LSAT 137 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q9

LR Question 9 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Legal theorist: Governments should not be allowed…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

CONCLUSION: The government shouldn’t be able to use your diary against you in a criminal case.

REASONING: A diary is a conversation with yourself, just like speaking to yourself is.

ANALYSIS: On principle/justify questions, you need to take the facts given, and say “this fact shows the conclusion is true”.

Here, that means we must say: speaking to yourself ➞ government can’t use info.

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1. Interoffice memos are not at all like diaries. You send memos to other people. Also, the stimulus is about criminal law in general, whereas this is only about corporations.
2. The stimulus was about restricting government, but this principle loosens restrictions on government. This can’t help.
3. CORRECT. This supports the stimulus. Diaries aren’t meant for other people, so this principle stops governments from using them. This also shows why the author thinks “speaking to oneself” is relevant.
4. Correspondence = stuff you send to other people. A diary isn’t correspondence. So this principle is not strictly relevant.
5. This principle says what governments should do, but it doesn’t say where the limits should be. That doesn’t help, since the stimulus was about limiting the government’s power.