Reading Comprehension · Law (comparative: two passages)
PrepTest 135 · Section 3 · Passage 3
Questions 14–19
Before you start
Open PrepTest 135, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 14–19, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- Passage A, P1: introduces a puzzle in one rule system (two permitted acts become forbidden when joined) and asks why
- Passage A, P2: explains the practical cost of having no good theory
- Passage A, P3: offers the author's own theory and backs it with an example
- Passage B, P1: shows how a different rule system needed no special category, because it starts from a different first question
- Passage B, P2: sums up that system's test, admits one factor matters a little, and states the conditions under which the act was protected
Step 2 · The kid passage
Two Notes About Ticket Flipping
Note A, by Nadia: At our school, the ban on ticket flipping is the oddest rule on the list. Nobody can say why it exists. Buying a ticket to the spring play is fine. Selling a thing you own to a friend is fine. Yet buy a stack of play tickets and sell them again at a markup, and you are off to the office. Why do two fine moves become a bad one when you glue them together? With no answer, the written rule got huge: it bans 'handing a ticket to anyone, ever,' which would even catch a kid giving one to Grandpa. So teachers quietly ignore most of it. Here is my answer. A flip has three corners, not two. The flipper earns his profit by leaning on somebody else's power: the drama club, which chose the low price and the small number of seats. The buyer pays extra because of the club's choices. The flipper is spending the club's allowance. That is why flipping is wrong. Note B, by Priya: Sunny Pines Camp never had a flipping rule, and it never needed one. Counselors judge any action by first asking, 'Did it hurt someone?' They do not start by checking whether each piece is allowed. They assumed (fairly, I think) that a camper who loses a seat he was waiting for is hurt. So a resale counted as not okay from the start, and the reseller had to prove a good reason. Charging only the printed price did not, alone, make a resale okay. Price mattered a little: resales above the printed price got even less patience. But even at the printed price, passing a ticket along was allowed only for a fair reason that helped something the head counselor cared about, like getting a performer's family into the front row.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Borrowed Bulldozer
Mr. Whitfield snapped his suspenders. "Your Honor, renting out a bulldozer is legal. Parking on a vacant lot is legal. Yet the town says my client broke the law by doing both at once. Nobody has ever explained why!" Judge Okafor raised a finger. "Counselor, try this. Your client did not profit from his own bulldozer. He profited because the town had closed the lot to everyone else, so builders had to pay him. He leaned on the town's power, not his own." Mr. Whitfield paused. "So it is a three-sided deal." "Exactly," said the judge. "In my grandmother's village, they skipped the puzzle. They just asked who got hurt, and then made the parker prove a good reason." Mr. Whitfield sat down slowly.