Politician: The mandatory jail sentences

Answer choices

1. A

   Unrelated to Goal25% picked this

   Juries should always consider whether the sum of the evidence leaves any reasonable doubt concerning the defendant’s guilt, and in all cases in which

   This principle is not addressing the preferability of the mandatory sentencing law nor the advocate's rebuttal. The rebuttal wasn't about cases in which the jury was unsure of guilt. It was about cases in which the jury was sure the defendant was guilty but didn't want the defendant to receive the mandatory sentence.

   25%
2. B

   Too Vague13% picked this

   A system of justice should clearly define what the specific actions are that judges are to

   If this were saying "a system should clearly define the specific penalty that judges are to issue for a given crime", it would be reinforcing the politician's position. This answer is saying, "Judges are to perform the specific action of sentencing a guilty defendant", but it doesn't offer any further clarity about whether the judge should have any leeway or discretion in determining that sentence.

   13%
3. C

   Unrelated to Goal7% picked this

   A system of justice should not require any legal expertise on the part of the people selected

   This principle is not addressing the preferability of the mandatory sentencing law nor the advocate's rebuttal. The rebuttal wasn't about whether or not the jury members had any legal expertise. The rebuttal was just saying, "Well now we have a different problem --- juries are acquitting guilty defendants because the mandatory sentence is too harsh". This answer choice doesn't address that concern at all, since it isn't clear why legal expertise would have any bearing on that.

   7%
4. D

   Unrelated to Goal4% picked this

   Changes in a system of justice in response to some undesirable feature of the system should be made as soon as possible once that

   This principle is not addressing the preferability of the mandatory sentencing law nor the advocate's rebuttal. This principle is about how soon / how quickly we should make changes. It's not helping the politician to argue that the change we made to mandatory sentencing was a good one.

   4%
5. E

   Correct51% picked this

   Changes in a system of justice that produce undesirable consequences should be reversed only if it is not feasible to ameliorate those

   Why this is right

   Wow, what a brutal correct answer. This barely does what we were expecting the correct answer to do. It does address the rebuttal, since the change in a system of justice (instituting mandatory jail sentences) did produce an undesirable consequence (juries are now acquitting some guilty defendants). I was expecting the politician would be trying to defend that the undesirable consequences are tolerable; the current system is still better than the old system. Instead, this answer is saying that politician could counter by saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa --- I agree this new phenomenon of juries' acquitting guilty defendants is bad. But we don't need to repeal my beloved mandatory sentencing law. Let's just see if we can fix this problem." In other words, this principle is allowing the politician to say, "Maybe it would be feasible to stop juries from acquitting some guilty defendants by further modification --- perhaps we could not tell juries what the mandatory sentence is, so that they weren't even factoring that into their decisions of conviction / acquittal. Maybe it would be feasible to simply have the judge add to her guidance to the jury as they go off to deliberate, 'Remember, your job is just to convict or acquit. You should not consider sentencing.' Maybe it would be feasible to come up with lesser charges for these defendants who deserve leniency. These lesser charges would still have mandatory sentences, but they would be less harsh. That way a jury could convict the defendant of a lesser charge." If any of those further modifications are feasible, then this principle is would dictate that we "don't reverse the change we made to our system of justice".

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

   51%