#12- Vague laws set vague limits on people’s freedom

[adkirk88]

Perfect thank you!

[Sean Kim]

Hello
I was just wondering if (B) could be an answer if the question was Necessary Assumption Question.
Because negating (B) would contradict the conclusion.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

It looks that way to me, too, Sean Kim! I'm not fond of the "might" in that answer, but it does seem that the author has to believe that's true. So it's a Necessary Assumption, but not a Sufficient one. Good eye!

[MordecaiSmith]

Any tips on how to quickly solve problems like this? I got the questions correct, but only after reading the stimulus, going to the question stem, realizing I have to diagram the conditional reasoning, going BACK to the stimulus, reading AGAIN, diagraming, and then applying my prephase to the ACs.

It seems like there's no good strategy to make this problem a quick solve and I would like to cut down time as much as possible. Is it simply gonna be pattern recognition that allows you to solve quickly for problems like these?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi MordecaiSmith!

Glad to hear that you got this one correct. I think that the administrator's post provides the quickest solution to this one. It combines the new element in the conclusion with the unconnected element in one of the premises into a conditional statement--in doing so, it provides what would be sufficient justification for the conclusion to follow from the premises. Answer choice (A) reflects the contrapositive of that conditional statement.

Perhaps one thing to note about this stimulus is that it is rather short. The LSAT can often pack plenty of conditional reasoning into few words. It's not always the case that a short stimulus will contain conditional reasoning, but very often it will. Thus seeing a short stimulus can at least put you on guard to keep a look out for it, in which case you can hopefully save time by diagramming as you read it rather than needing to read the stimulus a second time.