#6 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[Tajadas]

I got this wrong because I was confused by the indicator words and thought D was a reversal of what was happening.

"Primarily for this reason, neither the Supreme Court nor lower courts later applied Shelley’s approach"

"Primarily for this reason" made me think that the claim the author is making is that "the Supreme Court nor lower courts later applied Shelley’s approach because the reasoning would lead to unreasonable results". I took that to mean "If they found the reasoning questionable, the Supreme Court nor lower courts should not apply Shelley’s approach ". This is a reversal of the correct answer.

Where did I go wrong?

[Beth Hayden]

Hi Tajadas,

The author's argument is just that Shelley had a good outcome, but a bad legal analysis. The rest of the passage serves to support that argument, including the part about courts' application. They are basically saying, "hey, the Supreme Court and all the other lower courts have rejected that reasoning, even when they wanted to apply Shelley, so since they agree with me I'm probably right." For you to buy that as evidence, you have to assume (D), that the fact that courts haven't applied the rationale shows that it's questionable.

That's what you said in your comment; the problem is your inference that the author is endorsing this practice of invoking the precedent but using different analysis. The author's argument isn't necessarily about what courts should do about Shelley, even though it seems like they probably agree that this is the right approach. Their argument is just that the reasoning in Shelley is bad, and the reason the author brings in what courts have done with Shelley--the role it plays in the argument--is to support the claim that the reasoning in Shelley is flawed.

Hope that helps!

[Gameclue]

Hi,

Can somebody please explain what "most clearly operative" here means? I've read through this thread a few times and I'm just not getting it. Thanks

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Gameclue,

In this question, "most clearly operative" means "working or being used" or "functioning or having an effect."

In other words, what the question is asking is which principle is being used in the argument.

A principle is a broad rule often conditional in nature, and all of the answers are conditional statements.

Here, what you're looking for is a conditional statement that matches the reasoning in the passage.

In the passage, the main point/conclusion is that the legal rationale of the Shelley v. Kraemer case is problematic/questionable (lines 12-13). One of the pieces of support for this conclusion is the fact that later courts didn't use the Shelley legal reasoning (lines 44-46).

Answer D matches the reasoning in the passage by having the premise/support in the sufficient and the conclusion in the necessary. This matches the author's line of reasoning.

Several of the other answers start with the conclusion in the sufficient, but this is backwards. We are trying to arrive at the conclusion that the legal reasoning of Shelley is questionable, so this needs to be the necessary condition.

[lounalola]

I chose D however I was quite tempted by C. I get why D is right but can someone help me understand why C is incorrect?

[Stephanie Oswalt]

I chose D however I was quite tempted by C. I get why D is right but can someone help me understand why C is incorrect?

Hi Lounalola,

Please refer to Malila's explanation on page one of this thread here: viewtopic.php?p=60262#p60262

"Answer C has too much strong language in it to match with the tone of the author's argument. We don't know that this is "the most troubling aspect of a practice" and we don't know that any measures that could be taken could 'prevent this practice from continuing in an altered form."
Hope that helps"

[jona_zx]

I have two questions about E.

1. We can eliminate it based on the fact that it uses "controversial" instead of "erroneous" which is truly the problem the author had with it?

2. Is the part about "offering a new rational" acceptable? The author doesnt directly say we should change it, but he does say the current one is bad and there is another better one. Can we make the leap from this to say he wants to change it? (I think we could on a most strongly supported question or inference, but not sure about this question type).

[Jeff Wren]

Hi jona,

There are several problems with Answer E.

First, as you pointed out, "controversial" is not the same as "erroneous," and this alone is enough to make the answer incorrect.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, even if Answer E had used the word "erroneous" instead of "controversial," it's still missing a critical piece, which is that the decision had the correct outcome even though the rationale was erroneous. In other words, as it's written, Answer E is stating that every decision that has controversial (or erroneous, if we changed it) legal rationale should be supported by offering a new rationale, even cases that had terrible outcomes.

This is definitely not what the author is arguing. The author is arguing that Shelley v. Kraemer had the right outcome but used bad legal rationale to arrive at that outcome, and that is why different legal rationale should have been used to support that correct outcome.

Third, while the author believes that the court should have used a different legal rationale in Shelley v. Kraemer, that isn't quite the same as claiming that the rationale for that case can be changed going forward. The rationale for that case as it was written in the decision is fixed and can't really be altered. What the author would likely argue is that courts should try not make the same mistake in future cases as the court made in this case.

Here's one other tip about solving this kind of question, focus on the main point of the passage. The main point of the passage is that the legal rationale of the Shelley v. Kraemer case is problematic/questionable (lines 12-13). An answer that supports this point is really what you should be looking for, which Answer D does perfectly. Answer D provides evidence for when the rationale on a past decision is questionable and that evidence (the fact that courts are hesitant to apply the rationale in other cases) matches the facts of Shelley v. Kraemer as stated in the passage (lines 44-47).