LSAT 115 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q3

LR Question 3 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim that judges’…

QUESTION TYPE: Method of Reasoning

ARGUMENTS: The high court has recently overturned its own decisions. Tom argues that this has occurred in the past without causing problems. Mary counters that previously the court had only overturned old decisions which were clearly outdated. The new decisions overturned more recent precedent, which can create an impression of chaos.

Legal Note: High courts, such as the US Supreme Court, can usually overturn their own decisions. They generally refrain from doing so frequently, to lend a sense of order and finality to the law. Yet they also want to avoid the opposite error of letting bad decisions guide the law for too long. A high court “abiding by its own previous decisions” is the same thing as “following precedent”

ANALYSIS: Mary introduces new information and distinguishes the cases at issue from the previous cases.

___________

1. Mary adds new information about the past high court reversals, but implicitly agrees they were fine. The old decisions were “clearly outdated.”
2. Mary doesn’t even mention the critics.
3. Careful. Mary says it was only resorted to when the previous ruling were old and outdated. Almost all judicial decisions are only made after “due deliberation.” This is presumably true of recent decisions Mary disagrees with.
4. Mary adds new evidence, and uses this to disagree with Tom.
5. CORRECT. According to Mary the new decisions overturning precedents were worse than old decisions overturning precedents. The old decisions got rid of interpretations which were outdated. Tom ignores this distinction.

Recap: The question begins with “Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim that judges'”. It is a Method of Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Method of Reasoning questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.