Logical Reasoning

PT23 · S3 · Q20 Legal rules are expressed in general

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Legal rules are expressed in general terms.

Statements

Legal rules are basically conditional statements that classify certain persons and actions as being subject to certain legal consequences. Applying a rule to a case means deciding on whether the facts of the case trigger that rule. The legal decision establishes legal effect, not matters of fact.

Evaluate

Yikes. There is nothing here resembling a normal Inference paragraph. We don't see Conditional / Causal / Comparative / Pivot language. It's just a paragraph describing what legal rules are and what a legal decision is and isn't.

Goal

With nothing sense of what sort of synthesis the correct answer might be testing, we'll just stay wary of Strong language, Unknown Comparisons, or Out of Scope ideas.

20.

The passage provides the most support for which one of the following?

Legal rules, like matters of
Out of Scope: matters of fact
I never made it past the second comma. We don't know anything about matters of fact. We're told that legal decisions are not matters of fact, but we don't have any positive statements about what "matters of fact" are, so there's no support for saying anything about matters of fact (other than "matters of fact are not identical to a legal decision").
11% picked this
Matters of fact, like legal
Out of Scope: matters of fact
Same as (A). We don't know anything about matters of fact. We're told that legal decisions are not matters of fact, but we don't have any positive statements about what "matters of fact" are, so there's no support for saying anything about matters of fact (other than "matters of fact are not identical to a legal decision").
7% picked this
Making legal decisions does not
Too Strong: does not involve Contradicted
We know that "matters of fact are not identical to a legal decision", because we're told that legal decisions establish the legal effect, not any matter of fact. But the two could be frequently overlapping. A legal decision might say "this oil company is culpable for the damage of this oil spill" and as a matter of fact the company may indeed be responsible for the damage. Beyond that, in trying apply a rule to a particular case (i.e. making a legal decision), we are deciding on whether the facts of that case fall within the categories mentioned in the rule. So since we have to inquire whether the facts trigger the rule, making legal decisions does involve matters of fact.
13% picked this
The application of a rule
Out of Scope: judge
The paragraph never discusses judges. We might think to ourselves, "I'm not a judge, but I could still assess whether a rule applies to a particular case", but there's no support for that in the passage.
1% picked this
Correct
Whether the facts of a
Why this is right
The last sentence is all we know about "matter of fact", and it says this decision does not establish any matter of fact What does "this decision" refer to? a decision on whether the facts of the case fall within the categories mentioned in the rule So put that together and what do you get? deciding whether the facts of the case fall does not any matter into the relevant establish of fact category of the rule It would be kind of like if we were told, "Although tax money is spent in part on supporting charitable organizations that do good deeds, paying your taxes is a legal responsibility, rather than a good deed." The analogous answer would sound like this (A) Paying money to a government which will later use that money in part to support organizations that do good deeds is not itself a good deed".
Skill tested: Most Supported · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
68% picked this

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