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  • Caselist.RoundClass[8]
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1		-2016-12-03 00:16:26.346
	1	+2016-12-03 00:16:26.0

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	1	+The role of the ballot is to evaluate the simulated consequences of the aff world through a policymaking paradigm. You can weigh the SQUO or a competitive policymaking paradigm against the aff. Prefer:
	2	+1. Fairness.
	3	+A. Anything moots 6 minutes of 1ac offense – forces 1ar restart. They get a 13-7 minute advantage which means we have worse discussion, even if the subject of discussion is slightly better. At the very worst that means I get to weigh the case to preserve my offense. B. Independently, there is a huge spectrum of political theories – the k can be the radical on both sides of the spectrum and multifunctional aff offense is insufficient to interact with everything. Unfairness denies effective dialogue on kritikal issues which turns your impacts.
	4	+Galloway 7 Ryan Galloway, Samford Comm prof, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28, 2007
	5	+Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to “understand what ‘went on…’” and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114).
	6	+2. Institutional Engagement.
	7	+The state is inevitable- policymaking is the only way to create change.
	8	+Coverstone 5 Alan Coverstone (masters in communication from Wake Forest, longtime debate coach) “Acting on Activism: Realizing the Vision of Debate with Pro-social Impact” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference November 17th 2005 Powerful personal narratives unconnected to political power are regularly co-opted by those who do learn the language of power. One need look no further than the annual state of the Union Address where personal story after personal story is used to support the political agenda of those in power. The so-called role-playing that public policy contest debates encourage promotes active learning of the vocabulary and levers of power in America. Imagining the ability to use our own arguments to influence government action is one of the great virtues of academic debate. Gerald Graff (2003) analyzed the decline of argumentation in academic discourse and found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place. I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing presupposes. It’s as if such students can’t imagine any rewards for being a public actor or even imagining themselves in such a role. This lack of interest in the public sphere may in turn reflect a loss of confidence in the possibility that the arguments we make in public will have an effect on the world. Today’s students’ lack of faith in the power of persuasion reflects the waning of the ideal of civic participation that led educators for centuries to place rhetorical and argumentative training at the center of the school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57) The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the great virtues of the traditional notion of fiat that critics deride as mere simulation. Simulation of success in the public realm is far more empowering to students than completely abandoning all notions of personal power in the face of governmental hegemony by teaching students that “nothing they can do in a contest debate can ever make any difference in public policy.” Contest debating is well suited to rewarding public activism if it stops accepting as an article of faith that personal agency is somehow undermined by the so-called role playing in debate. Debate is role-playing whether we imagine government action or imagine individual action. Imagining myself starting a socialist revolution in America is no less of a fantasy than imagining myself making a difference on Capitol Hill. Furthermore, both fantasies influenced my personal and political development virtually ensuring a life of active, pro-social, political participation. Neither fantasy reduced the likelihood that I would spend my life trying to make the difference I imagined. One fantasy actually does make a greater difference: the one that speaks the language of political power. The other fantasy disables action by making one a laughingstock to those who wield the language of power. Fantasy motivates and role-playing trains through visualization. Until we can imagine it, we cannot really do it. Role-playing without question teaches students to be comfortable with the language of power, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism. Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must confront governmental power at some point.
	9	+3. The aff deploys the state to learn scenario planning- even if politics is bad, scenario analysis of politics is pedagogically valuable- it enhances creativity, deconstructs biases and teaches advocacy skills
	10	+Barma et al 16 – (May 2016, Advance Publication Online on 11/6/15, Naazneen Barma, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brent Durbin, PhD in Political Science from UC-Berkeley, Professor of Government at Smith College, Eric Lorber, JD from UPenn and PhD in Political Science from Duke, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Rachel Whitlark, PhD in Political Science from GWU, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, “‘Imagine a World in Which’: Using Scenarios in Political Science,” International Studies Perspectives 17 (2), pp. 1-19, http://www.naazneenbarma.com/uploads/2/9/6/9/29695681/using_scenarios_in_political_science_isp_2015.pdf)
	11	+What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them in Political Science? Scenario analysis is perceived most commonly as a technique for examining the robustness of strategy. It can immerse decision makers in future states that go beyond conventional extrapolations of current trends, preparing them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities and to protect themselves from adverse exogenous shocks. The global petroleum company Shell, a pioneer of the technique, characterizes scenario analysis as the art of considering “what if” questions about possible future worlds. Scenario analysis is thus typically seen as serving the purposes of corporate planning or as a policy tool to be used in combination with simulations of decision making. Yet scenario analysis is not inherently limited to these uses. This section provides a brief overview of the practice of scenario analysis and the motivations underpinning its uses. It then makes a case for the utility of the technique for political science scholarship and describes how the scenarios deployed at NEFPC were created. The Art of Scenario Analysis We characterize scenario analysis as the art of juxtaposing current trends in unexpected combinations in order to articulate surprising and yet plausible futures, often referred to as “alternative worlds.” Scenarios are thus explicitly not forecasts or projections based on linear extrapolations of contemporary patterns, and they are not hypothesis-based expert predictions. Nor should they be equated with simulations, which are best characterized as functional representations of real institutions or decision-making processes (Asal 2005). Instead, they are depictions of possible future states of the world, offered together with a narrative of the driving causal forces and potential exogenous shocks that could lead to those futures. Good scenarios thus rely on explicit causal propositions that, independent of one another, are plausible—yet, when combined, suggest surprising and sometimes controversial future worlds. For example, few predicted the dramatic fall in oil prices toward the end of 2014. Yet independent driving forces, such as the shale gas revolution in the United States, China’s slowing economic growth, and declining conflict in major Middle Eastern oil producers such as Libya, were all recognized secular trends that—combined with OPEC’s decision not to take concerted action as prices began to decline—came together in an unexpected way. While scenario analysis played a role in war gaming and strategic planning during the Cold War, the real antecedents of the contemporary practice are found in corporate futures studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Raskin et al. 2005). Scenario analysis was essentially initiated at Royal Dutch Shell in 1965, with the realization that the usual forecasting techniques and models were not capturing the rapidly changing environment in which the company operated (Wack 1985; Schwartz 1991). In particular, it had become evident that straight-line extrapolations of past global trends were inadequate for anticipating the evolving business environment. Shell-style scenario planning “helped break the habit, ingrained in most corporate planning, of assuming that the future will look much like the present” (Wilkinson and Kupers 2013, 4). Using scenario thinking, Shell anticipated the possibility of two Arab-induced oil shocks in the 1970s and hence was able to position itself for major disruptions in the global petroleum sector. Building on its corporate roots, scenario analysis has become a standard policymaking tool. For example, the Project on Forward Engagement advocates linking systematic foresight, which it defines as the disciplined analysis of alternative futures, to planning and feedback loops to better equip the United States to meet contemporary governance challenges (Fuerth 2011). Another prominent application of scenario thinking is found in the National Intelligence Council’s series of Global Trends reports, issued every four years to aid policymakers in anticipating and planning for future challenges. These reports present a handful of “alternative worlds” approximately twenty years into the future, carefully constructed on the basis of emerging global trends, risks, and opportunities, and intended to stimulate thinking about geopolitical change and its effects.4 As with corporate scenario analysis, the technique can be used in foreign policymaking for long-range general planning purposes as well as for anticipating and coping with more narrow and immediate challenges. An example of the latter is the German Marshall Fund’s EuroFutures project, which uses four scenarios to map the potential consequences of the Euro-area financial crisis (German Marshall Fund 2013). Several features make scenario analysis particularly useful for policymaking.5 Long-term global trends across a number of different realms—social, technological, environmental, economic, and political—combine in often-unexpected ways to produce unforeseen challenges. Yet the ability of decision makers to imagine, let alone prepare for, discontinuities in the policy realm is constrained by their existing mental models and maps. This limitation is exacerbated by well-known cognitive bias tendencies such as groupthink and confirmation bias (Jervis 1976; Janis 1982; Tetlock 2005). The power of scenarios lies in their ability to help individuals break out of conventional modes of thinking and analysis by introducing unusual combinations of trends and deliberate discontinuities in narratives about the future. Imagining alternative future worlds through a structured analytical process enables policymakers to envision and thereby adapt to something altogether different from the known present. Designing Scenarios for Political Science Inquiry The characteristics of scenario analysis that commend its use to policymakers also make it well suited to helping political scientists generate and develop policy-relevant research programs. Scenarios are essentially textured, plausible, and relevant stories that help us imagine how the future political-economic world could be different from the past in a manner that highlights policy challenges and opportunities. For example, terrorist organizations are a known threat that have captured the attention of the policy community, yet our responses to them tend to be linear and reactive. Scenarios that explore how seemingly unrelated vectors of change—the rise of a new peer competitor in the East that diverts strategic attention, volatile commodity prices that empower and disempower various state and nonstate actors in surprising ways, and the destabilizing effects of climate change or infectious disease pandemics—can be useful for illuminating the nature and limits of the terrorist threat in ways that may be missed by a narrower focus on recognized states and groups. By illuminating the potential strategic significance of specific and yet poorly understood opportunities and threats, scenario analysis helps to identify crucial gaps in our collective understanding of global politicaleconomic trends and dynamics. The notion of “exogeneity”—so prevalent in social science scholarship—applies to models of reality, not to reality itself. Very simply, scenario analysis can throw into sharp relief often-overlooked yet pressing questions in international affairs that demand focused investigation. Scenarios thus offer, in principle, an innovative tool for developing a political science research agenda. In practice, achieving this objective requires careful tailoring of the approach. The specific scenario analysis technique we outline below was designed and refined to provide a structured experiential process for generating problem-based research questions with contemporary international policy relevance.6 The first step in the process of creating the scenario set described here was to identify important causal forces in contemporary global affairs. Consensus was not the goal; on the contrary, some of these causal statements represented competing theories about global change (e.g., a resurgence of the nation-state vs. border-evading globalizing forces). A major principle underpinning the transformation of these causal drivers into possible future worlds was to “simplify, then exaggerate” them, before fleshing out the emerging story with more details.7 Thus, the contours of the future world were drawn first in the scenario, with details about the possible pathways to that point filled in second. It is entirely possible, indeed probable, that some of the causal claims that turned into parts of scenarios were exaggerated so much as to be implausible, and that an unavoidable degree of bias or our own form of groupthink went into construction of the scenarios. One of the great strengths of scenario analysis, however, is that the scenario discussions themselves, as described below, lay bare these especially implausible claims and systematic biases.8 An explicit methodological approach underlies the written scenarios themselves as well as the analytical process around them—that of case-centered, structured, focused comparison, intended especially to shed light on new causal mechanisms (George and Bennett 2005). The use of scenarios is similar to counterfactual analysis in that it modifies certain variables in a given situation in order to analyze the resulting effects (Fearon 1991). Whereas counterfactuals are traditionally retrospective in nature and explore events that did not actually occur in the context of known history, our scenarios are deliberately forward-looking and are designed to explore potential futures that could unfold. As such, counterfactual analysis is especially well suited to identifying how individual events might expand or shift the “funnel of choices” available to political actors and thus lead to different historical outcomes (Nye 2005, 68–69), while forward-looking scenario analysis can better illuminate surprising intersections and sociopolitical dynamics without the perceptual constraints imposed by fine-grained historical knowledge. We see scenarios as a complementary resource for exploring these dynamics in international affairs, rather than as a replacement for counterfactual analysis, historical case studies, or other methodological tools. In the scenario process developed for NEFPC, three distinct scenarios are employed, acting as cases for analytical comparison. Each scenario, as detailed below, includes a set of explicit “driving forces” which represent hypotheses about causal mechanisms worth investigating in evolving international affairs. The scenario analysis process itself employs templates (discussed further below) to serve as a graphical representation of a structured, focused investigation and thereby as the research tool for conducting case-centered comparative analysis (George and Bennett 2005). In essence, these templates articulate key observable implications within the alternative worlds of the scenarios and serve as a framework for capturing the data that emerge (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). Finally, this structured, focused comparison serves as the basis for the cross-case session emerging from the scenario analysis that leads directly to the articulation of new research agendas. The scenario process described here has thus been carefully designed to offer some guidance to policy-oriented graduate students who are otherwise left to the relatively unstructured norms by which political science dissertation ideas are typically developed. The initial articulation of a dissertation project is generally an idiosyncratic and personal undertaking (Useem 1997; Rothman 2008), whereby students might choose topics based on their coursework, their own previous policy exposure, or the topics studied by their advisors. Research agendas are thus typically developed by looking for “puzzles” in existing research programs (Kuhn 1996). Doctoral students also, understandably, often choose topics that are particularly amenable to garnering research funding. Conventional grant programs typically base their funding priorities on extrapolations from what has been important in the recent past—leading to, for example, the prevalence of Japan and Soviet studies in the mid-1980s or terrorism studies in the 2000s—in the absence of any alternative method for identifying questions of likely future significance. The scenario approach to generating research ideas is grounded in the belief that these traditional approaches can be complemented by identifying questions likely to be of great empirical importance in the real world, even if these do not appear as puzzles in existing research programs or as clear extrapolations from past events. The scenarios analyzed at NEFPC envision alternative worlds that could develop in the medium (five to seven year) term and are designed to tease out issues scholars and policymakers may encounter in the relatively near future so that they can begin thinking critically about them now. This timeframe offers a period distant enough from the present as to avoid falling into current events analysis, but not so far into the future as to seem like science fiction. In imagining the worlds in which these scenarios might come to pass, participants learn strategies for avoiding failures of creativity and for overturning the assumptions that prevent scholars and analysts from anticipating and understanding the pivotal junctures that arise in international affairs.
	12	+4. Heuristics.
	13	+The 1AC acknowledges the state is bad in many ways. However, the aff uses state as heuristic which doesn’t affirm its legitimacy but allows enhanced governmental resistance.
	14	+Zanotti 14 Dr. Laura Zanotti (Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech) “Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World” – Alternatives: Global, Local, Political – vol 38(4):p. 288-304,. A little unclear if this is late 2013 or early 2014 – The Stated “Version of Record” is Feb 20, 2014, but was originally published online on December 30th, 2013. Obtained via Sage Database
	15	+By questioning substantialist representations of power and subjects, inquiries on the possibilities of political agency are reframed in a way that focuses on power and subjects’ relational character and the contingent processes of their (trans)formation in the context of agonic relations. Options for resistance to governmental scripts are not limited to ‘‘rejection,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ or ‘‘dispossession’’ to regain a pristine ‘‘freedom from all constraints’’ or an immanent ideal social order. It is found instead in multifarious and contingent struggles that are constituted within the scripts of governmental rationalities and at the same time exceed and transform them. This approach questions oversimplifications of the complexities of liberal political rationalities and of their interactions with non-liberal political players and nurtures a radical skepticism about identifying universally good or bad actors or abstract solutions to political problems. International power interacts in complex ways with diverse political spaces and within these spaces it is appropriated, hybridized, redescribed, hijacked, and tinkered with. Governmentality as a heuristic focuses on performing complex diagnostics of events. It invites historically situated explorations and careful differentiations rather than overarching demonizations of ‘‘power,’’ romanticizations of the ‘‘rebel’’ or the ‘‘the local.’’ More broadly, theoretical formulations that conceive the subject in non-substantialist terms and focus on processes of subjectification, on the ambiguity of power discourses, and on hybridization as the terrain for political transformation, open ways for reconsidering political agency beyond the dichotomy of oppression/rebellion. These alternative formulations also foster an ethics of political engagement, to be continuously taken up through plural and uncertain practices, that demand continuous attention to ‘‘what happens’’ instead of fixations on ‘‘what ought to be.’’83 Such ethics of engagement would not await the revolution to come or hope for a pristine ‘‘freedom’’ to be regained. Instead, it would constantly attempt to twist the working of power by playing with whatever cards are available and would require intense processes of reflexivity on the consequences of political choices. To conclude with a famous phrase by Michel Foucault ‘‘my point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper- and pessimistic activism.’’84
	16	+Framework
	17	+The standard is resisting material inequalities.
	18	+Prefer:
	19	+1. Ideal theory cannot guide action since its starting point has diverged from the descriptive model of the real world. Non-ideal theory is key for ethical motivation. MILLS: Charles W. Mills, “Ideal Theory” as Ideology, 2005
	20	+“A first possible argument might be the simple denial that moral theory should have any concern with making realistic assumptions about human beings, their capacities, and their behavior. Ethics is concerned with the ideal, so it doesn’t have to worry about the actual. But even for mainstream ethics this wouldn’t work, since, of course, ought is supposed to implies can the ideal has to be achievable by humans. Nor could it seriously be cal imed that moral theory is concerned only with mapping beautiful ideals, not their actual implementation. If any ethicist actually said this, it would be an astonishing abdication of the classic goal of ethics, and its link with practical reason. The normative here would then be weirdly detached from the prescriptive: this is the good and the right—but we are not concerned with their actual realization. Even for Plato, a classic example in at least one sense of an ideal theorist, this was not the case: the Form of the Good was supposed to motivate us, and help philosophers transform society. Nor could anyone seriously say that ideal theory is a good way to approach ethics because as a matter of fact (not as a conceptual necessity following from what “model” or “ideal” means), the normative here has come is close to converging with the descriptive: ideal- as-descriptive-model has approximated to ideal-as-idealized-model. Obviously, the dreadful and dismaying course of human history has not remotely been a record of close-to-ideal behavior, but rather of behavior that has usually been quite the polar opposite of the ideal, with oppression and inequitable treatment of the majority of humanity (whether on grounds of gender, or nationality, or class, or religion, or race) being the norm. So the argument cannot be that as a matter of definitional truth, or factual irrelevance, or factual convergence, ideal theory is required. The argument has to be, as in the quote from Rawls above, that this is the best way of doing normative theory, better than all the other contenders. But why on earth should anyone think this? Why should anyone think that abstaining from theorizing about oppression and its consequences is the best way to bring about an end to oppression? Isn’t this, on the face of it, just completely implausible?”
	21	+
	22	+Non-ideal theory necessitates consequentialism since instead of following rules that assume an already equal playing field, we take steps to correct the material injustice.
	23	+
	24	+2. Debate should deal with the real-world consequences of oppression.
	25	+Curry 14, Tommy, The Cost of a Thing: A Kingian Reformulation of a Living Wage Argument in the 21st Century, Victory Briefs, 2014,
	26	+Despite the pronouncement of debate as an activity and intellectual exercise pointing to the real world consequences of dialogue, thinking, and (personal) politics when addressing issues of racism, sexism, economic disparity, global conflicts, and death, many of the discussions concerning these ongoing challenges to humanity are fixed to a paradigm which sees the adjudication of material disparities and sociological realities as the conquest of one ideal theory “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” Charles Mills outlines the problem contemporary theoretical-performance styles in policy debate and value-weighing in Lincoln-Douglass are confronted with in their attempts to get at the concrete problems in our societies. At the outset, Mills concedes that “ideal theory applies to moral theory as a whole (at least to normative ethics as against metaethics); since ethics deals by definition with normative/prescriptive/evaluative issues, against factual/descriptive issues.” At the most general level, there is a conceptual chasm between what emerges as actual problems in the world (e.g.: racism, sexism, poverty, disease, etc.) and how we frame such problems theoretically—the assumptions and shared ideologies we depend upon for our problems to be heard and accepted as a worthy “problem” by an audience—is the most obvious call for an anti-ethical paradigm, since such a paradigm insists on the actual as the basis of what can be considered normatively. Mills, however, describes this chasm as a problem of an ideal-as-descriptive model which argues that for any actual-empirical-observable social phenomenon (P), an ideal of (P) is necessarily a representation of that phenomenon. In the idealization of a social phenomenon (P), one “necessarily has to abstract away from certain features” of (P) that is observed before abstraction occurs. ¶ This gap between what is actual (in the world), and what is represented by theories and politics of debaters proposed in rounds threatens any real discussions about the concrete nature of oppression and the racist economic structures which necessitate tangible policies and reorienting changes in our value orientations. As Mills states: “What distinguishes ideal theory is the reliance on idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual,” so what we are seeking to resolve on the basis of “thought” is in fact incomplete, incorrect, or ultimately irrelevant to the actual problems which our “theories” seek to address. Our attempts to situate social disparity cannot simply appeal to the ontologization of social phenomenon—meaning we cannot suggest that the various complexities of social problems (which are constantly emerging and undisclosed beyond the effects we observe) are totalizable by any one set of theories within an ideological frame be it our most cherished notions of Afro-pessimism, feminism, Marxism, or the like. At best, theoretical endorsements make us aware of sets of actions to address ever developing problems in our empirical world, but even this awareness does not command us to only do X, but rather do X and the other ideas which compliment the material conditions addressed by the action X. As a whole, debate (policy and LD) neglects the need to do X in order to remedy our cast-away-ness among our ideological tendencies and politics. How then do we pull ourselves from this seeming ir-recoverability of thought in general and in our endorsement of socially actualizable values like that of the living wage? It is my position that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s thinking about the need for a living wage was a unique, and remains an underappreciated, resource in our attempts to impose value reorientation (be it through critique or normative gestures) upon the actual world. In other words, King aims to we must reformulate the values which deny the legitimacy of the living wage, and those values predicated on the flawed views of the oppressed worker, Blacks, and the colonized (dignity, justice, fairness, rights, etc.) used to currently justify the living wages in under our contemporary moral parameters
	27	+Plan
	28	+Resolved: The United States should limit qualified immunity for police officers by removing the “clearly established” element from the Qualified Immunity Doctrine as method to increase accountability for officers. I’m willing to clarify T interps in CX. Wright 15
	29	+ (Journalist and PHD in Law. "Want to Fight Police Misconduct? Reform Qualified Immunity." http://abovethelaw.com/2015/11/want-to-fight-police-misconduct-reform-qualified-immunity/)
	30	+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? That’s just a start. There are plenty of other reforms that could open up civil rights lawsuits and help ensure police accountability for bad conduct. Two posts (one, two) at Balkinization by City University of New York professor Lynda Dodd provide a good overview. Campaign Zero should consider adding civil rights litigation reform to its platform, our policymakers should consider making civil rights litigation more robust, and, if we want to see justice done, we should push to make it happen.
	31	+Inherency
	32	+The United States is a warzone—police murder thousands of black people a year—it’s try or die.
	33	+Wong ’15 (Kathleen is a branded content staff writer at Mic, “10 Police Brutality Statistics That Are Absolutely Shocking,” Mic, 12/9, https://mic.com/articles/129981/10-police-brutality-statistics-that-are-absolutely-shocking#.HiJcAd5rQ) Bracketed for efficiency
	34	+1. In May, the Washington Post analyzed the 385 fatal police shootings in the United States that had occurred so far in 2015. The Post noted its number, which came out to two officer-involved shooting deaths per day, was more than twice the rate that the government had recorded over the past decade. 2. That same report found blacks to be killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities. 3. It also found that almost a quarter of those killed were identified as mentally ill by police or family members. 4. The youngest victims at the end of May, according to the Washington Post, were 16 years old (though at the time, nine ages were unknown). 5. Another Washington Post investigation from August found that black men — who constitute 6 of the nation's population — account for 40 of the 60 unarmed people who had been fatally shot by police by that time. 6. The Guardian's The Counted project, which crowdsources and reports on police deaths, analyzed the first half of 2015 to find that an average of three people were killed daily during the first half of 2015 that time. 7. Mapping Police Violence found that black people living in Oklahoma were six times more likely to be killed by police than in Georgia. 8. It also found 98 of these events did not end with an officer being charged with a crime. 9. A 2014 article by KQED found California to be the state with the most frequent occurrences of deadly officer-involved shootings, with 102 in 2011. 10. The Guardian also found that if this trend persists, the number of people killed by police will surpass 1,000 by the end of the year.
	35	+Advantage 1 is Police Brutality
	36	+Qualified immunity destroys accountability for police officers-limitations are key. Bernick 15 Evan Bernick, https://fee.org/articles/to-hold-police-accountable-dont-give-them-immunity/
	37	+The sad fact is that it is often effectively impossible to hold police officers accountable for unconstitutional acts. That fact is attributable in large part to a potent well of unchecked power that many Americans have never heard of. You will not find it in the Constitution. You will not find it in any federal law. It is a judge-made doctrine, invented by the Supreme Court. It is called qualified immunity. And if those charged with enforcing the law are to be kept within the bounds of their rightful authority, it must be abolished. Section 1983, the federal law that allows citizens to sue for constitutional violations, is broad, unequivocal, and unambiguous. It says that “every person” who is acting “under color of” law who causes a “deprivation of any rights… secured by the Constitution and laws” “shall be liable to the party injured.” Section 1983 embodies a foundational principle of justice that resonates with Americans who have never heard of Marbury v. Madison: where there is a right, there is a remedy.But for decades, we have had rights without remedies. In the 1967 case of Pierson v. Ray, the Supreme Court held that police officers sued for constitutional violations can raise “qualified immunity” as a defense, and thereby escape paying out of their own pockets, even if they violated a person’s constitutional rights. This decision was unabashedly policy-oriented: it was thought that government officials would not vigorously fulfill their obligations if they could be held accountable for actions taken in good faith. Under current law, the general rule is that victims of rights violations pay the costs of their own injuries. In practice, qualified immunity provides a near-absolute defense to all but the most outrageous conduct. The Ninth Circuit has held that throwing a flash-bang grenade “blindly” into a house, injuring a toddler, isn’t outrageous enough. Just last year, in Plumhoff v. Rickard, the Supreme Court decided that firing 15 bullets at a motorist is a reasonable method to end the driver’s flight from the police. So much for “every person” “shall be liable.” Qualified immunity shields police misconduct not only from liability but also from meaningful judicial scrutiny. Private lawsuits are an essential tool in uncovering the truth about police misconduct. The discovery process can yield information that makes broader policy changes within police departments possible. At trial, judicial engagement — an impartial, evidence-based determination of the constitutionality of the officer’s actions — can take place.
	38	+The plan solves- cases that the aff puts in court get interacted fairly and result in success while still protecting officers- no backlash.
	39	+Sheng 11
	40	+(Philip, B.A., Stanford University, John Arrillaga Scholar. An "Objectively Reasonable" Criticism of the Doctrine of Qualified Immunity in Excessive Force Cas-es Brought Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 BYU Journal of Public Law 2011 The BYU Journal of Public Law 26 BYU J. Pub. L. 99)
	41	+A better approach might be to eliminate qualified immunity altogether in excessive force cases; but rather than create a whole new test, the Court should remove the question of reasonableness from the jury and allow judges to decide whether the use of force was objectively reasonable. Under this approach, jury interaction would remain much the same, except that after all the facts are resolved, the judge would decide the ultimate constitutional question of reasonableness based on the jury's findings. While this would be a departure from settled practice, it appears to have an adequate basis in the law. For instance, trial court judges already decide the question of reasonableness on motions for summary judgment whenever facts are undisputed or viewed in the light most *109 favorable to the plaintiff. n83 Moreover, appellate judges routinely decide the question of reasonableness every time an excessive force case goes on appeal. n84 Judges are well-equipped, yet it seems odd that the constitutional question of reasonableness only goes to the judge when facts are not in dispute, but at all other times, is entrusted to the jury. It would perhaps make better sense to have the jury resolve the facts, and have the judge decide the question of reasonableness based on those facts. There are several benefits to this approach. First, it would eliminate the need for line drawing between Hope and Brosseau, and courts would not have to worry about clearly established law. Second, the Court could retreat from its "irreducibly murky" n85 distinction between Graham and Harlow. If applied judiciously, Graham alone provides law enforcement officers with adequate protection for reasonable mistakes. Third, even though they would be denied qualified immunity, law enforcement officers would benefit by having judges decide the constitutional question of reasonableness. Judges are in a better position to decide constitutional questions, having been trained in the law and having developed expertise through experience. This approach would also eliminate potential jury bias. While jury bias can cut both ways, n86 consider the case of Jared Massey, a YouTube sensation and public hero after being Tasered by a Utah Highway Patrol officer in 2007. n87 Despite an internal investigation clearing the officer, the state settled for $ 40,000 rather than risk a jury awarding more. n88 Fourth, the approach would serve the same purposes as qualified immunity by allowing claims to be decided early on summary judgment.
	42	+And lawsuits deter brutality while indemnification is not guaranteed.
	43	+Gilles ’01 (Mirriam, Assistant Professor, Cardozo Law School, “In Defense of making Government Pay: The Deterrent Effect of Constitutional Tort Remedies,” Georgia Law Review, Vol. 35, 2001.) OS bracketed for gender
	44	+The question of whether constitutional tort remedies serve any deterrent effect is, I think, easily answered in the affirmative. No police officer wants to be sued, 2 particularly where there is no absolute guarantee that their his municipal employer will pay for their his defense and indemnify him for damages.3 Indeed, the substantive and procedural elements of the qualified immunity doctrine are largely premised on the undesirability of dragging public officials through a difficult legal process, taking their time and energies away from their official duties, and exposing them to potentially ruinous liability. 4 And even where officers are indemnified, it is reasonable to suppose that there are immense political costs (in the sense of everyday workplace politics) associated with a finding of liability and exposing the municipal employer to budgetary payouts. Common sense supports this view that constitutional damages deter police misconduct to some appreciable degree. Every day across the country, there are obviously situations in which officers are tempted to abuse a defenseless suspect in order to gain information during an interrogation, or for some other purpose. It would be foolhardy to assume that the knowledge that a suspect might sue for damages has no inhibitory effect.
	45	+Independent of deterrence, lawsuits lead to political reform for the better. Schwartz 11
	46	+Joanna Schwartz 11 (Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law.) "What Police Learn from Lawsuits." Cardozo L. Rev. 33 (2011): 841.
	47	+The practices of the departments in my study are distinct in two significant ways from expectations about the uses of litigation data underlying theories of deterrence. Deterrence theorists generally expect that settlements and judgments – financial penalties – inspire performance improvement efforts. Yet the police departments in my study that gather and analyze litigation data do not focus solely – or even primarily – on settlements and judgments. Instead, they pay particular attention to the allegations of misconduct in claims and lawsuits when they are first filed, and the information developed during the course of litigation. To be sure, departments in my study also pay attention to the resolution of suits in various ways. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department tracks trends in settlements and judgments and has reviewed practices and units responsible for large payouts.115 And large settlements and judgments may focus attention on particular cases, particularly if they attract press or political attention.116 But the five departments in my study pay attention to lawsuits at the beginning and middle – as well as the end – of the litigation process. Second, deterrence theory expects that officials deciding which course of action to take weigh the costs of litigation against the benefits of the underlying conduct.117 Yet, the policies in place in the departments in my study do not facilitate this sort of weighing. Departments would not, for example, track lawsuits alleging chokeholds and then decide whether to retrain their officers about the impropriety of chokeholds based on the costs of these suits.118 Instead, departments in my study would use lawsuits, with other data, to identify chokeholds as behavior that triggered a concentration of suits, civilian complaints, and/or use of force reports. The department then would conduct an investigation and identify ways to address the underlying policy, training, or personnel problems.119 And when a department looks for trends in payouts, officials do not weigh those judgments and settlements against the costs of potential policy changes. Instead, the concentration of settlements and judgments is treated as an indication of an underlying problem that is then investigated and analyzed. By differentiating department practices from prevailing understandings of deterrence, I do not mean to suggest that these departments are immune to lawsuits’ deterrent effects. Indeed, the LASD’s elaborate efforts to track and reduce misconduct can be understood as a kind of end-product of deterrence. When the Board of Supervisors appointed the Kolts Commission to review LASD practices, they were motivated in part by a Los Angeles Times story that reported $32 million paid in settlements and judgments against the LASD over a five-year period.120 The Kolts Commission was instructed to find ways to reduce the costs of litigation against the department121 and a significant aim of Merrick Bobb’s reviews of the department remains to monitor the costs of lawsuits brought against the LASD.122 But the policies put in place by the Kolts Commission and Merrick Bobb reduce the costs of liability by understanding and addressing the underlying causes of police error and misconduct. And to achieve this understanding, the LASD and Bobb focus attention on the lessons that can be learned from lawsuits, regardless of an individual suit’s financial or political ramifications. The practices of departments in my study are more akin to those encouraged by those focused on the identification and reduction of error.
	48	+Meta-studies prove that police accountability and legitimacy stops the culture of fear and spillovers to decrease overall violence.
	49	+Mazerolle et al 13, Lorraine, Sarah Bennett, Jacqueline Davis, Elise Sargeant and Matthew Manning, 2013, Legitimacy in Policing: A Systematic Review, http://thecapartnership.org/cms/assets/uploads/2016/02/Mazerolle_Legitimacy_Review-1.pdf
	50	+The systematic search found 163 studies that reported on police led interventions, and a final set of 30 studies contained data suitable for meta-analysis. The direct outcomes analyzed were legitimacy, procedural justice, and citizen cooperation/compliance and satisfaction/confidence in the police. In addition, an indirect outcome, reoffending, was also analyzed. The main finding of this review is that police interventions that comprised dialogue with a procedural justice component (or stated specifically that the intervention sought to increase legitimacy) did indeed enhance citizens’ views on the legitimacy of the police, with all direct outcomes apart from legitimacy itself being statistically significant. Our review shows that by police adopting procedurally just dialogue, they can use a variety of interventions to enhance legitimacy, reduce reoffending, and promote citizen satisfaction, confidence, compliance and cooperation with the police.
	51	+Case studies prove that litigation spurs legislation for positive policy reform, win or lose.
	52	+Richard A. L. Gambitta, Chair of the Political Science and Geography Department, University of Texas-San Antonio, GOVERNING THROUGH THE COURTS, ed. Gambitta, May, and Foster, 1981, p. 275-276.
	53	+
	54	+Similar to the aftermath of the “winning” litiation in Serrano and Robinson, the losing litigation in Rodriguez was followed by positive, though limited, policy reform and relative equalization. How did the Rodriguez litigaton contribute to the policy reform and expenditure change? I suggest, in ways similar to Serrano and Robinson. The litigation process performed a legislative agenda-setting function. All three cases contributed to setting a legislative agenda that otherwise would not have 276 transpired. Additionally, the litigation processes bolstered the political positions of the advocates of change, though the policy outcomes were tempered by, as they are always subject to and at least partially determined by, the inherent compromises of the majoritarian processes and institutions (Casper, 1972; Clune, 1979; Horowitz, 1977; Lehn, 1978; Scheingold, 1974).
	55	+Advantage 2 – Human Rights
	56	+Qualified immunity leads to circumvention of rights and propagates police brutality – plan solves this.
	57	+Johnson 15 – Tabitha Johnson, : 2015(“QUALIFIED IMMUNITY OR JUSTIFIED BRUTALITY?: AN EXAMINATION OF THE QUALIFIED IMMUNITY DOCTRINE IN PETERSON V. KOPP” Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, Vol. 4:2 p.265-267)
	58	+The Eighth Circuit then addressed Peterson’s excessive force claim.43 During his arrest, Peterson contended that Kopp used excessive force, thus violating Peterson’s Fourth Amendment right “to be free from unreasonable seizures.”44 In determining whether Kopp used excessive force in Peterson’s arrest, the court used an “objective reasonableness” test.45 The Eighth Circuit explained that this test took into account that an officer’s actions “must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with the 20/20 vision of hindsight.”46 In determining whether an officer’s actions in pursuing an arrest were reasonable, the Eighth Circuit evaluated “the severity of the crime at issue, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and whether the suspect is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.”47 The court concluded that Peterson’s purported crime was not severe, he was not posing a threat to others, nor was he fleeing.48 As Peterson’s disobedience was passive and non-threatening to others, Kopp’s infliction of physical force onto Peterson was deemed excessive.49 While Kopp’s arrest failed the excessive force test, the Eighth Circuit held that Kopp was entitled to qualified immunity because Peterson’s injuries sustained from the altercation with Kopp were de minimis.50 The injuries were de minimis because Peterson “did not seek medical care and his injuries resolved themselves without medical intervention.”51 To support its conclusion, the court provided a wealth of similar cases for comparison.52 The court further noted that a recent decision changed the law regarding the applicability of qualified immunity for de minimis injuries; however, the court also clarified that it rendered the ruling after the altercation between Kopp and Peterson.53 Therefore, Kopp was reasonable in assuming that, as long as the injuries he inflicted upon Peterson were de minimis, he would remain entitled to qualified immunity as his actions were “constitutionally permissible” at the time.54 Lastly, the Eighth Circuit addressed Peterson’s two retaliation claims.55 Peterson alleged that Kopp both pepper sprayed and arrested him for participating in a constitutionally protected activity.56 In determining whether Kopp acted in retaliation, the court determined that Peterson must show that “he engaged in a protected activity,” that “the government official took adverse action against him that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing in the activity,” and that “the adverse action was motivated at least in part by the exercise of the protected activity.”57 The Eighth Circuit consolidated the three prongs of the test by stating that a plaintiff need only show that “he was ‘singled out because of his exercise of constitutional rights’” in order to prevail on a retaliation claim.58 The court further implemented a fourth prong to this traditional test.59 To satisfy the test, Peterson would also need to prove a “lack of probable cause or a lack of arguable probable cause.”60 The Eighth Circuit first applied the aforementioned test to Peterson’s claim of retaliatory arrest.61 In applying this four-prong test, the Eighth Circuit held that “Kopp was entitled to qualified immunity on Peterson’s retaliatory arrest claim because, as detailed above, Kopp had at least arguable probable cause for the arrest,” as exemplified through his actions prior to his arrest.62 The Eighth Circuit then evaluated Peterson’s claim of being pepper sprayed out of retaliation.63 The court determined that Peterson presented enough evidence to prove that Kopp pepper sprayed him out of retaliation. 64 In reaching its conclusion, the Eighth Circuit noted that it was significant to Peterson’s contention that, shortly before being pepper sprayed, Peterson demanded Kopp’s badge number.65 This—along with Kopp’s outright refusal to provide Peterson with the requested information—justified the court’s decision to remand the issue.66 The court ultimately held that “a reasonable jury could conclude . . . that Kopp pepper sprayed Peterson in retaliation for asking for his badge number, and Peterson’s First Amendment right was clearly established at the time of the incident.”67 For these reasons, the Eighth Circuit remanded the retaliatory force claim for further review. IV. CONCLUSION Despite its arrival during a tumultuous era for civilian rights, Peterson does not stray from the majority of its precedents regarding the evaluation of qualified immunity. Peterson’s claims of wrongful arrest, retaliatory arrest, and excessive force all proved futile under the Eighth Circuit’s application of qualified immunity, while Peterson’s claim of retaliatory force has been remanded for further examination. It is clear from the holdings in Peterson that the doctrine of qualified immunity still reigns supreme in cases of purported police brutality. Unless there is a reevaluation of the doctrine on a fundamental and moral level, Peterson will provide precedent for further police brutality cases.
	59	+Police brutality is the largest cause of a decline in US cred on human rights – the UN Human Rights Council has smashed the US for it
	60	+Sheriff 15 - Natasja Sheriff, independent journalist and a visiting scholar at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute: May 11, 2015(“US cited for police violence, racism in scathing UN review on human rights” Al Jazeera Available at http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/11/us-faces-scathing-un-review-on-human-rights-record.html)
	61	+The United States was slammed over its rights record Monday at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, with member nations criticizing the country for police violence and racial discrimination, the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility and the continued use of the death penalty. The issue of racism and police brutality dominated the discussion on Monday during the country’s second universal periodic review (UPR). Country after country recommended that the U.S. strengthen legislation and expand training to eliminate racism and excessive use of force by law enforcement. "I'm not surprised that the world's eyes are focused on police issues in the U.S.," said Alba Morales, who investigates the U.S. criminal justice system at Human Rights Watch. "There is an international spotlight that's been shone on the issues, in large part due to the events in Ferguson and the disproportionate police response to even peaceful protesters," she said. Anticipating the comments to come, James Cadogan, a senior counselor to the U.S. assistant attorney general, told delegates gathered in Geneva, "The tragic deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Ohio and Walter Scott in South Carolina have renewed a long-standing and critical national debate about the even-handed administration of justice. These events challenge us to do better and to work harder for progress — through both dialogue and action." All of the names he mentioned are black men or boys who were killed by police officers or died shortly after being arrested. The events have sparked widespread anger and unrest over the past year. Cadogan added that the Department of Justice has opened more than 20 investigations in the last six years — including an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department — as well as the release of a report of the Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing in March, which included more than 60 recommendations. But advocates like Morales say the U.S. could do much more. "Use of excessive force by police was a major part of this year's UPR, and the fact that we still don't have a reliable national figure to know how many people are killed by police or what the racial breakdown is of those people is a travesty," she said. "A nation as advanced as the U.S. should be able to gather that number." The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment. Although the problems are not new, the death of young men like Gray and Brown and the unrest that followed their killings in U.S. cities over the past year has attracted the attention — and criticism — of the international community. "Chad considers the United States of America to be a country of freedom, but recent events targeting black sectors of society have tarnished its image," said Awada Angui of the U.N. delegation to Chad.
	62	+US leadership is key to the UN’s worldwide success in human rights
	63	+Lagon 5/17
	64	+Mark P. Lagon, Centennial Fellow and Distinguished Senior Scholar in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University: May 17, 2016(“A GLASS HALF FULL: WHY THE U.S. NEEDS TO BE ON THE U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL” Freedom House Available at https://freedomhouse.org/article/glass-half-full-why-us-needs-be-un-human-rights-council )
	65	+Active membership in the Council by the U.S. has contributed to successes. A resolution and rapporteur on Belarus were restored. Moreover, I would never have thought ten years ago that a resolution devoted to Iran could be passed not only in New York but in Geneva. The Human Rights Council resolution does not yet enumerate Iran’s human rights violations chapter and verse – as it should. But it has sustained a Special Rapporteur when the international community (and candidly the United States) have let nuclear nonproliferation be a pretext for deprioritizing human rights in that country – both before and after a nuclear deal with Tehran. Despite fears to the contrary, the Council once again extended the Iran mandate on March 23, 2016 by a 5 vote margin. Today, the Council and the current Iran resolution remain important vehicles for the world to increase pressure on Iran to improve its human rights record. While the Security Council has been all too inert on the atrocities of Assad in Syria, allowing ISIS to grow as a second source of atrocities, the Human Rights Council has repeatedly devoted its attention to those calamities. On August 22, 2011, the Council established a Commission of Inquiry on Syria which found that the Syrian government is responsible for violations that amount to crimes against humanity. Since then, the UNHRC has held over 20 sessions on Syria and adopted no less than 17 resolutions. The Human Rights Council was pretty feckless in calling attention to human rights abuses in Sri Lanka in the period when the United States refused to run to be a Member. After the United States got on, there was a pronounced shift in the substance of resolutions adopted on Sri Lanka, making clear the international community’s demand for accountability for mass atrocities committed during the civil war. Sri Lanka is making some progress. It is one ray of hope in Freedom House’s Freedom of the World survey, which shows ten straight years of a global recession of democracy, notably in freedom of expression, freedom of association, and rule of law. Most striking was the Commission of Inquiry launched by the Council to investigate North Korea’s atrocities. No single multilateral mandate or report on human rights has changed the terms of debate on a neglected human rights issue than this Commission headed by Australian jurist Michael Kirby. No mandate devoted to atrocities-level abuse has treated a case where open warfare has not existed for decades. And yet, so powerful were the Commission’s findings that China and Russia could not block North Korea’s human rights situation from being added to the U.N. Security Council’s standing agenda. Less striking, but highly important, was action on Eritrea – a country all but forgotten, and of little strategic importance, yet so repressive that in 2014, some 6 percent of its population fled to seek asylum. In July 2012, the Council appointed a Special Rapporteur to shine a light onto widespread human rights violations. On June 27, 2014, the Council established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate these gross and systematic abuses, with a particular focus on documenting crimes against humanity. The United States helped make the numerous Council assessments of Israel’s conduct in Gaza and in the humanitarian flotilla controversy fairer. The United States may not fix the quantitative volume and qualitative tilt of the Council’s treatment of Israel, but its presence has been helpful. And at a minimum, the United States using its voice and vote means that excessive criticism of Israel is not answered with silence. THEMATIC WORK In a second area, the thematic work of the Human Rights Council has improved, and been ameliorated by U.S. leadership. Let’s take a few examples. First, the United States helped turn around a perverse set of resolutions on defamation of religion which gave states in Islamic-majority nations cover in order to use blasphemy laws to sideline and repress freedom of religion and of expression in the name of anti-defamation. Those resolutions always have represented a latent threat for creation of a broader UN Declaration or Convention codifying their pernicious provisions. In 2011, the United States, working with a cross-regional group of partners, engaged the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to end-run intransigent, longstanding ambassadors in Geneva. The result was a new consensus framework on combatting religious intolerance, resting on the pillars of defending freedom of expression and veritable freedom of all religions. That victory is precarious and is already vulnerable. As the single most pronounced voice for freedom of conscience and expression in the international community, the U.S. should be on the Council.i Second, a much-needed mandate was created for Freedom of Assembly and Association, in large part because of U.S. leadership. At a time when autocracies and ostensible democracies worldwide are squeezing civil society groups and demonizing them for getting international advice and backing, this mandate is essential. We know the Rapporteur well. Kenyan Maina Kiai happens to have won the Freedom Award at the annual dinner where I was named to become Freedom House’s President. As Special Rapporteur, he embodies the UN’s thematic work on human rights at its most energetic and effective. I have said in my book Human Dignity and the Future of Global Institutions that multilateral measures on economic and social aspirations are not inherently less important than the political and civil liberties Freedom House champions. Yet the Human Rights Council does dignify a number of matters that no serious person could claim are really human rights. The number of mandates for economic, social, and cultural rights have grown, even while the U.S. has been on the Council as a voice of reason. Without the U.S. there, there would be even more silly mandates, like treating the real problem of toxic waste as a human rights matter. And those efforts which have proven constructive, like the Council resolution on business and human rights springing from the work of John Ruggie as Special Representative, would be in danger of being taken in the wrong direction, which bears watching as Ecuador and others seek a related treaty. UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW A third area relates to peer review. The most distinctive innovation of the negotiation I took part in to create the Council is the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). It meant all nations, including some heinous, human rights-abusing states managing to get on the Council would be subject to regular scrutiny. Some of us feared the UPR would be a pretext for winnowing the number of country-specific resolutions and rapporteurs, but they have been sustained, especially when the U.S. has been a Council Member. The UPR gives an opportunity for civil society groups to shine a light of accountability on their states. The largest part of Freedom House’s work, our true comparative advantage, is capacity-building and emergency assistance to civil society organizations in all regions of the world. We see how the UPR helps our local civil society partners assert their voice in an organized, focused and coordinated manner, which is why we support these frontline activists to engage directly in the UPR process, including appearing in Geneva and producing shadow reports. At its best, governments are adopting the practice of formally consulting with civil society, a good example being Mali, where the government arranged meetings between ministerial departments and representatives of civil society, and where the Ministry of Justice established a working group to prepare the UPR report. In more restrictive environments, civil society and even the media have the option of discussing UPR recommendations at one step removed: rather than themselves raising issues directly, they can report on recommendations raised by the international community. According to a 2014 report of the civil society organization UPR Info, 48 percent of UPR recommendations triggered action (partially or fully implemented) within two and a half years, and 19 percent of recommendations that were not accepted but merely “noted” still resulted in action. The UPR is not an unvarnished success.ii It offers an opportunity to raise human rights issues in any nation every four years, makes recommendations to states, and those states in turn make commitments to address some of the recommendations. Yet in a decade, with nations now getting repeatedly assessed, it is not clear to me that there is sufficient onus on states to live up to even the recommendations they agree to meet, much less those they do not. This is one reason Freedom House helps civil society actors, like some from Venezuela, to present their case to the expert bodies assigned to assess how much parties to UN human rights conventions fulfill their commitments, because these treaty bodies have more impact than the UPR. The United States is empirically the most vocal participant in the UPR dialogue with states under examination. The UPR will be stronger over time for U.S. involvement in the Council.
	66	+Improving UN rights and preventing violations helps billions materially across the globe.
	67	+CFR 13 - Council on Foreign Relations: June 19, 2013 (“The Global Human Rights Regime” From the multimedia Global Governance Monitor of the International Institutions and Global Governance program Available at http://www.cfr.org/human-rights/global-human-rights-regime/p27450#p1)
	68	+Although the concept of human rights is abstract, how it is applied has a direct and enormous impact on daily life worldwide. Millions have suffered crimes against humanity. Millions more toil in bonded labor. In the last decade alone, authoritarian rule has denied civil and political liberties to billions. The idea of human rights has a long history, but only in the past century has the international community sought to galvanize a regime to promote and guard them. Particularly, since the United Nations (UN) was established in 1945, world leaders have cooperated to codify human rights in a universally recognized regime of treaties, institutions, and norms. An elaborate global system is being developed. Governments are striving to promote human rights domestically and abroad, and are partnering with multilateral institutions to do so. A particularly dynamic and decentralized network of civil-society actors is also involved in the effort. Together, these players have achieved marked success, though the institutionalization and implementation of different rights is progressing at varying rates. Response to mass atrocities has seen the greatest progress, even if enforcement remains inconsistent. The imperative to provide people with adequate public health care is strongly embedded across the globe, and substantial resources have been devoted to the challenge. The right to freedom from slavery and forced labor has also been integrated into international and national institutions, and has benefited from high-profile pressure to combat forced labor. Finally, the steady accumulation of human-rights-related conventions has encouraged most states to do more to implement binding legislation in their constitutions and statutes.

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	1	+2016-12-03 00:16:29.118

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	1	+Emily Nguyen

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	1	+Dulles MK

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	1	+8

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	1	+1

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	1	+Strake Jesuit Li Aff

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	1	+ND - Race AC v3

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	1	+Longhorn Classic