How to Identify and Solve Must Be True Questions on the LSAT

If a question asks you to find a conclusion supported by the given passage, you’re likely reading a Must Be True question.

But that’s not all. When reading the question, look for wording like this:

• "Which of the following must be true?"
• "Which of the following conclusions follows the statement above logically?"
• "Which of the following can be inferred from the passage above?"
• "The statements above, if true, most strongly support which of the following?"
• "Which of the following can be properly concluded from the above statements?"

Not all Must Be True questions follow this structure, but many do.

To solve Must Be True questions effectively, begin by carefully reading and analyzing the information in the stimulus, ensuring you understand all the facts presented. 

Then, diagram the statements to clarify their logical connections if the passage includes multiple relationships. 

Next, make valid inferences by applying logical rules such as syllogism (if A → B and B → C, then A → C), the transitive property, and contrapositive reasoning to draw conclusions that must follow from the given information. Then, use the process of elimination. 

Remember that in Must Be True questions, four answer choices can sometimes be wrong, while one must never be wrong. 

Evaluate each option carefully, checking if it is ALWAYS true based solely on the passage. You must stay within the scope of the given information. Don’t use outside knowledge, even if the stimulus contradicts real-world facts.

10 Sample LSAT "Must Be True" Questions With Answer Explanations

Here are ten Must Be True questions you might see on the test and how to answer them effectively.

Sample Question #1

“Proponents of the electric car maintain that when the technical problems associated with its battery design are solved, such cars will be widely used and, because they are emission-free, will result in an abatement of the environmental degradation caused by auto emissions. But unless we dam more rivers, the electricity to charge these batteries will come from nuclear or coal-fired power plants. Each of these three power sources produces considerable environmental damage. Thus, the electric car _______.”

Which one of the following most logically completes the argument?

(A) will have worse environmental consequences than its proponents may believe

(B) will probably remain less popular than other types of cars

(C) requires that purely technical problems be solved before it can succeed

(D) will increase the total level of emissions rather than reduce it

(E) will not produce a net reduction in environmental degradation

Answer:

• A. CORRECT. This accurately reflects the argument’s flaw. The proponents ignore the pollution created in generating electricity, meaning the overall environmental impact may be greater than expected.
• B. This misses the point. The author never discusses what factors influence a car’s popularity.
• C. The argument doesn’t rule out the possibility that electric cars could still be preferable to gas-powered ones. Even with pollution from electricity generation, they might still pollute less overall.
• D. This goes beyond the argument. The author establishes that pollution exists, not that electric cars create more pollution than gas cars. Plus, the reference to “emissions” may not apply to all power sources, such as nuclear energy.
• E. Similar to D, this overreaches. The argument supports the idea that pollution will occur, but not necessarily that it will exceed current levels."

Sample Question #2

“Advertisers have learned that people are more easily encouraged to develop positive attitudes about things toward which they originally have neutral or even negative attitudes if those things are linked, with pictorial help rather than exclusively through prose, to things about which they already have positive attitudes. Therefore, advertisers are likely to _______.”

Which one of the following most logically completes the argument?

(A) use little if any written prose in their advertisements

(B) try to encourage people to develop positive attitudes about products that can be better represented pictorially than in prose

(C) place their advertisements on television rather than in magazines

(D) highlight the desirable features of the advertised product by contrasting them pictorially with undesirable features of a competing product

(E) create advertisements containing pictures of things most members of the target audience like

Answer:

• A. This goes too far. While images are important for creating associations, that doesn’t mean text has no value.
• B. This misinterprets the stimulus. The ad strategy wasn't about showing the product itself in pictures, but about using images to associate the product with things people already like.
• C. Irrelevant. The presence of pictures in magazines doesn’t address the reasoning in the argument.
• D. Off-base. The stimulus didn’t discuss competing products—it focused on linking a product to something appealing to consumers.
• E. CORRECT. This matches the argument’s point: to make people like a product, visually connect it with things they already enjoy.

Sample Question #3

“Philosopher: Nations are not literally persons; they have no thoughts or feelings, and, literally speaking, they perform no actions. Thus they have no moral rights or responsibilities. But no nation can survive unless many of its citizens attribute such rights and responsibilities to it, for nothing else could prompt people to make the sacrifices national citizenship demands. Obviously, then, a nation _______.”

Which one of the following most logically completes the philosopher’s argument?

(A) cannot continue to exist unless something other than the false belief that the nation has moral rights motivates its citizens to make sacrifices

(B) cannot survive unless many of its citizens have some beliefs that are literally false

(C) can never be a target of moral praise or blame

(D) is not worth the sacrifices that its citizens make on its behalf

(E) should always be thought of in metaphorical rather than literal terms

Answer:

• A. The argument states that only the false belief in nations' moral rights and responsibilities can motivate citizens to make sacrifices. The phrase "nothing else" refers specifically to this belief.
• B. CORRECT. This is the main conclusion of the argument: although it is false that nations possess moral rights and responsibilities, their survival depends on citizens believing they do.
• C. The philosopher never addresses whether nations can be targets of moral blame or praise. Even if a nation lacks moral responsibilities, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of assigning blame.
• D. The argument does not discuss which sacrifices are worthwhile; this idea is never introduced.
• E. The author doesn’t reject the idea of treating nations as if they were people. For instance, saying “The U.S. and China reached a trade deal” anthropomorphizes nations for clarity, and the author may accept this as a useful simplification.

Sample Question #4

“For decades, there has been a deep rift between poetry and fiction in the United States, especially in academic settings; graduate writing programs in universities, for example, train students as poets or as writers of fiction, but almost never as both. Both poets and writers of fiction have tended to support this separation, in large part because the current conventional wisdom holds that poetry should be elliptical and lyrical, reflecting inner states and processes of thought or feeling, whereas character and narrative events are the stock-in-trade of fiction. 

Certainly it is true that poetry and fiction are distinct genres, but why have specialized education and literary territoriality resulted from this distinction? The answer lies perhaps in a widespread attitude in U.S. culture, which often casts a suspicious eye on the generalist. Those with knowledge and expertise in multiple areas risk charges of dilettantism, as if ability in one field is diluted or compromised by accomplishment in another. 

Fortunately, there are signs that the bias against writers who cross generic boundaries is diminishing; several recent writers are known and respected for their work in both genres. One important example of this trend is Rita Dove, an African American writer highly acclaimed for both her poetry and her fiction. A few years ago, speaking at a conference entitled “Poets Who Write Fiction,” Dove expressed gentle incredulity about the habit of segregating the genres. She had grown up reading and loving both fiction and poetry, she said, unaware of any purported danger lurking in attempts to mix the two. She also studied for some time in Germany, where, she observes, “Poets write plays, novelists compose libretti, playwrights write novels—they would not understand our restrictiveness.”

It makes little sense, Dove believes, to persist in the restrictive approach to poetry and fiction prevalent in the U.S., because each genre shares in the nature of the other. Indeed, her poetry offers example after example of what can only be properly regarded as lyric narrative. Her use of language in these poems is undeniably lyrical—that is, it evokes emotion and inner states without requiring the reader to organize ideas or events in a particular linear structure. Yet this lyric expression simultaneously presents the elements of a plot in such a way that the reader is led repeatedly to take account of clusters of narrative details within the lyric flow. Thus while the language is lyrical, it often comes to constitute, cumulatively, a work of narrative fiction. Similarly, many passages in her fiction, though undeniably prose, achieve the status of lyric narrative through the use of poetic rhythms and elliptical expression. In short, Dove bridges the gap between poetry and fiction not only by writing in both genres, but also by fusing the two genres within individual works.”

It can be inferred from the passage that the author would be most likely to believe which one of the following?

(A) Each of Dove’s works can be classified as either primarily poetry or primarily fiction, even though it may contain elements of both.

(B) The aesthetic value of lyric narrative resides in its representation of a sequence of events, rather than in its ability to evoke inner states.

(C) The way in which Dove blends genres in her writing is without precedent in U.S. writing.

(D) Narrative that uses lyrical language is generally aesthetically superior to pure lyric poetry.

(E) Writers who successfully cross the generic boundary between poetry and fiction often try their hand at genres such as drama as well.

Answer:

• A. CORRECT. The passage supports this. It describes Dove’s poetry and fiction as distinct forms. Her poetry is referred to specifically in line 40, and her fiction is clearly labeled “prose” in lines 51–52. There’s no suggestion that Dove’s works can’t be classified as either poetry or fiction.
• B. Incorrect. The passage doesn’t address aesthetic value at all. This is a classic distractor that introduces an unrelated concept, often associated with poetry, to mislead you.
• C. Incorrect. While the passage does mention that Dove is one example among many who cross genre boundaries (lines 21–25), this doesn’t support the specific claim in the answer choice.
• D. Incorrect. Like B, this answer introduces the idea of aesthetic value, which the passage never discusses.
• E. Incorrect. The passage mentions that some German authors move between genres like poetry, plays, and novels, but it doesn’t indicate how frequently this occurs or whether they blur boundaries between poetry and fiction specifically.

Sample Question #5

“The following two passages discuss recent scientific research on music. They are adapted from two different papers presented at a scholarly conference. ‍

Passage A 

Did music and human language originate separately or together? Both systems use intonation and rhythm to communicate emotions. Both can be produced vocally or with tools, and people can produce both music and language silently to themselves. 

Brain imaging studies suggest that music and language are part of one large, vastly complicated, neurological system for processing sound. In fact, fewer differences than similarities exist between the neurological processing of the two. One could think of the two activities as different radio programs that can be broadcast over the same hardware. One noteworthy difference, though, is that, generally speaking, people are better at language than music. In music, anyone can listen easily enough, but most people do not perform well, and in many cultures composition is left to specialists. In language, by contrast, nearly everyone actively performs and composes. 

Given their shared neurological basis, it appears that music and language evolved together as brain size increased over the course of hominid evolution. But the primacy of language over music that we can observe today suggests that language, not music, was the primary function natural selection operated on. Music, it would seem, had little adaptive value of its own, and most likely developed on the coattails of language. 

Passage B 

Darwin claimed that since “neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least [practical] use to man . . . they must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.” I suggest that the enjoyment of and the capacity to produce musical notes are faculties of indispensable use to mothers and their infants and that it is in the emotional bonds created by the interaction of mother and child that we can discover the evolutionary origins of human music. 

Even excluding lullabies, which parents sing to infants, human mothers and infants under six months of age engage in ritualized, sequential behaviors, involving vocal, facial, and bodily interactions. Using face-to-face mother-infant interactions filmed at 24 frames per second, researchers have shown that mothers and infants jointly construct mutually improvised interactions in which each partner tracks the actions of the other. Such episodes last from one-half second to three seconds and are composed of musical elements— variations in pitch, rhythm, timbre, volume, and tempo. 

What evolutionary advantage would such behavior have? In the course of hominid evolution, brain size increased rapidly. Contemporaneously, the increase in bipedality caused the birth canal to narrow. This resulted in hominid infants being born ever-more prematurely, leaving them much more helpless at birth.

This helplessness necessitated longer, better maternal care. Under such conditions, the emotional bonds created in the premusical mother-infant interactions we observe in Homo sapiens today—behavior whose neurological basis essentially constitutes the capacity to make and enjoy music—would have conferred considerable evolutionary advantage.”

‍

It can be inferred that the authors of the two passages would be most likely to disagree over whether _____

(A) the increase in hominid brain size necessitated earlier births 

(B) fewer differences than similarities exist between the neurological processing of music and human language 

(C) brain size increased rapidly over the course of human evolution 

(D) the capacity to produce music has great adaptive value to humans 

(E) mother-infant bonding involves temporally patterned vocal interactions

Answer:

• A. Passage A does mention larger brains, but it doesn’t suggest what this development might have required.
• B. Although Passage A references language (lines 8–10), Passage B does not, so we can’t determine whether the authors agree or disagree on this point.
• C. Both passages acknowledge an increase in brain size. Passage B describes it as “rapid” (line 52), while Passage A doesn’t discuss the rate of change. There’s no indication of disagreement.
• D. CORRECT. Passage B (lines 57–62) argues that music provided a significant evolutionary benefit by fostering bonding between mothers and infants. In contrast, earlier in Passage B (lines 21–27), the author presents the view that music had little evolutionary function and was likely just a byproduct.
• E. Passage A doesn’t mention mother-infant bonding, so there’s no basis for comparing the authors’ views on this topic

Sample Question #6

“The World Wide Web, a network of electronically produced and interconnected (or “linked”) sites, called pages, that are accessible via personal computer, raises legal issues about the rights of owners of intellectual property, notably those who create documents for inclusion on Web pages. Some of these owners of intellectual property claim that unless copyright law is strengthened, intellectual property on the Web will not be protected from copyright infringement. Web users, however, claim that if their ability to access information on Web pages is reduced, the Web cannot live up to its potential as an open, interactive medium of communication. 

The debate arises from the Web’s ability to link one document to another. Links between sites are analogous to the inclusion in a printed text of references to other works, but with one difference: the cited document is instantly retrievable by a user who activates the link. This immediate accessibility creates a problem, since current copyright laws give owners of intellectual property the right to sue a distributor of unauthorized copies of their material even if that distributor did not personally make the copies. If person A, the author of a document, puts the document on a Web page, and person B, the creator of another Web page, creates a link to A’s document, is B committing copyright infringement? 

To answer this question, it must first be determined who controls distribution of a document on the Web. When A places a document on a Web page, this is comparable to recording an outgoing message on one’s telephone answering machine for others to hear. When B creates a link to A’s document, this is akin to B’s giving out A’s telephone number, thereby allowing third parties to hear the outgoing message for themselves. Anyone who calls can listen to the message; that is its purpose. While B’s link may indeed facilitate access to A’s document, the crucial point is that A, simply by placing that document on the Web, is thereby offering it for distribution. Therefore, even if B leads others to the document, it is A who actually controls access to it. Hence creating a link to a document is not the same as making or distributing a copy of that document. Moreover, techniques are already available by which A can restrict access to a document. For example, A may require a password to gain entry to A’s Web page, just as a telephone owner can request an unlisted number and disclose it only to selected parties. Such a solution would compromise the openness of the Web somewhat, but not as much as the threat of copyright infringement litigation. Changing copyright law to benefit owners of intellectual property is thus ill-advised because it would impede the development of the Web as a public forum dedicated to the free exchange of ideas.”

The passage most strongly implies which one of the following? 

(A) There are no creators of links to Web pages who are also owners of intellectual property on Web pages. 

(B) The person who controls access to a Web page document should be considered the distributor of that document. 

(C) Rights of privacy should not be extended to owners of intellectual property placed on the Web. 

(D) Those who create links to Web pages have primary control over who reads the documents on those pages.

(E) A document on a Web page must be converted to a physical document via printing before copyright infringement takes place.

Answer:

• A. The author does not make this claim, and it’s highly implausible. Most website owners include links to other sites, so the idea that linking implies ownership doesn’t hold up.
• B. CORRECT. This choice is supported by lines 38–40 and 44–46. It aligns directly with the author’s argument and is easy to justify.
• C. Like A, this claim is extreme and unfounded. It suggests that creating a website means forfeiting all privacy rights—a conclusion the author never supports.
• D. This contradicts the passage. It implies that simply linking to a site gives control over who accesses it, which is not a position the author takes.
• E. This interpretation is clearly false. It suggests that copying a website is permissible as long as you don’t print it, which directly opposes the author's point about intellectual property.

Sample Question #7

“Charles Darwin objected to all attempts to reduce his theory of evolution to its doctrine of natural selection. “Natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification,” he declared. Nonetheless, a group of self-proclaimed strict constructionist Darwinians has recently risen to prominence by reducing Darwin’s theory in just this way. These theorists use the mechanism of natural selection to explain all biological phenomena; they assert that natural selection is responsible for every aspect of every species’ form and behavior, and for the success or failure of species in general. 

Natural selection is generally held to result in adaptation, the shaping of an organism’s form and behavior in response to environmental conditions to achieve enhanced reproductive success. If the strict constructionists are right, the persistence of every attribute and the survival of every species are due to such adaptation. But in fact, nature provides numerous examples of attributes that are not adaptations for reproductive success and of species whose success or failure had little to do with their adaptations. 

For example, while it is true that some random mutations of genetic material produce attributes that enhance reproductive success and are thus favored by natural selection, and others produce harmful attributes that are weeded out, we now know from population genetics that most mutations fall into neither category. Research has revealed that neutral, nonadaptive changes account to a large extent for the evolution of DNA. Most substitutions of one unit of DNA for another within a population have no effect on reproductive success. These alterations often change the attributes of species, but their persistence from one generation to the next is not explainable by natural selection. 

Additionally, the study of mass extinctions in paleontology has undermined the strict constructionist claim that natural selection can account for every species’ success or failure. The extinction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago was probably caused by the impact of an extraterrestrial body. Smaller animal species are generally better able to survive the catastrophic changes in climate that we would expect to follow from such an impact, and mammals in the Cretaceous period were quite small because they could not compete on the large scale of the dominant dinosaurs. But while this scenario explains why dinosaurs died off and mammals fared relatively well, it does not conform to the strict constructionist view of the adaptive reasons for the success of species.

For that view assumes that adaptations are a response to conditions that are already in place at the time the adaptations occur, and mammals could not have adapted in advance to conditions caused by the impact. In a sense, their success was the result of dumb luck.”

The author would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?

(A) Natural selection is responsible for almost none of the characteristics of existing species. 

(B) The fact that a species flourishes in a certain environment is not proof of its adaptation to that environment. 

(C) Only evolutionary changes that provide some advantage to a species are transmitted to subsequent generations. 

(D) Large animal species are generally unable to survive in harsh environmental conditions. 

(E) Natural selection is useful for explaining the form

Answer:

• A. This overstates the author's point. The argument is simply that not all evolutionary changes result from natural selection.
• B. CORRECT. As stated in paragraph 4, mammals thrived after the asteroid impact 65 million years ago, despite not being specifically adapted to that environment.
• C. This directly contradicts lines 29–31, which state that most evolutionary changes are neutral, offering neither advantage nor disadvantage.
• D. Lines 43–45 mention that large animals struggle during catastrophic events—not necessarily in harsh environments. Harsh conditions like deserts or the Arctic aren’t the same as sudden, catastrophic disruptions.
• E. Line 11 refers to both form and behavior without drawing a distinction. This answer misleads by pulling familiar terms from the passage out of context.

Sample Question #8

“The following passage is adapted from a critical discussion of the work of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. 

What Cameron called her “fancy-subject” pictures—photographs in which two or more costumed sitters enacted, under Cameron’s direction, scenes from the Bible, mythology, Shakespeare, or Tennyson—bear unmistakable traces of the often comical conditions under which they were taken. In many respects they have more connection to the family album pictures of recalcitrant relatives who have been herded together for the obligatory group picture than they do to the masterpieces of Western painting. In Raphael and Giotto there are no infant Christs whose faces are blurred because they moved, or who are looking at the viewer with frank hatred. These traces, of course, are what give the photographs their life and charm. If Cameron had succeeded in her project of making seamless works of illustrative art, her work would be among the curiosities of Victorian photography—like Oscar Gustave Rejlander’s extravagantly awful The Two Ways of Life—rather than among its most vital images. 

It is precisely the camera’s realism—its stubborn obsession with the surface of things—that has given Cameron’s theatricality and artificiality its atmosphere of truth. It is the truth of the sitting, rather than the fiction which all the dressing up was in aid of, that wafts out of these wonderful and strange, not-quite- in-focus photographs. They are what they are: pictures of housemaids and nieces and husbands and village children who are dressed up as Mary Madonnas and infant Jesuses and John the Baptists and Lancelots and Guineveres and trying desperately hard to sit still. The way each sitter endures his or her ordeal is the collective action of the photograph, its “plot” so to speak. When we look at a narrative painting we can suspend our disbelief; when we look at a narrative photograph we cannot. We are always aware of the photograph’s doubleness—of each figure’s imaginary and real personas. Theater can transcend its doubleness, can make us believe (for at least some of the time) that we are seeing only Lear or Medea. Still photographs of theatrical scenes can never escape being pictures of actors. 

What gives Cameron’s pictures of actors their special quality—their status as treasures of photography of an unfathomably peculiar sort—is their singular combination of amateurism and artistry. In The Passing of Arthur, for example, the mast and oar of the makeshift boat representing a royal barge are obviously broomsticks and the water is white muslin drapery. But these details are insignificant. For once, the homely truth of the sitting gives right of place to the romantic fantasy of its director. The picture, a night scene, is magical and mysterious. While Cameron’s fancy- subject pictures have been compared to poor amateur theatricals, The Passing of Arthur puts one in mind of good amateur theatricals one has seen, and recalls with shameless delight.”

The passage provides the most support for inferring that in Cameron’s era ______________

(A) there was little interest in photographs documenting contemporary life 

(B) photography was practiced mainly by wealthy amateurs 

(C) publicity stills of actors were coming into vogue 

(D) there were no professional artist’s models 

(E) the time required to take a picture was substantial

Answer:

• A. We can’t determine this. The author doesn’t discuss Victorian photography as a whole or whether other photographers aimed to depict real life.
• B. There’s no information about photographers in general—only about Cameron.
• C. This is unsupported. The passage doesn’t mention publicity stills of actors. While lines 40–42 reference photos of actors, there’s no indication these were publicity materials or that they were Victorian.
• D. The reason Cameron used amateur models is not given. The existence or availability of professional models is never addressed.
• E. CORRECT. Line 31 states that subjects were “trying desperately hard to sit still,” highlighting the difference from modern photography, where people can be captured more easily, even in motion.

Sample Question #9

“Some critics of advertising have assumed that the creation of false needs in consumers is the principal mechanism underlying what these critics regard as its manipulative and hegemonic power. Central to this type of critique are the writings of political theorist Herbert Marcuse, who maintained that modern people succumb to oppression by believing themselves satisfied in spite of their living in an objectively unsatisfying world. This process occurs because in mass market culture the powerful psychological techniques of advertising create “needs” that are false and whose satisfaction thus contributes, not to the genuine well-being of consumers, but rather to the profit—and thereby the disproportionate power—of corporations. 

Marcuse supposed that we all have certain real needs, both physical and psychological. Advertising appropriates these needs for its own purposes, forging psychological associations between them and consumer items, e.g., between sex and perfume, thereby creating a false “need” for these items. Since the quest for fulfillment is thus displaced from its true objects to consumer items, the implicit promises of advertisements are never really fulfilled and the consumer remains at some level unsatisfied. 

Unfortunately, the distinction between real and false needs upon which this critique depends is extremely problematic. If Marcusians are right, we cannot, with any assurance, separate our real needs from the alleged false needs we feel as a result of the manipulation of advertisers. For, in order to do so, it would be necessary to eliminate forces of persuasion that are so prevalent in society that they have come to inform our instinctive judgments about things. 

But, in fact, Marcusians make a major mistake in assuming that the majority of consumers who respond to advertising do not do so autonomously. Advertising techniques are unable to induce unwilling behavior in rational, informed adults, and regulations prohibit misinformation in advertising claims. Moreover, evidence suggests that most adults understand and recognize the techniques used and are not merely passive instruments. If there is a real need for emotional fulfillment, and if we can freely and authentically choose our means of obtaining it, then free, informed individuals may choose to obtain it through the purchase of commodities or even through the enjoyment occasionally provided by advertisements themselves. It is no doubt true that in many—perhaps even most—cases the use of an advertised product does not yield the precise sort of emotional dividend that advertisements seem to promise. This does not mean, however, that consumers do not freely and intentionally use the product as a means to another sort of fulfillment, or even that its genuine fulfillment of needs must be less than the advertisement suggests.”

Which one of the following sentences would most logically complete the passage? 

(A) Therefore, while in principle there might be grounds for holding that advertising is detrimental to society, the Marcusian critique does not provide such grounds. 

(B) Therefore, although Marcusian claims about advertising are rationally justified, the mistake of many recent critics of advertising is in their use of these claims for political gain. 

(C) Therefore, any shift in basic assumptions required to correct the abuses of advertising will require a change in the perception of human nature held by corporate leaders. 

(D) Therefore, while emphasizing only detrimental social aspects of advertising, Marcusians have failed to consider that such aspects are clearly outweighed by numerous social benefits. 

(E) Therefore, the Marcusian critique of advertising is mistaken except in its claim that advertisers exert economic power over those few people who are unable or unwilling to distinguish real from false needs.

Answer:

• A. CORRECT. This aligns with the author’s view. The author doesn’t endorse advertising but argues that Marcuse’s critique is flawed.
• B. Incorrect. The fourth paragraph clearly criticizes Marcuse’s position. The author questions the validity of his claims, and politics is not a focus of the passage.
• C. The passage doesn’t mention corporate leaders. Ending with a focus on them would be inconsistent, as they play no role in the discussion.
• D. The author never outlines any benefits of advertising, so this option lacks textual support.
• E. This misrepresents Marcuse’s argument. He claims that all people are subject to false needs, not just a few who struggle to distinguish real from false ones.

Sample Question #10

“Passage A 

There are two principles that are fundamental to a theory of justice regarding property. The principle of justice in acquisition specifies the conditions under which someone can legitimately come to own something that was previously not owned by anyone. The principle of justice in transfer specifies the conditions under which the transfer of property from one person to another is justified. 

Given such principles, if the world were wholly just, the following definition would exhaustively cover the subject of justice regarding property: 

1. A person who acquires property in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that property. 

2. A person who acquires property in accordance with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else who is entitled to the property, is entitled to the property. 

3. No one is entitled to any property except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2. 

However, not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the principles of justice in acquisition and justice in transfer. Some people steal from others or defraud them, for example. The existence of past injustice raises the issue of the rectification of injustice. If past injustice has shaped present ownership in various ways, what, if anything, ought to be done to rectify that injustice? A principle of rectification would use historical information about previous situations and injustices done in them, and information about the actual course of events that flowed from these injustices, to produce a description of the property ownership that should have resulted. Actual ownership of property must then be brought into conformity with this description. 

Passage B 

In 1790, the United States Congress passed the Indian Nonintercourse Act, which requires that all transfers of lands from Native Americans to others be approved by the federal government. The law has not been changed in any relevant respect, and it remains in effect today. Its purpose is clear. It was meant to guarantee security to Native Americans against fraudulent acquisition by others of the Native Americans’ land holdings. Several suits have been initiated by Native American tribes for recovery of lands held by them when the Nonintercourse Act took effect. 

One natural (one might almost say obvious) way of reasoning about Native American claims to land in North America is this: Native Americans were the first human occupants of this land. Before the European invasion of North America, the land belonged to them. In the course of that invasion and its aftermath, the land was illicitly taken from them. The current owners lack a well-founded right to the land, which now lies illicitly in their hands. Ideally, the land should be restored to its rightful owners. This may be impractical; compromises might have to be made. But the original wrong can most easily be righted by returning the land to them—or by returning it wherever that is feasible.”

The author of passage A would be most likely to characterize the purpose of the Indian Nonintercourse Act as which one of the following?

(A) legitimization of actual property holdings during the eighteenth century

(B) clarification of existing laws regarding transfer of property

(C) assurance of conformity to the principle of justice in acquisition

(D) prevention of violations of the principle of justice in transfer

(E) implementation of a principle of rectification

Answer:

• A. The Nonintercourse Act aims to ensure the just transfer of property, not to legitimize existing holdings. For example, it wouldn’t apply to land wrongfully seized before the Act’s passage, such as in 1785.
• B. The Act represents a new legal measure—it doesn’t clarify previous laws but instead adds new provisions.
• C. Justice in acquisition, mentioned in lines 12–14, refers to acquiring unowned land. The Nonintercourse Act, however, pertains to land already owned by Native peoples.
• D. CORRECT. Lines 41–44 clearly state that the Act governs the transfer of Native land, with the goal of ensuring that those transfers are just.
• E. While paragraph two of passage B discusses rectifying past injustices, the Nonintercourse Act is designed to prevent future injustices in land transfers, not to address past wrongs.

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