| Tournament | Round | Opponent | Judge | Cites | Round Report | Open Source | Edit/Delete |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contact Info | Finals | the Other | You |
|
| ||
| Isidore Newman | 1 | Woodlands DY | Shields, Jhari |
|
|
| Tournament | Round | Report |
|---|
To modify or delete round reports, edit the associated round.
Cites
| Entry | Date |
|---|---|
Contact InfoTournament: Contact Info | Round: Finals | Opponent: the Other | Judge: You | 12/10/16 |
JF- Plastic Memories ACTournament: University of Houston | Round: 1 | Opponent: ALL | Judge: ALL I’ll specify how to weigh under the rotb: anything not here just ask in cx: no way you can say it won’t solve
Theories that can’t create material change in the real world are counter-productive and threaten actual solutions to oppression. The state is inevitable- speaking the language of power through policymaking is the only way to create social change in debate. Especially unique for teachers - Teachers are dissuaded from teaching rape law due to a culture of fear surrounding political correctness I’m not denying that academic freedom is taking a beating all over the country. But what is even more endangered, it seems to me, is the right of faculty members to speak their mind outside of the classroom, off-campus, and apart from their contractual duties. In return for a paycheck, faculty members are increasingly expected to surrender their personal beliefs on controversial topics, lest—God forbid—they say something that might “embarrass the institution.” That, I would argue, is an attempt to suppress free speech. Of course, whenever the topic of free speech comes up, someone is bound to say something like, “Well, you might be free to say what you want, but you’re not free to determine the consequences of what you say.” Obviously, that’s true. But it’s also true that, if you have to pay too high a price for your speech, then it really isn’t free. Totalitarian regimes often punish people for unorthodox speech by ostracizing them and depriving of them of their livelihoods. Has the University of Illinois done any less in the Salaita case? Another argument in favor of limiting faculty speech goes like this: The First Amendment was designed only to protect people from government sanctions. Private citizens and corporations are perfectly free to punish people for their speech by demoting, firing, or not hiring them. Again, that may be true to some extent. But the University of Illinois is neither a person nor a private entity. Just like Kansas University in the Guth case last year, the University of Illinois is an arm of the government. Not the federal government (although I suspect they accept a lot of federal money), but is anyone seriously arguing that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to state governments, as well? (If so, you might want to take a look at the 14th Amendment.) Here’s one more argument that pops up on a lot of blogs: A person in any other line of work who said publicly what Salaita said would probably have been fired. Why should college professors be treated any differently? What makes them special? I think that’s the wrong question. Perhaps we ought to be asking: Why should colleges and universities treat people differently than other employers? What makes institutions of higher education special? Oh, I don’t know: Maybe the fact that they’re supposed to be places where the free exchange of ideas is encouraged? Maybe because, unlike Microsoft or General Motors, they pose as bastions of open-mindedness and free thought? Maybe because they owe it to students to model the way that ideas—even offensive ideas—must be considered, vetted, and debated, rather than simply suppressed? I don’t dispute that university officials had every right not to hire Salaita if it they didn’t want to (although the way they went about it was, at the very least, problematic, if not downright underhanded, and will probably cost Illinois taxpayers in court). But in exercising that option, I believe they sent the wrong message to faculty, students, and the nation. Even worse, they squandered a valuable opportunity to send the right message: that this country’s great universities really are the champions of free speech, free thought, and robust debate that they have long pretended to be. Solvency Professors have high influences on students after college/the real world. Jaschik 13 Maybe it’s much more simple: Undergraduates are significantly more likely to major in a field if they have an inspiring and caring faculty member in their introduction to the field. And they are equally likely to write off a field based on a single negative experience with a professor. Those are the findings of a paper presented here during a session at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association by Christopher G. Takacs, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Chicago, and Daniel F. Chambliss, a professor of sociology at Hamilton College. The paper is one part of How College Works, their forthcoming book from Harvard University Press. In their study, they tracked the educational choices of about 100 students at a college that isn’t named but that sounds like Hamilton College. Students were interviewed about their original educational plans and why they either followed through on those plans or changed them, and they were tracked over their college careers and after graduation as well. What they found challenges the views of many experts that choice of major is “fixed” by such factors as a desire for a lucrative career. And their findings also suggest that those policy makers who want to attract more students to science and technology fields need to focus on teaching quality in those fields, not just financial benefits. Overwhelmingly, the authors write, students’ "taste formation" in choice of major is due to faculty members, although the influence can go either way. "Faculty determine students' taste for academic fields by acting as gatekeepers, either by welcoming them into an area of knowledge, encouraging and inspiring them to explore it, or by raising the costs of entry so high so as to effectively prohibit continuing in it," Takacs and Chambliss write. "Faculty can positively or negatively influence student taste for a field -- some compelling teachers can get students engaged in fields that they previously disliked, while other, more uncharismatic faculty can alienate students from entire bodies of knowledge, sometimes permanently." The research found the role of the first faculty member is strong whether the student has an intended major or doesn’t. And the interviews -- up to four years after graduation -- found that students remembered the professors who inspired them and those who annoyed them, and attributed their decisions on majors to those faculty members. In interviews here, both authors said that there are clear implications for colleges and departments that want to encourage students to major (or at least consider majoring) in certain fields. And the change may be more important in departments where senior faculty members may not want to teach freshmen. "It’s important for department chairs and deans to recognize who their more skilled teachers are, and the teachers they can use to draw students into certain majors," Takacs said. College leaders need to go to departments and say “why don’t you get so-and-so to teach this introductory course.” There is real danger in failing to do so, he added. Many of the students indicated that they made judgments not just on the professor or his or her discipline, but entire branches of disciplines -- with a bad course in any science field, for example, leading students to write off all science. The authors, based on their interviews, talk about the phenomenon of “majoring in a professor.” Chambliss said that there may be some fields that so many freshmen want to study that a single bad experience may not be decisive. But for lesser-known fields, or subjects thought to be challenging, enrollments are going to fall. "English and history can probably survive a bad course, but geology can’t," Chambliss said. Nor can subjects with sequential curriculum, where students must move from course to course in a pattern and can't skip over a course taught by someone with a bad teaching reputation. This is the case in many science fields. "Once they leave, they don’t come back," he said. "It’s important to do better in your intro course than in your capstone courses." Of course, as others here pointed out in questions to the authors during their presentation, many departments let their senior scholars focus on the senior seminars or graduate courses. And one sociologist here, while agreeing that the authors were correct, said she wondered about the “backlash” a chair or dean would get upon telling a senior faculty member who was a skilled teacher that his or her reward was going to be teaching the intro course. But Chambliss said that this is in fact what they should do. He noted that departments spend a lot of time talking about how to make their overall curriculum more inviting, but that a “very small intervention” and one that doesn’t necessarily cost any money can be more transformative. At a large university, making sure the right person is teaching the intro course can affect the experience and future choices of 500 or more students each semester, he said. “If you put someone who is not as good, you have damaged a lot of students.” (Chambliss practices what he preaches. A senior member of Hamilton’s sociology department, he is also one of those who teaches the 101 course there.) Chambliss and Takacs acknowledged that the impact of the first instructor may be different at some large universities, where students apply and enroll in divisions of a university focused on, for example, business or engineering or liberal arts. But they said that they suspect that within those divisions, one would find the same impact. One of the arguments offered by proponents of massive open online courses is that they can expose students around the world to “the best professor” in a given field. Chambliss is quick to say that this research does not back the idea that MOOCs will attract students to various fields. “Charisma alone is not the answer,” he said, noting that while part of the students’ judgments of their professors in the new study was based on the quality of lectures and presentations, far more was about the extent to which professors were engaged with students, took steps to get to know their students, were personally accessible, and so forth. "This is about the caliber of the people you meet in the classroom," he said. Free speech is key to make sure people like trump don’t get elected. and undermines political correctness. I have watched students cheer his theatrics, his insulting behavior, and his narcissism solely because the enforcers of campus goodthink are outraged by it. It's not about his ideas, or policies. It's not even about him. It's about vengeance for social oppression. Trump has done to America what Yiannopoulos did to campus. This is a view Yiannopoulos shares. When I spoke with him about Trump's success months ago, he told me, "Nobody votes for Trump or likes Trump on the basis of policy positions. That's a misunderstanding of what the Trump phenomenon is." He described Trump as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness." Correctly, I might add. What is political correctness? It's notoriously hard to define. I recently appeared on a panel with CNN's Sally Kohn, who described political correctness as being polite and having good manners. That's fine—it can mean different things to different people. I like manners. I like being polite. That's not what I'm talking about. The segment of the electorate who flocked to Trump because he positioned himself as "an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness" think it means this: smug, entitled, elitist, privileged leftists jumping down the throats of ordinary folks who aren't up-to-date on the latest requirements of progressive society. Example: A lot of people think there are only two genders—boy and girl. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe they should change that view. Maybe it's insensitive to the trans community. Maybe it even flies in the face of modern social psychology. But people think it. Political correctness is the social force that holds them in contempt for that, or punishes them outright. If you're a leftist reading this, you probably think that's stupid. You probably can't understand why someone would get so bent out of shape about being told their words are hurtful. You probably think it's not a big deal and these people need to get over themselves. Who's the delicate snowflake now, huh? you're probably thinking. I'm telling you: your failure to acknowledge this miscalculation and adjust your approach has delivered the country to Trump. There's a related problem: the boy-who-cried-wolf situation. I was happy to see a few liberals, like Bill Maher, owning up to it. Maher admitted during a recent show that he was wrong to treat George Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain like they were apocalyptic threats to the nation: it robbed him of the ability to treat Trump more seriously. The left said McCain was a racist supported by racists, it said Romney was a racist supported by racists, but when an actually racist Republican came along—and racists cheered him—it had lost its ability to credibly make that accusation. This is akin to the political-correctness-run-amok problem: both are examples of the left's horrible over-reach during the Obama years. The leftist drive to enforce a progressive social vision was relentless, and it happened too fast. I don't say this because I'm opposed to that vision—like most members of the under-30 crowd, I have no problem with gender neutral pronouns—I say this because it inspired a backlash that gave us Trump. My liberal critics rolled their eyes when I complained about political correctness. I hope they see things a little more clearly now. The left sorted everyone into identity groups and then told the people in the poorly-educated-white-male identity group that that's the only bad one. It mocked the members of this group mercilessly. It punished them for not being woke enough. It called them racists. It said their video games were sexist. It deployed Lena Dunham to tell them how horrible they were. Lena Dunham! I warned that political-correctness-run-amok and liberal overreach would lead to a counter-revolution if unchecked. That counter-revolution just happened. There is a cost to depriving people of the freedom (in both the legal and social senses) to speak their mind. The presidency just went to the guy whose main qualification, according to his supporters, is that he isn't afraid to speak his. | 1/6/17 |
ND- PopALockeACTournament: Isidore Newman | Round: 1 | Opponent: Woodlands DY | Judge: Shields, Jhari A: Means state structures inevitable- fear of uncertainty means individuals will always band into a social order to maintain homeostasis- that order is what we call the state. B: Sets a lithmus test for state action- if the state oversteps its boundaries or violates its citizens unduly, then it is illegitimate and citizens have the right to reform the system to keep it in line. This entails:
2. Ensuring that citizens have access to proper recourse against government injustices. The result is a joint social contract, whereby each person recognizes the liberties of every other person to act freely in the pursuit of happiness. Thus, my value criterion is preserving the lockean social contract. Part two is Accountability Unjust violence only continues to increase because police officers are protected by qualify immunity. Limiting is the only way to hold them accountable. Lindsey Qualified immunity doesn’t just mean that victims go without compensation–the "clearly established" right clause means courts can continue to avoid clarifying the scope of the law which prevents the law from ever becoming clearly established. Chen 15. 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 his or her conduct did, in fact, violate 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). To address this concern, the Court at one point instructed lower courts to order their decision making so that they first addressed whether the official’s conduct violated the Constitution before deciding whether They he or she had immunity from suit. Saucier v. Katz, 533 U.S. 194, 200 (2001). Thus, as in Savana Redding’s case, while she might not have benefited from the articulation of the relevant constitutional rule, at least similarly situated future plaintiffs could have benefited. But just a few years later, the Court reversed course and restored the lower courts’ discretion to determine in which order to decide those questions. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 242 (2009). There was some skepticism about how often lower courts addressed the merits question first, even under the Saucierregime, Alan K. Chen, Rosy Pictures and Renegade Officials: The Slow Death of Monroe v. Pape, 78 UMKC L. Rev. 889, 927 n.247 (2010), or if, when they did, they recognized a previously unarticulated constitutional right. Nancy Leong, The Saucier Qualified Immunity Experiment: An Empirical Analysis, 36 Pepp . L. Rev. 667, 692– 93 (2009). In any event, lower courts now have a green light to avoid the “harder” constitutional law question and simply decide that defendants are entitled to immunity whether or not they violated the Constitution. What this means is that in cases involving cutting-edge issues of constitutional law, qualified immunity may itself prevent the law from ever becoming clearly established. A couple of examples will help illustrate this phenomenon. One area of First Amendment doctrine that is not yet fully developed is whether or not citizens have a right to surreptitiously record police officers during the course of their duties. In Kelly v. Borough of Carlisle, 622 F.3d 248, 259 (3d Cir. 2010), the court reviewed the First Amendment claim of an automobile passenger who attempted to videotape a police officer during a traffic stop. After discovering the passenger’s conduct, the officer arrested him and confiscated his camera. Id. at 251–52. Rather than address the merits of the passenger’s First Amendment claim, the Third Circuit instead found that the right to record police officers was not clearly established and affirmed the officer’s claim that he was entitled to qualified immunity. Id. at 262. Other federal courts have followed this same practice, thus failing to clarify or advance the relevant First Amendment law. See Szymecki v. Houck, 353 F. App’x 852, 852–53 (4th Cir. 2009). In trying to decide whether a constitutional right is “clearly established,” courts should first determine whether the official’s actions were obviously unconstitutional. If so, the inquiry should end, and qualified immunity should not be available.193 If not, the court should consider the following factors: (1) Has the particular constitutional right ever been announced in binding precedent?;194 (2) If binding precedent has not pronounced such a constitutional right, has a consensus of cases (more than one or two) from federal circuit courts or the pertinent state court of last resort195 announced the particular constitutional right?;196 (3) Was the right pronounced as a broad statement of principle, or was the pronouncement closely tied to the particularized facts of the prior case?;197 (4) How recently was the constitutional right pronounced? Part three is solvency A second suggestion would be to change the doctrinal formula for qualified immunity. Rather than asking whether the defendant violated a ―clearly established‖ right, I would ask whether the defendant‘s conduct was ―clearly unconstitutional.‖ By ―clearly unconstitutional,‖ I mean to signal that borderline violations would not trigger damages liability (though of course other remedies would be unaffected). This basic proposition aligns with current law, and in many circumstances, there would be no difference between the formulations. If, for example, there were a change or development in the law, until the new rule was settled, the law would not be ―clearly established‖ and conduct violating it would not be ―clearly unconstitutional.‖ This is the strongest case for qualified immunity, and it would be covered equally well by either formulation. The same would be true when the validity of a particular rule or doctrine is simply unresolved. Pearson v. Callahan is an example. ―Consent once removed‖ as a justification for warrantless searches had been approved by other circuits but not by the Tenth. Unless and until the Tenth Circuit ruled, a ―consent once removed‖ search would not violate a ―clearly established‖ right nor would it be ―clearly unconstitutional.‖ Qualified immunity would be upheld under either formulation. In other circumstances, restating qualified immunity would make a difference. Asking whether conduct violates a ―clearly established‖ right directs one‘s attention to the search for factually similar precedent and to the kind of ―lawyer‘s notice‖ that technical legal sources provide.79 Asking whether conduct is ―clearly unconstitutional‖ is less tied to precedent and less technical. Most importantly, it incorporates the notion of common social duty. Conduct would be clearly unconstitutional if it contravened factually specific precedent, as is currently true, or if it clearly and unambiguously contravened constitutional principles. The nature of the constitutional violation would matter, whether or not it had previously arisen on closely similar facts. The Fifth Circuit has said the fact ―that we are ‗morally outraged‘, or the ‗fact that our collective conscience is shocked‘ by the alleged conduct does not mean necessarily that the officials should have realized that it violated a constitutional right . . . .‖ 80 The statement is narrowly correct. Moral outrage does not necessarily mean that officers should have known they were acting unconstitutionally—but neither is it irrelevant. If the conduct does violate a constitutional right, outrageousness should preclude qualified immunity, whether or not the specific misconduct has been adjudicated before. Thus, for example, I would part company from the Fifth Circuit‘s decision in Doe v. Louisiana, where defendant social workers engaged in a ―nightmarish‖ ―witch hunt‖ of a father alleged (by them) to have sexually abused his daughter. The defendants suppressed reports of medical examinations, misrepresented the results of those examinations, used deception in obtaining a court order, and knowingly presented false information to prosecutors. Their charges were completely unfounded.81 Concurring in the judgment upholding qualified immunity, Judge Carolyn Dineen King said, ―That the actions of which Doe complains are egregious, however, does not mean that he has asserted the violation of a federally protected right . . . .‖82 Again, the statement is technically correct. Egregiousness does not establish unconstitutionality, but neither should it be irrelevant to damages liability. In my view, truly appalling unconstitutional misconduct should not be protected by qualified immunity. Egregiousness may be irrelevant in the search for ―clearly established‖ law,83 but it would not be irrelevant in determining whether conduct is ―clearly unconstitutional.‖ 84 Civil lawsuits spur systemic reform through investigations and public outcry–also, even if there’s indemnity that doesn’t answer our offense because victims still get REPARATIONS and RECOMPENSE. Cheh 96 By contrast, the civil law, because of its greater flexibility and scope, has the potential to serve as the instrument of systemic reform. In adjusting rights and set-tling wrongs, civil remedies generally offer distinct advantages over criminal sanc-tions. First, a victim of police misconduct can sue on his or her own behalf and need not await the government’s decision to go forward. Second, an injured party need not overcome the heightened procedural protections afforded the criminally accused. For example, a plaintiff can prevail under a preponderance of evidence standard rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Third, although the civil law, like the criminal law, can punish via its potential for imposition of punitive damages, the civil law provides compensation to victims who have been harmed by police misconduct. Recompense is beneficial in itself, and damage awards can spur reform if the costs of misbehavior are high. Fourth, civil lawsuits permit broad discovery of information and may provide a means to uncover police mis-behavior and stir public reaction. Finally, the civil law offers various possibilities for framing relief which go beyond punishment or compensation and include re-mediation. That is, the civil law offers equitable relief, via court injunction and specific orders, that can force a deficient department not only to pay for harm caused but to reform so that the harm is not likely to be repeated. | 1/6/17 |
Open Source
| Filename | Date | Uploaded By | Delete |
|---|