PrepTest 138, Section 1, Question 27
Passage A Law enforcement agencies can effectively nullify(485 more words not shown)
Passage A(288 more words not shown)
Passage B(205 more words not shown)
Passage A suggests that an(12 more words not shown)
- Aenforcing the law(9 more words not shown)
- Benforcing the law(9 more words not shown)
- Cprioritizing enforcement of(12 more words not shown)
- Dnot understanding the(13 more words not shown)
- Enot following the(8 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Look at the contrast in A's final paragraph. Officials could use their discretion to focus on conduct that lawmakers accidentally swept into the rule. That would defeat the rule's intended purpose. The author then says capricious enforcement occurs, but is not the central tendency because legislative oversight keeps agencies reasonably close to lawmakers' intentions.
What we’re looking for
So capricious enforcement is the departure from that intended purpose. The oversight explanation tells us why it does not dominate; it does not turn capricious decisions themselves into examples of faithful enforcement.
Working the answers
- A
Limited resources may affect how much enforcement is possible, but that does not make the resulting choices arbitrary or contrary to lawmakers' intentions. This is not the contrast used to explain “capricious.”
- B
This is the opposite. Following the legislature's intent is the general pattern that oversight helps preserve, not the capricious exception the author acknowledges.
- C
Prioritizing more damaging crimes could be a reasoned use of discretion consistent with the law's purpose. Choosing priorities is not, by itself, capricious enforcement.
- D
A distinguishes the enacted wording from the intended rule, but capricious enforcement need not result from failing to understand that difference. An agency could understand the intended purpose and still choose not to follow it. The answer adds an unsupported explanation of why the agency departs from that purpose.
- ECorrect
The relevant failure is not following the legislature's intent. The paragraph's example—concentrating on conduct included inadvertently—shows how an agency could enforce the literal rule while departing from what lawmakers meant to regulate.
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