PT27.S3.Q02 - the expansion of mass media

Henry An

I have a question for answer choice A for the second question on "mental contortions." Although I got this question correct, I was really hesitant on marking A the right answer due to the word "beforehand." In the context of the passage, it states that "judges' instructions to juries to ignore information learned outside the courtroom" could not be "relied upon," and such instruction would become "mental contortions" to the jurors.

In my mind, information learned outside the courtroom (where prejudice can be formed) can be formed not only before the trial, but also in the middle of a trial, and therefore, I thought answer choice A was incorrect as it limits the scope to only before the trial (hence, descriptively inaccurate). However, I eventually chose A because all the other answer choices also limited the scope to "pretrial," which really confused me...

I'm actually a native South Korean student, so I may be unfamiliar with the concept of a "trial." If we are to assume that there is a certain case that lasts several days, and the parties of the case go to court several times to dispute the case, to my understanding, this as a whole would still be one trial. Therefore, I thought that juror prejudices could be formed in the middle of a trial (or, during a trial), as they would go to court, and then go home (get information outside the courtroom), then go to court, then go home, etc.

I would really like some clarification on this and any help would be great!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-27-section-3-passage-1-passage/
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-27-section-3-passage-1-questions/

inactive

Bumping this up for you so more people can see.

BinghamtonDave

I am going to do this passage in a bit. Probably by 2pm Eastern. I will certainly look into your issue deeper.

BinghamtonDave

Ok, so in the context of the second paragraph we have a basic structure: Judges have a potential solution to the problem of partiality with juries. Critics respond back that the solutions the judges offer are not effective. The rest of the paragraph are reasons critics give as to why the judge's solution fails. So on a macro scale we have: judges say the have answer/critics say judge's answer is weak for reasons A and B.

The "mental contortion" phrase comes in when our author quotes critics who say that the judges instructions to ignore their pretrial knowledge is sort of ridiculous. Think about what the critics are saying as a response to the judges: The judges are saying that a solution for the issue of people's opinions being tainted by mass media on jury trials is to instruct them to simply ignore and not use the knowledge about the case they might have heard on their local news, in their local papers, in the line at the grocery store, on the radio or from a friend. A human being fully embedded in their community simple cannot go to those lengths: divorce themselves fully and completely from the knowledge they have about a particular event. This is why the critics call this solution a "mental contortion."

As an aside, this brings up a few very interesting legal trials of the last century. Most notably the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Part of the defense's strategy in that case was to argue that the judges could not be impartial. Our passage is talking about an issue in the same vein. The critics are essentially taking a variation on this stand.

Now, a word on "beforehand": the purpose of this passage is to address the problem laid out in lines 5-10. Here we see a general preference for a juror who does not know the details therefore has not formed an opinion. I'm sure that this problem can be extended to during the process of a trial, that is certainly possible, but I feel as though the general sense here is knowledge before a trial. At the very least with the inclusion of lines 5-10 coupled with lines 21-23, we have support for the idea that there is a problem with juror knowledge acquired beforehand. During the general flow of the passage we also have the use of the words "potential jurors." Also the use of the word "empaneling" means to enlist or enroll jurors, this is done at the beginning and hence any problems with knowledge potential jurors would be carrying would be beforehand.

We can conclude (as we often have to do on RC) with a high degree of confidence that beforehand is indeed what we are generally talking about here.

I hope this helps
David

Henry An

@BinghamtonDave Thanks for your comment! This helps to clarify a lot of my questions for this passage! Especially, I was unaware of the concept of "empaneling," that it was used at the beginning of a trial.

I still have two questions though, and any help would be great!

1) You have mentioned lines 21-23 for evidence for answer choice A. Here it specifically states "pretrial," so in this flow of the context it would seem appropriate that lines 21-23 would also refer to "pretrial" as well. However, I thought the "Nor" in line 21 was introducing an independent premise for the author's argument (independent from lines 19-21), and hence, the context of "pretrial" and "potential jurors" mentioned in line 21 would not carry over to lines 21-23 (in which, here, these lines state "outside the courtroom.") Would you say that this was incorrect thinking?

2) Also, I am still confused with the concept of "trial." I wanted to get this concept straight just it case this shows up in future tests. I tried googling it but it doesn't really differentiate the meaning between "individual trials (individual instances going to court)" or the "whole trial (the whole case including all the individual instances the relevant parties go to court)." The latter understanding of a trial would include the former understanding of a trial. I'm uncertain on whether or not "trial" means the former concept or the latter concept, or if it actually refers to both, depending on the context. I'll copy and paste the original question on this for convenience!

I'm actually a native South Korean student, so I may be unfamiliar with the concept of a "trial." If we are to assume that there is a certain case that lasts several days, and the parties of the case go to court several times to dispute the case, to my understanding, this as a whole would still be one trial. Therefore, I thought that juror prejudices could be formed in the middle of a trial (or, during a trial), as they would go to court, and then go home (get information outside the courtroom), then go to court, then go home, etc.

Thanks for your help!

inactive

Bumping again!