#7 - Global Reference, Main Point

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

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

Answer choice (E):


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

[lathlee]

Hi. I always feel like A more powerfully correct over D. I got this question wrong 4 times. A is more directly supported by considering line 19-24. what am i not seeing?

[Adam Tyson]

Lathlee, I see no connection between lines 19-24 and answer choice A. What is it about those lines, which tell us some people adhere to a contracts standard established by the French, that suggests that the main point of the passage is that such an approach is not viable?

The main point of the passage is that the French approach of Administrative Contracts is flawed. Line 29 captures that, and then the rest of the passage is spent telling us what is wrong with that approach. It's not that it isn't viable to protect the security of the agreements, but just that it is based on faulty reasoning.

The Main Point needs to capture the big ideas in the passage, and to encompass as much of them as possible in one sweeping statement. This passage is an argument against the reasoning used to support the French view of Administrative Contracts. That's the big idea; not just that the contracts with foreign governments are not secure (they aren't).

Read it over again and you'll see that most of the passage is about refuting the French approach and not about whether these contracts are adequately protected.

[Khodi7531]

Is A not the answer because it just isn't the main conclusion? I was looking at line 27-28 and new that was the main point...disagreeing with the theory inherent with administrative contracts, and thought it supported A. But is it wrong because A is essentially the partial REASONING he uses to prove the MP..which is D?

I can see why D is wrong, but need to know what makes A wrong so I can learn to scratch it off.

[James Finch]

Hi Khodi,

As a Main Point question, the correct answer choice will effectively answer the question "Why was this passage written?" That answer can be found in lines 18-29:

"They assert that under the theory of administrative contracts, a government retains inherent power to modify or terminate its own contract, and that this power indeed constitutes a general principle of law. However, their argument is flawed on at least two counts."

Synthesized, those two sentences could read as: "It is not a general principle of law that governments retain inherent power to modify or terminate their own contracts." This accords very well with answer choice (D), making it the correct answer.

(A) is wrong because the goal isn't to criticize the application of general principles of law to economic development agreements, but to argue that even under the theory of administrative contracts, it is not a general principle of law that governments have the right to unilaterally modify or terminate contracts.

Hope this clears things up!

[juandresmc]

Hi PS!

I had a tough time eliminating answer choice (A), however, my reasoning for doing so was that it refers to an “international agreement” and nowhere in the passage the “international” nature of the development agreements between governments and foreign investors is discussed - the fact that one of the parties is foreign it does not mean that the agreement itself becomes international. Am I correct?

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Andrés

[Christen Hammock]

Hi Andres!

It's not a huge jump to call an agreement between a state and a foreign investor "international." The bigger problem with Answer Choice (A) is that it's not the author's main conclusion! The author's main goal is to challenge the argument that a government's ability to change its own contracts is a "general principle of law." In other words, the author is actually arguing the opposite of (A)—that being governed by "general principles" could provide legal security to the agreement.

[juandresmc]

Great, it makes more sense now! Thank you very much Christen!

[annabelle.swift]

I thought that the last sentence showed how the author believes that the power of a government to unilaterally change or end agreements is not inherent. That's why I eliminated (D). Can you explain why I shouldn't have done that?

[atierney]

I think you are reading answer choice D incorrectly, it's reiterating the initial argument mentioned in the last sentences beginning on line 23. Essentially, the idea is that there is inherent power retained by the government and that such power is not a general principle of law.

Let me know if you need further clarification on this.