Q22

[peg_city]

Why is E wrong?

I was debating between D and E and chose E because the last sentence of the first paragraph. Is it because of the word primary?

Thanks

[noah]

It's important to notice what we're being asked for. What, this question asks, does the author think of the sources that 19th century historians used to study medieval law?

Note that the discussion of what 19th century historians did takes place around line 13 - 15. We learn the author's opinion on line 15: "But these sources are of little help in determining...." This supports (D).

(A) is contradicted. They are not adequate!

(B) is unsupported. There's no discussion of preferring them.

(C) is too broad.

(E) is unsupported/contradicted. The author does not feel those sources are particularly valuable - the point he or she is making is that they're not helpful for researching what really matters.

[bigtree65]

I agree that D is the answer but I had trouble eliminating A, the passage says that scholars from the 19th and 20th centuries found the sources useful to write about medieval law, the problem is that they don't say anything about how theseblaws actually affected women, so wouldn't this suggest that to a modern legal historian writing about medieval law (not necessarily related to women) these sources would be adequate?

[austindyoung]

Bigtree65- I know you have probably taken the LSAT by now- but hopefully this helps others with the same problem.

I chose (A) at first, as the correct answer. Let's discuss why this is incorrect (how I found it out to be):

The question asks us to infer what the author thinks is true of sources consulted by the nineteenth-century historians of medieval law.

First thing we have to do is Identify where that is at. Well, it's in the first paragraph. The paragraph tells us that most 19th century scholars used "treatises, commentaries, and statutes" whenever they wrote about medieval law.

OK- from just this it would seem that (A) is OK. It then seems that (A) is completely acceptable when we read just what comes before it, "since court records are of vital importance in discovering how the law actually affected women, as opposed to how the law was intended to affect them or thought to affect them. These latter questions can be answered by consulting such sources as..." and then it goes on to list the sources as were mentioned above.

So the sources are sufficient for research, right? Well, not really. "Latter questions" are the only things that can be answered, and what got me was that I thought "latter questions" included "how the law actually affected women," but they do not. The only things that the sources are good for answering, concerning women, are how the law was "intended" or how it was "thought" to have affected them. The former question of how it "actually" affected them, cannot be answered- yet they are most assuredly part of medieval law.

So, when (A) states that they are "adequate" for one who wants to investigate medieval law," this is actually not true. That is because the area of medieval law and women is a subset of medieval law, and the sources mentioned do not contain this subset, so they are not adequate to research medieval law- which is inclusive of that subset.

I hope that makes sense. This question is also confusing because one thinks "Well, the needs of those other historians were fulfilled when they used the sources, right?" But (A) doesn't consider that, what if the need of a "modern legal historian" concerns Englishwomen in medieval law? Well, he would not, from the sources listed, find out how they "actually" affect women, if that's what he wanted to know.

Once this is analyzed, you can see how it has direct bearing on Question 25.

[goriano]

Interesting analysis, austindyoung. I wanted to add that it seems like bigtree65 answered his/her own question.

so wouldn't this suggest that to a modern legal historian writing about medieval law (not necessarily related to women) these sources would be adequate?

Note that from the perspective of a modern legal historian, these sources could be seen as adequate. But the question is asking from the perspective of the AUTHOR. Two different things!