#19 - Parallel

[alee]

fantastic, that discussion really clarifies things

[bli2016]

Hi, here I was confused because I thought U.S. and Canadian law did not have a coherent theory of blackmail, versus Roman law had a very clear prohibition on actions causing harm, which applied to blackmail. The way I understood the passage, the point that there are specific laws that prohibit blackmail was an interpretation of the law and suggestion made by the author. Therefore, I chose C which reflected the dichotomy between having no coherent theory (US/Canada) and having a broader theory (Rome) making something illegal. Can someone please explain why this is not the case? Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi bli2016!

Happy to try to give some insight on this one. First, I'll work on unpacking the right answer, (D): "One country makes it illegal for felons to own guns; another country has no such ban because it makes gun ownership illegal for everyone but police and the military."

As I understood the analogy suggested in (D), the first part of it is analogous to U.S./Canadian common law (because those countries have made it illegal via statutes to commit blackmail). The second part is analogous to Roman law, according to which the "revelation of shameful information was protected only if the revelation had been made for a legitimate purpose and dealt with a matter that the public authorities had an interest in having revealed." In other words, under Roman law, there's no need to create a law banning blackmail because the starting point for everyone is that it's not protected speech to begin with (Passage B describes the topic of blackmail more in terms of free speech), but is only protected in exceptional, circumstances.

To your reasons, I understand that a dichotomy could legitimately be made between these passages as you suggest, as lack of coherence (U.S./Canada) vs. clearly articulated (Roman law). You certainly seem right to describe it that way. However, it's not clear to me how that dichotomy is captured by answer (C). That answer choice uses the analogy of one country allowing "many" tax exemptions versus another country offering "fewer" exemptions, which doesn't seem to represent a coherence vs. non-coherence dichotomy.

Hope that helps!