PT125.S3.P1.Q4

PrepTest 125 - Section 3 - Passage 1 - Question 4

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P1

Most of what has been written about Thurgood Marshall, a former United States Supreme Court justice who served from 1967 to 1991, has just focused on his judicial record and on the ideological content of his earlier achievements as a lawyer pursuing civil rights issues in the courts. ███

Intro topic · Thurgood Marshall, lawyer and Supreme Court judge
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Main point · Marshall's work with the NAACP had significant impact on public interest law
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Elaborate on main point · Marshall's campaign-style approach was an important shift for public interest law
Represented a shift away from case-by-case litigation
P2

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Explain Marshall's approach · The "test case" strategy
Chose cases that allowed him to test different litigation approaches and involved sympathetic plaintiffs
P3

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Explain Marshall's approach · Use of sociological and pyschological statistical evidence
Showed that racial segregation caused harm which violated the Constitution
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Critics' perspective · on Marshall's use of statistical evidence
Took cases outside the realm of purely legal discourse
P4

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Implications of Marshall's approach · Public interest firms still use his methods
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Examples · of campaigns using Marshall's methods
Consumer advocacy, lawmaking though litigation
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Revisit main point · Marshall's public interest approach has been widely adopted
Passage Style
Single position
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4.

It can be most reasonably ████████ ████ ███ ███████ ████ ███ ██████ █████ ███ ████ ████ ████████ █████████ ██ ████████ ██

a

arbitrary

The author never suggests the strategy was random or involved an unreasonable process.

1%
b

inflexible

The author never suggests the strategy wasn’t adaptable.

1%
c

unprecedented

Supported, because the strategy was an “innovation that changed public interest law.” That’s evidence the author thinks the strategy was not used before.

77%
d

necessary

The author never suggests that the test case strategy was necessary in order for Marshall to achieve his success. Although it did contribute to his success, that doesn’t imply it was required. Also, if you’re looking at the word “essential” in P2, that word isn’t used to describe the test case strategy. It’s used to describe a component of the test case strategy — that component is necessary to the test case strategy, but we don’t know whether the strategy itself is necessary for something else.

15%
e

subjective

The author never suggests that the test case strategy was based on personal tastes or feelings or other kinds of subjective criteria. We have no evidence from the passage that Marshall’s criteria for selecting cases were subjective. And no, the mere fact that Marshall evaluated precedential nuances, potential impacts of decisions, and the level of public sympathy/appeal/credibility of plaintiffs does not show that Marshall’s selection of cases was subjective. One can use objective criteria to evaluate all of these things. The passage does not tell us enough about the way in which Marshall chose cases to support the characterization that his decision process was subjective.

6%

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