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-Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Qualified Immunity is legal. |
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-Totenberg 14, Nina, and Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza, Supreme Court Upholds Law Enforcement's Qualified Immunity, 2014, NPR, http://www.npr.org/2014/05/27/316484853/supreme-court-upholds-law-enforcements-qualified-immunity |
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-In two decisions handed down Tuesday, the Supreme Court made it more difficult for citizens to sue law enforcement officers for their conduct. Both decisions were unanimous. The central issue in both was the doctrine of "qualified immunity," which shields public officials from being sued for actions that fall short of violating a clearly established statutory or constitutional right. |
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-Aff destroys judicial review- it obliterates the precedent that the government has to listen to court decisions, allowing congress to pass laws that interfere with judicial review. |
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-Nathanson 86, Edmond, Law clerk for Court of Appeals, Congressional Power to Contradict the Supreme Court's Constitutional Decisions: Accommodation of Rights in Conflict, |
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-http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2115andcontext=wmlr |
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-In his dissenting opinion in Morgan, Justice Harlan suggested that the Court's recognition of congressional power to interpret the substance of the fourteenth amendment, in a manner inconsistent with the Court's interpretation, compromised the principle of judicial supremacy enunciated in Marbury v. Madison.' Justice Harlan contended that Congress could not revise or contradict a constitutional decision of the Court through ordinary legislation, and he noted that Congress could use the power recognized by the majority to curb fourteenth amendment rights.7 The majority's response to this argument was oblique. In a footnote, Justice Brennan argued that, while Congress could exercise the enforcement power to expand judicially-created rights, it could not "exercise discretion in the other direction . . . to restrict, abrogate, or dilute fourteenth amendment guarantees."' This assertion, which has become known as the one-way "ratchet" theory, has provided a continuing source of controversy. |
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-Judicial Review is key to check back the legislator from hugely oppressive laws- Brown v. Board proves. |
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-Somin 16, Ilya, The Supreme Court Is a Check on Big Government, Protection for Minorities, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/06/is-the-supreme-court-too-powerful/the-supreme-court-is-a-check-on-big-government-protection-for-minorities |
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-The Supreme Court gets many things wrong. Yet America would be a far worse society without it. If judicial review were seriously curtailed, the executive and legislative branches of government could ignore most constitutional limits on their powers. This is a particularly grave danger in a world where government is as large and powerful as it is today – spending nearly 40 percent of our gross domestic product, and regulating almost every aspect of human activity. Without an independent judiciary to check their vast powers, federal and state governments would often be free to use their full might to censor opposition speech, confiscate property and otherwise persecute those they disapprove of. Avoiding that is well-worth the price of putting up with a good many flawed judicial rulings. Public opinion imposes some constraints on oppressive policies. But with a government as large and complex as ours, many of its abuses are little-known to voters, who generally pay scant attention to public policy. Moreover, some of the worst abuses target groups disliked by mainstream public opinion, such as unpopular ethnic and religious minorities. Absent judicial protection for political rights, political incumbents could even use their powers to insulate themselves against future electoral competition – as has happened in some other countries that lack strong judicial review. The court’s historical record is mixed. But it has had a major beneficial impact in helping protect the rights of racial minorities – not only in iconic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, but in lesser-known decisions, like Buchanan v. Warley, an underappreciated 1917 ruling that struck down laws preventing blacks from moving into majority-white neighborhoods. There is also little doubt that unpopular speech and religious worship has far greater protection than would exist in the court’s absence. The same is true of the rights of criminal defendants, another vulnerable group that tends to get short shrift from the political process. In recent years, the court has done much to curtail uncompensated takings of private property by both federal and state officials. This June, it struck down a program that seized large quantities of raisins from their producers to facilitate a cartel that raises prices for the benefit of politically connected agribusiness interests. Many Americans have reason to be grateful for this little-known aspect of the court’s work. Historically, many of the court’s worst decisions were cases where it chose not to strike down an oppressive unconstitutional policy – cases like Plessy v. Ferguson, which permitted racial segregation, and Korematsu v. United States, which permitted the expulsion of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast during World War II. Weakening the court would increase the incidence of such outrages. |