#3 - Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim that judges’ willingness to abide by earlier

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Method of Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (E).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice.

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[Allen Iverson]

I'm a little confused about why C is incorrect, could someone explain this for me?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Allen

This is a method of reasoning question, which is in the prove family. We need to find something that correctly reflects how Mary makes her argument. Answer choice (C) describes something that does not happen in the argument. Mary never claims that the decisions are made after any significant deliberation. She doesn't talk about the process of making the decisions at all. She only discusses the time between when a decision is made, and when it was subsequently reversed.

Hope that helps!

[jennybaso]

Why the answer B is not correct? Can someone explain for me?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi jennybaso!

Answer choice (B) states that Mary "agrees to Tom’s evaluation of certain critics’ motives, but introduces evidence to show that it is usually difficult to discern such motives in practice." We can find Tom's evaluation of certain critics' motives in the second part of the second sentence: "these critics’ objections must be politically motivated and ought to be ignored."

So we know that Tom considers the critics to be politically motivated. We don't, however, know anything about Mary's view about the critics' motives. Indeed, it seems that Mary is entirely silent on that matter, as she doesn't mention the critics at all. We'd need something more from Mary for (B) to be a contender, such as her saying, "I concede that the critics are likely politically motivated ...," but there isn't anything like that in the stimulus.

[victoria1234]

pls elaborate more on why (E) is a correct answer....??

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Victoria,

The arguments in the stimulus can be a little hard to follow, so let's first go through them.

Tom is basically defending certain recent high court decisions against attacks made by critics of those decisions.

The critics argue that judges should abide by the rulings of earlier courts (and thus not overturn those rulings) to avoid legal chaos. Apparently, the recent high court decisions did overturn earlier rulings, which is why the critics disagree with the recent high court decisions. (This is not explicitly stated in Tom's argument, but it is implied in context. It is, however, explicitly stated later in Mary's argument.)

Tom attacks the critics' argument by pointing out that high courts of the past have overturned earlier rulings and this did not result in legal chaos or really any harm to the legal system. Basically, Tom is attempting to show that the critics' fears/concerns are unwarranted. Tom then concludes that the critics must therefore have ulterior political motives.

Mary shows an important difference between the cases in which high courts of the past have overturned earlier rulings and the recent cases in which the high court overturned earlier rulings. Specifically, that difference is that high courts of the past overturned earlier rulings only when those earlier rulings were old and clearly outdated, whereas the recent high court cases involved overturning more recent rulings. Mary then explains how overturning recent decisions, unlike overturning old/clearly outdated decisions, can harm the legal system. In other words, Mary shows how Tom's examples of high courts of the past overturning earlier rulings without harming the legal system are fundamentally different from what has happened in the recent high court decisions and therefore are not a good comparison.

Answer E best describes how Mary responds to Tom's argument. The "distinction between two kinds of situations" is the types of earlier rulings that were overturned (recent vs. old/outdated) and how Tom failed to take that difference into account when he used the examples of the high courts of the past to defend the recent high court decisions.