Reading Comprehension Passage Topics

Below, I've listed every LSAT Reading Comprehension passage topic from every released LSAT PrepTest.

Best LSAT Prep Books lists the books containing these exams. You can also see most of these passages categorized by topic.

PrepTest A - February 1996
1. Medieval marriage practices, Alexandrine doctrine
2. Nontraditional black women filmmakers
3. Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift
4. Jose Antonio Maravall's interpretation of Baroque culture


PrepTest B - February 1999
1. Invertebrate schooling behavior and benefits
2. Rationales for punishing criminals, social-benefit vs. retributivist
3. Hispanic American writers and Spain, cosmopolitanism vs. nativism
4. Privileged Renaissance women's education


PrepTest C - February 2000
1. Kinglets' survival in cold winters
2. Juvenile delinquency
3. African American communism in Alabama, Robin Kelley's Hammer and Hoe
4. Darwin's conception of early prehistoric humans, and taphonomy


Official LSAT PrepTest - February 1997
1. Childhood in medieval Europe, Philippe Aries vs. Shulamath Shahar
2. Greenhouse gases and impact
3. 19th-century British feminists and legal/labor historians
4. Robert L. Jackson's Black Writers in Latin America


PrepTest 1 - June 1991
1. Phillis Wheatley, African American poet/poetry
2. Cell biology / cytology and biochemistry
3. Criminal procedure - adversarial vs. inquisitorial systems
4. Professions - defining the term


PrepTest 2 - October 1991
1. Langston Hughes and folk poetry
2. U.S. railroad, "romantic-era distrust" of it, John Stilgoe
3. Water-bug adaptive responses, micropterous, macropterous
4. War Powers Resolution


PrepTest 3 - December 1991
1. Asteroid satellites
2. English scientists not crediting technicians for their work
3. Abuse of monopoly power
4. Navajo weaving, Amsden


PrepTest 4 - February 1992
1. Territorial waters, regulation of international waters
2. Biological diversity and human activity
3. Women's participation in French Revolution
4. French Impressionism, Robert L. Herbert


PrepTest 5 - June 1992
1. Administrative contracts and altering contracts unilaterally
2. Nico Frijdas "law of apparent reality" and emotional responses to art
3. Bacteria and chemical attractants, concentration gradient
4. Life-passage vs. life-history studies


PrepTest 6 - October 1992
1. Taft-Hartley Act, "right-to-work" legislation, Thomas M. Carroll
2. Women physicians in China
3. Early music movement
4. U.S. steel industry


PrepTest 7 - February 1993
1. Working mothers in the labor force
2. John Webster, Elizabethan playwright, and critics
3. Phytopathogens, pseudomonas fluorescens / syringae
4. Native American land and the Dawes Act


PrepTest 8 - June 1993
1. Recombinant DNA (rDNA)
2. Gray marketing
3. African American autobiographical narratives
4. British wealth, Rubinstein's claim


PrepTest 9 - October 1993
1. Technology and art, video, photography
2. Native Americans, land, readjustment, Bureau of Indian Affairs
3. Literacy in Ancient Greek society and the elite
4. Political attitudes / institutions in England vs. American colonies


PrepTest 10 - February 1994
1. Crude oil pumps and offshore processing platforms
2. Venetian religious narrative painting, Patricia Fortini Brown
3. Legal realists and vagueness in law
4. Civil rights movement social theories


PrepTest 11 - June 1994
1. Martin Luther King, Thoreau, and transcendentalism
2. Robert Dahl, democracy, and polyarchy
3. Species diversity in Amazon River basin
4. Women medical practitioners in Europe during Middle Ages


PrepTest 12 - October 1994
1. Otto Wagner's Modern Architecture
2. Socioeconomic achievements on Chinese and Japanese immigrants
3. Legal systems in US vs. England - substantive vs. formal reasons
4. Serotonin and carbohydrate craving


PrepTest 13 - December 1994
1. Neurogenesis and canaries
2. Freed African Americans in colonial Virginia, Myne Owne Ground
3. French artist Watteau and admirers
4. Jury inferential errors


PrepTest 14 - February 1995
1. Earth's magnetic field - hypotheses
2. Deconstruction - term and meaning
3. Stolen art, legislation, and purchasers
4. Russian serfdom vs. U.S. slavery, Peter Kolchin


PrepTest 15 - June 1995
1. Dinosaur extinction, volcanic-eruption theory vs. impact theory
2. Women folklorists
3. J.G.A. Pocock and political discourse
4. Black economic progress - hypotheses


PrepTest 16 - September 1995
1. Byron's poetry and personality
2. Native Americans and Supreme Court decisions
3. Large interactive systems, catastrophe caused by minor events
4. Women in colonial America vs. England


PrepTest 17 - December 1995
1. Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God
2. "Hard" legal cases, H.L.A. Hart vs. Ronald Dworkin
3. Industrial carbon dioxide emissions, impose a tax
4. Drought in sub-Saharan West Africa


PrepTest 18 - December 1992
1. Law-and-literature movement, Richard Posner
2. Science - objective vs. ideological bias (subjective), new historians
3. Cherokee and Euro-American culture, William McLoughlin
4. Luminist paintings, Fitz Hugh Lane


PrepTest 19 - June 1996
1. P.D. James' crime novels
2. Native American graves, individual vs. communal property law
3. Species diversity hypotheses
4. Britain's abolition of the slave trade, Eric Williams


PrepTest 20 - October 1996 - Free Online (PDF)
1. Miles Davis and jazz innovation
2. Medieval canon lawyers and lack of disciplinary proceedings
3. Birds and status signaling hypothesis, Rowher
4. Collapse of Classic Mayan civilization, John Lowe


PrepTest 21 - December 1996
1. London Pianoforte school and Nicholas Temperley's anthology
2. What is "law"? Law and Economics, Critical Legal Studies, Law and Lit
3. Origin of oil - biogenic vs abiogenic theory
4. Southeast Asian immigrants and James Tollefson's Alien Winds


PrepTest 22 - June 1997
1. Frida Kahlo and Mexican nationalism
2. Objectivism vs. alternative legal narratives
3. CEOs' economic vs. moral responsibility
4. Language and math, essentialist vs. conventionalist views of language


PrepTest 23 - October 1997
1. Dutch artist Rembrandt as entrepreneur, Svetlana Alpers
2. Medieval women's legal / financial rights
3. Environmental crisis, George P. Marsh, Frederic Clements
4. Fugita and O'Brien's Japanese American Ethnicity


PrepTest 24 - December 1997
1. Risk communication
2. Korean Americans, cultural identity, Pico Korea Union
3. Social science tools to analyze court opinions
4. Mark Jones's Fake? The Art of Deception (fake art)


PrepTest 25 - June 1998
1. Email privacy and the law
2. Homer's poetry - studying works vs. peripheral issues, Milman Parry
3. Native American intertribalism, Pan-Indian view
4. Analytic method vs. organicism


PrepTest 26 - September 1998
1. Compulsory national service
2. James Porter and African influence on African-American art
3. Dolphin die-off, PCBs, brevetoxin, synthetic pollutants
4. English marriage contracts and women's property rights, Susan Staves


PrepTest 27 - December 1998
1. Jury impartiality, judges, media coverage, voir dire
2. Personal names in Hopi culture
3. Homing pigeons - hypotheses re: how they "home"
4. Fairy tales, Bruno Bettelheim, Freud, therapeutic


PrepTest 28 - June 1999
1. Native American land claims, Mashpee, legal discourse
2. Volcano-climate connection, Mass and Portman
3. Steady-state economics vs. neoclassical economics
4. Movie quality/promotion changes due to mass media


PrepTest 29 - October 1999
1. Are pre-World War I painters prophetic?
2. Tribal communities in North America, and teaching traditional languages
3. Platypus uses bill to locate prey
4. Medieval law and women, lack of knowledge


PrepTest 30 - December 1999
1. The okapis' relatives, size and location of population, eating behavior
2. Greek tragic dramas, and free will vs. gods and fate
3. Denise Meyerson vs. Critical Legal Studies
4. Vernon and African American rice cultivation


PrepTest 31 - June 2000
1. Ideal industrial ecosystem and Earth's population increase
2. Thurgood Marshall's legal career and his strategies / approaches
3. Donna Haraway's Primate Visions
4. Objectivism vs. subjectivism when studying the mind


PrepTest 32 - October 2000
1. Defense lawyers and innocence/guilt of clients, obligations
2. Multicultural education and proposals for implementation.
3. Native American autobiographies
4. Why wine is healthy in moderation


PrepTest 33 - December 2000
1. Per capita GNP vs. human indicators, measuring a nation's economic health
2. Harriet Jacobs' autobiographical narrative, slave women, domestic novel
3. Potential benefits of increased atmospheric CO2 levels / concentrations
4. Jeremy Bentham and evidence reform - nonexclusion principle


PrepTest 34 - June 2001
1. Authoritarian rulers and democratic reforms/change
2. The blues, African American folk tradition, and spirituals
3. Lamarck and the inheritance of acquired characteristics - new examples
4. Women refugees and definitions according to the United Nations


PrepTest 35 - October 2001
1. Women's memoirs of the French Revolution, Denis Bertholet's study
2. Romare Bearden, paintings, and the African-American experience
3. Universal laws, determinism, and biology
4. Ronald Dworkin, legal positivism, and natural law


PrepTest 36 - December 2001
1. Do computer conferences function as communities?
2. Latin texts in Renaissance England
3. Hormones, behavior, and osmolality
4. South Africa's legal system and change


PrepTest 37 - June 2002
1. Jury trials, unanimity requirement
2. Marie Curie, radiation/radioactivity
3. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, critics
4. Psychology of decision making, and risk-taking


PrepTest 38 - October 2002
1. Native Americans and controlled burning of forests
2. Intellectual authority vs. institutional authority. Legal systems.
3. Philip Abrams, historical sociology, and structuring
4. Medical school ethics training


PrepTest 39 - December 2002
1. Muralists - Mexican artists / painters
2. Interpreting fairy tales, parents vs. children, Bruno Bettelheim
3. Max Planck, wave theory, and radiation
4. Canadian copyright law and digitalization


PrepTest 40 - June 2003
1. Multipolar vs. bipolar international political systems
2. Latin American poetry vs. Spanish poetry
3. Dark matter and neutrinos' mass
4. Leading questions and memories


PrepTest 41 - October 2003
1. Course packs and copyright law
2. Countee Cullen - Harlem Renaissance poet, European-style verse
3. Fossil fuels and renewable energy sources
4. Victorian philanthropy and criticism of it


PrepTest 42 - December 2003
1. Thurgood Marshall, NAACP, public interest law, tactics/strategies
2. Roy Lichtenstein, fine art, pop art, comics
3. Market system and technological developments
4. Neurotransmitters, synapses, and electrical impulses


PrepTest 43 - June 2004
1. Oil well drilling and contaminated groundwater
2. Code-switching among Puerto Rican Americans
3. Reader-response theory vs. formalism
4. Faculty inventions/discoveries and universities'/institutional policies


PrepTest 44 - October 2004
1. Canadian Auto Workers' Legal Services Plan
2. Historiography and Asian settlers of the Pacific Coast
3. Nerve growth factor (NGF) and Rita Levi-Montalcini
4. Modern Movement in architecture


PrepTest 45 - December 2004
1. Natural disaster relief proposals/approaches
2. Hippocratic Oath outdated?
3. Lichen-forming fungi DNA study
4. Aboriginal rights in Canada


PrepTest 46 - June 2005
1. Definition of prosperity. Monetary vs. other considerations.
2. Joy Kogawa's Obasan and rite of passage to become a hero
3. Pronghorn relict behavior, adaptation, fastest land animal
4. Prevention of harm - legal/moral theory


PrepTest 47 - October 2005
1. Downstate campaign, Congress of Racial Equality
2. Chinese Cultural Revolution, Scar Art movement, Revolutionary Realism
3. Family dispute resolution. Mediation programs vs. court adjudication.
4. Pathogen/parasite vs. host


PrepTest 48 - December 2005
1. Aurignacian cave paintings / art
2. Louise Gluck's poetry and gender issues
3. Native Canadians vs. Canadian courts on property rights
4. Embryo polarity, fruit fly, nematode


PrepTest 49 - June 2006
1. Computer-generated courtroom displays
2. Determining tribal origins of African sculptures/art based on style
3. Women doctors in ancient Greece and Rome
4. Maize / corn cultivation


PrepTest 50 - September 2006
1. Mexican-American literature vs. Mexican literature
2. Modern bankruptcy laws
3. Determining national / cultural identity
4. Riddled basins of attraction - John Sommerer and Edward Ott


PrepTest 51 - December 2006
1. Ezekiel Mphahlele, South African writer, mix autobiography/fiction
2. Late heavy bombardment (LHB), craters on the moon
3. Impact of TV in developing nations, cultural imperialism
4. Computer legal reasoning systems


"PrepTest 51.5" - June 2007 - Free Online (PDF)
1. Rita Dove, African American writer, gap between poetry and fiction
2. Music, language, and evolution *
3. The Web, links, copyright law, and intellectual property
4. Irish landscape, history, and preserved pollen grains


PrepTest 52 - September 2007
1. Ousmane Sembene, Senegalese filmmaker, oral tradition, sociopolitical
2. Professional (historical/legal) writing and narrative *
3. Evolutionary game theory, Susan Reichert
4. Philosophical anarchism


PrepTest 53 - December 2007
1. Wing Tek Lum's poetry
2. British common law, Peter Goodrich
3. University research findings as commodities *
4. Cyclamen mites and Typhlodromus mites


PrepTest 54 - June 2008
1. Internet - sovereignty and regulation
2. Drilling muds *
3. Cakewalk, Aida Overton Walker, African American performer
4. Groupthink and group cohesiveness


PrepTest 55 - October 2008
1. Trade secrets and court injunctions
2. Purple loosestrife *
3. Chinese talk-story, Maxine Hong Kingston
4. Dutch tulip market, speculative bubble, Charles Mackay, Peter Garber


PrepTest 56 - December 2008
1. Amos Tutuola, Nigerian writer, folktales, traditional lore
2. Inclusive fitness theory, kin recognition
3. The Roma and definition of national minority, Capotorti *
4. French women and egalitarian educational reform


PrepTest 57 - June 2009
1. FCC vs. United Church of Christ, broadcasting license
2. Humanists vs. scientists, scientific humanism
3. Willa Cather, novel vs. narrative *
4. Fractal geometry, self-similarity


PrepTest 58 - September 2009
1. Ancient textiles, analyzing archaeological remains and texts
2. Parallel computing. Philip Emeagwali, Nigerian-born computer scientist
3. Tangible-object theory of copyright
4. Music, complexity of sounds, and emotions *


PrepTest 59 - December 2009
1. Parallel computing and increased computing capabilities *
2. Importance of teaching statutory law in law school
3. Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi
4. Ultimatum Game. Economics, emotion, and evolution

* = comparative (dual) passages, started in June 2007.

Photo by midatlanticbulldogrescue / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0