#15 - Must Be True, Except

[moshei24]

Can you explain this question, please? I chose (E). Is it because in (A) says referencing court decisions when it's really consulting relevant statutes? And is (E) is mentioned when it says "direct reference to the wording of the statutes"? How does that imply that they would have an appreciation for issues with wording?

Thanks!

[Nikki Siclunov]

Yes, (A) is correct because the ability to locate references to court decisions regarding a statutory issue was never discussed.

(E) is alluded to in the second paragraph of the passage, particularly on lines 22-25 where the author discusses the importance of understanding and interpreting statutory language.

[agroves]

Hello,

Can you please explain why answer choice A is correct (Dec. 2009, RC, #15)? Can you also explain why answer choice C is incorrect? I missed anything about the formulation of laws in the passage.

Thank you very much!

Angela

[Jason Schultz]

Hello agroves,

The question is asking you to find the result that the author would not expect from his or her suggested method. Now, this could be unexpected either because it is contradicted by their method or because it is just too far afield to be a natural consequence.

Let's start by looking at why C is incorrect. The answer discusses "maritime statutes" which are not mentioned explicitly, however the third and fourth paragraphs show how a specialized study of any branch or area's laws could have benefits in understanding other interconnected fields of law. Also note that students formulating laws in mentioned in the first sentence. So connecting those, we can see how a study of how one set of laws is formed would lead to an understand of how another set - say, maritime laws - were formed.

Answer choice A is the old style of legal education that the author wants to move away from. Finding court decisions about every point of law is what he or she thinks law schools overemphasize. See lines 5-11.

Does that help?

[mpoulson]

Hello,

I have read the above dialogue, but I still am not understanding why A is correct. Can you explain in more simple terms or connect to information in the passage why A wouldn't be a course of action the author would expect?

V/r,

Micah

[Claire Horan]

Hi mpoulson,

From reading your question I think it may be that you are misinterpreting the question stem :

"Each of the following conforms to the kinds of educational results that the author would expect from the course of action proposed in the passage EXCEPT:"

So we are looking for the answer choice that DOES NOT describe educational results (learning/skills) that the author expects to come from the course of action proposed ("the study of all the statutes of a legal system in a certain small area of the law").

In the passage, two methods of teaching law are discussed: 1) the traditional case law method studying court cases and 2) study of statutes. #2 is the course of action proposed by the author.

I hope this helps!

Claire

[mpoulson]

Hello,

I should of clarified why I didn't understand why A was correct. I didn't see anything in the passage that would make me thing A was an implausible result even though it wasn't specifically stated. Maybe this is the reason it was wrong? Thank you.

V/r,

Micah

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Micah,

Yes, that is why it is incorrect. The question asks us: each of the following conforms to what the author expects under his plan of focusing on statutes EXCEPT:

So, four of our answer choices are going to be things that we can support as likely to happen under the proposed plan by referring to what the author has to say about it (that is true of B, C, D, and E). One of them will not be supported in the passage - as you point out, A is not supported in the passage.

Hopefully that makes it clear - again, I think this question is susceptible to the approach that I mentioned to you in the last post I submitted (lsat/viewtopic.php?f=804&t=3812) of proving correct answers rather than eliminating incorrect answers - though in this particular case, we would be proving four answers as supported in the passage (since it is an EXCEPT question) and choosing the remaining answer.

I hope that helps!

[hadimadi]

Hi,

i don't find the current explanation as to why (A) is the correct answer satisfactory / complete, so here is how I would solve it:

The text tells that studying statutory law, amongst other benefits, also gives the ability to understand how law in a specific area is interrelated in that the student understands WHY it is worded and structured in a specific way. To put in into an analogy, you can learn by heart how to derive, but you could fail if the derivation problem is slightly changed. However, if you understand the derivation of the theorem behind how to derive for specific mathematical cases, you are better equipped in general.

(E) and (C) describe exactly that: We understand the STRUCTURE of some law. If you want it more specific, the text itself says that statutory law isn't directly obvious, which proves (E). (C) is just another way to say something like (E). (D) is also described, you understand the general interrelations. (B) is also a general understanding.

(A), however, is looking for a SPECIFIC paragraph in that group of statutory law that was studied by the student, and that is exactly NOT the learning outcome the author advocates because (A) resembles much of what the painstaking analysis at law school does to you

[Robert Carroll]

hadimadi,

In fact answer choice (A) is talking about the searching of case law, which is what the author thinks law schools already teach well, and which the author's proposed course of action wouldn't help, because it's already taught so well. It's not about searching statutes at all, but searching the precedent record embodied in case law.

Robert Carroll