Reading comp PrepTest 154 · Section 3 · Question 27

Passage

Questions 21-27  .       In the absence of international statutes prohibiting  . nations from causing each other environmental damage,  . scholars Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage SummaryTopic: Legal Studies

Paragraph 1
  • Paragraph note
    • Two principles that make up a norm are introduced
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Absence of law, international environmental law relies on "customary law", i.e., norms
    • Principle 1 - Transboundary harm - Don't do anything that leaves your borders
    • Principle 2 - Precautionary principle - Don't put other nations at significant risk of harm
Paragraph 2
  • Paragraph note
    • A question is implied
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Question - Do these principles amount to norms for court cases?
    • Normal rule - They do only if countries actually practice them instead of just saying them (Say vs. Do)
    • Current situation - Countries break the principles
Paragraph 3
  • Paragraph note
    • More of the Say vs. Do situation is discussed
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Countries - Repeat principles, criticize others based on them, break them
    • Scholars - Evaluate countries based on what they say
    • Author - These "norms" aren't really norms - they're an "ideological system"
Paragraph 4
  • Paragraph note
    • Implications of the Author's conclusion; Author makes a recommendation
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Focusing on norms as law/courts is misguided
    • Focus instead on treaties/negotiations - use principle to make good agreements
Main Point:
Rather than focusing on environmental principles as norms to guide court cases, scholars interested in making progress on the environment should focus on them as a means of directing treaties and agreements.

Key Lines:
Lines 8-9 - The principles being debated are introduced
Lines 21-24 - The criterion for determining whether a principle is a norm is established
Lines 27-28 - The Author shows the principles in question don't meet that criterion
Line 43-46 - The Author classifies the principles
Lines 54-59 - The Author makes a recommendation

Meta-Structure:

Question/Answer - The Author asks whether the principles amount to actual norms for international law, and she determines they don't (Paragraphs 2 and 3).

Criterion/Classification - The Author establishes the criterion for classifying something as a norm, and she determines that the principles in question aren't norms but rather ideological systems (Line 44).

Problem/Solution - The Author presents international environmental problems to be addressed, and she recommends that those focused on these problems approach them by using principles to guide international agreements.

Last Thoughts:
There's an interesting relationship between what scholars are currently doing and what the Author recommends that they do. Currently, the scholars are focusing on two environmental principles as a means of solving international environmental issues. That's what the Author recommends! However, the scholars currently are appealing to these principles as a basis for international law that can be applied by courts, while the Author says that these principles should instead be used as the basis for international agreements.

So, in short, the Author agrees with the principles that the scholars are using, but she disagrees on how they're using them. There's not a complete disconnect between the two viewpoints, so that might come up in the answers.

Question prompt

The author states that Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: A

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Legal

Answer choices

  1. A
    the extent to which Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A matches the stem
    Correct. Question Type:
    Must Be True

    Strategy Overview:
    Find the phrase in question and figure out what it applies to

    Answer Anticipation/Relevant Lines:
    Note something interesting about this question—if you read the context for the statement in the previous question, you would have read the statement including this phrase. That's not a happy accident—RC tends to have questions that reflect the same key portions of the passage!

    With that noted, we can see that the Author brings up a lack of empirical studies in Line 29. There, it says that despite this dearth of studies, experience proves that harmful pollutants constantly cross international borders and nations don't try to fix that. Let's find an answer reflecting that.

    Answer Explanation:
    (Lines 28-30) This answer is more abstract than our anticipated one. However, pollutants crossing borders with only rare attempts to mitigate it would show that nations don't conform to the principles in question, and that was the intent of this paragraph, so this is the correct answer.

    Key Takeaway:
    While it can feel as if RC questions ask about any detail from the passage, that's only true to a certain extent. They can, but they tend to ask about the same types of details. That means two things.

    First, if you can note the pattern to this, you can highlight the right information as you read through a passage.

    And second, the questions in one passage will tend to ask about the same things, or address the same concepts in the answer choices. Thus, you should be thinking about the answers you select as all being a part of the same meta-answer. That sounds weird, but we just mean that they should all make sense in the context of each other—if you're about to pick an answer that doesn't line up with the others, then it's probably wrong!
  2. B
    the proportion of international Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 58-59) The Author doesn't bring up treaties and negotiations until much later in the passage.
  3. C
    the relative success rates Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    Incorrect. The passage doesn't actually discuss any court cases or their success rate, so this answer is out of scope.
  4. D
    the extent to which Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 58-59) The question in the second paragraph is whether countries act in accord with principles, not treaties.
  5. E
    the extent to which Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    Incorrect. (Lines 24-28) It's the Author that disagrees with the Scholars over whether certain principles count as norms—it's not Scholars disagreeing with each other on it!

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A Credited 43%
  2. B 15%
  3. C 13%
  4. D 22%
  5. E 7%

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