武汉大学考博英语真题

武汉大学

2015 年博士学位研究生外语综合水平考试试题

一、阅读理解

Justice in society must include both a fair trial to the accused and the selection of an appropriate

punishment for those proven guilty. Because justice is regarded as one form. of equality, we find in its

earlier expressions the idea of a punishment equal to the crime. Recorded in the Old Testament is the

expression "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." That is, the individual who has done wrong has

committed an offence against society. To make up for his offence, society must get even. This can be

done only by doing an equal injury to him. This conception of retributive justice is reflected in many

parts of the legal documents and procedures of modern times. It is illustrated when we demand the

death penalty for a person who has committed murder. This philosophy of punishment was supported

by the German idealist Hegel. He believed that society owed it to the criminal to give a punishment

equal to the crime he had committed. The criminal had by his own actions denied his true self and it is

necessary to do something that will counteract this denial and restore the self that has been denied. To

the murderer nothing less than giving up his own will pay his debt. The demand of the death penalty is

a right the state owes the criminal and it should not deny him his due.

Modern jurists have tried to replace retributive justice with the notion of corrective justice. The aim

of the latter is not to abandon the concept of equality but to find a more adequate way to express it. It

tries to preserve the idea of equal opportunity for each individual to realize the best that is in him. The

criminal is regarded as being socially ill and in need of treatment that will enable him to become a

normal member of society. Before a treatment can be administered, the cause of his antisocial behavior.

must be found. If the cause can be removed, provisions must be made to have this done. Only those

criminals who are incurable should be permanently separated front the rest of the society. This does

not mean that criminals will escape punishment or be quickly returned to take up careers of crime. It

means that justice is to heal the individual, not simply to get even with him. If severe punishments is

the only adequate means for accompanying this, it should be administered. However, the individual

should be given every opportunity to assume a normal place in society. His conviction of crime must

not deprive him of the opportunity to make his way in the society of which he is a part.

1. The best title for this selection is （ ）

A. Fitting Punishment to the Crime

B. Approaches to Just Punishment

C. Improvement in Legal Justice

D. Attaining Justice in the Courts

2. The passage implies that the basic difference between retributive justice and corrective jus tice is

the （ ） .

A. type of crime that was proven B. severity for the punishment

C. reason for the sentence

D. outcome of the trial

3. The punishment that would be most inconsistent with the views of corrective justice woul d be（ ） .

A. forced brain surgery

B. whipping

C. solitary confinement

D. the electric chair

4. The Biblical expression "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ”was presented in orde

r to （ ） .

A. prove ， that equality demands just punishment

B. justify the need for punishment as a part of law

C. give moral backing to retributive justice

D. prove that man has long been interested in justice

"In every known human society the male's needs for achievement can be recognized... In a

great number of human societies men's sureness of their sex role is tied up with their right, or ability,

to practice some activity that women are not allowed to practice. Their maleness in fact has to be

underwritten by preventing women from entering some field or performing some feat."

This is the conclusion of the anthropologist Margaret Mead about the way in which the roles of

men and women in society should be distinguished.

If talk and print are considered it would seem that the formal emancipation of women is far fr om

complete. There is a flow of publications about the continuing domestic bondage of women and about

the complicated system of defences which men have thrown up around their hitherto accepted

advantages, taking sometimes the obvious form of exclusion from types of occupation and sociable

groupings, and sometimes the more subtle form of automatic doubt of the seriousness of women's

pretensions to the level of intellect and resolution that men, it is supposed, bring to the business of

running the world.

There are a good many objective pieces of evidence for the erosion of men's status. In the first