PrepTest 114, Section 3, Question 11
Intellectual authority is defined as the authority of(434 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(17 more words not shown)
- AJudges often act(13 more words not shown)
- BIn some legal(20 more words not shown)
- CMany socially inappropriate(16 more words not shown)
- DIn some legal(21 more words not shown)
- EJudges are rarely(15 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The writer's reason is that judges can revisit a bad decision and fix it. What if they don't? A poorly reasoned ruling could stay in place for years because judges refuse to correct it. That would challenge the very process offered as evidence of intellectual authority.
What we’re looking for
Making a bad decision in the first place isn't enough. The writer already allows for that; we need to examine what happens afterward.
Working the answers
- A
Occasional mistakes fit the account we're given. This doesn't tell us whether judges later reconsider and correct them, which is the part supporting the conclusion.
- B
A higher error rate than another system doesn't show that a system lacks significant intellectual authority. Even a far higher percentage could compare two small rates. More importantly, we still don't know whether the errors get corrected.
- C
This is tempting: perhaps judges need social pressure before they act. But they still throw out the inappropriate decisions. Public opposition could draw attention to a genuine flaw that judges then address through reasoning. C raises a concern without directly showing that the correction process fails.
- D
Again, different percentages don't tell us whether either system meaningfully corrects faulty reasoning. We aren't given a benchmark showing that a particular rate makes intellectual authority insignificant.
- ECorrect
The judges recognize faulty reasoning but are rarely willing to fix it. That's the failure we predicted. The writer treats reconsideration as a meaningful intellectual check; E suggests that recognizing the problem usually doesn't lead to correction. “Rarely” doesn't mean never, but it attacks that check more directly than C does.
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