If an act of civil disobedience—willfully breaking a specific law in

Question

If an act of civil disobedience—willfully breaking a specific law in order to bring about legal reform—is done out of self-interest alone and not out of a concern for others, it cannot be justified. But one is justified in performing an act of civil disobedience if one's conscience requires one to do so.

Which one of the following judgments most closely conforms to the principles stated above?

(A) Keisha's protest against what she perceived to be a brutal and repressive dictatorship in another country was an act of justified civil disobedience, because in organizing an illegal but peaceful demonstration calling for a return to democratic leadership in that country, she acted purely out of concern for the people of that country.

(B) Janice's protest against a law that forbade labor strikes was motivated solely by a desire to help local mine workers obtain fair wages. But her conscience did not require her to protest this law, so Janice did not perform an act of justified civil disobedience.

(C) In organizing an illegal protest against the practice in her country of having prison inmates work eighteen hours per day, Georgette performed an act of justified civil disobedience: she acted out of concern for her fellow inmates rather than out of concern for herself.

(D) Maria's deliberate violation of a law requiring prepublication government approval of all printed materials was an act of justified civil disobedience: though her interest as an owner of a publishing company would be served by repeal of the law, she violated the law because her conscience required doing so on behalf of all publishers.

(E) In organizing a parade of motorcyclists riding without helmets through the capital city, Louise's act was not one of justified civil disobedience: she was willfully challenging a specific law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, but her conscience did not require her to organize the parade.

HongHu · Answer

Principle I: Civil disobedience cann't be justified if it is done for self and not out of a concern for others. (Can it be justified if it is done out of others? Don't know. But if it is justified, it mustn't be for oneself.)

Principle II: Civil disobedience is justified if it is required by one's conscience. (Is it not justified if it is not required by conscience? Don't know. But if it is not justified, it must mean that it is not required by conscience.)


(A) Keishaâ€™s protest against what she perceived to be a brutal and repressive dictatorship in another country was an act of justified civil disobedience, because in organizing an illegal but peaceful demonstration calling for a return to democratic leadership in that country, she acted purely out of concern for the people of that country.
K acted out of concern for people. Therefore it is justified.
Not comforming to principle I. (In I we say if she acted out of concern for other people her action may or may not be justified, we don't know.)

(B) Janiceâ€™s protest against a law that forbade labor strikes was motivated solely by a desire to help local mine workers obtain fair wages. But her conscience did not require her to protest this law, so Janice didnâ€™t perform an act of justified civil disobedience.
J's action was out of concern for others. J's action is not required by her conscious. Therefore it is not justified.
Not comforming to princeple I and II. We don't know if it is justifiable according to both I and II.

(C) In organizing an illegal protest against the practice in her country of having prison inmates work eighteen hours per day, Georgette performed an act of justified civil disobedience: though she acted out of concern for her fellow inmates rather than out of concern for herself.
G acted out of concern for others. Therefore G's action is justifiable.
Not conforming to Principle I. We don't know if it is justifiable.

(D) Mariaâ€™s deliberate violation of a law requiring prepublication government approval of all printed materials was an act of justified civil disobedience: though her interest as an owner of a publishing company would be served by repeal of the law, she violated the law because her conscience required doing so on behalf of all publishers.
M's action was required by her conscience. Therefore her action was justifiable.
Comforming to principle II.

(E) In organizing a parade of motorcyclists riding without helmets through the capital city, Louiseâ€™s act was not one of justified civil disobedience: she was willfully challenging a specific law requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets, but her conscience did not require her to organize the parade.
L's action was not required by her conscience. Therefore her action was justified.
Not comforming to Principle II. We don't know if it is justified.

(D)

ncp · Answer

Good CR!

To conform to the argument, the anwer must establish that

1. A specific law was broken.
2. It was broken to bring about legal reform
3. Done not solely based on self-interest.
4. Required by one's conscience to do so.

The key to cracking this CR is to understand the following portion of the argument.

 willfully breaking a specific law in order to bring about legal reform 

IMHO, this indicates that a specific law must be broken to bring about legal reform of the law that is broken(in order to most closely conform to the argument).

Only D and E meet this criterion. E does not meet criterion no.4. So, I will stick my neck out and say D.

buckkitty · Answer

are you refuting B solely because it does not conform to:

 willfully breaking a specific law in order to bring about legal reform 
??

I saw the key to the question being the If x then y logic. 

From the stem we only know:
If acting in self interest and not out of concern for others, then not justified
But,
If conscience requires it, then justified.

So, for instance we cannot deduce that:
If conscience does NOT require it, then NOT justified

And so onâ€¦

ncp · Answer

I ruled out B primarily because, I dont think Janice's act can be classified as civil disobedience. B only says that Janice protested. We cannot be sure that she broke any laws.

I understand that the statement made in B is true. But the domain of the argument is restricted to civil disobedience. 

For example, lets say 'If you write the GMAT, to get a score of 800, you need to get a raw score of 51 in Q and 51 in V'.

Lets examine another statement that says X did not write the GMAT. Does this mean he didn't get an 800. Of course, yes. But does this conform to the previous statement. No.

nervousgmat · Answer

I choose D.

(A) Because Keisha acted purely out of concern for the people of other country, this sentence contradicts the definition of civil disobedience. 
(B) Desire to help local mine workers obtain fair wages contradicts the definition of civil disobedience
(C) Georgette acted out of concern for her fellow inmates rather than out of concern for herself - same ias A and B
 (D) An example of civil disobedience 
(E) Louiseâ€™s act was not one of justified civil disobedience.

YangYichen · Answer

i see another explanation on LSAT forum by a LSAT geek hope it helps:
if done out of self-interest alone ---> not justified 
if required by one's conscience ---> justified 
We're looking for an example that conforms to one or both of these statements, and we can expect the wrong answers to try to tempt us with negated or reversed logic (as opposed to reversed and negated logic, a.k.a., the contrapositive, which would be valid). 
(D) is correct. Maria's conscience required her to violate the law, therefore her civil disobedience was justified. This directly conforms to the second statement. Further, although her own interest would be served by a repeal of the law in question, we're also told that she was acting "on behalf of all publishers," so we know that she wasn't acting out of self-interest alone.
(A) is negated logic. We know that pure self-interest means civil disobedience is unjustified, but that doesn't mean that acting purely out of concern for others makes it justified. 
(B) is negated logic. We know that if one's conscience requires it, civil disobedience is justified, but we cannot infer that if one's conscience doesn't require it, the act is unjustified. 
(C) is negated in exactly the same way as (A). 
(E) is negated in exactly the same way as (B).

Thekingmaker · Answer

Wholly molly is understanding the passage to the last word and pointing out whether all of these are satified or not it was war between B and D for me i eliminated B because it sisn't commit anything , however was acted by the conciosness by the for the people hence IMO D

VerbalBot · Answer

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If an act of civil disobedience—willfully breaking a specific law in

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