medium · LSAT Reading Comprehension
Defenders of judicial precedent point to the practice of 'distinguishing cases,' by which a court declines to follow an earlier ruling by identifying factual differences in the case before it, as a built-in corrective that lets the law adapt without formally overturning past decisions. Yet whatever its theoretical appeal, the practice tends to breed elaborately tangled chains of reasoning, as courts strain to draw ever-finer distinctions; the very clarity and predictability that precedent is supposed to secure are thereby eroded.
The passage expresses which one of the following reservations about the practice of distinguishing cases?
- By prompting courts to spin out increasingly intricate distinctions, it undercuts the legal clarity precedent is meant to deliver
- It lies entirely beyond the reach of ordinary trial courts and can be exercised only by the higher appellate tribunals above them
- It cannot take legal effect at all unless the legislature first chooses to enact some specific statute expressly supporting it
- It is invoked so seldom in actual practice that it does almost nothing to remedy the deeply entrenched historical injustices
- It lets judges overturn long-settled law on a whim, thereby destabilizing the predictability of the entire legal system itself
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