Logical Reasoning

PT142 · S4 · Q17 Under the legal doctrine of jury

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Under the legal doctrine of jury nullification, a jury may legitimately acquit a defendant it believes violated a law if the jury believes that law to be unjust.

Conclusion (implied)

The doctrine of jury nullification is questionable.

Evidence

The doctrine of jury nullification relies too much on jurors' objectivity. When you entrust juries with the power to decide what's fair, they too often make serious mistakes.

Evaluate

We're being asked what technique the author used to respond to the proponents.

She pointed out a downside of jury nullification -- we're entrusting the jury with the power to decide on which laws are unjust, and they're prone to serious mistakes.

How would we describe that rebuttal in more general terms?

Goal

Look for something like, ?

17.

The argument uses which one of the following techniques in its attempt to undermine the position that it attributes to the proponents of jury nullification?

attacking the motives of the
Out of Scope: proponents' motives
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% picked this
identifying an inconsistency within the
No Contradiction
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% picked this
attempting to show that a
Doesn't Deny Premise
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% picked this
presenting a purported counterexample to
No Counterexample
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% picked this
Correct
arguing that the application of
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.
80% picked this

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