Q3

[floraliuthu]

Can someone help me with this question? I chose (E) because of the information in line 28-30. I don't understand what 'multiple meanings' mean in option (A). Thank you!

[ohthatpatrick]

Since the question stem gives us some keywords, our first job is to find that section of the passage ("legal practitioners ... their approach to interpreting law")

"Practitioners" appears in line 28, but that's about "law-and-literature practitioners", whereas this question stem is asking about legal practitioners.

Line 40 locks in with "approach to interpreting law" = "legal interpretation aims"

The approach is to discover a single meaning.

Posner contrasts this with literary approaches that "explore richness and variety of meaning in texts".

(A) this locks in with lines 38-41. "Eschews" means "to NOT do something .. to avoid something". Legal interpretation aims to discover a single meaning, so legal interpretation AVOIDS discovering multiple meanings.

(E) I can't find any line reference that talks about de-emphasizing the social relevance of the legal tradition.

[floraliuthu]

Thanks!

[michellemyxu]

Is (B) wrong because we can't be sure that literary techniques such as deconstruction are being employed to interpret law? I chose (B) because I thought, yes, Posner surely admits that the law-and-literature thing is happening, and in this movement, literary approaches are being applied to interpreting law. Am I making too many assumptions here?

[ohthatpatrick]

Yeah, (B) is an answer that describes what law-and-literature people do.

But remember, they are TEACHERS. They are teaching the law, instructing students.

This question stem is asking us about "legal practitioners", which would mean LAWYERS and JUDGES out there lawyering and judging.

We cannot assume that the popularity of law-and-literature as an academic trend has already bled into actual lawyers using the techniques of law-and-literature.

In fact, Posner's main problem with law-and-literature is this very technique. He's saying, in 36-45, that what ACTUAL lawyers do is very different from what literary criticism does.