Saturday, February 21, 2015

Punishment should be based on motive

lsat legal logical-reasoning

The following is one of my favorite LSAT LR question (PT37, S2, Q22)

Political theorist: Many people believe that the punishment of those who commit even the most heinous crimes should be mitigated to some extent if the crime was motivated by a sincere desire to achieve some larger good. Granted, some criminals with admirable motives deserve mitigated punishments. Nevertheless, judges should never mitigate punishment on the basis of motives, since motives are essentially a matter of conjecture and even vicious motives can easily be presented as altruistic.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the political theorist's reasoning?

(A) Laws that prohibit or permit actions solely on the basis of psychological states should not be part of a legal system.

(B) It is better to err on the side of overly severe punishment than to err on th side of overly lenient punishment.

(C) The legal permissibility of actions should depend on the perceivable consequences of those actions

(D) No law that cannot be enforced should be enacted.

(E) A legal system that, if adopted, would have disastrous consequences ought not be adopted.

"Many people" or "Some people" often signals opposing view. In this question, again, the political theorist believe punishment of those who commit crimes with benign motivations should not be mitigated although they deserve mitigated punishment, because the true motive is indiscernible. (A) (C) and (D) are clearly out of scope because this question is not concerned with the permissibility or enforceability of law. I think if (C) was modified to "The punishment of illicit actions should depend on the perceivable consequences of those actions", then (C) would have been correct, although such a claim is overly sufficient.

(E) is the second best option. "A legal system wherein the punishments are allowed to be mitigated on the basis of motives, if adopted, would have disastrous consequences". Such a claim would make (E) comparable to (B).