A law that is not consistently enforced does not serve its purpose. Law without enforcement is not law; it is merely ...
avifApril 8, 2020
Clarifying main points
I got answer B to this question. After going it over a couple of times I do realize that the fact that answer B only says authorization of punishment and not actually talking about punishment itself may be a reason that it isn't the correct answer. Yet answer choice C didn't seem to be the main point when I read the passage. It seemed that the main point that was trying to be made was that the law needed to have enforcement. There was also a point that enforcement needed to be fair. Yet that seems to be an adjunct to the main point that the law needs to be enforced.
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Thanks for the question! So this passage concerns itself primarily with talking about what’s necessary for “rule law” versus just having the promise of law. What is necessary for that? Punishment. But this punishment, as is mentioned later, has to be unbiased, or otherwise it becomes the arbitrary and unjust exercise of power. The main purpose of the argument is really revealed in the first sentence, where we’re told that a law that’s not consistently enforced doesn’t serve its purpose.
(B) is wrong not just because it talks about the authorization of the enforcement of punishments. (B) is wrong because it misses out on the important aspect of enforcing the law by punishing without favor for friends or malice for enemies, stressed in the second half and declared in the first sentence of the passage. Consistent with (B) is unfair enforcement of punishments, but this is exactly what the author is arguing against.
(C), on the other hand, is the main point of the passage because it captures the “unbiased” punishment of prohibited behavior. The main point wasn’t just that the law has to be enforced; it’s that the law has to be consistently enforced. Since this answer has both the enforcement part and the consistency part, (C) is correct.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
sangagul1234ah@gmail.comJanuary 21, 2021
so B is wrong because it is not 100% true or not necessarily true and Main point questions must be true?
Should we be analyzing every answer choice this way?
