TEXT C In a very broad sense, legislation plays the same role in France as judicial decisions play in common law countries. Legislative rules provide the starting point from which lawyers and judges work toward their goal, the most just solution for the problem at hand. Usually the statute provides a clear answer to the problem. In those cases, the statute is strictly applied, more because it is just than because it is a statute. Because of this it often appears that legislation is the law and that the judge’s role is simply to apply automatically the ready-made solutions provided by the legislature. Nevertheless, there are a greatly many cases where the judge’s role is far from creative. The legislature sometimes deliberately speaks in very general terms; it has said that divorce can be obtained where there are serious grounds; contracts must be performed in good faith; a person must repair the damage caused another by his fault; the penalty for a crime can be reduced if there are extenuating circumstances; an act of a government official is invalid if in excess of his powers. The legislature, however, has not defined serious grounds or fault, nor explained what is required by good faith or what constitutes extenuating circumstances. Of course, statutory law is being applied in all of these cases, but it is essential to recognize that the statute takes on real meaning only as the courts interpret it. The way in which the U. S. Supreme Court interprets the U. S. Constitution can give a common law lawyer an idea of how French courts interpret the legislation from which they work. When French lawyers and judges strictly apply a statute, it is usually because ______.
A. it provides a just solution to a problem
B. statutes are laws, and must be obeyed
C. the judge’s role is always simply to apply automatically the ready-made solutions provided by the legislature
D. the role of the French judiciary is never really creative
TEXT A Before the mid-1860’s, the impact of the railroads in the United States was limited, in the sense that the tracks ended at this Missouri River, approximately the center of the country. At the point the trains turned their freight, mail, and passengers over to steamboats, wagons, and stagecoaches. This meant that wagon freighting, stagecoaching, and steamboating did not come to an end when the first train appeared; rather they became supplements or feeders. Each new "end-of-track" became a center for animal-drawn or waterborne transportation. The major effect of the railroad was }o shorten the distance that had to be covered by the older, slower, and more costly means. Wagon freighters continued operating throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s and into the 1890’s. Although over constantly shrinking routes, and coaches and wagons continued to crisscross the West wherever the rails had not yet been laid. The beginning of a major change was foreshadowed in the later 1860’s, when the Union Pacific Railroad at last began to build westward from the Centre Plains city of Omaha to meet the Central Pacific Railroad advancing eastward from California through the formidable barrier of the Sierra Nevada. Although President Abraham Lincoln signed the original Pacific Railroad bill in 1862 and a revised, financially much more generous version in 1864, little construction was completed until 1865 on the Central Pacific and 1866 on the Union Pacific. The primary reason was skepticism that a Railroad built through so challenging and thinly settled a stretch of desert, mountain, and semiarid plain could pay a profit. In the words of an economist, this was a case of "premature enterprise", where not only the cost of construction but also the very high risk deterred private investment. In discussing the Pacific Railroad bill, the chair of the congressional committee bluntly stated that without government subsidy no one would undertake so unpromising a venture; yet it was a national necessity to link East and West together. Why does the author mention the Sierra Nevada in line 10
A. To argue that a mom direst route to the West could have boon taken,
B. To identify a historically significant mountain range in the Went,
C. To point out the legation of n serious train accident,
D. To give an example of an obstacle faced by the central pacific.