A distinguished British judge, Justice Upton, said that whether some administrative decision by a government minister is reasonable “is a question that judges, by their training and experience, should be well-equipped to answer, or else there would be something badly wrong with the legal system, and there is little reason to suppose that there is.”
Conclusion
Judges should be well-equipped to answer the question of whether a given administrative decision by a government minister is reasonable or not.
Evidence
Given the judges' training and experience, if they were not well-equipped to answer this question then that would mean there's something badly wrong with the legal system.
There's no reason to think something is badly wrong with the legal system.
Evaluate
Wow! That is a brain full, alright. Dense prose. Distinguished British judges. It's a real stuffy Downton Abbey vibe.
The argument itself breaks down to these pieces.
Background: People are asking whether A is X or not.
Upton's Conclusion: Yes, A is X.
Upton's Evidence: If A were not X, then Z would be true. Z is not true.
It's actually really important to understand that general argument structure, if we're going to make it easier to discern what this argument is trying to say.
We should dumb down that first idea leading up to the quotation: whether some administrative decision by a government minister is reasonable
If people are debating that, they're debating whether the thing some government dude did was unreasonable or not.
Judge Upton is saying judges are well equipped to answer that question. They can tell you whether the thing some government dude did was unreasonable or not.
How does he know this? He provides an argument by contrapositive:
1. If judges aren't well-equipped to answer, then there would be something badly wrong with the legal system.
contrapositive: if there isn't anything badly wrong with legal system, then judges are well equipped to answer.
2. there is not something badly wrong with the legal system.
One final lifeline we have is that the word and almost always joins two premises. So the final and before can indicate to us that the two claims connected by the and are both premises.
Additionally, the word should, in the conclusion, is an Opinion Indicator, which can help us identify that claim as the conclusion.
Goal
We want something like, judges should be well-equipped to answer the question of whether some administrative decision by a government minister is reasonable