June 2010 LSAT Section 3 Question 25

The law of the city of Weston regarding contributions to mayoral campaigns is as follows: all contributions to these...

schicago on August 15, 2020

The conditional in the stimulus

I am very confused why C is correct because we only know one type of thing that should be registered. How do we conclude that it is the only one? Isn't being registered the necessary part?

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shunhe on August 17, 2020

Hi @schicago,

Thanks for the question! Yes, this one is kind of unnecessarily sneaky in my opinion. So normally, you’re right in that “all contributions to these campaigns in excess of $100 made by nonresidents of Weston who are not former residents of Weston must be registered with the city council” would have “registered with the city council” in the necessary condition. But here’s the thing: we’re also told that this is “the law” when it comes to contributions to mayoral campaigns, and it is “as follows”: in other words, what follows is all of the law in that city about mayoral campaigns. So when it comes to campaign contributions for mayoral campaigns, nothing else needs to be registered; in other words, only the contributions described in the passage must be registered with the city council. And so this first statement is actually a biconditional (or “if and only if”), and from there, we can get to (C).

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.