PrepTest 135 - Section 3 - Passage 3 - Question 17

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The following passages are adapted from articles recently published in North American law review journals.

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Question · Why is blackmail illegal under Canadian and US law?

Blackmail combines two acts that are each legal alone -- threatning to expose info, and seeking money from another. Why is it illegal to combine these actions?

Consequences of lack of answer · No clear line between legal and illegal blackmail

Blackmail statutes are broad and cover conduct that most people would think should be legal.

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Answer to question · Illegal because of triangular structure

Blackmailer uses leverage that's dependent on a third party (the government). This misuses a third party for the blackmailer's own benefit.

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Blackmail in Roman law · No special category for blackmail

Roman law evaluated actions based on harm, not based on the legality or illegality of the action itself.

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Assumption about blackmail · Blackmail presumed harmful if it revealed hurt victim's reputation

Party who threatened blackmail had burden to prove good reason for revealing the info.

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Relevance of truth · Truth of a revealed fact not enough to make blackmail legal

True revelation was legal only if there was a legitimate purpose in revealing the info and the government had an interest in having the info revealed.

Passage Style

17.

Which one of the following ██ █ █████████ ████ ██ ████ ██ █████████ █████ ████████ ███ ████ ██████ ████ █████████ ██ ███████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ██ █████████ ██ ███ █████ █████ ████████ █████████ ██ ███████ ██

Question Type

Stated

Split Approach: After passage A, treat this like a Must Be True question. Eliminate any answer choice that isn’t definitely true of Canadian and U.S. common law. Then, after passage B, treat this like a Must Be False question. Choose the one claim that’s definitely false of Roman law.

Sequential Approach: We’re looking for a claim that’s true of Canadian and U.S. law, and at the same time is false of Roman law. So we want to focus on any areas where the two legal systems clearly diverge. Canadian and U.S. law says that blackmail is illegal even though the actions that make up blackmail, taken separately, are legal, while Roman law says that one of the actions that make up blackmail—revealing damaging private information for selfish reasons—is already illegal. So the two systems take different stances on whether the actions that make up blackmail are legal.

It combines two ████ ████ ███ ████ █████ ███████████

This is true of blackmail under Canadian and U.S. common law as stated in P1: revealing someone else’s private information and seeking money are both legal on their own. And it’s false blackmail under Roman law as explained in P5 and in P6: revealing someone else’s private information for damaging and selfish reasons is illegal.

67%

It is a ███████████ ████ █ ██████████ ██████████

This is true of blackmail under both legal systems. It’s just a general claim about how blackmail works. Author B may not address the triangular structure of blackmail when she discusses Roman law, but that doesn’t mean it would be false to say that blackmail in Rome had a triangular structure. Author B is still talking about blackmail as the same triangular transaction that author A refers to.

15%

The laws pertaining ██ ██ ███ █████ ██ ██ ████████ █████████ ██ ████████

This is false of blackmail under Canadian and U.S. law as stated in P2. This is enough to eliminate (C). But it’s also not necessarily false under Roman law. Author B simply doesn’t discuss whether Roman laws were enshrined in writing or how those laws were meant to be enforced.

The blackmail victim ████ ██ █████ █████ ██████ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ███ ████████████

This is true of blackmail under both legal systems. Author A states this in P3, and author B acknowledges it in P5.

Canadian and U.S. ██████ ███ ████ ██ ███████ ████████ ██████████ ██ ██████████

This is false; author A refers to blackmail as a unique crime with its own statutes. This is enough to eliminate (E). But also, notice how this answer choice doesn’t actually fit the question stem. Recall what we’re looking for: a claim about blackmail that’s both true under Canadian and U.S. common law and false under classical Roman law. For (E) to be correct, the classical Roman system would have to disagree with this claim about the Canadian and U.S. system. What would that mean? The Roman system would need to have looked at present-day Canadian and U.S. law and said, “Actually, that’s false: as far as we’re concerned, that other common law system from the future does have a special category for blackmail.”

PrepTest 135 - Section 3 - Passage 3 - Question 17

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