Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT128 S4 P4 Q22 Explanation

Cosmic Justice

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

TopicsAuthor's AttitudeLaw

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Passage

Passage A discusses the views of the economist and political thinker Thomas Sowell. Passage B is article by Sowell.

Passage

"Cosmic justice," as Sowell uses the term, refers to the perfect justice that only an omniscient being could render—rewards and punishments that are truly deserved when all relevant things are properly taken into consideration. Inherent human limitations, however, make it impossible to achieve this type of justice through human law, even though understand all the complex causal interrelationships involved or even know definitively what cosmic justice really is.

Whether somebody truly deserves something is a very difficult thing for us to determine. For one thing, we are not knowledgeable enough about the person and situation, or smart enough, even if we knew what all the critical factors were, to perform the complicated calculus necessary to understand how the complex interrelationships best we can reasonably do is judge primarily based upon outputs, or consequences, rather than inputs.

Passage

Cosmic justice is not simply a higher degree of traditional justice; it is a fundamentally different concept. Traditionally, justice or injustice is characteristic of a process. A defendant in a criminal case would be said to have received justice if the trial were conducted as it should be, under fair rules and innocent person. In short, traditional justice is about impartial processes rather than either results or prospects.

On the other hand, cosmic justice foolishly seeks to correct, not only biased or discriminatory acts by individuals or social institutions, but unmerited disadvantages in general, from whatever source they may arise. In criminal trials, for example, before a murderer is sentenced, the law permits his traumatic childhood to be taken into reduces that deterrence and allows more crime to take place at the expense of innocent people.

What this question is testing

Author's Attitude

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
22.

Passage A differs from passage B in that passage A

Answer choices

  1. Correct71% picked this

    Why this is right

    To say one author is more abstract / general is to imply that the other author is more specific / particular. Could we support that contrast? Sure. Passage A's second paragraph actually stops talking directly about the legal system or about cosmic justice. It gets more into an abstract discussion of what it means "to deserve" something. That discussion could be applied to a legal setting, but it could also be applied to any other setting in which we're judging (or refraining from judging) deservedness. Passage B, meanwhile, stays grounded in the specific topic of cosmic justice as applied to the legal system. And it also introduces more specific examples (an unjust trial even though the verdict is correct / a lenient sentence based on a traumatic childhood).

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

  2. Unsupported for Both1% picked this

    It's hard to say that either passage was ever "inflammatory". The most attitude / provocation we see in Passage A is probably when she says "human limitations make it impossible to achieve [cosmic justice], even though many times it seems that people are arguing for such justice and promote policies they think will render it". Meanwhile, Passage B's peak snark was, "Cosmic justice foolishly seeks to correct ... " Neither of those is really inflammatory, but if anything, Passage B is more directly name-calling.

  3. Opposite10% picked this

    This is the inverse of (A). If one passage is more abstract and theoretical, the other one is more practical and technical. It was Passage B that advanced a specific, technical explanation of what regular justice means, in terms of process. So if anything we'd probably say Passage B is more technical.

  4. Unsupported for Both11% picked this

    "Narrative" means 'to tell a story'. Neither passage told a story with any chronological or climactic beginning / middle / end.

  5. Opposite7% picked this

    This is pretty similar to (B). Both authors conveyed a negative view towards efforts to implement cosmic justice with our legal system. So both were adverse to that idea. But in terms of tone, Passage (B) is more confrontational / adversarial / inflammatory when he calls the effort "foolish".

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