Passage Summary: The author says if laws aren't meant to make people happy, then we can't judge them at all, so they must be okay just because they are the law.

Conclusion: If the purpose of laws is not to contribute to happiness, then laws are legitimate simply because they exist.

Reasoning: The author argues that if the primary condition for criticizing laws (happiness) is absent, then no other basis for evaluation exists.

Analysis: This argument suffers from a classic formal logic error known as 'denying the antecedent.' The author states that if the purpose is happiness, we have a basis for criticism, but then incorrectly assumes that if that specific purpose is gone, *no* basis for criticism exists. This ignores the possibility that other factors, like justice or equality, could also serve as a basis for evaluation. Furthermore, the jump from 'no basis for evaluation' to 'legitimate because they are laws' is an unsupported leap that fails to consider other definitions of legitimacy.