Support ·Appellate courts don't have important tools for figuring out what's true
Live testimony from experts can help judges understand scientific stuff, and cross-examination of those experts can help discover what's true. Appellate judges don't get these things, since they happen only at the trial level.
Support ·Appellate courts who do research risk reaching bad results; they also shouldn't read stuff that wasn't presented to the trial court
Passage Style
22.
It can be inferred that ████ ██████ █████ █████ ████ ██ ██████ ███████ ███████████ █████████ ████ ████████
Question Type
Author’s perspective
Implied
Split Approach: After passage A, eliminate any answer choice that isn’t supported as something author A would agree with. Then, after passage B, choose the remaining answer choice that author B would agree with.
Sequential Approach: We’re asked what both authors would agree on if judges conduct independent research, but author B argues that appellate judges shouldn’t conduct independent research at all, and he doesn’t seem to take a stance on what trial judges should do. This one is hard to predict, but we know that both authors think judges’ research shouldn’t be a substitute for the research presented by opposing parties. We should use POE on the answer choices, keeping that general point of agreement in mind.
a
should be constrained ██ ███ █████████ ██ █ █████
Author A would agree. She argues that part of what makes independent research okay is that the research is guided by the structure of a trial.
Author B would agree. He argues that independent research is inappropriate at the appellate level because that research isn’t handled through the structure of a trial. He must believe that, if independent research is performed at all, it should be done so within the structure of a trial.
b
is typically confined ██ █████████ ████████ ███████
Author A doesn’t suggest what kinds of sources judges typically use when doing independent research. Neither does author B.
c
replaces, rather than ████████████ ███████████████ ████████
Anti-supported from author A’s perspective. She states the opposite.
d
should be conducted ██ ███ █████ █████ ███ ███ ██ ███ █████████ █████
Unsupported from author A’s perspective. She doesn’t discuss the appellate level at all.
e
usurps the trial ███████ ████████████ ████████
Anti-supported from author A’s perspective. She says that when trial judges perform independent research, it supplements, rather than replaces (i.e., usurps), the way evidence is presented in trial courts.
Difficulty
64% of people who answer get this correct
This is a difficult question.
It is somewhat easier than other questions in this passage.
CURVE
Score of students with a 50% chance of getting this right
25%149
157
75%165
Analysis
Author’s perspective
Implied
Comparative
Law
Answer Popularity
PopularityAvg. score
a
64%
164
b
20%
159
c
2%
155
d
11%
157
e
2%
156
Question history
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