- High courts often repudiated legal precedent
+
No harm done
→
We should ignore the critics objections that abiding by earlier decisions is necessary to prevent chaos
+
Such objections are politically motivated
Mary:
- If the high courts repudiated precent, then they were careful and only did so when precent was outdated
→
Overturning any recent legal ruling diminishes the law
Mary responds to Tom by showing that he fails to consider something critical: that overturning precedent is okay only when it does so to clearly outdated precedent. She thus responds by showing a distinction; Tom's statement blankets all of precedent while Mary says, "not so fast! overturning precedent is not the same for every precedent"
- (A) She never seems to question that some precedent can be overturned successfully. She merely says that there is some precedent that definitely cannot be overturned successfully/should not be overturned at all. We have no basis for supposing (A) so it simply cannot be right.
(B) Mary's argument is not centered around motives and that is exactly what (B) is centered around. In addition, there is absolutely no evidence that Mary "agrees to Tom's evaluation."
(C) This is close, but still off. I guess you could say she does defend a practice: she defends the practice of not haphazardly repudiating new legal precedent. She does cite a bit of evidence saying that this practice has only been resorted to in certain situations. However, this "due deliberation" part is throwing me off. We don't know anything about deliberation. Did the courts deliberate before repudiating outdated legal precedent? We assume they did but Mary never really mentions anything about it. Thus, I am not going to automatically eliminate this one because it is CLOSE but I am definitely going to look for better answers.
(D) No actually she points out that Tom's conclusion is based on an incomplete set of facts and actually offers additional evidence. Tom never contradicts himself and this is what (D) is implying.
(E) This is basically perfect. She introduces the distinction between two kinds of situations: overturning new precedent and overturning old precedent. She also argues for a difference (that overturning new precedent shouldn't happen) for reasons that Tom fails to take into account. Remember that Tom offers basically a blanket statement that overturning all precedent is okay but Mary says, "nope! we must make a distinction between new and outdated precedent!"
(E) is much more direct and to the point than (C) and so it seems to more accurately represent the role of Mary's argument. The part about "deliberation" is just too big of a jump.
