Under the legal doctrine of jury

Answer choices

1. A

   Out of Scope: proponents' motives1% picked this

   attacking the motives of the proponents of

   The author never impugns the motives of the proponents. She describes their position and then begins talking about the doctrine and about jurors, never about the proponents.

   1%
2. B

   No Contradiction11% picked this

   identifying an inconsistency within the reasoning used to support

   A logical inconsistency = a contradiction The reasoning used to support the "jury nullification is cool" position is that "it helps shield against injustice". Since there's only one premise, it's hard for it to contradict itself.

   11%
3. C

   Doesn't Deny Premise5% picked this

   attempting to show that a premise put forward in support of the

   It's incredibly rare on LSAT to deny the truth of a premise, so we always get suspicious of answers like this. The premise offered in support of jury nullification is that it helps shield against injustice. The author never denied that it might sometimes help to shield against injustice. She is just pointing out that it often also leads to serious mistakes. We might be tempted to call these serious mistakes "injustices", but A) that could be a stretch. we're not sure what the mistakes are or whether they would constitute injustice, in the relevant sense B) even if mistakes by jurors often leads to serious injustices, it's still possible to acknowledge that the practice helps shield against injustice. Dark example, but — we could say that seatbelts help prevent against injuries in car accidents, even if it's often the case that seatbelts actually strangle people or give them skin burns.

   5%
4. D

   No Counterexample4% picked this

   presenting a purported counterexample to a general claim made by the

   An example / counterexample is a specific person / place / thing. The author's premises are totally general in nature. We could possibly stretch this to work by saying, "the author presents situations in which jury nullification leads to serious mistakes, so isn't that presenting a purported counterexample to the general claim that 'jury nullification helps shield against injustice"? Again, it comes back to the idea that LSAT wouldn't consider this a counterexample. It's definitely a claim that runs counter to the general claim that jury nullification leads to more just outcomes. But a counterexample would sound more like, "X was a case where the defendant was acquitted by jury nullification, and this didn't shield from injustice".

   4%
5. E

   Correct79% picked this

   arguing that the application of the doctrine has

   Why this is right

   We can match up all this wording (which is our only standard of right/wrong on Method). In the last sentence, our author argues that application of the doctrine of jury nullification ... when juries are empowered to acquit on perceived unfairness ... has undesirable consequences ... they too often make serious mistakes.

   Skill tested: Method · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   79%