#9 - Legal doctrine: The government cannot appropriate

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[jm123]

I ultimately chose the correct answer but I was skeptical at first. My reasoning is that the correct answer states "significantly diminish," while the application states "diminishing their market value." I was skeptical because I said if the principal states significantly diminish then why would it strengthen an application that only includes diminishing?

[Adam Tyson]

A Strengthen answer only needs to help a little bit in order to be good, jm123! While answer C does not PROVE the conclusion in the application of the legal doctrine, it sure does help, because it at least connects the idea of "diminished value" to the concept of "appropriation." It's not about whether the answer is perfect, but whether it helps, and if that help is more help than any of the other answer provides. Since none of the other answers helps at all, and answer C at least gets us into the right ballpark, it is the one that helps the most! (And you can imagine this thing going to court and turning on the question of whether the loss in value was significant or not).

[nicizle]

Hi, I'm just posting to see if my logic in approaching this question is sound.

I diagrammed the legal doctrine as APP (appropriate private property) FC (fair compensation)

The application of the legal doctrine states that if a government regulation blocks construction on private lots and ultimately diminishes their market/economic value, then the government owes the owners fair compensation

Answer choice C allows us to attribute the government regulations as constituting government appropriation, which is the sufficient condition of the conditional diagrammed above, thus tightening the application.

Adam Tyson's comment above me states that this doesn't prove the conclusion, but how is that true? If a sufficient condition is satisfied, does that not guarantee the conclusion? I'd appreciate some clarification regarding that comment, as well as whether how I've approached this question is logically sound. Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi nicizle!

You comment,

Hi, I'm just posting to see if my logic in approaching this question is sound.

I diagrammed the legal doctrine as APP (appropriate private property) FC (fair compensation)

Yes, this makes sense as a way to diagram the legal doctrine in this stimulus.

If a sufficient condition is satisfied, does that not guarantee the conclusion?

Yes, your reasoning seems persuasive to me. I'm not fully sure what Adam meant by proof above, but answer choice (C) tells us that the sufficient condition is met, meaning that the necessary condition must follow.