#10 - Famous personalities found guilty of many types of

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (D)

This stimulus points out something that many of us already know: celebrities often get lighter sentences than non-celebrities for the same crimes. In fact, many people – especially people who want to go to law school – have strong opinions about whether this makes sense or not. This is a trap! We need to answer based only on the stimulus, not on our opinion.

Answer Choice (A) goes too far. It may be that there are only a few types of cases where the principle is not rigorously applied – the types of cases that celebrities are involved in. In all the other types of case, it is applied equally.

Answer Choice (B) makes a numerical fallacy: There are far more non-celebrities than celebrities, so we should not expect the numbers to be equal. In fact, there are probably fewer celebrities, both law-abiding and law-breaking, than there are non-celebrities in community service.

Answer Choice (C) relies on what some people may think about the issue, not on the stimulus: It may be that there are overriding principles. But, there may not be overriding principles – it could be that some courts are improperly ignoring the principle. The stimulus does not lead us to believe either way:

Answer Choice (D): This is the correct answer choice: if everybody is equal before the law, then celebrities should not get better treatment than non-celebrities. But, they do get better treatment. As a result, the principle has been violated.

Answer Choice (E), like (A), goes too far: it is possible to be lenient in sentencing, as long as it is done equally.

[netherlands]

Hi there PS,

I think this is another one where I misinterpreted what was being asked of me - assuming that a Most Strongly Supported question stem was asking me what Must Be True ( like some of my other posts).

When I first approached it, and assumed it to be a MBT, I didn't believe that D had to be true because there was a possibility that celebrities and criminals were receiving different convictions because of some other reason - for example, different courtrooms and judges can be more or less lenient in general than others, there could have been a possibility that more celebrities are in LA courts that are lenient and more unknown criminals are in Michigan courts that are more harsh... etc.) If we didn't know for sure that judges were purposefully giving lenient sentences to celebrities because they were celebrities - then how can we PROVE that a conscious violation is taking place?

But - if approached from a different point of view - meaning interpreting the MSS question stem as asking me what I can rightfully assume - then based off of the information I could assume that "D" was taking place. I could assume that a violation was taking place - despite the fact that I can't prove it.

Is this a correct understanding?

[netherlands]

Also, is A, regardless of the fact that its the wrong answer - a kind of mistaken reversal?

Because a lack of rigorous law application is seen in many types of crimes A is an inference that a rigorous application is seen in a few.

I just know this inference structure has some kind of "category" but am not sure.

[Nikki Siclunov]

You may be overthinking this question a bit Could there be some other reason why celebrities and unknown defendants serve different sentences? It's possible, but ultimately irrelevant to our conclusion. A logical implication of the principle of equality before the law is that if the crimes are similar, the sentences imposed should be similar as well. They are not. Why that is the case unimportant; the fact is, the principle is clearly violated, and the practice seems fairly widespread, judging from the broad language in the first sentence. It would not be a stretch to conclude, therefore, that it is a violation of the principle of equality in many cases (notice how they don't say, in "all" cases).

[avengingangel]

But the only reason I didn't find myself choosing "D" is because of the "MANY" used in the answer choice! Nowhere in the stimulus does it indicate that this happens "MANY" (more than 50%) times, only that it is happening "INCREASINGLY." Ah! Pls explain ?!?!

Oh shoot.. right after I wrote that, I just realized that MANY might not be the same as MOST... I actually can't remember if the work "many" was ever addressed as to the meaning?!

[Adam Tyson]

"Many" is a nebulous term, Angel, hard to nail down. It can be (and usually is) relative - maybe there are only 3 people in my neighborhood who were born with a third eye in the middle of their forehead, but if that's an incredibly rare thing to happen then 3 might be seen as many.

I do see your point here. There is some "many" activity in the stimulus (many types of crimes), but it's hard to prove that those many crimes involve many cases. One person may, for example, be accused of a dozen different crimes that all relate to a single case. A single incident of fraud, like lying on a loan application, might involve accusations of mail fraud, wire fraud, honest services fraud, banking law violations, mortgage fraud, and a host of other crimes (whatever the Feds decide to charge you with, really, all tied to just one lie on one application). Many crimes doesn't prove many cases.

Still, let's not overthink this one, as Nikki says - it seems likely, and it is reasonable to believe, that many crimes also means many cases, and in any event it's still the best answer of the bunch. Sometimes a MBT question really isn't a MBT question, but just a Most Likely to Be True question. It's like Sherlock Holmes says, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be true (or something like that). That's what your goal is on this test - to eliminate the worst answers and then select what's left, the best of the bunch, no matter how improbable or awful it may seem.

[nlittle]

Hi there PS,

I think this is another one where I misinterpreted what was being asked of me - assuming that a Most Strongly Supported question stem was asking me what Must Be True ( like some of my other posts).

When I first approached it, and assumed it to be a MBT, I didn't believe that D had to be true because there was a possibility that celebrities and criminals were receiving different convictions because of some other reason - for example, different courtrooms and judges can be more or less lenient in general than others, there could have been a possibility that more celebrities are in LA courts that are lenient and more unknown criminals are in Michigan courts that are more harsh... etc.) If we didn't know for sure that judges were purposefully giving lenient sentences to celebrities because they were celebrities - then how can we PROVE that a conscious violation is taking place?

But - if approached from a different point of view - meaning interpreting the MSS question stem as asking me what I can rightfully assume - then based off of the information I could assume that "D" was taking place. I could assume that a violation was taking place - despite the fact that I can't prove it.

Is this a correct understanding?

Hi Netherlands, I had the same thought and seem to be struggling with the same issue: When to take the authors words literally. My thought was that D was wrong, given that we could not prove it. The stimulus states that the law prohibits using fame or publicity, however, there may be other factors correlating to celebrity status such as wealth and thus the ability to hire better attorneys.

Thanks for asking about this!

Nick

[kuma-turtle]

Dear PowerScore,

I have just reread the MBT section of the LR Bible, but still don't completely understand how to approach this problem.
My analysis is;

no. of celeb sent to CS is increasing
no. of unknown sent to prison is same
principle of equality rules out fame+publicity as a concideration

So, I thought the the conclusion would focus on equality, and mistakenly eliminated D because it said sentencing celebs is wrong, and I thought them being celebs or not is irrelevant. So it wouldn't be wrong to be sent to CS while you're a celeb, but would be wrong be sent to CS for the reason of being a celeb.

Could you please guide me on how to approach this problem?

Thank you very much in advance.

[nicholaspavic]

So it wouldn't be wrong to be sent to CS while you're a celeb, but would be wrong be sent to CS for the reason of being a celeb.

Hi kuma,

This is a really interesting question that you raise. As I understand it, during your prephrasing, you keyed in on the ideas of "fame" and "publicity" as distinct concepts and then sought an answer which would bring out that distinction allowing for community service for celebs because of fame but not because of publicity. But that distinction though is not supported in the stimulus. Remember, our stimulus says "the law rules out using fame and publicity as relevant considerations" so it's both.

Now the stimulus is drawing a distinction between celebs and non celebs, so Answer (D) does pass the Fact Test because it addressed the sentencing of celebrities. That distinction between the two groups and the application of the principle of equality should be your prephrase when you attack this Must Be True question.

Thanks and I hope this helped.

[kuma-turtle]

Thank you very much for your assistance.
I appreciate your quick response and explanation.