Lesson 1 - Understanding the passage
Steps
1. Read the passage at moderate speed
2. Try to get a sense of what the author is trying to say. Do not worry if you do not understand
everything.
3. Start slowly and then speed up after the first para and slow down at the last para so that you get
a sense of what the author is trying to say without compromising on your reading speed. In the
case of longer passage spend more time on the first and the last paragraphs so that you get the
central idea of the passage better. In the case of shorter passage focus on the first 1 or 2 and the
last 1 or 2 sentences for the above reason.
4. Once you get the central idea, you can focus on the appropriate part of the passage as the
questions require.
Illustration:
In England the burden of history weighs heavily
on common law, that unwritten code of time-honored
laws derived largely from English judicial custom and
precedent. Students of contemporary British law are
(5) frequently required to study medieval cases, to
interpret archaic Latin maxims, or to confront
doctrinal principles whose validity is based solely on
their being part of the “timeless reason” of the
English legal tradition. Centuries-old custom serves as
(10) the basis both for the divisions of law school subject
matter and for much of the terminology of legal
redress. Connected not only with legal history but
also with the cultural history of the English people,
common law cannot properly be understood without
(15) taking a long historical view.
Yet the academic study of jurisprudence has
seldom treated common law as a constantly evolving
phenomenon rooted in history; those interpretive
theories that do acknowledge the antiquity of
(20) common law ignore the practical contemporary
significance of its historical forms. The reasons for
this omission are partly theoretical and partly
political. In theoretical terms, modern jurisprudence
has consistently treated law as a unified system of
(25) rules that can be studied at any given moment in time
as a logical whole. The notion of jurisprudence as a
system of norms or principles deemphasizes history
in favor of the coherence of a system. In this view,
the past of the system is conceived as no more than
(30) the continuous succession of its states of presence. In
political terms, believing in the logic of law is a
necessary part of believing in its fairness; even if
history shows the legal tradition to be far from
unitary and seldom logical, the prestige of the legal
(35) institution requires that jurisprudence treat the
tradition as if it were, in essence, the application of
known rules to objectively determined facts. To
suggest otherwise would be dispiriting for the student
and demoralizing for the public.
(40) Legal historian Peter Goodrich has argued,
however, that common law is most fruitfully studied
as a continually developing tradition rather than as a
set of rules. Taking his cue from the study of
literature, Goodrich sees common law as a sort of
(45) literary text, with history and tradition serving as the
text’s narrative development. To study the common
law historically, says Goodrich, is to study a text in
which fiction is as influential as analysis, perception
as significant as rule, and the play of memory as
(50) strong as the logic of argument. The concept of
tradition, for Goodrich, implies not only the
preservation and transmission of existing forms, but
also the continuous rewriting of those forms to adapt
them to contemporary legal circumstances.
Approach
To find the main idea of the passage focus on the first and the last
paragraphs. The first paragraph or the beginning of the second paragraph
and the last paragraph generally give a good idea of what the author
wants to convey.
Look at the highlighted portions:
In England the burden of history weighs heavily
on common law, that unwritten code of time-honored
laws derived largely from English judicial custom and
precedent. Students of contemporary British law are
(5) frequently required to study medieval cases, to
interpret archaic Latin maxims, or to confront
doctrinal principles whose validity is based solely on
their being part of the “timeless reason” of the
English legal tradition. Centuries-old custom serves as
(10) the basis both for the divisions of law school subject
matter and for much of the terminology of legal
redress. Connected not only with legal history but
also with the cultural history of the English people,
common law cannot properly be understood without
(15) taking a long historical view.
Yet the academic study of jurisprudence has
seldom treated common law as a constantly evolving
phenomenon rooted in history;
The first paragraph says a historical view is necessary to understand the
common law properly it is derived from custom and precedent. The first
sentence of the second paragraph says that the above is not done.
Now look at the last paragraph, where a historian’s view supporting the
author’s point is given.
So given the following question about the main idea of the passage, what
would be the answer?
1.Which one of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
(A) The residual influences of common law explain not only the divisions of subject matter but also the
terminology associated with many legal procedures.
(B) In the academic study of jurisprudence, theoretical interpretations of common law have
traditionally been at odds with political interpretations of common law.
(C) Common law, while often treated as an oral history of the English people, would, according to one
scholar, be more fruitfully studied as a universally adaptable and constantly changing system of rules.
(D) Although obviously steeped in history and tradition, common law has seldom been studied in
relation to its development, as one theorist proposes that it be understood.
(E) Although usually studied as a unitary and logical system of rules and norms, the history of common
law shows that body of law to be anything but consistent and fair.
Only D captures what we have noted down as the main idea.