[eDebate] Ede's plan and extra-T

[Stefan Bauschard]

Ede's Plan

 

Ø      /Extra-topicality: You can't specify what content is permissible. 
You /
can only overrule the decision

 

Two points:

 

(1)   This generally isn't how the Court works/how new law is made -- 
See Joe's post, arguments by many others

 

(2)   I don't even know how this works in debate.

 

Plan:  O-T the U.S. v. Morrison decision

 

Result: The judgment is now in favor of allowing the VAWA.

 

No reason given.  If the aff gives a reason, they are X-T.

 

What?

 

The Morrison decision said (at least) that neither the 14A nor the 
Commerce Clause protected Congress' authority to legislate the VAWA on 
the states.

 

Does the plan (the new precedent) mean that the Court was wrong about 
_both _the 14A and the CC arguments?  Was it just wrong about one of 
them?  Which one? Was it wrong in Lopez originally about the impact of 
guns near schools on interstate commerce, or was it just wrong that this 
law, and not the gun control law at stake in Lopez ,"substantially" 
impacting interstate commerce?  Was it wrong in Lopez originally that 
the "substantial affects" test is flawed?  Did Morrison lack standing to 
make a claim in the first place? Was it wrong about everything it said 
in the decision -- anything that is explicitly stated by the Court 
reporter as a holding or could be interpreted as a holding? If that is 
the case, can the negative PIC out of all of these things, with the 
affirmative having to overturn the judgment and all potential holdings?  
Or is the affirmative limited to a basesless reversal of the judgment, 
leaving them with no legal precedent advantage potential and an 
apparently weird new decision?  Is the "substantial affects" standard 
too weak?  Should a practice have to "massively" impact interestate 
commerce before Congress can legislate in that area?  Does messing 
around with the test OT Morrison, Lopez, or both?

 

If your plan can't state the content, how do you claim a real advantage? 
I guess in this instance you could claim that the VAWA is now law 
(assuming you can win that this Congress will re-instate it).  I have no 
idea how you can claim a legal precedent advantage, since you don't even 
know what the new standard is.   The neg is in trouble as well. Their 
federalism DA links pretty well if the aff says that the "substantial 
affects" test is too strong, but it is relatively weak if it the new 
precedent just now says that domestic violence but not guns near schools 
substantially impacts interstate commerce. 

These are just a few examples. Tripp posted a whole bunch of other ways 
to overrule this decision.  All rationales have extensive implications 
for disadvantage links that the negative needs.
 

So, yes, this topic can be reigned-in by not allowing the affirmative to 
specify, but I'm not sure why that makes any sense, is very educational, 
or produces quality debates about legal precedent.

 

The alternative is to let the aff specify -- let them overturn it for 
just about any reason they can come up with, and let the negative get 
prepared to debate all of these plans times X number of decisions that 
are voted for, plus intersections.  Getting ready for Morrison seems 
easy compared to Roe or Quirnan!  The problems Lindsay identifies in her 
blog post with the Casey example are readily apparent.   And some of the 
topics have all of these decisions in them.

 

Of course, the neg does have the "don't overrule" -- distinguish, just 
have a somewhat different precedent that captures that case without 
explicitly overruling -- CP that seems to be awfully strong given that 
the SC rarely overrules and that is what people seem to support in the 
literature as a way of dealing with most "bad" decisions.  Those debates 
could get kind of dull though.

 

What's different about now than 92?

 

I think we have a better understanding of how this all works.

 

The alternative?

 

Vote for the 1A or a SMALL list.  I'm sure these Morrison debates could 
be very interesting.  I'm not bashing Morrison's inclusion -- this would 
be a good debate topic, or at least half of one if you can defend the 
need to "overrule it" -- whatever it is.  Ditto for every other decision 
listed.

 

The neg's alternatives against the larger lists include winning an X-T 
argument that doesn't make any sense and could even hurt their links, or 
B) running Distinguish, Foucault, or CLS in every debate.

 

Of course, the flip side of this is that if it is very hard to defend 
"overruling" any of these decisions, the more options the affirmative 
has the better....

 

 

 

 

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