December 2002 LSAT Section 4 Question 6

A politician can neither be reelected nor avoid censure by his or her colleagues if that politician is known to be in...

Anna20 on February 9, 2021

Politicians

I diagrammed this as: SC --> not RE or not AC and then elimiated A because I thought that would be incorrect. If you diagram this as an 'and' then I can see how A is correct, but why is this and? Also why would C be incorrect? I diagrammed this as not AC --> SC - why is that wrong? Thank you so much - this question really threw me!

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Victoria on February 9, 2021

Hi @Anna2020,

Happy to help!

A lot of students seem to have an issue with "neither/nor."

"Either/or" means that you can select one of the two e.g. you can have either a hamburger or a hot dog.

"Neither/nor" means that you cannot have either one of the two e.g. you can have neither a hamburger nor a hot dog. This would mean that you cannot have a hamburger AND you cannot have a hot dog.

We know that if a politician is known to be involved in any serious scandals, then they can neither be re-elected nor avoid censure by their colleagues.

Therefore, if a politician is known to be involved in any serious scandals, then they cannot be re-elected AND they cannot avoid censure by their colleagues.

We know that the prominent politicians have been shown to be involved in a serious scandal. Our sufficient condition is met; therefore, we can conclude that the politicians cannot avoid censure by their colleagues.

As for answer choice (C), we know that "unless" introduces a necessary condition. Therefore, our necessary condition is SC.

The second step is to negate the other variable and make it the sufficient condition: Not C becomes C.

C --> SC

This reads, a politician will be censured if they are involved in a serious scandal.

Therefore, this is incorrect because it is simply the reverse of our diagram from above.

Additionally, it is not true based on the information with which we have been provided. We know that if a politician is involved in a serious scandal, then they will be censured by their colleagues; however, this does not mean that a politician will not be censured unless they are involved in a serious scandal.

Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any further questions.