Jury vs judges

Question

Civil trials often involve great complexities that are beyond the capacities of jurors to understand. As a result, jurors’ decisions in such trials are frequently incorrect. Justice would therefore be better served if the more complex trials were decided by judges rather than juries.

The argument above depends on which of the following assumptions?
(A) A majority of civil trials involve complexities that jurors are not capable of understanding.
(B) The judges who would decide complex civil trials would be better able to understand the complexities of those trials than jurors are.
(C) The judges who would preside over civil trials would disallow the most complex sorts of evidence from being introduced into those trials.
(D) Jurors’ decisions are frequently incorrect even in those civil trials that do not involve great complexities.
(E) The sole reason in favor of having juries decide civil trials is the supposition that their decisions will almost always be correct.

Why A is not the answer? Is it because it is already stated as the premise or for some other reason??

Ludacrispat26 · Answer

2010gmat wrote:
Why A is not the answer? Is it because it is already stated as the premise or for some other reason??

Exactly. The right answer is B because the argument just asserts that judges would do a better job than juries in complex matter. Thus, there's an assumption that the judges are better equipped to deal with these issues than juries are.

Testluv · Answer

Hi!

And, notice that the Kaplan denial test also kills it. If B were not true--if judges were NOT better able to handle the complexity, then the argument falls apart. This proves that B is a necessary assumption for the argument to hold.

gmatmachoman · Answer

2010gmat... U r posting some wonderful questions..Keep Posting!!

delhiboy1979 · Answer

Actually, I find option E very interesting. What if the purpose of juries in these trials was not for getting the correct decision?

Gaurav Yadav · Answer

Dear gmat2010,

You seem to be confused between assumption and inference.

Note that although both assumption and inference are unstated in the argument, the flow pattern is as follows:

1) Assumption

Premise --> assumption --> conclusion

2) Inference

Premise(s) --> inference

It can be seen that any thing that can be derived from the information given(premises) is an inference. But something that affects the conclusion( or without which conclusion cannot stand) is an assumption.

in this particular question , choice A is an inference ( though it is a little exaggerated by use of majority of cases) which can be derived from the first two sentences.

choice B is an assumption without which the conclusion that the judges would perform better would not hold true.

You may like reading Powerscore's critical reasoning bible for detailed study of assumptions and inferences. It has got some good text.

Hope that helps you.. thanks.

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