Today’s ACT question of the day is a reading question from a social science passage about the medieval legal system. The question asks us about the use of judges in the trials described in the passage, so our job is to skim back over the passage and find the mention(s) of judges.

Judges appear twice in the passage – lines 11-14, and again in lines 78-83. (The first time they’re referred to as “the court” but we can infer that the judge is a part of the court.)

Both instances state that the judges didn’t determine the verdict (e.g. guilty or not guilty), and that they instead determined how the trial should take place (see especially lines 80-81 – there’s a section in there that is almost a direct reprint of the correct answer choice). The differences between criminal and civil litigation are mentioned in the passage (line 78), but the information there has nothing to do with judges. So, F is the correct answer: judges decided how the trial should take place.

Remember to go with what’s literally written in the text and avoid being too creative when dealing with questions about details. These are the easy ones, so save your creative brainpower for some of the more challenging parts of the test.