QUESTION TEXT: The use of ordinary dictionaries in interpreting…
QUESTION TYPE: Weaken
CONCLUSION: The use of ordinary dictionaries for interpreting the law is justified.
REASONING: Chemists use the periodic table, which they all agree on. Dictionaries can be used the same way for legal interpretation.
ANALYSIS: This argument is founded on the comparison of dictionaries to the periodic table. But note that the periodic table is a source of “agreed-upon background information”, which makes it useful as a reference. If we had evidence that dictionaries were less agreed-upon, it would weaken the argument.
___________
- The dictionary being in alphabetical order doesn’t weaken the argument, because the argument doesn’t compare the dictionary’s organizational structure to that of the periodic table.
- CORRECT. If we know that the use of different dictionaries would result in different legal interpretations, it certainly weakens the comparison to the “agreed-upon” information in the periodic table.
- The relative ages of these materials is not relevant to the argument.
- The ease of memorization isn’t what the argument is founded on, so this is incorrect.
- Who typically uses the reference doesn’t matter when we’re talking about its usefulness. This would be like saying “a calculator is not useful to a lawyer because they’re used primarily by mathematicians”.
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