PrepTest 115, Section 4, Question 2
Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim(96 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(11 more words not shown)
- Awhether the overturning(10 more words not shown)
- Bwhether the overturning(8 more words not shown)
- Cwhether critics of(11 more words not shown)
- Dwhether a precedent(10 more words not shown)
- Ewhether judicial decisions(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Things went well before. Does that mean they'll go well this time? Tom points to past decisions that overturned precedent without harming the legal system. That gives us a reason to examine the earlier cases, but we still need to know whether the current cases are comparable.
I also don't see how Tom has established the critics' political motives. Someone could sincerely fear legal harm and be mistaken. Being wrong about an effect doesn't tell us why a person believes it.
Mary takes up the first concern. The old decisions overturned rulings that had been around long enough to become outdated. The current decisions overturn rulings that are themselves recent. To Mary, changing a recent ruling makes the law look unstable and unpredictable. That's the harm she thinks Tom has overlooked.
What we’re looking for
For a disagreement question, keep my objections separate from Mary's response. I questioned both the comparison and the accusation about motives. Mary develops the comparison. We want a statement Tom rejects and Mary accepts: overturning these recent rulings will harm the legal system.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Tom uses the harmless past reversals to dismiss the current critics' concern about legal harm. Mary says overturning recent rulings does harm the system by making the law seem unstable. That gives us opposing positions on the effect of the recent reversals.
- B
Watch whose motives we're discussing. Tom accuses the critics of political motives; B asks whether the overturning of precedents was politically motivated. Those are different actions by different people. Mary doesn't take a position on either set of motives, so we couldn't establish a disagreement here anyway.
- C
Tom says the critics made the claim he reports. To disagree with that, Mary would need to say something like, “That isn't what the critics argued.” She doesn't. She adds a distinction between old rulings and recent rulings to challenge Tom's treatment of their objection.
Disagreeing with Tom's conclusion isn't the same as disputing every statement he makes along the way. Mary can accept his report of the critics' position and still reject his response to it.
- D
Mary explains how outdated precedents differ from the recent precedents at issue. That doesn't establish that she and Tom disagree about whether every clearly outdated precedent needs to be overturned. The debate concerns the consequences of the current reversals, not a general requirement to reverse outdated decisions.
- E
Neither speaker discusses decisions that initially seem progressive. “Recent” tells us when a ruling was made, not its political outlook. We can't substitute that new category and assign the speakers opposing views about it.
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