LSAT 109 | Section 2 | Reading Comprehension: Q26

RC Question 26 Explanation

DISCUSSION: As with all questions that ask you to use information in the passage, make sure you use information from the passage. Too many people try to answer these based on gut feeling.

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1. Lines 1-4 show that most of the common law rules of evidence are still used today. It was just in a few areas that major changes were made, such as admissibility. 
2. CORRECT. Lines 21 shows this: “Morass…technicalities”. The law was inflexible. Rational rules produced irrational results (lines 13-20). 
3. From the sounds of it, it was the common law system that implemented Bentham’s ideas. See lines 51-53 “approach…after death”. That could make non-exclusion a common law principle. We’re not told where Bentham got his ideas, either. Maybe he found inspiration from within the common law. Or perhaps non-exclusion already was a common law principle, but it took Bentham’s help to make it win. Who knows? 
4. Lines 1-4 say modern evidence law had taken shape in the late eighteenth century. But surely evidence law existed before that, with somewhat different rules.
5. We know late eighteenth century evidence rules were based in common law. Why, then, would we assume earlier evidence rules were not common law? It’s an old system.