Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT108 S1 P2 Q14 Explanation

Non-Objectivist Discourse

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsNon-Author OpinionLaw

Keep going in LSAT Lab

  • Save & drill this skill build targeted practice sets from questions like this one

  • Video walkthroughs watch every question solved step by step

  • 81 official LSATs as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Passage

In recent years, a growing belief that the way society decides what to treat as true is controlled through largely unrecognized discursive practices has led legal reformers to examine the complex interconnections between narrative and law. In many legal systems, legal judgments are based on competing stories about events. Without having witnessed in law from selective perception, or from subjective judgments based on prior experiences, values, and beliefs.

The societal harm caused by the assumption of objectivist principles in traditional legal discourse is that, historically, the stories judged to be objectively true are those told by people who are trained in legal discourse, while the stories of language of the law are rejected as false.

Legal scholars such as Patricia Williams, Derrick Bell, and Mari Matsuda have sought empowerment for the latter group of people through the construction of alternative legal narratives. Objectivist legal discourse systematically disallows the language of emotion and experience by focusing on cognition in its narrowest sense. These legal reformers propose replacing such by overcoming differences in background and training and forming a new collectivity based on emotional empathy.

What this question is testing

Non-Author Opinion

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
14.

The passage suggests that Williams, Bell, and Matsuda would most likely agree with which one of the following

Answer choices

  1. Trap0% picked this

    Personal stories are more likely to adhere to the principles of objectivism than are other

  2. Correct79% picked this

    Personal stories are more likely to de-emphasize differences in background and training than are traditional

    Why this is right

    Answer B is correct.

    Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  3. Trap4% picked this

    Personal stories are more likely to restore tranquility to the legal establishment than are more

  4. Trap8% picked this

    Personal stories are more likely to lead to the accurate reconstruction of facts than are traditional

  5. Trap8% picked this

    Personal stories are more likely to be influenced by a person’s expectations, values, and beliefs than are

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free