easy · LSAT Reading Comprehension
A passage examines 'distinguishing cases'—the practice by which a court avoids an inconvenient precedent by declaring that the matter before it differs in some relevant detail from the earlier one. The passage observes that although this device lets courts sidestep precedents without formally overruling them, it tends to spawn ever finer and more strained distinctions, producing tangled reasoning that erodes the very predictability that following precedent is supposed to secure.
Which one of the following best describes the passage's primary criticism of distinguishing cases as a means of correcting precedent?
- It is inherently slanted toward preserving discriminatory doctrines in force rather than working to dismantle them.
- Courts seldom resort to it because doing so first demands the explicit approval of some higher reviewing tribunal.
- It breeds tangled, hairsplitting reasoning that undercuts the very predictability the law is meant to furnish.
- It bars legislatures from enacting the very statutes that might otherwise clarify how the courts are to read the law.
- It is by a wide margin the single greatest obstacle to undertaking any genuine reform of an unjust legal system.
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