I am a little shaken off by the word "advantages"
in answer choice A.
I get that Bentham's approach was revolutionary and helped shaping the modern laws. But calling them as "advantages" seems to be a stretch.
Please help!
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Re: Q27
Unfortunately, some question tasks on LSAT require us to be incredibly picky about wording, whereas other tasks simply require us to find the best answer, so you may have to live with wording that doesn't quite sound perfect.
I do think that "revolutionary" and "underlies the modern approach" definitely seemed like positive ideas in the context of this passage, so in the sense that "advantages" is a synonym for "positive things", I can live with that.
We might also point to Bentham's own line that if you exclude potentially sketchy evidence such as hearsay, you "prefer ignorance to knowledge". (line 39) So we definitely know that with the nonexclusion principle, one advantage is that the jury gets to hear a lot more evidence than it would otherwise (and hopefully weighs the character/trustworthiness of the evidence properly -- a limitation).
If I were writing my own answer to this question, I would have said something like, "Describing the problematic state of evidentiary law pre-Bentham and describing Bentham's solution to that problem".
(B) looks close, but "legal system" isn't a good match for "evidentiary law", and this answer ONLY addresses the problem, not Bentham's solution.
(C) This is too focused on the present, and the author never emphasizes the "apparent inadequacies" of the current evidence law.
(D) This does happen at a certain point, but it's way too narrow to encompass the whole passage.
(E) Bentham's proposal was NOT dismissed, so this is just contradicted.
(A) is far from perfect, but it's certainly accurate to call Bentham's solution a legal reform, and by referencing the "advantages and limitations", we get a broad way of referring to how Bentham's reform moves us out of the "morass" (21), the "bizarre" (6), the "extreme irrationality" (11) of the old way, although it still leaves us with tough questions to answer, such as where to draw the line between admissible and inadmissible types of evidence.
Hope this helps.
I do think that "revolutionary" and "underlies the modern approach" definitely seemed like positive ideas in the context of this passage, so in the sense that "advantages" is a synonym for "positive things", I can live with that.
We might also point to Bentham's own line that if you exclude potentially sketchy evidence such as hearsay, you "prefer ignorance to knowledge". (line 39) So we definitely know that with the nonexclusion principle, one advantage is that the jury gets to hear a lot more evidence than it would otherwise (and hopefully weighs the character/trustworthiness of the evidence properly -- a limitation).
If I were writing my own answer to this question, I would have said something like, "Describing the problematic state of evidentiary law pre-Bentham and describing Bentham's solution to that problem".
(B) looks close, but "legal system" isn't a good match for "evidentiary law", and this answer ONLY addresses the problem, not Bentham's solution.
(C) This is too focused on the present, and the author never emphasizes the "apparent inadequacies" of the current evidence law.
(D) This does happen at a certain point, but it's way too narrow to encompass the whole passage.
(E) Bentham's proposal was NOT dismissed, so this is just contradicted.
(A) is far from perfect, but it's certainly accurate to call Bentham's solution a legal reform, and by referencing the "advantages and limitations", we get a broad way of referring to how Bentham's reform moves us out of the "morass" (21), the "bizarre" (6), the "extreme irrationality" (11) of the old way, although it still leaves us with tough questions to answer, such as where to draw the line between admissible and inadmissible types of evidence.
Hope this helps.
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