#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.