets at this.

(A) doesn't address the sentencing/backlash problem.
(B) is too general. Okay, so judges' specific actions should be defined. The politician says this, and the public advocate says, in that case let's define sentencing as "allow leniency where it's appropriate." That's a clear definition.
(C) Legal expertise?
(D) is the opposite of what the politician would say.

[timmydoeslsat]

Thanks for the post.

My issue with E is that I thought it was too vague in the sense that we would not know how it would counter the advocate's comments.

Yes, we know that the advocate wants to reverse the changes.

But (E): Changes in a system of justice that produce undesirable consequences should be reversed ---> ~Feasible to ameliorate those undesirable consequences through further modification.

This is really just giving a necessary characteristic of when changes should be reversed.

The advocate, I felt, could just respond to that by saying, "Yep, I know, it is not feasible. This is a characteristic of when something should be reversed."

[agersh144]

I don't understand how E is an effective response. We don't know whether or not their is an alterative that could ameliorate those undesirable consequences so how in the world would we know if this would be a sound rejoinder, isn't it just a shot in the dark with inadequate information to go off of?

[ohthatpatrick]

I definitely agree with the overall qualms people have about (E). It's unusual that LSAT would ask us to use a rule

Feasible to fix by modification --> don't reverse the change

that DOES have the consequence we want (this is clearly a counter to the public advocate's conclusion of "repeal mandatory sentencing")
but has a trigger for which we've been given no supporting ideas.

What can I say, but, plug your nose and pick it because it's the best option we have?

One problem I have with (B) is that it doesn't respond to anything the advocate says. Whenever LSAT asks us to counter the 2nd person's rebuttal, we have to accept the 2nd person's premise but not the 2nd person's conclusion.

So here, we need an answer that reinforces
"just because some juries are too reluctant to convict a guilty defendant doesn't mean that we need to repeal mandatory sentencing."

As Mary said, (E) at least drives a wedge into the discussion that lets the politician say, "Why don't we at least TALK about ways to remedy that problem. Why do we have to immediately repeal it?"

Part of what confuses us here is that most of us think of Principle-Justify as acting like Sufficient Assumption ... i.e. most of the correct principles we pick actually PROVE an argument is valid.

Clearly (E), does not prove the politician's side or refute the advocate's. But if we think of this as "which is the best way to weaken the advocate's argument", then it's easier to see that (E) somewhat undermines the advocate's aggressive jump from "problem with law" to "repeal law".

Hope this mollifies, if ever so slightly.

[tian.application]

sometimes i feel like a "logic counter" question like this can be tackled as a "weaken" type question, to make answers like (E) more likable.

And bump to what ohthatpatrick said above, yes, i think that is a great point that we sometimes will have to pick answers that don't necessarily completely fix the problem

[WaltGrace1983]

I got (E) by process of elimination. If in a tough problem like this I cannot eliminate an answer but can soundly eliminate other ones then I just got to go with it. I won...this time .

Anyway, wouldn't the main point to (A), (B), and (C) just be that it leaves us with the question, "so what?" If we accept (A) (B) or (C) as true, this doesn't hurt the conclusion that the law should be repealed. If we accept (A) (B) and (C), we are afterwards thinking to ourselves, "okay....but should we repeal the law or not!?!?"

As for (D), I actually think it strengthens the advocate's argument. Why? Because the advocate uncovers an "undesirable feature" in the system. This undesirable feature is that the juries "do not return an accurate verdict." If we accept (D) as true and realize that the advocate's promulgation that the jury fails to return an accurate verdict is equal to "being recognized as undesirable," then we get that "changes in the system should be made as soon as possible." While "changes" does not necessarily mean "repeal," I think it is close enough to say that it strengthens the advocate's argument.

As for (E), it says that we should only repeal the law only in one specific circumstance. Armed with the knowledge that this specific circumstance may or may not occur (and that it is the only specific circumstance that allows the advocate's conclusion to be properly drawn), that seemed good enough to me.

[kimhyungjoon]

Stem
This is a rare stem that asks you to find the best (basis for) counterargument to the public advocate's.

Stimulus
Public advocate's argument:
Conclusion: mandatory jail sentence law should be repealed
Premise: the law precludes leniency when appropriate
Premise: no leniency means jurors sometimes acquit defendant to prevent overly harsh punishment
Premise: and some such acquittals constitute inaccurate verdict on guilty defendants

Prephrase
This one's difficult to prephrase.

Answer choices
A: This describes the traditional process by which jurors should reach their verdict, but the answer doesn't address the new legislation that interferes with the existing process.
B: Jurors are a major issue in the PA's argument, and this one only relates to judges.
C: Expertise of the jurors was never an issue.
D: This could support any side of the argument, including the PA's.
E: This says to look for ways to improve the newly instituted legislation before repealing it.

Lessons
The answer here, while hard to prephrase, was the only one that dealt with the new issue at hand, which was regarding the introduction of a new legislation that added to some existing system. In any LR question, look for answers that contain loose "new information".