Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[6]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[6]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-11-19 03:30:08.550
	1	+2016-11-19 03:30:08.0

Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Cites

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	1	+I affirm the resolution. Resolved: The United States Federal Government ought to limit qualified immunity for police officers. Some evidence is bracketed for gender and clarity.
	2	+I adhere to the legal definition of qualified immunity, or “government employees’ immunity from trial, as long as a) the official did not break a Constitutional right or federal statute that was clearly established at the time of violation, and b) the officer could not have reasonably believed their conduct to be lawful under that right or statute.
	3	+I define “limit” as “to restrict or confine, as to area, extent, time, etc.” To clarify: I do not defend the complete abolishment of qualified immunity, but rather, restricting it to the extent that it no longer impedes justice.
	4	+Dictionary, F. (2016). Retrieved from Free Dictionary Website : thefreedictionary.com
	5	+Framework
	6	+Part I is framework.
	7	+‘Ought’ implies obligation, so I value morality.
	8	+"Ought." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ought. “used to express obligation”
	9	+
	10	+Part I is framework.
	11	+
	12	+‘Ought’ implies obligation, so I value morality.
	13	+"Ought." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ought. “used to express obligation”
	14	+First — the mere concept of agency demands we assign importance to the idea of moral accountability. Barrett 04:
	15	+Will Barrett, “Responsibility, Accountability and Corporate Activity,” Online Opinion: Australia’s E-journal of Social and Political Debate, August 25, 2004, http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/print.asp?article=2480#.
	16	+Moral responsibility assumes a capacity for making rational decisions, which in turn justifies holding moral agents accountable for their actions. Morality gives reasons for action, and moral agents must in principle be capable of choosing to act morally, and of acting on the basis of a moral reason. People who lack a capacity for rational decision-making cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. In case this requirement strikes you as too stringent, ask yourself why adults are held responsible for the welfare (and sometimes the actions) of children. Adults have moral responsibility for children because children lack a developed capacity for rational decision-making, and adults, other things being equal, are taken to have such a capacity.
	17	+Given that moral agency entails responsibility, in that autonomous rational agents are in principle capable of responding to moral reasons, accountability is a necessary feature of morality. Moral agents have negative responsibilities at least, and can be held to account for violating these. A thicker sense of accountability derives from the roles we occupy. Responsibilities attach to roles, for example professional responsibilities, and roles sometimes are defined in terms of responsibilities. I can be held to account for my fulfilment of my role-given responsibilities.
	18	+
	19	+The value of autonomy is inextricably linked to the principle of accountability. We cannot have one without valuing the other. Bivins 06:
	20	+Bivins, Thomas. "Responsibility and Accountability, Chapter 2." Ethics in Public Relations: Responsible Advocacy, SAGE Books, 2006, sk.sagepub.com/books/ethics-in-public-relations.
	21	+
	22	+
	23	+There are several ways to look at autonomy as it relates to responsibility and accountability. Philosopher and ethicist Mitchell Haney suggests that the moral community is composed of two kinds of actors: responsible actors and accountable actors. Responsibility is viewed within this model as having a higher level of autonomy by nature in that it implies the actor is able to “self-oversee, self-regulate, and self-motivate responsive adjustments to maintain adherence with appropriate moral standards of action.”6
	24	+“Responsible actors need not depend on external or mediated motivational pressure for responsive adjustment. They are expected to be motivated to correct harms and reduce future risk of harms without external or mediated pressure to do so.”7
	25	+Under this formulation, the actor (moral agent) has the capacity to impose moral law on herself, thus achieving a level of “moral autonomy” we would hope to associate normally with professional status. This somewhat Kantian model supposes that we understand ourselves as free, reasoning individuals—invoking a mandate of both self-respect and respect for others (but not control by others).
	26	+Furthermore, promoting accountability is the most important concern for ethical conduct. 5 warrants:
	27	+1) Innateness — to the concept of justice is that we hold people and agents accountable for their actions — if we assume the obligation to a justice system at all we accept the importance of accountability and punishment;
	28	+2) Definitional — Oxford defines “accountable” as “required to explain actions or decisions to someone”; key to the notion of morality is the idea that we demand explanation and thorough thinking;
	29	+3) Reasoning — accountability rejects of arbitrary defense, meaning it rests of the very principle of justification — and regardless of what my opponent’s framework it is, it relies on justification, which means it values the principle of accountability;
	30	+4) Fairness — accountability defends against unfair treatment because its very principle is to only assign blame and punishment to those who deserve it;
	31	+5) Functionality — we can’t operate a moral framework which evaluates individual actions without assigning some importance to the participation of the individual, meaning that any framework we choose in this round will value accountability.
	32	+Offense
	33	+Part II is the plan.
	34	+Plantext: the United States Federal Government will eliminate the “clearly established” qualifier of the Qualified Immunity doctrine, pertaining to whether the right was “reasonably established” at the time of violation. I am willing to clarify any part of the plan in cross-x.
	35	+
	36	+Contention 1 is officer accountability.
	37	+ a) In the status quo, qualified immunity functions alleviates officers of punishment for their crimes, discouraging a sense of responsibility for rights protections. Chemerinksy 14:
	38	+Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine, “How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops,” New York Times, 26 August 2014.
	39	+
	40	+The court has also weakened accountability by ruling that a local government can be held liable only if it is proved that the city’s or county’s own policy violated the Constitution. In almost every other area of law, an employer can be held liable if its employees, in the scope of their duties, injure others, even negligently. This encourages employers to control the conduct of their employees and ensures that those injured will be compensated. A 2011 case, Connick v. Thompson, illustrates how difficult the Supreme Court has made it to prove municipal liability. John Thompson was convicted of an armed robbery and a murder and spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, because of prosecutorial misconduct. Two days before Mr. Thompson’s trial began in New Orleans, the assistant district attorney received the crime lab’s report, which stated that the perpetrator of the armed robbery had a blood type that did not match Mr. Thompson’s. The defense was not told this crucial information.
	41	+
	42	+The Supreme Court has used this doctrine in recent years to deny damages to an eighth-grade girl who was strip-searched by school officials on suspicion that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen. It has also used it to deny damages to a man who, under a material-witness warrant, was held in a maximum-security prison for 16 days and on supervised release for 14 months, even though the government had no intention of using him as a material witness or even probable cause to arrest him. In each instance, the court stressed that the government officer could not be held liable, even though the Constitution had clearly been violated. Taken together, these rulings have a powerful effect. They mean that the officer who shot Michael Brown and the City of Ferguson will most likely never be held accountable in court. How many more deaths and how many more riots will it take before the Supreme Court changes course?
	43	+
	44	+b) A restriction on qualified immunity would hold more officers accountable for their wrongs. Stephan 2k16:
	45	+Lindsey De Stefan. “‘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 article claims it’s from 2017 but let’s just go 2016 to be safe. Seton Hall University. http://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1861andcontext=student_scholarship.
	46	+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 employment related 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. 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.
	47	+
	48	+
	49	+
	50	+Contention 2
	51	+Contention 2 is courts’ accountability.
	52	+a) The first function of the courts in a Constitutional suit is to determine a Constitutional right — the question of immunity should come second to the question of justice. This is an obligation derived from the authority of the courts granted by the people. The Supreme Court, 2016:
	53	+The Supreme Court. "The Court and Constitutional Interpretation." The Supreme Court of the United States, 22 Oct. 2016, www.supremecourt.gov/about/constitutional.aspx.
	54	+
	55	+
	56	+The complex role of the Supreme Court in this system derives from its authority to invalidate legislation or executive actions which, in the Court's considered judgment, conflict with the Constitution. This power of "judicial review" has given the Court a crucial responsibility in assuring individual rights, as well as in maintaining a "living Constitution" whose broad provisions are continually applied to complicated new situations.
	57	+While the function of judicial review is not explicitly provided in the Constitution, it had been anticipated before the adoption of that document. Prior to 1789, state courts had already overturned legislative acts which conflicted with state constitutions. Moreover, many of the Founding Fathers expected the Supreme Court to assume this role in regard to the Constitution; Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, for example, had underlined the importance of judicial review in the Federalist Papers, which urged adoption of the Constitution.
	58	+Hamilton had written that through the practice of judicial review the Court ensured that the will of the whole people, as expressed in their Constitution, would be supreme over the will of a legislature, whose statutes might express only the temporary will of part of the people. And Madison had written that constitutional interpretation must be left to the reasoned judgment of independent judges, rather than to the tumult and conflict of the political process. If every constitutional question were to be decided by public political bargaining, Madison argued, the Constitution would be reduced to a battleground of competing factions, political passion and partisan spirit.
	59	+Despite this background the Court's power of judicial review was not confirmed until 1803, when it was invoked by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. In this decision, the Chief Justice asserted that the Supreme Court's responsibility to overturn unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of its sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. That oath could not be fulfilled any other way. "It is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is," he declared.
	60	+In retrospect, it is evident that constitutional interpretation and application were made necessary by the very nature of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had wisely worded that document in rather general terms leaving it open to future elaboration to meet changing conditions. As Chief Justice Marshall noted in McCulloch v. Maryland, a constitution that attempted to detail every aspect of its own application "would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. . . . Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves."
	61	+b) In the status quo, courts consider police immunity first, and Constitutional rights second. It perverts the rightful order of courts’ duties. Chen 15:
	62	+Alan K. Chen, professor of law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, “Qualified Immunity Limiting Access to Justice and Impeding Development of the Law,” Human Rights Magazine Vol. 41, 2015.
	63	+
	64	+Critics of qualified immunity point out that the breadth of the doctrine’s protection means that people like Savana Redding whose rights have been violated will go without compensation. Contrary to Marbury’s admonition, their rights can be violated, but they will receive no remedy. But there are broader social costs associated with qualified immunity as well. Because of the way the doctrine is structured, courts can decide an official is entitled to qualified immunity by concluding that they he or she have not violated a “clearly established” right without ever answering the question of whether their his or her conduct did, in fact, violated the Constitution. This means that courts can dismiss constitutional rights claims without precisely clarifying the scope of the law. Constitutional doctrine, like the common law, evolves and is refined through series of court decisions. But qualified immunity interferes with this law-pronouncing function of the federal courts and reduces the amount of guidance about the meaning of the Constitution for both government officials and the public at large. John C. Jeffries Jr., The Right-Remedy Gap in Constitutional Law, 109 Yale L.J. 87, 99–100 (1999).
	65	+
	66	+To hold officers accountable for their actions and demand equal justice in cases of law enforcement, we ought to focus on the question of whether the right is legitimate — it is the only definite way to end the courts’ leniency.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-11-19 03:30:10.335

Judge

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	1	+x

Opponent

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	1	+x

ParentRound

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	1	+6

Round

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	1	+1

Team

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	1	+Sunset bhat Aff

Title

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	1	+ND - 1AC - Clearly Established

Tournament

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	1	+x