Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Easy

PT128 S4 P4 Q27 Explanation

Cosmic Justice

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

TopicsAuthor OpinionLaw

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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 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
27.

Which one of the following is a view advanced by the author of passage A with which the author of passage B would be

Answer choices

  1. Not Mentioned in A: unmerited disadvantages8% picked this

    It is sometimes possible for the legal system to take unmerited disadvantages into account in rendering judgment on

    This is attractively weak wording ("sometimes"), but taking unmerited disadvantages into account in rendering judgments on people is something that happens with cosmic justice. Both of these authors seem to think that the legal system can't employ cosmic justice. Passage A says, "whether somebody truly deserves something (whether something is merited / unmerited) is a very difficult thing for us to determine ... Deservedness necessarily focuses on consideration of inputs. An omniscient being is capable of perfectly considering all these things, but we are not".

  2. Opposite: should strive for it3% picked this

    Whether or not cosmic justice is an attainable ideal, human law should strive for it because doing so

    Both authors are saying that the legal system should not strive for cosmic justice.

  3. Opposite: achieving cosmic justice7% picked this

    Impartial legal processes are a better means of achieving cosmic justice than are efforts to

    Both authors think it's impossible for us mere mortals to know enough to actually pull off cosmic justice. So they don't think that anything is a means of achieving cosmic justice.

  4. Correct81% picked this

    Human law should be concerned with the consequences of human actions, not with the myriad of factors

    Why this is right

    This sounds the most like the main point of both authors: "The legal system should be worrying about stuff it can do, i.e. traditional justice (i.e. the consequences of human actions), not trying to do cosmic justice (i.e. calculating all the myriad factors that may have influenced such an action)." This answer is just disguising "traditional justice" and "cosmic justice" in code words, to see if we understood the meaning behind these terms, not just the names themselves. The final sentence of Passage A advances this view: Will all our human limitations, the best we can reasonably do is judge primarily based upon outputs, or consequences, rather than inputs (factors that influenced the action). And Passage B provides a specific example saying, "we shouldn't consider how a traumatic childhood may have influenced the action of murdering someone. We should focus on the action and trying to deter similar actions from others by not-mitigating the punishment based on all the factors that may have led to someone becoming a murderer."

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

  5. Opposite: achieve cosmic justice1% picked this

    Human legal systems can in theory achieve cosmic justice by focusing upon factors that tend

    Both authors think it's impossible for us mere mortals to know enough to actually pull off cosmic justice. They don't think that we can possibly achieve cosmic justice, which is why they think the legal system is incorrect to aim for it.

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