LSAT 124 – Section 1 – Question 16

LSAT 124 - Section 1 - Question 16

December 2007

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT124 S1 Q16	+LR	Inference +Inf Value Judgment +ValJudg	A 1% 155 B 10% 159 C 7% 159 D 3% 159 E 80% 165	136 148 160	+Medium	146.495 +SubsectionMedium

Jurist: A nation’s laws must be viewed as expressions of a moral code that transcends those laws and serves as a measure of their adequacy. Otherwise, a society can have no sound basis for preferring any given set of laws to all others. Thus, any moral prohibition against the violation of statutes must leave room for exceptions.

Summary

A nation’s laws must be based on a moral code.

The moral code provides the basis for evaluating laws (E.g., if a law abides by the moral code, it is adequate; if it doesn’t, it’s inadequate.)

Any moral rule that mandates compliance with the law must allow for exceptions. In other words, there are times when moral rules require that the law should not be followed.

Very Strongly Supported Conclusions

There must be occasions when strict compliance with a nation’s laws would lead to violating the nation’s moral code.

Those who formulate statutes are not primarily concerned with morality when they do so.

Unsupported. The stimulus tells us that a nation’s laws can be understood as expressions of a moral code, which indicates that lawmakers are probably consciously or unconsciously deeply concerned with morality when they write said laws.

Sometimes criteria other than the criteria derived from a moral code should be used in choosing one set of laws over another.

Anti-supported. The stimulus says that, without a moral code, there would be no sound basis for choosing one set of laws over another. In other words, the moral code is the only thing that allows a society to effectively compare the adequacy of different laws.

Unless it is legally forbidden ever to violate some moral rules, moral behavior and compliance with laws are indistinguishable.

Unsupported. (C) says: “if it it’s legally permitted to violate some moral rules, then behaving morally is the same as complying with the law.” The stimulus doesn’t discuss legal permissibility of violating moral rules, so we can’t infer anything from that sufficient condition.

There is no statute that a nation’s citizens have a moral obligation to obey.

Anti-supported. Statutes can be viewed as expressions of a moral code, so the nation’s citizens presumably have a moral obligation to obey at least some statutes!

A nation’s laws can sometimes come into conflict with the moral code they express.

Very strongly supported. The author’s conclusion is that moral mandates to follow the law need to allow for exceptions. So we can infer that there are times when the moral thing is actually not to follow the law, because the law conflicts with the nation’s moral code!

LSAT 124 – Section 1 – Question 16

LSAT 124 - Section 1 - Question 16

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Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 124 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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