PrepTest 112, Section 1, Question 20
Editorialist: To ensure justice in the legal system,(63 more words not shown)
The editorialist's argument requires assuming(5 more words not shown)
- AMost citizens view(14 more words not shown)
- BIn order to(16 more words not shown)
- CThe primary concern(11 more words not shown)
- DIn a legal(12 more words not shown)
- ECitizens without knowledge(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Not knowing as much as an expert doesn't automatically make you unable to criticize one.
Suppose a judge proposes an extreme punishment for a minor offense. I'd want citizens to be able to challenge that decision. The opening principle makes that ability a requirement for ensuring justice. But when the argument introduces experts who study how punishments discourage crime, it hasn't yet told us that citizens lose the ability to criticize them.
The final sentence tells us most citizens lack this knowledge, then concludes that justice isn't ensured. There is the jump. A person can lack specialized knowledge and still raise an objection. People comment on subjects they don't fully understand all the time. Whether their criticism is well informed is a further question. We can't simply substitute “doesn't know much about this” for “cannot criticize.”
What we’re looking for
We also need to be precise about “capable.” The argument concerns citizens' ability to criticize, not merely whether the law permits them to speak. No ban on speech is stated. For the necessary-assumption question, I'd look for a link between the lack of knowledge and the missing ability. Otherwise, the evidence hasn't shown that the stated requirement for justice fails.
Working the answers
- A
This is about citizens' views of what justice means. The argument gives the editorialist's requirement for ensuring justice; it doesn't depend on most citizens agreeing on a particular definition. Citizens could hold different views about deserved punishment while the editorialist still makes the same knowledge-to-criticism argument.
- B
This introduces a different requirement for a just system: considering effects on individual criminals. It doesn't connect citizens' lack of knowledge with inability to criticize the experts. Even if those effects were considered, we would still need to know why the public couldn't evaluate or challenge the people making the decisions. B doesn't supply the assumption this argument uses.
- C
We don't need to establish the system's primary concern to evaluate whether justice is ensured in it. A system could put some other goal first, and the editorialist could still object that a requirement for justice isn't being met. C supplies a ranking of goals rather than the missing link about citizens' ability.
- D
Concern for punishment and an emphasis on deterrence can fit together: the experts in the passage assess how punishments affect potential lawbreakers. The argument doesn't need those concerns to be incompatible. Its objection concerns whether citizens can criticize the experts, not whether a system can pay attention to both punishment and deterrence.
- ECorrect
This ties the evidence to the requirement. Most citizens lack knowledge about the effect of punishments on potential lawbreakers. E says that without that knowledge, they cannot criticize the experts in that area.
Now the editorialist has the missing connection: the experts help determine punishments, those citizens' lack of knowledge prevents them from criticizing those experts, and the required ability to criticize the people determining punishment is therefore missing. That is how the argument gets to justice not being ensured.
Without this connection, lack of knowledge alone wouldn't establish the failure. Citizens might still be capable of criticizing the experts, in which case the argument hasn't shown that its opening requirement is violated. E expresses the assumption behind treating their lack of expertise as that barrier.
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