Read these only after you have written your own three sentences. Two of the paragraphs are good, one is not. The question is not which side is right — the lesson does not settle that — but what a paragraph has to do to count as an argument at all.

Model A — with the court

Loomis was sentenced on an argument. The state’s inference is valid: if a population-level instrument predicts risk reliably and risk is relevant to sentencing, then the score is a legitimate input. The dispute lives at the soundness step, in the first premise, and the court met it honestly by requiring that the score not be determinative and that judges be warned of its limits — which is what you do with a premise you cannot fully verify but have good reason to accept. The price I pay is a line I have to draw: an instrument whose premise nobody can examine, not even under seal, would stop being an input and become an oracle, and I owe the court a test for where that line falls.

What it does: names the side; locates the reason at the soundness step and in a specific premise; names the price and admits it is a debt.

Model B — with Loomis

Loomis was handed a conclusion. The form of the state’s argument is impeccable, and that is precisely why the case is hard: nothing in the logic was available to challenge, so everything turned on premise 1, and premise 1 was a trade secret. A premise you cannot examine is not a premise you have been given; the argument was valid for the court and merely asserted to the defendant. The price I pay is the alternative: unaided judicial discretion has its own documented disparities, and I would have to say why a bias I cannot see in a judge is better than one I might, in principle, audit in an algorithm — or propose the audit.

What it does: the same three moves, on the other side. Notice that both good paragraphs agree on the logic (valid) and disagree at soundness. That is where the case lives.

Model C — a paragraph that does not count

I think Loomis was treated unfairly because the algorithm was biased against Black defendants, as ProPublica proved, and the court’s argument was therefore illogical. Also, sentencing should be about the individual, not statistics, so the whole approach is wrong.

What goes wrong:

  • “Illogical” is used for a false premise. The court’s argument is valid; the objection is to premise 1, so it belongs at the soundness step. This is the collapse the lesson names.
  • The reason is an outcome (the ProPublica numbers), not a premise. The numbers may be right; they are evidence for rejecting premise 1, and the paragraph never says so.
  • No price. “The whole approach is wrong” costs the writer nothing; it does not say what replaces risk-scoring.
  • “I think … unfairly” takes a side without saying which premise it rejects. A valid argument with a conclusion you reject obliges you to name a premise you reject — the one consequence of validity the lesson most wants you to carry away.

The checklist

A paragraph counts as an argument when it:

  1. names a side;
  2. gives a reason that names a premise (or the inference), and says whether the objection is to validity or soundness;
  3. names the price the side pays, in the writer’s own words;
  4. answers, or at least states, the strongest objection from the other side.

Model C fails 2, 3 and 4. Go back to your own paragraph and mark it 1–4.