Political theorist: Many people believe that the punishment of those

Hello, Shrey08. Pardon the delay in my response. Believe it or not, when your request came through, I was preparing for a 5K race. (I am sore today, but injury free, so I am pleased.) In the interest of helping you and the larger community, I will provide a full analysis of the question.


Notice, first, that this is from the LSAT. In general, I discourage practicing LSAT questions if you intend to train for the GMAT™. Logical Reasoning and Critical Reasoning questions are similar in many regards, but there are enough subtle differences to make the former more trouble than they are worth to the GMAT™ aspirant, at least in my view. That said, I do enjoy these questions on a personal level: I like to embrace challenges. And it feels rewarding when you answer a question correctly that hovers around 20 percent accuracy. Anyway, enough of my rambling.

Notice that the passage, from start to finish, hinges on this word mitigate. If you know the word or can gather from the context that it means to lessen the severity of, then you should be in good shape. You just have to make sure you follow the political theorist's reasoning to the T, or it is easy to get sidetracked. Examine that last line of the passage again. It follows a basic conclusion/premise format:


We should be looking for an answer, then, that speaks to this conclusion.


Although the political theorist might agree with this statement, nowhere does the passage focus on psychological states forming the sole basis of laws. If you have practiced CR before, you should know to watch out for overreaching or extreme language, and this is a case in point.


This answer choice is more or less a recap of the last two lines of the passage. We cannot ignore the fact that the political theorist acknowledges that some criminals deserve better:


But at the same time, we cannot ignore the conclusion, which starts with an even so or despite that transition. Putting everything together, we can get behind an answer choice that says that even though some criminals deserve less severe punishments, the motives of the criminals should not be considered at all to determine whether to reduce the severity of a punishment. In balance, the principle of not considering motives to reduce sentences outweighs the justice that some criminals deserve, so this answer choice is hard to argue against. Leave it alone.


I spent the longest time pondering this option, and it looks as if I am not alone: this is the most popular selection, according to the timer data. But perceivable consequences in particular turned me off. That sounds somewhat arbitrary, as though the consequences could be perceived differently from person to person. And this line of thought, in turn, plays into the motives of criminals, the very angle the argument seeks not to take. If you straighten out the two halves of the answer choice, you get,

The perceivable consequences of actions should determine the legal permissibility of those actions.

That does not sound like the argument made at the end of the passage, not by a long shot. If you were unsure at this point, you could let this answer choice be, but under scrutiny, it does not hold up and should ultimately be adandoned.


Notice the absolute language again: no law. Then, we get this notion of enforcement when the passage places mitigation (of punishment) front and center. This is about as disconnected from the argument as we could get, and we should be grateful for an easy elimination.


Since you chose this option, I feel first that I need to address the associative line of reasoning you took above:


I hope you can appreciate from my treatment of (D) why I would disagree that the political theorist makes a comment on the enforceability of the law. In my view, the theorist is disputing the claim from the opening line of the passage, nothing more. In short, many people believe that the punishment [of criminals] should be mitigated based on whether the motives of the criminals were sincere and good. Keep it simple.

Getting back to this answer choice, a projection into the future has no relation to the passage: disastrous consequences is pure conjecture. We have no idea what could happen if judges started taking into account the motives of criminals. All we know is that the political activist opposes the notion. All things considered, we cannot get behind this answer choice.

Again, stick strictly to what the passage says, and you will be much more likely to walk away with the correct answer, whether you are practicing CR questions or their trickier LR cousins. I hope my analysis proves useful as you continue your studies. Good luck.

- Andrew