Reading Comprehension · Law
PrepTest 115 · Section 3 · Passage 4
Questions 24–28
Before you start
Open PrepTest 115, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 24–28, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces one group's ideal and a growing conflict with another group that wants to protect its property
- P2: cites experts that an existing rule has not kept up with a new technique, and explains why the rule does not clearly apply to it
- P3: presents some experts' simple fix, then raises a series of problems with it (who counts, enforcement, existing exemptions), and ends with the view that even a better rule will not settle the deeper clash
Step 2 · The kid passage
The Long Spoon Problem
At Maple Street School, many kids think of the lunch table as a place where everyone shares. Most lunchtime trading is just swapping chips or chatting. But more and more kids now bring homemade desserts, and the bakers want to keep their treats from being taken without asking.
The lunch monitors say the Dessert Rule, updated last fall to cover cupcakes, has not kept up with Marcus's new trick: the long spoon. The rule forbids grabbing someone's dessert, or a big piece of it, with your hands. Marcus never touches the dessert. He just scoops frosting from across the table. Nobody knows if a scoop counts as a grab, so long-spoon scooping is not clearly against the rule.
Some monitors want to simply add scooping to the list of banned grabs in the current rule. But that raises puzzles. If Marcus scoops frosting onto a plate and five kids dip crackers in it, is each dipper breaking the rule, even though none of them came near the cupcake? Also, there is one lunch aide for two hundred kids, and a scoop takes a second. And the rule already lets members of the Taste Test Team sample anyone's food for their science project, and half the fifth grade is on that team. Even with a smarter rule, most monitors think the deeper fight will go on: the sharers see lunch as everyone's, and the bakers see a treat as belonging to whoever made it.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Balloon Tables
Judge Okafor heard a made-up dispute over park picnic tables. Park rules ban leaving a cooler on a table you are not using. A family began saving tables by tying balloons to them, and nobody knew if balloons counted. One lawyer said, "Easy. Add balloons to the list." Mr. Whitfield tugged his suspenders. "Your Honor, if a friend sits at a balloon table, is she breaking the rule too? There is one ranger and thousands of visitors. And the rules already excuse birthday parties, which fill half the park on weekends." The judge sighed. "Even a smarter rule will not end this. Some folks think a table belongs to whoever is sitting there. Others think it belongs to whoever claimed it first."