RC Passage 3 Explanation
Paragraph Summaries
- Traditional legal research doesn’t use social science, but two scholars have used it so analyze sex discrimination cases. This is a good idea, but their use of “outcome analysis” isn’t.
- It’s not useful to say how likely a plaintiff is to win, in general. Some plaintiffs are much more likely to win than others.
- Two other approaches examine individual cases and provide more useful information to plaintiffs.
Analysis
This passage has a straightforward structure. It’s important to understand it well to so that you can find details when questions ask about them.
The first paragraph tells us that traditional research is terrible, and so some legal scholars are using social science to analyze cases.
The author gives Zirkel and Schoenfeld as an example. The author approves of their use of social science, but dislikes one technique they use: outcomes analysis.
(The scholars might also use other techniques, we don’t know.)
The second paragraph criticizes outcomes analysis because it is near useless for individual plaintiffs. It doesn’t tell us which factors help plaintiffs win.
The final paragraph tells us about two other techniques that are more useful. The difference between them is subtle.
The first, policy capturing, has researchers read judicial opinions. (line 39)
The second, which is not named, has researchers read trial transcripts. (line 50)
Sometimes not all the details of a trial make it into the judges opinion. So reading a transcript lets researchers examine all issues from the trial.
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