medium · LSAT Reading Comprehension
A passage on legal precedent grants that adherence to precedent serves important values, chiefly the stability and predictability of the law, but it argues that this same adherence carries a serious cost: by binding courts to earlier rulings, precedent can perpetuate injustices long after they are recognized as such. A law professor responds: 'The doctrine of precedent is like an anchor for a ship; it provides the stability needed to keep the legal system from drifting aimlessly. Removing it would produce total judicial chaos.'
Based on the passage, its author would most likely respond to the law professor's analogy by
- rejecting any need at all for stability and endorsing a system driven entirely by case-by-case individual judicial discretion
- insisting that the legal system is far better likened to a living, adapting organism than to a rigid mechanical ship
- agreeing without reservation that judicial precedent is the sole guarantor of predictability for the ordinary private citizen
- granting the value of stability while observing that the same anchor can hold a ship fast against a hazardous reef
- conceding that, absent the doctrine of precedent, the legal system would in fact collapse into total and lasting chaos
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