LSAT 15 - Section 3 - Question 05

We’ve got a MBT question here, as the question stem asks: If the statements in the argument are all true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?

This stimulus is all about constitutions and what can make them liberal. It begins by denying the view that whether a constitution is written or unwritten inherently makes them more or less liberal. The big takeaway here should be that just knowing a constitution is written isn’t enough to know whether or not it is liberal. The next sentence further emphasizes this point with the conditional indicator until; a written constitution by itself is just a piece of paper, it only becomes meaningful when its content is (i) interpreted and (ii) applied. Put otherwise, if a written constitution hasn’t been interpreted and applied, then it isn’t a real constitution yet. These two sentences arguing against the importance of whether a constitution is written are followed up by a helpful definition of what a constitution is. A constitution isn’t the written or unwritten text, it is a sum of procedures which together legitimize and control the state’s use of power. Our final sentence begins with the conclusion indicator therefore, and from all this talk about what a constitution is and whether its being written matters, concludes that a written constitution is only liberal if it is (i) interpreted and (ii) applied in a liberal way.

This is a four star question, and it is easy to see why; unlike a lot of MBT true questions the underlying logic of the stimulus isn’t made super clear. The key to getting this question correct is recognizing the essential claims the stimulus makes about what makes something a constitution and what makes something a specifically liberal constitution. The key triggers are whether a constitution has been interpreted and applied, and whether this was in a liberal way. Let’s look at the answer choices and eliminate the ones that could be false:

Answer Choice (A) Since we’ve been told a written constitution is just a paper with words until it is put into action, it must be false that we could judge whether a written constitution is actually liberal just by reading it.

Correct Answer Choice (B) B is correct for the same reason that A is incorrect. It says the opposite of A, and tells us that a written constitution can’t be judged to be liberal by its written text alone, which is exactly what must be true given the definition of a constitution and the requirements to be liberal that the stimulus gives us. If a written constitution is just words on paper prior to being interpreted and applied, then we can’t know whether it is a liberal constitution without it being interpreted and applied.

Answer Choice (C) This answer makes a really broad claim that we have zero support for in the stimulus. All we’ve been told is that written constitutions are not inherently more liberal than unwritten ones because a constitution becomes real only through interpretation and application. We know nothing about whether or not there are advantages between the two kinds.

Answer Choice (D) We were only told that there is nothing inherently liberal about written constitutions, we cannot infer from that that there is something inherently liberal about unwritten constitutions.

Answer Choice (E) This answer choice is the most selected incorrect answer for this question. We are given the conditional statement that if a written constitution is liberal, then it is required that it be interpreted and applied in a liberal way. What this answer does which makes it incorrect is confuse the sufficient and necessary conditions of this statement, so that merely being interpreted in a liberal way is enough for a constitution to be liberal. If you chose this answer, it might be helpful to review conditional logic and specifically why we cannot conclude that jsut because the necessary condition is true that the sufficient condition is as well.