The correct answer is (B).
Blackmail in Two Legal Contexts
Step 1: Read the Passage Strategically
Sample Highlighting
The following passages are adapted from articles recently published in North American law review journals.
Passage A
In Canadian and United States common law, blackmail is unique among major crimes: no one has yet adequately explained why it ought to be illegal. The heart of the problem—known as the blackmail paradox—is that two acts, each of which is legally permissible separately, become illegal when combined. If I threaten to expose a criminal act or embarrassing private information unless I am paid money, I have committed blackmail. But the right to free speech protects my right to make such a disclosure, and, in many circumstances, I have a legal right to seek money. So why is it illegal to combine them?
The lack of a successful theory of blackmail has damaging consequences: drawing a clear line between legal and illegal acts has proved impossible without one. Consequently, most blackmail statutes broadly prohibit behavior that no one really believes is criminal and rely on the good judgment of prosecutors not to enforce relevant statutes precisely as written.
It is possible, however, to articulate a coherent theory of blackmail. The key to the wrongness of the blackmail transaction is its triangular structure. The blackmailer obtains what he wants by using a supplementary leverage, leverage that depends upon a third party. The blackmail victim pays to avoid being harmed by persons other than the blackmailer. For example, when a blackmailer threatens to turn in a criminal unless paid money, the blackmailer is bargaining with the state's chip. Thus, blackmail is criminal because it involves the misuse of a third party for the blackmailer's own benefit.
Passage B
Classical Roman law had no special category for blackmail; it was not necessary. Roman jurists began their evaluation of specific categories of actions by considering whether the action caused harm, not by considering the legality or illegality of the action itself.
Their assumption—true enough, it seems—was that a victim of blackmail would be harmed if shameful but private information were revealed to the world. And if the shame would cause harm to the person's status or reputation, then prima facie the threatened act of revelation was unlawful. The burden of proof shifted to the possessor of the information: the party who had or threatened to reveal shameful facts had to show positive cause for the privilege of revealing the information.
In short, assertion of the truth of the shameful fact being revealed was not, in itself, sufficient to constitute a legal privilege. Granted, truth was not wholly irrelevant; false disclosures were granted even less protection than true ones. But even if it were true, the revelation of shameful information was protected only if the revelation had been made for a legitimate purpose and dealt with a matter that the public authorities had an interest in having revealed. Just because something shameful happened to be true did not mean it was lawful to reveal it.
Passage Notes
Passage A
Paragraph 1
blackmail unique
paradox - 2 legal acts illegal together
Paragraph 2
statutes overly broad
Paragraph 3
blackmail wrong b/c triangular
Ex. blackmailing criminal bad for state
Passage B
Paragraph 1
Rome - blackmail got no special law
Paragraph 2
principle - harm caused?
If harmed by revealed info = unlawful
Revealer needed good reason for revealing
Paragraph 3
Truth of assertion not sufficient for revealing
OK to reveal only if in public interest
Discussion
Passage A begins by introducing the Topic that will likely be common to both passages: the legal conception of blackmail. Passage A, however, deals exclusively with blackmail in Canadian and U.S. common law. The author goes on to introduce a paradox: Blackmail, an illegal action, results from the combination of two actions, each of which is legal when taken individually. Paragraph 1 ends with a question that nails down the passage's Scope : why is the combination of these two legal actions illegal?
LSAT authors rarely pose rhetorical questions, so expect to find an answer at some point in the passage. For now, paragraph 2 deals with the consequences of the blackmail paradox. The current laws on the books outlaw behavior that "no one believes is criminal" and that isn't prosecuted by jurists "precisely as written."
Paragraph 3 is where the author attempts to resolve the paradox. This resolution is the author's Purpose . The second sentence of this paragraph is the crux of the author's view. Blackmail is wrong because it is triangular. The power of the blackmailer depends on a third party who may affect the blackmail victim if the information comes to light. An example is given in the next-to-last sentence of paragraph 3: If someone blackmails a criminal, the blackmailer's leverage comes from knowing that the state would be interested in prosecuting the victim if it knew of the crimes. The Keyword "thus" (last sentence) wraps it up, and provides the Main Idea : blackmail is illegal because the blackmailer misuses a third party for his or her own gain.
Right away, passage B establishes its own Scope : blackmail as handled by classical Roman jurists. The author starts by pointing out that the Romans didn't conceive of blackmail as a unique crime. In Roman law, what mattered was whether an action caused harm and not whether it was legal or illegal on its face.
The Romans assumed (first sentence of the second paragraph) that a blackmail victim would be harmed if his shameful secrets were revealed. Because of this, the act of blackmail constituted a harm and was therefore unlawful. (Don't worry about Latin legalese like prima facie , which simply means "at first look" or "on its face." Your grasp of a Reading Comp passage will never fully depend on knowing terms like this.) Therefore, the blackmailer had to show positive cause for revealing the information.
The final paragraph deals in terms with which you are hopefully becoming more familiar: Formal Logic terms. Notice "sufficient" in the first sentence of the last paragraph and "only if" in the third sentence. The author provides a necessary condition for the revelation of shameful information to be lawful: There must be an overriding public interest in the information, and the revelation must be for a legitimate purpose. Just because the information is true doesn't mean a blackmailer can lawfully reveal (or threaten to reveal) it.
Both passages examine the legal idea of blackmail, but the Purpose of passage A is to examine and resolve the paradox of blackmail in Canadian/U.S. common law, whereas the Purpose of passage B is to discuss how the Romans treated blackmail legally. The Main Ideas of the passages show their divergence. Passage A maintains that blackmail is a unique and paradoxical crime that is illegal because it misuses a third party for the blackmailer's benefit. Passage B holds that blackmail wasn't a unique crime to the Romans and that it was illegal because it caused harm to the blackmail victim (unless there was a compelling state interest in the information).
(B) Inference
Step 2: Identify the Question Type
If a question asks about what an author means by using a particular phrase, it's an Inference question.
Step 3: Research the Relevant Text
The question stem directs you to the last sentence of passage A. This sentence begins with "For example," so it's wise to read the previous sentence as well to see what this sentence is illustrating.
Step 4: Make a Prediction
The author's point in this part of the passage is that a blackmail victim pays money to avoid harm from a third party. In the criminal example the author gives, the third party is the state, which would certainly prosecute the blackmail target if it learned of the target's crimes. So "the state's chip" is the state's responsibility to investigate and prosecute crime.
Step 5: Evaluate the Answer Choices
(B) matches the prediction. The author of passage A considers the "third party" (as the state would be in this case) to suffer harm from the blackmail scheme, so he must consider the state's interest in prosecuting crime to be "legitimate."
(A) is wrong because the determination of what actions are crimes is already a settled matter, one in which a blackmailer couldn't intervene.
(C) is moot because in a blackmail situation the crime has already occurred.
(D) is Extreme and too broad. The passage doesn't suggest that the government relies only on private citizens. Further, the example used by the author doesn't just concern "important" information; it also has to do with crime.
(E) is a Distortion. The blackmailer in question doesn't need to have witnessed the crimes of the blackmail victim. The blackmailer just needs to have knowledge of the crimes.
