#10 - Concept Reference, Must Be True

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

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

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[Roadto170]

Wondering why C would be correct over D? Here is what I was thinking going into the question.

C- legal principles providing the rationale for applying legal rules was very tempting, but how would they underlie?? This seems more like a guide if anything...
D- Author says that Dworkin holds that law includes many principles that do not depend for their legal status on any prior official recognition or enactment... i.e. rules not passed through legislative processes/procedures

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Check the text in the third paragraph, Roadto170, and you'll find there that Dworking says that legal principles are different from rules, rather than that they are rules that haven't yet become a law (which brings to mind Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill"). And then this part:

For Dworkin, legal rules apply in an all-or-nothing fashion, whereas legal principles do not: they provide the rationale for applying legal rules.

The passage tells us that Dworkin sees a distinction between these principles and legal rules, in that the principles underlie the rules, and this line in the text directly supports answer C. Answer C is really just a paraphrase of that statement, and since the question says the answer will be "according to the passage," that's what we really want it to be. Meanwhile, Dworkin never says that the principles are just waiting to become laws, as answer D implies. Thus, answer D is not something that we can say is true "according to the passage."

And that brings up a good point that many students overlook: the way the question is framed can have a big impact on how you answer it. When the questions asks for something that is true "according to the passage," the answer will either directly quote the text or else paraphrase it. The answer is explicit. But when a questions asks what is true "based on the passage," then we're looking for something implicit, like the answer to a Most Strongly Supported question in LR. The passage doesn't say it directly, but there is evidence to support the correct answer. That distinction in the wording of the question makes a big difference in how you research and prephrase your answer, and how you go about eliminating losers.

[Roadto170]

Thanks Adam! You have cleared up my confusion. I will try to pay closer attention to the question stem to differentiate what I am looking for between an "according to the passage" problem and a "based on the passage" problem for that explicit/implicit variation.