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Harvard Westlake-Nayar-Aff-Damus-Round2.docx
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Harvard Westlake-Nayar-Aff-Damus-Round3.docx
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1 -1AC
2 -Part 1 is Framing
3 -The starting point of government deliberation has to be the individual and how they relate to the social world around them. Rules only gain their force if they are open to public criticism. This means we need a procedural democracy that transcends the exact content of any moral rule. . Adorno:
4 -
5 -Adorno, Theodor. “Education after Auschwitz,” Critical Model
6 -
7 -Since the possibility of changing the objective—namely societal and political— conditions is extremely limited today, attempts to work against the repetition of Auschwitz are necessarily restricted to the subjective dimension. By this I also mean essentially the psychology of people who do such things. I do not believe it would help much to appeal to eternal values, at which the very people who are prone to commit such atrocities would merely shrug their shoulders. I also do not believe that enlightenment about the positive qualities possessed by persecuted minorities would be of much use. The roots must be sought in the persecutors, not in the victims who are murdered under the paltriest of pretenses. What is necessary is what I once in this respect called the turn to the subject. One must come to know the mechanisms that render people capable of such deeds, must reveal these mechanisms to them, and strive, by awakening a general awareness of those mechanisms, to prevent people from becoming so again. It is not the victims who are guilty, not even in the sophistic and caricatured sense in which still today many like to construe it. Only those who unreflectingly vented their hate and aggression upon them are guilty. One must labor against this lack of reflection, must dissuade people from striking outward without reflecting upon themselves. The only education that has any sense at all is an education toward critical self-reflection. But since according to the findings of depth psychology, all personalities, even those who commit atrocities in later life, are formed in early childhood, education seeking to prevent the repetition must concentrate upon early childhood. I mentioned Freud’s thesis on discontent in culture. Yet the phenomenon extends even further than he understood it, above all, because the pressure of civilization he had observed has in the meantime multiplied to an unbearable degree. At the same time the explosive tendencies he first drew attention to have assumed a violence he could hardly have foreseen. The discontent in culture, however, also has its social dimension, which Freud did not overlook though he did not explore it concretely. One can speak of the claustrophobia of humanity in the administered world, of a feeling of being incarcerated in a thoroughly societalized, closely woven, netlike environment. The denser the weave, the more one wants to escape it, whereas it is precisely its close weave that prevents any escape. This intensifies the fury against civilization. The revolt against it is violent and irrational. A pattern that has been confirmed throughout the entire history of persecutions is that the fury against the weak chooses for its target especially those who are perceived as societally weak and at the same time—either rightly or wrongly—as happy. Sociologically, I would even venture to add that our society, while it integrates itself ever more, at the same time incubates tendencies toward disintegration. Lying just beneath the surface of an ordered, civilized life, these tendencies have progressed to an extreme degree. The pressure exerted by the prevailing universal upon everything particular, upon the individual people and the individual institutions, has a tendency to destroy the particular and the individual together with their power of resistance. With the loss of their identity and power of resistance, people also forfeit those qualities by virtue of which they are able to pit themselves against what at some moment might lure them again to commit atrocity. Perhaps they are hardly able to offer resistance when the established authorities once again give them the order, so long as it is in the name of some ideal in which they half or not at all believe. When I speak of education after Auschwitz, then, I mean two areas: first children’s education, especially in early childhood; then general enlightenment that provides an intellectual, cultural, and social climate in which a recurrence would no longer be possible, a climate, therefore, in which the motives that led to the horror would become relatively conscious. Naturally, I cannot presume to sketch out the plan of such an education even in rough outline. Yet I would like at least to indicate some of its nerve centers. Often, for instance, in America, the characteristic German trust in authority has been made responsible for National Socialism and even for Auschwitz. I consider this explanation too superficial, although here, as in many other European countries authoritarian behavior and blind authority persist much more tenaciously than one would gladly admit under the conditions of a formal democracy. Rather, one must accept that fascism and the terror it caused are connected with the fact that the old established authorities of the Kaiserreich decayed and were toppled, while the people psychologically were not yet ready for self-determination. They proved to be unequal to the freedom that fell into their laps. For this reason the authoritarian structures then adopted that destructive and, if I may put it so, insane dimension they did not have earlier, or at any rate had not revealed. If one considers how visits of potentates who no longer have any real political function induce outbreaks of ecstasy in entire populations, then one has good reason to suspect that the authoritarian potential even now is much stronger than one thinks. I wish, however, to emphasize especially that the recurrence or non-recurrence of fascism in its decisive aspect is not a question of psychology, but of society. I speak so much of the psychological only because the other, more essential aspects lie so far out of reach of the influence of education, if not of the intervention of individuals altogether. Very often well-meaning people, who don’t want it to happen again, invoke the concept of bonds. According to them, the fact that people no longer had any bonds is responsible for what took place. In fact, the loss of authority, one of the conditions of the sadistic-authoritarian horror, is connected with this state of affairs. To normal common sense it is plausible to appeal to bonds that check the sadistic, destructive, and ruinous impulse with an emphatic “You must not.” Nevertheless I consider it an illusion to think that the appeal to bonds—let alone the demand that everyone should again embrace social ties so that things will look up for the world and for people— would help in any serious way. One senses very quickly the untruth of bonds that are required only so that they produce a result—even if it be good—without the bonds being experienced by people as something substantial in themselves. It is surprising how swiftly even the most foolish and naive people react when it comes to detecting the weaknesses of their betters. The so-called bonds easily become either a ready badge of shared convictions—one enters into them to prove oneself a good citizen—or they produce spiteful resentment, psychologically the opposite of the purpose for which they were drummed up. They amount to heteronomy, a dependence on rules, on norms that cannot be justified by the individual’s own reason. What psychology calls the superego, the conscience, is replaced in the name of bonds by external, unbinding, and interchangeable authorities, as one could observe quite clearly in Germany after the collapse of the Third Reich. Yet the very willingness to connive with power and to submit outwardly to what is stronger, under the guise of a norm, is the attitude of the tormentors that should not arise again. It is for this reason that the advocacy of bonds is so fatal. People who adopt them more or less voluntarily are placed under a kind of permanent compulsion to obey orders. The single genuine power standing against the principle of Auschwitz is autonomy, if I might use the Kantian expression: the power of reflection, of self-determination, of not cooperating. I once had a very shocking experience: while on a cruise on Lake Constance I was reading a Baden newspaper, which carried a story about Sartre’s play Morts sans s ´epulchre, a play that depicts the most terrifying things.3 Apparently the play made the critic uneasy. But he did not explain this discontent as being caused by the horror of the subject matter, which is the horror of our world. Instead he twisted it so that, in comparison with a position like that of Sartre, who engages himself with the horror, we could maintain—almost maintain, I should say—an appreciation of the higher things: so that we could not acknowledge the senselessness of the horror. To the point: by means of noble existential cant the critic wanted to avoid confronting the horror. Herein lies, not least of all, the danger that the horror might recur, that people refuse to let it draw near and indeed even rebuke anyone who merely speaks of it, as though the speaker, if he does not temper things, were the guilty one, and not the perpetrators. With the problem of authority and barbarism I cannot help thinking of an idea that for the most part is hardly taken into account. It comes up in an observation in the book The SS State by Eugen Kogon, which contains central insights into the whole complex and which hasn’t come near to being absorbed by science and educational theory the way it deserves to be.4 Kogon says that the tormentors of the concentration camp where he spent years were for the most part young sons of farmers. The cultural difference between city and country, which still persists, is one of the conditions of the horror, though certainly neither the sole nor the most important one. Any arrogance toward the rural populace is far from my intentions. I know that one cannot help having grown up in a city or a village. I note only that probably debarbarization has been less successful in the open country than anywhere else. Even television and the other mass media probably have not much changed the state of those who have not completely kept up with the culture. It seems to me more correct to say this and to work against it than to praise sentimentally some special qualities of rural life that are threatening to disappear. I will go so far as to claim that one of the most important goals of education is the debarbarization of the countryside. This presupposes, however, a study of the conscious and unconscious of the population there. Above all, one must also consider the impact of modern mass media on a state of consciousness that has not yet come anywhere close to the state of bourgeois liberal culture of the nineteenth century. In order to change this state of consciousness, the normal primary school system, which has several problems in the rural environment, cannot suffice. I can envision a series of possibilities. One would be—I am improvising here—that television programs be planned with consideration of the nerve centers of this particular state of consciousness. Then I could imagine that something like mobile educational groups and convoys of volunteers could be formed, who would drive into the countryside and in discussions, courses, and supplementary instruction attempt to fill the most menacing gaps. I am not ignoring the fact that such people would make themselves liked only with great difficulty. But then a small circle of followers would form around them, and from there the educational program could perhaps spread further. However, there should arise no misunderstanding that the archaic tendency toward violence is also found in urban centers, especially in the larger ones. Regressive tendencies, that is, people with repressed sadistic traits, are produced everywhere today by the global evolution of society. Here I’d like to recall the twisted and pathological relation to the body that Horkheimer and I described in The Dialectic of Enlightenment. Everywhere where it is mutilated, consciousness is reflected back upon the body and the sphere of the corporeal in an unfree form that tends toward violence. One need only observe how, with a certain type of uneducated person, his language—above all when he feels faulted or reproached—becomes threatening, as if the linguistic gestures bespoke a physical violence barely kept under control. Here one must surely also study the role of sport, which has been insufficiently investigated by a critical social psychology. Sport is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can have an anti-barbaric and anti-sadistic effect by means of fair play, a spirit of chivalry, and consideration for the weak. On the other hand, in many of its varieties and practices it can promote aggression, brutality, and sadism, above all in people who do not expose themselves to the exertion and discipline required by sports but instead merely watch: that is, those who regularly shout from the sidelines. Such an ambiguity should be analyzed systematically. To the extent that education can exert an influence, the results should be applied to the life of sport. All this is more or less connected with the old authoritarian structure, with modes of behavior, I could almost say, of the good old authoritarian personality. But what Auschwitz produced, the characteristic personality types of the world of Auschwitz, presumably represents something new. On the one hand, those personality types epitomize the blind identification with the collective. On the other hand, they are fashioned in order to manipulate masses, collectives, as Himmler, H¨oss, and Eichmann did. I think the most important way to confront the danger of a recurrence is to work against the brute predominance of all collectives, to intensify the resistance to it by concentrating on the problem of collectivization. That is not as abstract as it sounds in view of the passion with which especially young and progressively minded people desire to integrate themselves into something or other. One could start with the suffering the collective first inflicts upon all the individuals it accepts. One has only to think of one’s own first experiences in school. One must fight against the type of folkways Volkssitten, initiation rites of all shapes, that inflict physical pain—often unbearable pain—upon a person as the price that must be paid in order to consider oneself a member, one of the collective.6 The evil of customs such as the Rauhn¨achte and the Haberfeldtreiben and whatever else such long-rooted practices might be called is a direct anticipation of National Socialist acts of violence.7 It is no coincidence that the Nazis glorified and cultivated such monstrosities in the name of “customs.” Science here has one of its most relevant tasks. It could vigorously redirect the tendencies of folk-studies Volkskunde that were enthusiastically appropriated by the Nazis in order to prevent the survival, at once brutal and ghostly, of these folk-pleasures. This entire sphere is animated by an alleged ideal that also plays a considerable role in the traditional education: the ideal of being hard. This ideal can also, ignominiously enough, invoke a remark of Nietzsche, although he truly meant something else.8 I remember how the dreadful Boger during the Auschwitz trial had an outburst that culminated in a panegyric to education instilling discipline through hardness. He thought hardness necessary to produce what he considered to be the correct type of person.9 This educational ideal of hardness, in which many may believe without reflecting about it, is utterly wrong. The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism. Being hard, the vaunted quality education should inculcate, means absolute indifference toward pain as such. In this the distinction between one’s own pain and that of another is not so stringently maintained. Whoever is hard with himself earns the right to be hard with others as well and avenges himself for the pain whose manifestations he was not allowed to show and had to repress. This mechanism must be made conscious, just as an education must be promoted that no longer sets a premium on pain and the ability to endure pain. In other words: education must take seriously an idea in no wise unfamiliar to philosophy: that anxiety must not be repressed. When anxiety is not repressed, when one permits oneself to have, in fact, all the anxiety that this reality warrants, then precisely by doing that, much of the destructive effect of unconscious and displaced anxiety will probably disappear. People who blindly slot themselves into the collective already make themselves into something like inert material, extinguish themselves as self-determined beings. With this comes the willingness to treat others as an amorphous mass. I called those who behave in this way “the manipulative character” in the Authoritarian Personality, indeed at a time when the diary of H¨oss or the recordings of Eichmann were not yet known.10 My descriptions of the manipulative character date back to the last years of the Second World War. Sometimes social psychology and sociology are able to construct concepts that only later are empirically verified. The manipulative character—as anyone can confirm in the sources available about those Nazi leaders—is distinguished by a rage for organization, by the inability to have any immediate human experiences at all, by a certain lack of emotion, by an overvalued realism. At any cost he wants to conduct supposed, even if delusional, Realpolitik. He does not for one second think or wish that the world were any different than it is, he is obsessed by the desire of doing things Dinge zu tun, indifferent to the content of such action. He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person. If my observations do not deceive me and if several sociological investigations permit generalization, then this type has become much more prevalent today than one would think. What at that time was exemplified in only a few Nazi monsters could be confirmed today in numerous people, for instance, in juvenile criminals, gang leaders, and the like, about whom one reads in the newspapers every day. If I had to reduce this type of manipulative character to a formula—perhaps one should not do it, but it could also contribute to understanding—then I would call it the type of reified consciousness. People of such a nature have, as it were, assimilated themselves to things. And then, when possible, they assimilate others to things. This is conveyed very precisely in the expression “to finish off” “fertigmachen”, just as popular in the world of juvenile rowdies as in the world of the Nazis. This expression defines people as finished or prepared things in a doubled sense. According to the insight of Max Horkheimer, torture is a manipulated and somewhat accelerated adaptation of people to collectives.11 There is something of this in the spirit of the age, though it has little to do with spirit. I merely cite the saying of Paul Val ´ery before the last war, that inhumanity has a great future.12 It is especially difficult to fight against it because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids.
8 -Government action is about the process of deliberation not finding an exact rule to follow in every circumstance. Generation of values requires the ability to speak out. . Singer 84
9 -
10 -Singer, Joseph William. "The player and the cards: nihilism and legal theory." The Yale Law Journal 94.1 (1984): 1-70.
11 -
12 -Moreover, we cannot respond adequately to problems faced in life by¶ generating abstract moral categories. Discussion of moral and legal choices¶ must focus on the rich context in which those problems occur. For some¶ purposes, it may be useful to characterize two persons as "employer" and¶ "employee" and to develop generalizations to describe and govern their¶ relationships. But it is important to remember that these are real people¶ we are talking about, and when we describe them in this way for the¶ purpose of judging what their relations should be like, we are closing our-¶ selves off from their actual life experiences. We can think impersonally¶ about a busboy as simply representing the table-clearing function; or we¶ can describe him, say, as a forty-year-old man, recently divorced, with¶ back trouble and money problems. As Robert Gordon argues, we need "to¶ unfreeze the world as it appears to common sense as a bunch of more or¶ less objectively determined social relations and to make it appear as (we¶ believe) it really is: people acting, imagining, rationalizing, justifying."'179¶ It may indeed be useful to develop general models to describe social life.¶ But when it comes time to make decisions, we should recognize that we¶ are making decisions rather than discovering ourselves. In making those¶ decisions, it is right to focus on the particular social context, to decide¶ whether our descriptive model actually applies in that case and whether¶ we are allowing the model to turn our attention away from facts that we¶ would otherwise consider to be important. Expressive theory emphasizes the active role of the theorist in deciding¶ how to characterize situations, and in deliberating, conversing, intro-¶ specting, and judging.180 Expressive theory also emphasizes the communal¶ nature of theory and its complex relations with social life. The kernel of¶ truth in the idea of rational consensus is that all ideas and actions involve¶ relations among people. "Individuals do not simply 'have' opinions, they¶ form opinions. . . . The formation of opinions is not a private activity¶ performed by a solitary thinker."'' Traditional theorists have reified the¶ idea of rational consensus by treating it as a basis for what we do, as a¶ source of answers, as a generator of outcomes. But consensus, if it exists,¶ is not something that just happens to be there, that we could describe¶ accurately. It must be created, and the work of creating it is the work and¶ play of daily life, of living, contending, sharing, and being with other peo-¶ ple. Like law, consensus must be made, not found.182¶ Emphasis on the creative, communal nature of common understanding¶ creates an appropriate relationship between thought and action. The proc-¶ ess of generating values is something we do with others in the context of¶ relationships that continue over time.¶ Democratic politics is an encounter among people with differing in-¶ terests, perspectives, and opinions-an encounter in which they re-¶ consider and mutually revise opinions and interests, both individual¶ and common. It happens always in a context of conflict, imperfect¶ knowledge, and uncertainty, but where community action is neces-¶ sary. The resolutions achieved are always more or less temporary,¶ subject to reconsideration, and rarely unanimous. What matters is¶ not unanimity but discourse. The substantive common interest is¶ only discovered or created in democratic political struggle, and it re-¶ mains contested as much as shared. Far from being inimical to de-¶ mocracy, conflict-handled in democratic ways, with openness and¶ persuasion-is what makes democracy work, what makes for the¶ mutual revision of opinions and interest.'83¶ Legal theory can help create communal ties and shared values by freeing¶ us from the sense that current practices and doctrines are natural and¶ necessary and by suggesting new forms of expression to replace outworn¶ ones. For example, Gabel and Harris have suggested replacing our cur- rent rights orientation with a power orientation.'84 They would shift our¶ focus from viewing individuals as abstract citizens whose relations to each¶ other are governed by rights enforced by the state to viewing them as¶ active participants in shaping their relations in daily life. Such changes in¶ language may help focus our attention on facts we had previously ignored¶ and make us more keenly aware of alternative social arrangements.'85
13 -
14 -The law can either be used to forward the claims of the powerless or to perpetuate those of the powerful. We embrace a system of politics that allows for the powerless to speak out. Balkin 08
15 -
16 -Balkin, Jack M. "Critical legal theory today." (2008).
17 -
18 -The relative autonomy of law from politics – rather than its complete¶ autonomy – simultaneously poses a threat and a promise. The threat is that law¶ will fail to do much more than ratify and legitimate the interests of the powerful;¶ the promise is that it might hold off the worst excesses of power by giving people¶ discursive and institutional tools to talk back to power, to restrain its selfishness¶ and inhumanity, and to imagine finer, better visions of human association.¶ The threat and the promise of law are joined together inseparably. What¶ gives law its power to legitimate is its ability to re-describe unjust and unfair¶ events, social practices and institutions in terms of valued ideals of human¶ association like consent, freedom, dignity, equality and fairness. In the hands of¶ lawyers and politicians, law can disguise, mystify and legitimate great injustices¶ using the very ideas and ideals we admire. But law can only do this because it¶ appeals to these values and claims to try to put them into practice through law.¶ Recourse to law forces the powerful to talk in terms in which the powerless can¶ also participate and can also make claims.¶ From this standpoint, law is not simply an efficient tool of power that¶ powerful people and powerful groups can wield any way they like. They do not¶ merely shape the world with it; rather it shapes them and their world, because¶ they have bought into law as a means of achieving and wielding power. Law¶ shapes their beliefs and desires, their sense of the appropriate and the¶ inappropriate, their conceptions of the possible and impossible. Law generates its¶ own institutions and its own demands; it creates its own culture, it is its own form¶ of life; it struggles with other forms of knowledge and power for dominance.¶ That struggle might lead to yet another form of professional power displacing older ones. But it might offer a space for something far more beneficial and¶ noble.¶ The critical approach to law—or at any rate, my version of it—has always¶ been doubled, has always reflected the Janus word “legitimate.” On the one hand,¶ powerful people have used law to subordinate others and secure their own¶ interests under the guise of promoting laudable goals like freedom, equality,¶ liberty, consent, community and human dignity. On the other hand, by choosing¶ to speak in the language of law, powerful people and interests can sometimes be¶ called to account because they try to legitimate what they are doing in those¶ terms. The people they take advantage of can argue that this is a misuse of law,¶ an illegitimate attempt at mystifying rhetoric. They can appeal to the values that¶ law seeks to protect to promote better, more just, and more humane practices and¶ forms of human association.¶ Important theoretical debates among critical scholars in the 1970s and¶ 1980s period revolved around which conception of law was the best one. Some¶ critical scholars adopted a largely pejorative conception, focusing primarily on¶ law’s defects. They argued that the rule of law was enmeshed in irreconcilable¶ contradictions; they denounced rights talk as sterile, useless and¶ counterproductive.5¶ Others, especially feminist and critical race theory scholars,¶ pointed out that rights discourse and rule of law values were among the few¶ resources that disempowered people had.6¶ Rule of law and rights talk were¶ potentially emancipatory discourses. They held a limited but important potential¶ for liberation and for contesting the arbitrary and unjust use of power.¶ These feminist and critical race theorists understood the deemphasized elements – the other side – of critical claims about the relative autonomy of law.¶ They well recognized that rule of law values and rights discourse were hardly¶ perfect – after all, they had been used repeatedly to justify slavery and the¶ subordination of women – but that they had also allowed people to speak out¶ against and to restrain the worst excesses of power. Even in a period of deep¶ skepticism and disillusionment about what law could do, these critical scholars¶ retained a sense of the political importance of rule of law values and rights¶ discourse. That is not because they believed in a strict autonomy of law from¶ politics, but because they understood the political values that legal culture and¶ rights discourse might serve. The best version of critical theory, I think, employs an ambivalent¶ conception of law rather than a pejorative conception: it recognizes law’s relative¶ autonomy from other forms of power in social life, and it understands the dual or¶ Janus-faced nature of that relative autonomy. It sees both law’s limitations in the¶ face of power and its possibilities as a means of channeling power and preventing¶ its most serious injustices.
19 -
20 -Part 2 – The Police State
21 -Qualified immunity reflects a culture of policing that justifies terrorizing black neighborhoods and lets police know they can get away with anything. Carter ‘15
22 -Tom Carter – WSWS Legal Correspondent, a lawyer (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/24/cart-f24.html). “US Supreme Court Expands Immunity for Killer Cops.” Center for Research on Globalization. November 12, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-supreme-court-expands-immunity-for-killer-cops/5488366 JJN
23 -When a civil rights case is summarily dismissed by a judge on the grounds of “qualified immunity,” the case is legally terminated. It never goes to trial before a jury and is never decided on its constitutional merits. In March of 2010, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Chadrin Mullenix climbed onto an overpass with a rifle and, disobeying a direct order from his supervisor, fired six shots at a vehicle that the police were pursuing. Mullenix was not in any danger, and his supervisor had told him to wait until other officers tried to stop the car using spike strips. Four shots struck Israel Leija, Jr., killing him and causing the car, which was going 85 miles per hour, to crash. After the shooting, Mullenix boasted to his supervisor, “How’s that for proactive?” The Luna v. Mullenix case was filed by Leija’s family members, who claimed that Mullenix used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. The district court that originally heard the case, together with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, denied immunity to Mullenix on the grounds that his conduct violated clearly established law. The Supreme Court intervened to uphold the Mullenix’s entitlement to immunity—a decision that will set a precedent for the summary dismissal of civil rights lawsuits against police brutality around the country. This is the Supreme Court’s response to the ongoing wave of police mayhem and murder. The message is clear: The killings will continue. Do not question the police. If you disobey the police, you forfeit your life. So far this year, more than 1,000 people have been killed by the police in America. Almost every day, there are new videos posted online showing police shootings, intrusions into homes and cars, asphyxiations, beatings and taserings. Last week, two police officers in Louisiana opened fire on Jeremy Mardis, a six-year-old autistic boy, and his father Chris Few. The boy’s father had his hands up during the shooting and is currently hospitalized with serious injuries. His son succumbed to the police bullets while still buckled into the front seat of the car. The Supreme Court’s decision reflects the fact that in the face of rising popular anger over police killings, the entire political apparatus—including all of the branches of government—is closing ranks behind the police. This includes the establishment media, which has largely remained silent about Monday’s pro-police Supreme Court decision. The police operate with almost total impunity, confident that no matter what they do, they will have the backing of the state. Two weeks ago, a South Carolina grand jury refused to return an indictment against the officer who was caught on video killing 19-year-old Zachary Hammond. This follows the exoneration of the police who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Eric Garner in New York City and Tamir Rice in Cleveland. The Obama administration’s position regarding the surge of police violence was most clearly and simply articulated by FBI director James Comey in aspeech on October 23. “May God protect our cops,” Comey declared. He went on to accuse those who film the police of promoting violent crime. Meanwhile, in virtually every police brutality case that has come before the federal courts, the Obama administration has taken the side of the police. On Monday, the Supreme Court went out of its way to cite approvingly anamicus curiae (friend of court) brief filed by the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), which defended Mullenix. With this citation, notwithstanding its ostensible role as a neutral arbiter and guarantor of the Constitution, the Supreme Court sent a clear signal as to which side it is on. During the imposition of de facto martial law in Ferguson last year, NAPO issued statements vociferously defending Michael Brown’s killer, labeling demonstrators as “violent outsiders,” and denouncing “the violent idiots on the street chanting ‘time to kill a cop!’” “Qualified immunity” is a reactionary doctrine invented by judges in the later part of the 20th century to shield public officials from lawsuits. As a practical matter, this doctrine allows judges to toss out civil rights cases without a jury trial if, in the judge’s opinion, the official misconduct in question was not “plainly incompetent” or a “knowing violation of clearly established law.” Over recent decades, the doctrine has been stretched to Kafkaesque proportions to shield police officers from accountability. In the landmark case ofTennessee v. Garner (1985), the Supreme Court held that it violates the Constitution to shoot an “unarmed, nondangerous fleeing suspect,” and required an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury before the police could open fire. But the Supreme Court in its decision on Monday dismissed this language as constituting a “high level of generality” that was not “particular” enough to “clearly establish” any particular constitutional rights. Since cases that are dismissed on the grounds of qualified immunity do not result in decisions on the constitutional issues, this circular pseudo-logic ensures that no rights will ever be “clearly established.” It also ensures that, instead of the democratic procedure of a jury trial, cases involving the police will be decided by judges. The Supreme Court issued Monday’s decision without full briefing or oral argument, designating it “per curiam,” i.e., in the name of the court, not any specific judges. Justice Antonin Scalia filed a concurring opinion, displaying his trademark sophistry. According to Scalia, Mullenix did not use “deadly force” within the meaning of the Supreme Court’s prior cases, since he was shooting at a car, not a person. (Four bullets struck Leija, but none of the six shots struck the engine block at which Mullenix was supposedly aiming.) Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed the sole dissent, noting that this decision “renders the protections of the Fourth Amendment hollow,” and sanctions a “shoot first, think later” approach to policing. However, Sotomayor wrote that she would have used a “balancing” analysis instead, in which a “particular government interest” would need to be “balanced” against the use of deadly force. This “balancing” rhetoric mirrors the Obama administration’s justifications for assassination and domestic spying, according to which national security is balanced against democratic rights. The Bill of Rights itself—that old, yellow, forgotten piece of paper—does not make itself contingent on the subjective mental states of police officers, “clearly established law,” or the “balancing” of “government interests.” America confronts a massive social crisis. Decades of endless war and occupations abroad, the degradation of wages and living conditions at home, the enrichment of a tiny layer of financial criminals at the expense of the rest of the society, rampant speculation and corruption at the highest levels—these factors contribute to mounting social tensions and the danger, from the standpoint of the ruling class, of the growth of social opposition. Such opposition can already be seen, in its earliest stages, in the struggle by autoworkers against the sellout contract being imposed by the United Auto Workers union. Like the tyrant who proposes to solve the problem of hunger by imposing a hefty fine on everyone who starves, the Supreme Court’s decision Monday confirms that the entire social system has nothing to offer by way of a solution to the crisis except more of the same. The abrogation of democratic rights, torture, military commissions, drone assassinations, unlimited surveillance, the lockdown of entire cities, internment camps, beatings, murder, martial law, war—this is how the ruling class plans to deal with the social crisis. Notwithstanding the epidemic of police violence, the flow of unlimited cash and military hardware to police departments from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon continues unabated. The buildup of the police as a militarized occupation force operating outside the law, pumped up and ready to kill, must be seen as a part of preparations by the ruling class for mass repression and dictatorship in response to the growth of working class opposition.
24 -
25 -Police immunity makes endless violence inevitable when police are never held accountable. Pattis ‘14
26 -Norm Pattis is a Connecticut based trial lawyer focused on high stakes criminal cases and civil right violations, He is a veteran of more than 100 jury trials, many resulting in acquittals for people charged with serious crimes, multi-million dollar civil rights and discrimination verdicts, and scores of cases favorably settled. “The Courts Helped Kill Michael Brown.” Norm Pattis Blog. August 17, 2014. http://www.pattisblog.com/blog.php?article=The-Courts-Helped-Kill-Michael-Brown_6645andpage=searchandq=qualified+immunity JJN
27 -It is only a slight exaggeration to say that Michael Brown’s blood is on the gavel of the federal judiciary. In the past couple of decades, the courts have made it all but impossible to hold police officers accountable before juries. Is it any wonder officers think they can kill with impunity? We know how Michael Brown, 18, was killed in Ferguson, Missouri — a police officer shot him to death. What we don’t know is why the shooting occurred. The law gives to police officers the right to use deadly force. But that right is not without limitation. All citizens, at least in theory, enjoy the right guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. As interpreted in a series of cases by the United States Supreme Court, that includes the right to be free from unreasonable force, colloquially known as police brutality. Police officers are trained to use violence. They attend police academies where they are taught about command presence, various chokeholds and takedown maneuvers they can do with their hands. They are trained in the use of a variety of other tools, including batons, pepper spray, Tasers and, of course, in this gun-loving culture of ours, firearms. They are expected to use these tools and techniques when circumstances warrant. There’s no recipe on how much force an officer can use when faced with a threat. Many departments rely on the concept of a continuum of force, a rough calibration of force and perceived threat of harm. We’ve not yet devolved to the point where jaywalkers can be shot on sight, for example. All departments teach that deadly force can be used to overcome an imminent, or immediate, risk of serious physical harm to an officer or others. Press accounts make it unclear what precipitated the Brown shooting. If, as reported by some, Brown, who was African-American, was in a struggle with Darren Wilson, the 28-year-old Caucasian officer who fatally shot him, the overwhelming odds are that the courts will hold the shooting justified. Indeed, so strong will be the court’s view of the matter that the case will never see the light of day in a courtroom. No jury will ever decide on the matter. No community will be permitted to speak. If, as has also been reported, Brown was doing no more than walking down the middle of the street disrupting traffic and was stopped by Wilson, then there is no justification for the shooting. Brown may have mouthed off, he might have even disregarded Wilson’s order to stop, but there is no justification for killing in these limited circumstances. The Fourth Amendment is written for all to see in the Constitution. So is the Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial. What is not written in the Constitution is the legal doctrine the courts have fallen in love with and rely upon to keep police misconduct cases from going to trial — qualified immunity. This doctrine sprung from the fertile imagination of a judiciary sick and tired of presiding over civil rights cases. It is a product of a judicial revolution no one noticed, a revolution that has effectively closed the courts to ordinary people seeking justice. Fifteen or so years ago, a friendly federal judge pulled me aside to warn of what was coming. New Haven lawyer John Williams and I were partners at the time. “Norm, the judges are getting angry. There are too many civil rights suits on the docket. You guys need to get more lawyers and get ready. The courts are going to push back.” So we did. We hired two new lawyers and took more office space, and then waited for cases to be called to trial. Instead of trials, we were barraged with paperwork. Judges began to grant qualified immunity to police officers, a doctrine that, effectively, ends litigation when a judge throws a case out of court because in his or her judgment the police officer is entitled to the benefit of the doubt in a close case. In other words, jurors, we the people, lost the ability to sit in judgment over the violence done in our name by a lifetime elite far removed from the communities in which police violence occurs. Police officers are free to act with impunity, at least in so far as the courts are concerned, unless their conduct is truly shocking. The courts have made it easy, too easy, for police officers to escape the judgment of their communities. By substituting judicial conceptions of what is reasonable for that of the communities actually policed, we’ve made tinderboxes like Ferguson inevitable. The St. Louis suburb has long complained of police violence. The courts, blinded by legal doctrine, refused to see. It is small wonder the streets of Ferguson have erupted in violence. Police departments nationwide have militarized at the same time the courts have made individual officers virtually immune from suit. Young officers like Wilson have been trained in a culture of violence. Do towns like Ferguson really need retired military equipment and SWAT teams to help patrol residential neighborhoods? Do we? Who protects us from the police? Law enforcement officers in distressed communities rely on a strategy known as “broken windows” to keep crime down. By focusing on such small quality of life factors as petty vandalism and loitering, police can create an environment in which a sense of order reduces the likelihood of more serious crime. At least that’s the theory. Residents of Ferguson are applying a little broken window theory of their own. When kids are gunned down by cowboy cops and the courts are closed to ordinary people, they’ve decided to break a few windows of their own. The message? “No justice, no peace.” I’ll go so far as to say that if more communities reacted as Ferguson is reacting, there’d be less, not more, police violence. If the courts refuse to hold police officers accountable, communities will. When justice fails in the courts, it will find a home in the streets.
28 -
29 -Excessive force is the worst manifestation of this form of structural violence – 4th amendment cases get shut down before they even have a chance. Jeffries ‘13
30 -Jeffries Jr, John C - David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, the University of Virginia. "The Liability Rule for Constitutional Torts." Virginia Law Review (2013): 207-270.
31 -Finally, special mention must be made of the case of excessive force.¶ The unconstitutional use of excessive force presents the most glaring¶ case of the inadequacy of current law. To some extent, that reflects the¶ intractability of the underlying problem of persuading officers who may¶ be excited, adrenalin-rushed, and fearful to be more restrained in the use¶ of force, especially deadly force. The intersection of qualified immunity¶ and excessive force claims raises in a particularly troubling context an¶ issue that can be put more generally: what role should qualified immunity¶ play for rights defined in terms of reasonableness? The question was¶ first raised by Justice Stevens in his dissent in Anderson,¶ 217 where the¶ majority applied qualified immunity to an unlawful search. Justice Stevens¶ objected to what he called a “double standard of reasonableness.”218¶ Since the Fourth Amendment forbids only “unreasonable” searches and¶ seizures, he argued, extending qualified immunity to invasions found to¶ violate that standard introduced “two layers of insulation from liability” and led to a logical contradiction: “I remain convinced that in a suit for¶ damages as well as in a hearing on a motion to suppress evidence, ‘an¶ official search and seizure cannot be both “unreasonable” and “reasonable”¶ at the same time.’”219 Since allowance for reasonable error was already¶ built into the definition of the constitutional right, Stevens argued,¶ allowing the officers to claim qualified immunity unjustifiably gave¶ them “two bites at the apple.”220 Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia¶ rejected the “‘reasonably unreasonable’ argument” as little more than a¶ play on words.221 The fact that Fourth Amendment doctrine (including¶ the warrant requirement and the specification of exigent circumstances)¶ had developed under the rubric of “unreasonable searches and seizures”¶ did not mean that one could not be reasonably mistaken about specific¶ questions. Application of qualified immunity to Fourth Amendment protections¶ was in principle no different from its application to any other¶ constitutional guarantee.¶ Logically, Scalia is right. The phrasing of the Fourth Amendment¶ does not preclude the possibility of reasonable mistake. On any of the¶ component issues of Fourth Amendment doctrine (probable cause, exigent¶ circumstances, and the like), an officer could be reasonably mistaken¶ about whether his or her conduct violated clearly established law.¶ Analytically, there is no conceptual contradiction in applying qualified¶ immunity to the Fourth Amendment. At a deeper level, however, Stevens has a point. That point arises not¶ from the fact that the Fourth Amendment uses the term “unreasonable”¶ but rather from the construction of a constitutional standard that seemingly¶ encompasses within its terms all possibility of reasonable mistake.¶ The archetype of such a standard, however, is not ordinary search and¶ seizure but the constitutional prohibition against excessive force.¶ The Supreme Court has said in Graham v. Connor that claims of excessive¶ force should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment and that¶ the test is one of “objective reasonableness.”222 This label might suggest a standard that is cut-and-dried, but in fact it is highly variable and particular.¶ Factors such as the severity of the suspected crime and whether¶ the suspect is actively resisting arrest are not to be assessed “with the¶ 20/20 vision of hindsight” but from the perspective of the officer on the¶ scene, with limited time and information and under conditions of emergency.223¶ As the Court put it, “The calculus of reasonableness must embody¶ allowance for the fact that police officers are often forced to make¶ split-second judgments—in circumstances that are tense, uncertain, and¶ rapidly evolving—about the amount of force that is necessary in a particular¶ situation.”224 The result is a general concept, unmediated by specific¶ implementing rules or doctrines, that takes all relevant circumstances¶ into account. All the mistakes that an officer might make—such¶ as misidentifying the suspect or erroneously thinking him armed or¶ overestimating the risk of civil disorder if a loud-mouth is not subdued—are¶ subsumed within the constitutional standard, so long as those¶ mistakes are reasonable. To find a violation of the constitutional standard,¶ the court or jury must conclude that, taking into account all the circumstances¶ that might excuse misjudgment, the use of force was unreasonable.¶ To then say that the unreasonable use of force might¶ nevertheless be reasonable is indeed puzzling.¶ The Supreme Court (per Justice Kennedy) explained the matter as follows:¶ It is sometimes difficult for an officer to determine how the relevant¶ legal doctrine, here excessive force, will apply to the factual situation¶ the officer confronts. An officer might correctly perceive all of the¶ relevant facts but have a mistaken understanding as to whether a particular¶ amount of force is legal in those circumstances. If the officer’s¶ mistake as to what the law requires is reasonable, however, the officer¶ is entitled to the qualified immunity defense.225¶ This statement is confusing and has worked much mischief, but it is not¶ analytically unsound. The confusion arises from trying to imagine how a reasonable officer could be mistaken about the “relevant legal doctrine”¶ when it consists only of the injunction that the use of force be reasonable.¶ Every officer would know that, and not knowing it would itself be¶ unreasonable. It is nevertheless true that an officer on the scene and a¶ subsequent trier of fact might evaluate the reasonable use of force (from¶ the perspective of the officer on the scene, etc.) differently. In that case,¶ one might say, with the Supreme Court, that the officer would have a¶ “mistaken understanding as to whether a particular amount of force is¶ legal” and that if the officer’s misjudgment of that issue were very¶ slight, it might be deemed reasonable.226 By this reasoning, qualified¶ immunity would still have some role to play in borderline applications¶ of a constitutional standard based entirely on reasonableness.¶ An alternative understanding—which seems to me the better understanding—would¶ treat the trier of fact’s evaluation as conclusive of reasonableness,¶ as is done for example in negligence cases. Conceptually,¶ the difference between these approaches lies in whether one conceives¶ of the officer as trying to anticipate the judgment of a trier of fact (in¶ which case a borderline error might be deemed reasonable) or as trying¶ to adhere to the underlying standard governing both officer and trier of¶ fact (in which case the latter’s determination would be conclusive). The¶ latter characterization seems more appropriate in this context and is certainly¶ more straightforward, but the former characterization is more consistent¶ with the overall structure of qualified immunity, which traditionally¶ focuses on mistake as to legality.¶ Whatever view one takes of this matter, it seems plain that qualified¶ immunity would impart only a very slight addition to the protections¶ built into the constitutional standard for excessive force. Given that reasonable¶ mistakes and misjudgments preclude finding a constitutional violation¶ in the first place, it is hard to see much room for the operation of¶ qualified immunity. At most, it would add a very narrow zone of additional¶ protection in truly borderline cases.¶ This is not, however, the lesson of the cases. Courts have been told¶ that qualified immunity applies to claims of excessive force, that reasonable¶ mistakes in light of “clearly established” law should trigger qualified¶ immunity despite the “objective unreasonableness” of the actor’s¶ conduct, and that “clearly established” law depends on similar precedent.¶ This cumulation of messages, powerfully reinforced by Brosseau v. Haugen,¶ 227 has led many lower courts to reject civil liability for excessive¶ force in circumstances where such liability seems fully justified. As¶ usual, the culprit is the unlikelihood of finding another excessive-force¶ case in that jurisdiction with sufficiently similar facts.
32 -
33 -Militarism has inflicted massive suffering and casualties – without immediate action, militarism will lead us into a death spiral that threatens the planet and humanity. That’s try or die CACC 11:
34 -Admin, “Rejecting Militarism”, FEBRUARY 15, 2011, Canadians for Emergency action on Climate Change, http://climatesoscanada.org/blog/2011/02/15/rejecting-militarism/ climate change, wars, displacement, resource scarcity, false solutions, wealth concentration
35 -Resources: 1 http://www.fcnl.org/budget/budget-proposal11.htm 2 Miriam Pemberton with Jonathan Glyn, Military vs. Climate Security: The 2011 Budgets Compared. Institute for Policy Studies. http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/military_vs_climate_security_the_2011_budgets_compared 3 Many resources can be found on the various market mechanisms and other false solutions, here: www.climatesos.org/resources 4 Anita Dancs, Mary Orisich, Suzanne Smith, The Military Costs of Securing Energy (National Priorities Project – October 2008) 5 http://www.iacenter.org/o/world/climatesummit_pentagon121809/ 6 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-sanders/the-green-zone-the-worst-_b_70173.html 7 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html 8 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0327-21.htm 9 http://www.actforclimatejustice.org/2010/03/the-impact-of-militarism-on-climate-change-must-no-longer-be-ignored/ (and personal communication with the author) 10 http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-10-27/the-economic-crisis-and-the-hidden-cost-of-the-wars/full/ 11 http://www.kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article32304 12 http://www.peace-action.org/Peace20Action20Military20Spending20Primer.pdf 13 Will R. Turner, et al. (2010). Climate change: helping nature survive the human response. Conservation Letters, http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123523083/abstract?CRETRY=1andSRETRY=0 http://esciencenews.com/articles/2010/08/06/the.worst.impact.climate.change.may.be.how.humanity.reacts.it 14 http://www.foei.org/en/media/archive/2010/developed-countries-attempt-to-launder-aid-money-through-world-bank-and-call-it-climate-funds, http://www.foe.org/un-advisory-group-climate-finance-report-falls-flat, http://www.ituc-csi.org/climate-finance-closing-the.html?lang=en 15 2003 Pentagon report: http://www.climate.org/PDF/clim_change_scenario.pdf About the report authors: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=doug_randall_1 16 http://www.indymedia.org/pt/2009/12/932387.shtml More resources: Top 25 Censored Stories: US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/ Al Jazeera Video: Empire – The new arms race (The world has entered a new arms race, but what justifies this global military addiction?) http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_contentandtask=viewandid=31andItemid=74andjumival=5796 Why large scale biofuels production worsens global warming, not reduce it: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk Cost of War Calculator http://www.stwr.org/special-features/cost-of-war-calculator.html
36 -Militarism, through wars and military actions (overt and covert) around the world, has inflicted massive suffering and civilian casualties. · Militarism is likely the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, yet the IPCC does not indicate in a separate category the extent of military contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. · Access to more oil, the burning of which is a fundamental cause of climate change – is the primary underlying motive for current wars. · Both warfare and climate change are rendering large areas uninhabitable – displacing millions of people as refugees, and yet the rights of immigrants are increasingly limited, threatened and abused. · Climate change is likely to result in far more wars, being a “threat multiplier” and now recognized as the greatest looming threat to “security”. Access to resources – including land, food, water – is already becoming increasingly challenging, and scarcities will likely trigger conflict and further displacement in the future. · Militarism is the largest source of toxic chemical and radioactive poisoning of peoples and environment around the globe, and plays a major role in promoting false solutions that only worsen the problems (biofuels, nuclear technologies, climate geoengineering etc.) · The global economy is in shambles, funding for a “fair and just transition” – to ensure that people are not negatively impacted by the necessary transitions, is not forthcoming. “Green” jobs remain scarce, millions lack access to basic healthcare. · Major greenhouse gas emitting developed states have lead the efforts to obstruct progress among nations, consistently refusing to pay their “ecological debt”, owed to peoples of non-industrialized countries… All while spending trillions on furthering wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere. · Our global commons (air, water, forests) is being bought and sold in carbon markets under the guise that this is the ONLY feasible means of generating funds to take necessary actions to prevent and adapt to impacts of climate change. The result is further concentration of wealth and power, at the expense of the planet and humanity. We will not accept the death spiral of militarism, war and climate change.
37 -
38 -Part 3 - The plan
39 -Plan Text: In all cases in which a police officer is a named defendant against an accusation of violating the 4th amendment by excessive force, the SCOTUS will strike down the "clearly established" and "reasonable officer" clauses in Harlow. Wright ‘15
40 -Sam Wright is a public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. “Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity.” Above the Law. November 3, 2015. http://abovethelaw.com/2015/11/want-to-fight-police-misconduct-reform-qualified-immunity/?rf=1 JJN
41 -As usual, I’ve not buried the lede: that something is qualified immunity reform. In order to truly hold police accountable for bad acts, civilians must be able to bring, and win, civil rights suits themselves — not rely on the Department of Justice, or special prosecutors, or civilian review boards to hold officers accountable. And in order to both bring and win civil rights suits, civilians need a level playing field in court. Right now, they don’t have one. Instead, police officers have recourse to the broad protections of the judicially established doctrine of qualified immunity. Under this doctrine, state actors are protected from suit even if they’ve violated the law by, say, using excessive force, or performing an unwarranted body cavity search — as long as their violation was not one of “clearly established law of which a reasonable officer would be aware.” In other words, if there’s not already a case where a court has held that an officer’s identical or near-identical conduct rose to the level of a constitutional violation, there’s a good chance that even an obviously malfeasant officer will avoid liability — will avoid accountability. To bring about true accountability and change police behavior, this needs to change. And change should begin with an act of Congress rolling back qualified immunity. Removing the “clearly established” element of qualified immunity would be a good start — after all, shouldn’t it be enough to deviate from a basic standard of care, to engage in conduct that a reasonable officer would know is illegal, without having to show that that conduct’s illegality has already been clearly established in the courts?
42 -
43 -Militarism justifies a logic of disposability that makes violence inevitable. Talking about militarism in debate spaces is uniquely key to end it.
44 -Giroux 5 - (Henry A history teacher in Rhode Island, for six years,2 held positions at Boston University, Miami University, and Penn State. " http://philosophersforchange.org/2015/10/13/the-curse-of-totalitarianism-and-the-challenge-of-critical-pedagogy/)
45 -The forces of free-market fundamentalism are on the march ushering in a terrifying horizon of what Hannah Arendt once called “dark times.” Across the globe, the tension between democratic values and market fundamentalism has reached a breaking point.1 The social contract is under assault, neo-Nazism is on the rise, right-wing populism is propelling extremist political candidates and social movements into the forefront of political life, anti-immigrant sentiment is now wrapped in the poisonous logic of nationalism and exceptionalism, racism has become a mark of celebrated audacity and a politics of disposability comes dangerously close to its endgame of extermination for those considered excess. Under such circumstances, it becomes frightfully clear that the conditions for totalitarianism and state violence are still with us smothering critical thought, social responsibility, the ethical imagination and politics itself. As Bill Dixon observes: The totalitarian form is still with us because the all too protean origins of totalitarianism are still with us: loneliness as the normal register of social life, the frenzied lawfulness of ideological certitude, mass poverty and mass homelessness, the routine use of terror as a political instrument, and the ever growing speeds and scales of media, economics, and warfare.2 In the United States, the extreme right in both political parties no longer needs the comfort of a counterfeit ideology in which appeals are made to the common good, human decency and democratic values. On the contrary, power is now concentrated in the hands of relatively few people and corporations while power is global and free from the limited politics of the democratic state. In fact, the state for all intents and purposes has become the corporate state. Dominant power is now all too visible and the policies, practices and wrecking ball it has imposed on society appear to be largely unchecked. Any compromising notion of ideology has been replaced by a discourse of command and certainty backed up by the militarization of local police forces, the surveillance state and all of the resources brought to bear by a culture of fear and a punishing state aligned with the permanent war on terror. Informed judgment has given way to a corporate-controlled media apparatus that celebrates the banality of balance and the spectacle of violence, all the while reinforcing the politics and value systems of the financial elite.3 Following Arendt, a dark cloud of political and ethical ignorance has descended on the United States creating both a crisis of memory and agency.4 Thoughtlessness has become something that now occupies a privileged, if not celebrated, place in the political landscape and the mainstream cultural apparatuses. A new kind of infantilism and culture of ignorance now shapes daily life as agency devolves into a kind of anti-intellectual foolishness evident in the babble of banality produced by Fox News, celebrity culture, schools modeled after prisons and politicians who support creationism, argue against climate change and denounce almost any form of reason. Education is no longer viewed as a public good but a private right, just as critical thinking is devalued as a fundamental necessity for creating an engaged and socially responsible populace. Politics has become an extension of war, just as systemic economic uncertainty and state-sponsored violence increasingly find legitimation in the discourses of privatization and demonization, which promote anxiety, moral panics and fear, and undermine any sense of communal responsibility for the well-being of others. Too many people today learn quickly that their fate is solely a matter of individual responsibility, irrespective of wider structural forces. This is a much promoted hypercompetitive ideology with a message that surviving in a society demands reducing social relations to forms of social combat. People today are expected to inhabit a set of relations in which the only obligation is to live for one’s own self-interest and to reduce the responsibilities of citizenship to the demands of a consumer culture. Yet, there is more at work here than a flight from social responsibility, if not politics itself. Also lost is the importance of those social bonds, modes of collective reasoning, public spheres and cultural apparatuses crucial to the formation of a sustainable democratic society. With the return of the Gilded Age and its dream worlds of consumption, privatization and deregulation, both democratic values and social protections are at risk. At the same time, the civic and formative cultures that make such values and protections central to democratic life are in danger of being eliminated altogether. As market mentalities and moralities tighten their grip on all aspects of society, democratic institutions and public spheres are being downsized, if not altogether disappearing. As these institutions vanish – from public schools to health-care centers – there is also a serious erosion of the discourses of community, justice, equality, public values and the common good. One consequence is a society stripped of its inspiring and energizing public spheres and the “thick mesh of mutual obligations and social responsibilities to be found in” any viable democracy.5 This grim reality marks a failure in the power of the civic imagination, political will and open democracy.6 It is also part of a politics that strips the social of any democratic ideals and undermines any understanding of higher education as a public good and pedagogy as an empowering practice, a practice that acts directly upon the conditions that bear down on our lives in order to change them when necessary. At a time when the public good is under attack and there seems to be a growing apathy toward the social contract, or any other civic-minded investment in public values and the larger common good, education has to be seen as more than a credential or a pathway to a job. It has to be viewed as crucial to understanding and overcoming the current crisis of agency, politics and historical memory faced by many young people today. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators and students is the need to reclaim the role that education has historically played in developing critical literacies and civic capacities. There is a need to use education to mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to addressing important social issues and being alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy. At the heart of such a challenge is the question of what education should accomplish in a democracy. What work do educators have to do to create the economic, political and ethical conditions necessary to endow young people with the capacities to think, question, doubt, imagine the unimaginable and defend education as essential for inspiring and energizing the people necessary for the existence of a robust democracy? In a world in which there is an increasing abandonment of egalitarian and democratic impulses, what will it take to educate young people to challenge authority and in the words of James Baldwin “rob history of its tyrannical power, and illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place”?7 What role might education and critical pedagogy have in a society in which the social has been individualized, emotional life collapses into the therapeutic and education is relegated to either a private affair or a kind of algorithmic mode of regulation in which everything is reduced to a desired measurable economic outcome. Feedback loops now replace politics and the concept of progress is defined through a narrow culture of metrics, measurement and efficiency.8 In a culture drowning in a new love affair with empiricism and data, that which is not measurable withers. Lost here are the registers of compassion, care for the other, the radical imagination, a democratic vision and a passion for justice. In its place emerges what Francisco Goya, in one of his engravings, termed “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monster.” Goya’s title is richly suggestive, particularly about the role of education and pedagogy in compelling students to be able to recognize, as my colleague David Clark points out, “that an inattentiveness to the never-ending task of critique breeds horrors: the failures of conscience, the wars against thought, and the flirtations with irrationality that lie at the heart of the triumph of every-day aggression, the withering of political life, and the withdrawal into private obsessions.”9 Given the multiple crises that haunt the current historical conjuncture, educators need a new language for addressing the changing contexts and issues facing a world in which there is an unprecedented convergence of resources – financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military and technological – that are increasingly used to concentrate powerful and diverse forms of control and domination. Such a language needs to be political without being dogmatic and needs to recognize that pedagogy is always political because it is connected to the struggle over agency. In this instance, making the pedagogical more political means being vigilant about those very “moments in which identities are being produced and groups are being constituted, or objects are being created.”10 At the same time it means educators need to be attentive to those practices in which critical modes of agency and particular identities are being denied. For example, the Tucson Unified School District board not only eliminated the famed Mexican-American studies program, but also banned a number of Chicano and Native American books it deemed dangerous. The ban included Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, and Pedagogy of the Oppressed by the famed Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. This act of censorship provides a particularly disturbing case of the war that is being waged in the United States against not only young people marginalized by race and class, but also against the very spaces and pedagogical practices that make critical thinking possible. Such actions suggest the need for faculty to develop forms of critical pedagogy that not only inspire and energize. They should also be able to challenge a growing number of anti-democratic practices and policies while resurrecting a radical democratic project that provides the basis for imagining a life beyond a social order immersed in inequality, degradation of the environment and the elevation of war and militarization to national ideals. Under such circumstances, education becomes more than an obsession with accountability schemes, an audit culture, market values and an unreflective immersion in the crude empiricism of a data-obsessed, market-driven society. It becomes part of a formative culture in which thoughtlessness prevails, providing the foundation for the curse of totalitarianism. At a time of increased repression, it is all the more crucial for educators to reject the notion that higher education is simply a site for training students for the workforce and that the culture of higher education is synonymous with the culture of business. At issue here is the need for educators to recognize the power of education in creating the formative cultures necessary to both challenge the various threats being mobilized against the ideas of justice and democracy while also fighting for those public spheres, ideals, values and policies that offer alternative modes of identity, thinking, social relations and politics. In both conservative and progressive discourses pedagogy is often treated simply as a set of strategies and skills to use in order to teach prespecified subject matter. In this context, pedagogy becomes synonymous with teaching as a technique or the practice of a craft-like skill. Any viable notion of critical pedagogy must grasp the limitations of this definition and its endless slavish imitations even when they are claimed as part of a radical discourse or project. In opposition to the instrumental reduction of pedagogy to a method – which has no language for relating the self to public life, social responsibility or the demands of citizenship – critical pedagogy illuminates the relationships among knowledge, authority and power.11
46 -
47 -Only ending qualified immunity addresses the injustices being done in America - until police are held personally accountable, nothing will change. Carrié ‘15
48 -Shawn Carrié. “Why do police officers keep killing unarmed black men?.” The Daily Dot. March 12, 2015. http://www.dailydot.com/via/police-killings-ferguson-unarmed-black-men/ JJN
49 -Why do police officers keep on killing black men? In the past week alone, three men have been shot by police in America, adding on to more than 200 reports of people killed by law enforcement in what analysts have repeatedly called an epidemic of violence. In Ferguson—the small Missouri town that's now a synecdoche of America’s racial strife—some steps toward progress are being made. Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson and chief executive John Shaw resigned this week as federal investigators are pushing hard for reforms of the city’s documented practices of racial discrimination in the wake of the release of a scathing reporting carried out by the Department of Justice. While the ouster of the officials who oversaw the practice of routine racism brings some relief, the protesters that pushed Ferguson into the national spotlight say that a report and a few staff changes are not enough. “This report was almost like a spit in the face from the government,” Ferguson organizer Alexis Templeton told the Daily Dot. “The truth that hundreds of people have been spewing for over six months finally comes to light and all the people of Ferguson receive is a document stating that people’s experiences may in fact have some truth to it? People risked arrest, their health, their safety, and their lives for over six months just for the Department of Justice to put together a Word document with a federal watermark on it and say, ‘There may have been a reason these folks were standing face-to-face with law enforcement.’ That’s a spit in the face if I’ve never seen one before.“ Somehow, the killing needs to stop. The Justice Department hasn’t ruled out a total reboot of the Ferguson Police Department—but what comes next? In order to stop the violence, we need to look at what’s causing it under a microscope. Why do police officers kill unarmed black men? Whether it’s Mike Brown, Tony Robinson, or Anthony Hill, the reason is almost always a cop who says, “I feared for my life.” But what causes them to fear for their life when their victim is unarmed? Lack of experience and training in nonviolent de-escalation practices are one factor. Younger cops are more likely to shoot than their more experienced colleagues. “Incidents in which officers employ verbal and/or physical force diminished with each year of experience gained by the officer,” reads a 2007 report published in the Criminal Justice and Behavior Journal. Most police departments have a minimum age of 21, but for some it’s only 18, and there is no federal age limit for becoming a police officer. Putting guns in the hands of young people barely old enough to drive a car is probably a bad idea, but the problem goes much deeper. Rockit Ali, a 22-year-old organizer in Ferguson says he can feel the way police look at him underneath his skin. “They just look at us like we’re suspicious just for being here. Sometimes I tell them, 'It’s okay! I’m only black!'” he told the Daily Dot in November. “I know there’s this stereotype in their head of the black man as a feral, unpredictable, 800-pound gorilla with super strength, and prone to violence,” he said. “It’s in the way they look at you and talk to you.” Scientific research even shows that biased judgments based on race can influence split-second decisions that—in the situations police often find themselves in—can mean the difference between life or death. FBI Director James Comey echoed these claims during a speech at Georgetown University last February: “No one’s really color blind. Maybe it’s a fact we all should face. Everyone makes judgments based on race,” Comey said. Most police officers aren’t card-carrying members of the KKK—although there are some examples of that occurring—and their biases are much more subtle. It’s these innate biases of white police officers that can sometimes cause them to shoot because they’ve seen black skin. The most lethal kind of racism isn’t ignorant songs sung by drunken frat boys; it’s the implicit bias that can sway a cop in a split second to decide a black man is more likely to pull out a gun than a wallet, as four New York City cops did when they shot Amadou Diallo 41 times in 1999. This lethal bias is reinforced every time a police shooting rationalizes the taking of another human life as a simple cause-and-effect outcome of the victim’s own decisions. The police officer who shot 19-year old Tony Robinson in Madison, Wisc., said Robinson had pointed a gun at him. Police told the same story in the case of Kimani Gray, a scrawny 16-year old who was shot dead after he allegedly pulled out a gun and pointed it, unprovoked, at two plainclothes police officers in Brooklyn, Ny. Cleveland police opened fire on 12-year old Tamir Rice within seconds of jumping out of a police car. John Crawford III was killed while holding a BB gun he had taken off the shelf in an Ohio Walmart in September 2014, a month after Ferguson erupted in anger. Yet when two white men in Idaho actually fired shots inside of a Walmart, they were taken into custody without being killed. Like Darren Wilson, all of the officers involved in these shootings were cleared of wrongdoing and escaped any punishment. By rationalizing death after death in the same way, our justice system is failing to recognize the pattern of a continual lapse in accountability for officers who kill in the line of duty. “Without accountability, nothing’s gonna change,” says Jeralynn Brown-Blueford, whose son was killed by an Oakland cop who turned off his lapel camera in 2012. That officer, who like many others who claimed he self-defense for murder, was protected by qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that effectively exonerates a police officer for any actions they take in their official capacity. “All they have to do is claim self-defense and say 'I feared for my life' and they know they can walk free,” says Tory Russel, co-founder of Hands Up United, one of Ferguson’s grassroots organizations founded in the summer of 2014. Accountability is precisely what America’s police force needs to put a safety on its eagerness to pull the trigger. The shakeup in Ferguson’s police force is a decent start, but there’s a lot more to be done before residents will feel they’ve had a fair resolution. At its heart, the movement growing out of Ferguson is one that fervently demands equality. “If you or I or any other regular person shot somebody, and everybody knew it, you'd be thrown in jail and you know it. What we want for the police is nothing more, nothing less,” says Pastor Derrick Robinson, another boisterous voice from the streets. Police won’t stop killing unarmed black people until they know they can face actual punishment and repercussions for themselves before they end the life of another. Ending qualified immunity and sticking police with some personal responsibility for their actions may actually save lives.
50 -
51 -The plan fosters cooperation, which operates as a key check against police departments. De Stefan ‘16
52 -Lindsey de Stefan - J.D. Candidate, 2017, Seton Hall University School of Law; B.A., Ramapo College of New Jersey. ““No Man Is Above the Law and No Man Is Below It:” How Qualified Immunity Reform Could Create Accountability and Curb Widespread Police Misconduct.” The date is claimed to be 2017… but that’s impossible. So it says it has had 360 downloads since July 26, 2016 which is when the article is most likely to have been assumed to be released on the website. Stetan Hall Law. http://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1861andcontext=student_scholarship JJN
53 -VI. Amending Qualified Immunity Doctrine as a Catalyst for Curbing Police Violence Altering the qualified immunity doctrine is an excellent way to begin the path to restoring trust by establishing a much-needed sense of accountability. Civil remedies are a good jumping off point because, as repeated failures to indict officers—even in the face of video footage—have demonstrated, accountability via the criminal law is a far-off possibility, if it is possible at all. Prosecutors are generally disinclined to bring charges against law enforcement officers, 140 and grand juries are equally as hesitant to indict them.141 Independent investigations, as suggested by the Task Force, are an excellent idea, but establishing a feasible system nationwide would take time. On the other hand, Supreme Court amendment of the stringent immunity afforded to police officers could take effect relatively quickly. Of course, this is easier said than done. The Court has increasingly enlarged the immunity afforded to police officers in its recent decisions, and any 180-degree turnaround would likely require a change in Court composition. But the current Court can nevertheless begin to firm up qualified immunity doctrine by simply providing more guidance and clarification, thereby enhancing accountability and reaffirming trust between law enforcement and their respective communities. The concept of a clearly established right is, in many ways, a problem that requires solving. A substantial number of cases are disposed of on the premise that a right was not “clearly established”—yet lower courts have struggled for years with what those words actually mean. Arguably, then, at least some officers are escaping liability simply because of the Court’s repeated failures to establish consistency in its qualified immunity jurisprudence. But if the Court used qualified immunity opinions to demonstrate what qualifies as a clearly established right by meticulously outlining its reasoning in answering whether a set of facts implicates such a right, the Court could alleviate some confusion. In other words, rather than taking cases simply to overturn the lower courts’ denial of immunity, it could take cases to affirm those denials or, alternatively, to reverse lower courts’ grant of immunity. By so doing, the Court can give examples of what constitutes a right that is “sufficiently clear that every reasonable official would have understood that what he is doing violates that right,”142 and can give lower courts somewhat of a guide to follow. By elucidating the contours of the clearly established right, the Court would alleviate some of the confusion of lower courts and ensure that they are in fact applying that part of the test properly. Proper application of this prong directly promotes accountability, as the public can rest assured that, at least in that regard, cases are not being disposed of based merely on perplexity and uncertainty. Moreover, increased confidence about the clearly established prong could foster a willingness to take on the second part of the test and, in so doing, advance the development of constitutional law and clarify further constitutional rights. The Court could also accept that its attempts at a general standard for all classes of officials that are not otherwise entitled to absolute immunity has been problematic and hugely unsuccessful. Though the Court apparently fears “complicating” qualified immunity, the doctrine is quite complicated as is, and adopting more particularized classes of officials with different standards of immunity would not only assist lower courts in properly analyzing immunity, but would promote justice in constitutional tort litigation. For example, the Court could classify officials based on the approximate number of people with whom they come in contact, so to speak, and that might therefore bring civil suits against them. A governor, for example, could theoretically face a lawsuit from any resident of the state, and would thus be afforded more stringent protection—much like the standard afforded to all officials now. But law enforcement officers, who come in contact with only the residents of one town, city, or perhaps county, risk possible suits from a much smaller pool of people. The threat of litigation would therefore be much less crippling on governmental function, and immunity protection need not be so rigorous. In the case of allegations of Fourth Amendment violations, in light of the already-existing reasonableness standard, immunity may be inappropriate altogether. In addition, the Court could do its proverbial homework and take notice of the widespread indemnification of officers that often results in a complete absence of financial or employmentrelated consequences for law enforcement. If the Court stopped relying on its own intuition, and instead came to grip with the facts, it would likely realize that it has been overzealous in protecting low-level officers, and be inclined to alter course somewhat. By beginning to mend the qualified immunity doctrine in these ways, the Court will allow more civil suits for the vindication of constitutional rights to succeed. This will help to reduce the public mentality—strengthened by recent events—that cops get away with everything, in every regard. Civil suits avoid subjecting law enforcement to any criminal liability that, because of recent events, many laypersons believe is warranted. While this may be true in select circumstances, reality demonstrates that criminal charges are highly unlikely to stick against a police officer. But allowing more civil suits to go forward will serve as an important reminder to both civilians and law enforcement that the police are not above the law, and that they are held accountable for their wrongdoings. In turn, this accountability will begin to heal the relationship between law enforcement and communities by serving as the first step on what will surely be a long path to rebuilding the trust that is so crucial. VII. Conclusion By adopting different immunity standards for high-level and low-level officials, clarifying the vagueness surrounding the definition of a “clearly established” right, and acknowledging the real-world effects of indemnification, the Court can begin to repair some of the substantial flaws in its qualified immunity jurisprudence. As it does, it will permit more constitutional tort suits to succeed, thereby fostering law enforcement accountability. Because criminal liability is nearly impossible as a practical matter, and because strategies like improving police training and recruiting tactics will likely take years to effectively implement, civil suits are the (relatively) fastest way to demonstrate to the country that our officers are our guardians and that they are accountable to us. It is thus the most immediate way to rebuild trust and begin healing the citizenpolice relationship.
EntryDate
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1 -2016-11-06 20:02:49.0
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1 -Panny Shan
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1 -Brentwood LR
ParentRound
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1 -9
Round
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1 -3
Team
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1 -Harvard Westlake Nayar Aff
Title
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1 -NOV-DEC - Police State AC V2
Tournament
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1 -Damus
Caselist.CitesClass[7]
Cites
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1 -Part 1 is Framing
2 -The starting point of government deliberation has to be the individual and how they relate to the social world around them. Rules only gain their force if they are open to public criticism. This means we need a procedural democracy that transcends the exact content of any moral rule. . Adorno:
3 -Adorno, Theodor. “Education after Auschwitz,” Critical Model
4 -
5 -Government action is about the process of deliberation not finding an exact rule to follow in every circumstance. Generation of values requires the ability to speak out. . Singer 84
6 -Singer, Joseph William. "The player and the cards: nihilism and legal theory." The Yale Law Journal 94.1 (1984): 1-70.
7 -
8 -The law can either be used to forward the claims of the powerless or to perpetuate those of the powerful. We embrace a system of politics that allows for the powerless to speak out. Balkin 08
9 -Balkin, Jack M. "Critical legal theory today." (2008).
10 -
11 -Part 2 – The Police State
12 -Qualified immunity reflects a culture of policing that justifies terrorizing black neighborhoods and lets police know they can get away with anything. Carter ‘15
13 -Tom Carter – WSWS Legal Correspondent, a lawyer (https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/02/24/cart-f24.html). “US Supreme Court Expands Immunity for Killer Cops.” Center for Research on Globalization. November 12, 2015. http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-supreme-court-expands-immunity-for-killer-cops/5488366 JJN
14 -
15 -Qualified immunity makes questions of civil rights irrelevant. It shuts down democratic debates about which rights we should value and prevents forms of activism that fight for legal recognition. Hassel ‘99
16 -Diana Hassel - Associate Professor, Roger Williams University School of Law. B.A. 1979, Mount Holyoke College; J.D. 1985, Rutgers, the State University of New JerseyNewark. “Living a Lie: The Cost of Qualified Immunity.” Missouri Law Review. Winter 1999. http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3402andcontext=mlr JJN
17 -
18 -Part 3 - The plan
19 -Plan Text: In all cases in which a police officer is a named defendant against an accusation of violating the 4th amendment by excessive force, the SCOTUS will strike down the "clearly established" and "reasonable officer" clauses in Harlow. Wright ‘15
20 -Sam Wright is a public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. “Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity.” Above the Law. November 3, 2015. http://abovethelaw.com/2015/11/want-to-fight-police-misconduct-reform-qualified-immunity/?rf=1 JJN
21 -
22 -Excessive force is the worst manifestation of this form of structural violence – 4th amendment cases get shut down before they even have a chance. Jeffries ‘13
23 -Jeffries Jr, John C - David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor of Law, the University of Virginia. "The Liability Rule for Constitutional Torts." Virginia Law Review (2013): 207-270.
24 -
25 -The AFF changes police behavior – lawsuits are used by departments to create reform and individuals know their behavior will be watched – they don’t’ even need to win the lawsuits. Schwartz 10
26 -Schwartz, Joanna. "What Police Learn from Lawsuits." Cardozo Law Review, 2010. http://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/files/event/265497/media/slspublic/What_Police_Learn_From_Lawsuits.pdf. SGK
27 -
28 -The AFF changes culture – it is a form of social condemnation that validates the claims of the survivor. Armacost 98
29 -Armacost 98 Barbara Armacost, Vanderbilt Law Review, April, 1998, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=90852, “Qualified Immunity: Ignorance Excused,” WP
30 -
31 -The plan fosters cooperation, which operates as a key check against police departments. De Stefan ‘16
32 -Lindsey de Stefan - J.D. Candidate, 2017, Seton Hall University School of Law; B.A., Ramapo College of New Jersey. ““No Man Is Above the Law and No Man Is Below It:” How Qualified Immunity Reform Could Create Accountability and Curb Widespread Police Misconduct.” The date is claimed to be 2017… but that’s impossible. So it says it has had 360 downloads since July 26, 2016 which is when the article is most likely to have been assumed to be released on the website. Stetan Hall Law. http://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1861andcontext=student_scholarship JJN
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1 -2016-11-08 23:23:52.0
Judge
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1 -McHugh, Tim
Opponent
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1 -Harker AC
ParentRound
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1 -11
Round
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1 -2
Team
... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@
1 -Harvard Westlake Nayar Aff
Title
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1 -NOV-DEC - Damus R2 - Police State AC V1
Tournament
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1 -Damus
Caselist.RoundClass[9]
Cites
... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@
1 -6
EntryDate
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1 -2016-11-06 20:02:46.0
Judge
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1 -Panny Shan
OpenSource
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1 -https://hsld.debatecoaches.org/download/Harvard+Westlake/Nayar+Aff/Harvard%20Westlake-Nayar-Aff-Damus-Round3.docx
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1 -Brentwood LR
Round
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1 -3
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1 -1AC militarism AC
2 -NC demilitarize CP CLS K
Tournament
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1 -Damus
Caselist.RoundClass[10]
EntryDate
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1 -2016-11-08 23:21:52.0
Judge
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1 -McHugh, Tim
OpenSource
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1 -https://hsld.debatecoaches.org/download/Harvard+Westlake/Nayar+Aff/Harvard%20Westlake-Nayar-Aff-Damus-Round2.docx
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1 -Harker AC
Round
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1 -2
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1 -1AC Police State
2 -1NC Congress CP
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1 -Damus
Caselist.RoundClass[11]
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1 -7
EntryDate
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1 -2016-11-08 23:23:49.0
Judge
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1 -McHugh, Tim
OpenSource
... ... @@ -1,1 +1,0 @@
1 -https://hsld.debatecoaches.org/download/Harvard+Westlake/Nayar+Aff/Harvard%20Westlake-Nayar-Aff-Damus-Round2.docx
Opponent
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1 -Harker AC
Round
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1 -2
RoundReport
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1 -1AC Police State
2 -1NC Congress CP
Tournament
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1 -Damus
Caselist.RoundClass[8]
EntryDate
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1 +2016-11-06 01:18:45.39
Judge
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1 +McHugh, Tim
Opponent
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1 +Harker AC
Round
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1 +2
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2 +1NC Congress CP
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