Self-paced
Tom: Critics of recent high court decisions claim that judges' willingness to abide by earlier decisions is necessary to avoid legal chaos. █████ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ██████████ █████ ██████████ ███ ██ ████ ██ ███ █████ ██████ ███████ █████ ████████ ██████████ ████ ██ ███████████ █████████ ███ █████ ██ ██ ████████
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Speaker 1 Summary
Recently, the high court has overturned earlier decisions. There’s been criticism of the court on the grounds that judges’ willingness to follow precedent is necessary to avoid legal chaos. Tom rejects this criticism, because judges have often overturned legal precedent in the past without causing harm.
Speaker 2 Summary
Mary agrees that judges have overturned precedent in the past, but says that this was only when the previous rulings were old and outdated. The high court’s recent decisions overturned more recent decisions, which makes people view the law as unstable. Her implicit point is that the criticism of the court’s recent decisions is valid.
3.
Mary responds to Tom's argument ██ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ █████
a
She questions Tom's █████ █████ ███ ███████ ██ █████████ ██ ████ ██████ ██ ███ █████
Mary does not dispute what Tom says about past reversals. She accepts that earlier high courts overturned precedents without harm to the legal system. Rather than questioning those effects, she sets the past cases apart from the recent ones.
b
She agrees to █████ ██████████ ██ ███████ ████████ ████████ ███ ██████████ ████████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ██ ███████ █████████ ██ ███████ ████ ███████ ██ █████████
Mary never accepts Tom's view that the critics are politically motivated, and she says nothing about how hard it is to read people's motives. Her response is about the difference between old and recent rulings, not about the critics' intentions or the difficulty of detecting them.
c
She defends a ████████ ███████ █████ ██████████ ██ ██████ ████████ ██ ████ ████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ████████ ██ ████ █████ ███ █████████████
Tom is not criticizing a practice, so there is no practice for Mary to defend against him. Tom is dismissing the court's critics, and Mary is taking the critics' side. Her point is also not that past overturnings followed due deliberation, but that they targeted rulings that were old and outdated, unlike the recent ones.
d
She points out ████ █████ ██████████ █████ ██ ██ ██████████ ████ ██ ████████████ ██ ███ ████████ ███ █████████
Mary does not show that Tom's own evidence works against him. Tom's evidence, that past courts overturned precedents without harm, does not contradict his conclusion. Mary has to bring in new information, that those past rulings were old while the recent ones were not, to make her point. Since she adds outside information rather than exposing a conflict inside Tom's evidence, this does not fit.
e
She introduces a ███████████ ███████ ███ █████ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ██████████ ███ ███████████ ██ █████ ██ █████ ███ █ ██████████ ████ ███ █████ ██ ████ ████ ████████
This describes Mary's response. She separates precedent-overturning into two kinds of situations: the past cases, where the overturned rulings were old and outdated, and the recent cases, where the overturned rulings were themselves recent. Tom treated all overturning of precedent as the same, which is what let him compare the harmless past to the present.