medium · LSAT Reading Comprehension
The doctrine of judicial precedent serves genuinely important values: it lends the law predictability, treats like cases alike, and constrains the discretion of individual judges. Yet the doctrine also entrenches mistaken rulings. In theory, courts can correct an erroneous precedent by overruling it or by 'distinguishing' the case at hand, and legislatures can rewrite the underlying rule. In practice, however, courts overrule sparingly for fear of unsettling expectations, distinguishing breeds convoluted reasoning that muddies the law, and legislative repair stalls for want of political attention. The avenues for correction exist, but they rarely deliver.
Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?
- Although precedent secures valuable stability, the remedies it offers for its own mistakes tend to fail when actually relied upon.
- Predictability is by a wide margin the single most important quality a legal system can possess, outweighing every other concern.
- The doctrine of judicial precedent is an obsolete and unsalvageable institution that inevitably breeds injustice and should be scrapped.
- Legislatures are, on the whole, markedly better suited than courts to repairing the very legal errors that precedent leaves behind.
- Courts that distinguish cases instead of overruling them do so chiefly to escape the political backlash that legislative reform invites.
Sign up free to see the explanation and track your rank →
More LSAT Reading Comprehension practice
- The author's use of the word "demonstrates" most strongly suggests that the author's attit
- Which one of the following most accurately describes the author's attitude toward true cri
- Which one of the following most accurately describes the author's attitude toward urban mi
- Which one of the following most accurately describes the author's attitude toward the pres
- Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?
- Which one of the following most accurately describes the primary purpose of the second par
- Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main point of the passage?
- Which one of the following most accurately describes the primary function of the second pa