Hi Doreen!
First, the blog posting can be found here:
http://www.atlaslsat.com/blog/index.php ... the-field/I agree with you that we could think about the scale in terms of less clarity of law v. greater clarity of law. There also seems to be an implied dichotomy between a liberal and a conservative reading of the rights as they exist now.
With question 22, they are asking us to determine which statement is *explicitly* made in the passage as a consequence of the constitutional rights. In this case (C) is our answer and is explicitly justified by lines 6 through 8, which say that such recognition protected rights already recognized by law. The other answer choices are incorrect because they do not relate to a result of this constitutionalization or they do not relate to an intended consequence:
(A) The definition of the kind of property rights was neither the explicit intent nor a direct result.
(B) This is unsupported and goes against parts of the passage that indicate that provincial courts were still quite relevant.
(D) This is simply not supported by the passage. There were specific groups mentioned, but there is no reason to believe that there was any clarification.
(E) Local government isn't even mentioned in the part of the passage discussing the intended consequences of this constitutionalization (the first paragraph).
For question 25, we need to return to the text - specifically the lines they refer us to. They tell us that the ruling was excessively conservation - now we need some sort of assumption or additional premise that makes this assertion about the court's decision more plausible.
(A) could be quite helpful - it suggests that even if the court only saw use as being traditionally protected, that the court still could have found that many modern property rights were implicated in that "use" as had other courts. This is helpful on two counts - because of "use" and because it tells us that other courts came to more liberal holdings. This is also the correct answer.
(B) is irrelevant to whether the decision was a strict conservative one or not.
(C) is the opposite of (A) and actually lends less credence to the author's assertion.
(D) is largely irrelevant - it would require an assumption of its own to be relevant.
(E) is also irrelevant.
Finally, let's take a look at 26. Here, we need to go back to that 1984 case - incidentally the same case question #25 asked about. A few things jump out at me right away about that case. First, the author found it excessively conservative so did not approve of its holding. Second, it did not expand aboriginal rights. Looking at this only, let's consider the answer choices:
(A) is unsupported - that is not what the constitutional reforms were about.
(B) is unsupported - the author gives us no reason to believe the court overstepped its authority.
(C) is unsupported - the court was concerned about what rights they had at that time - occupation would not prove the right to sell, as the aboriginal party to the suit wanted.
(D) is completely unsupported.
(E) must be our answer by default. This looks about right too - the author clearly has serious qualms about the decision even if he recognizes it asked most of the right questions.
I hope this helps. Does this, in particular, clarify your question about # 26? Please let me know what else is confusing you here
