Tournament: Scarsdale | Round: 2 | Opponent: Cambridge MB | Judge: Jose Torchio
Regardless of the material impacts we garner from any policy advocacy, there must be an inherent value to the action being taken for the policy to have true meaning. We must engage in policy discussions but policies lose meaning unless they represent a shift towards positive values to the people they affect.
Dr. Tommy J. Curry 1The Cost of a Thing: A Kingian Reformulation of a Living Wage Argument in the 21st Century. 2014
Debate sees the
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An ideological frame
The topic calls into question whether an action taken by a governmental entity is positive in correcting the actions of the police, an institutional force. Therefore the Role of the Ballot is to find the best tangible policy option that best rejects authoritative dehumanization.
Arthur W. Foshay 1991 (“The Curriculum Matrix: Transcendence and Mathematics”, President of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, President of the John Dewey Society, and a Founder of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Attainment, Director of the Bureau of Educational Research, Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, Summer 1991, Vol 6, No 4. 277-293)
The continuing purpose
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Of human experience
The role of the judge is to be an educator invested in combatting dominant schools of thought.
Brandon Merrell 1 (“Contrasting Structures, Conditional Strategies: Designing Format-Specific Theories for Competitive Debate”, University of California, San Diego, Ph.D., Political Science (in progress) M.A., Political Science (2015), Southern Illinois University  B.A., Economics and Political Science (2011), Western Kentucky University Undergraduate (2007-2009)
Debate in general
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An educational perspective
In the status quo, the lines for what triggers a legitimate qualified immunity claim is blurry. That allows people to come up with arbitrary claims that removes checks on qualified immunity.
David Rudofsky ("The Qualified Immunity Doctrine in the Supreme Court: Judicial Activism and the Restriction of Constitutional Rights" (1989).Faculty Scholarship.Paper 1507. David Rudovsky, one of the nation’s leading civil rights and criminal defense attorneys, practices public interest law with the firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing and Feinberg. He became a Senior Fellow at Penn Law in 1988 and teaches courses in Criminal Law, Constitutional Criminal Procedure and Evidence.
Qualified immunity protects
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Of redefining law
Some practices make it impossible to clearly establish a right that was violated. Civil forfeiture is one of those police practices. Since it is a charge brought against property, and property does not have constitutional rights qualified immunity protects them 100 of the time from 100 of responsibility in 100 of civil forfeiture cases.
Joi E. Peake, (Bound by the Sins of Another: Civil Forfeiture and the Lack of Constitutional Protection for Innocent Owners in Bennis v. Michigan, 75N.C. L. Rev.662 (1997).
Civil forfeiture is
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Under forfeiture statutes
Certain statutes make it impossible to seek recourse turning the practice into legalized robbery by law enforcement. That erodes the rule of law and severs the trust between the police and citizenry.
Jefferson E. Holcomb 1(Dr. Jeff Holcomb joined the Department of Government and Justice Studies in 2008. He earned a B.S. in Criminology from Auburn University, a M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University, Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture, March 2010)
After a seizure
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Phones and homes
Our forfeiture practices in the squo are inspired by the racist war on drugs policy.
Jefferson E. Holcomb 2 (Dr. Jeff Holcomb joined the Department of Government and Justice Studies in 2008. He earned a B.S. in Criminology from Auburn University, a M.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University, and a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University, Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture, March 2010)
Civil forfeiture use
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Generating forfeiture funds
Key examples prove that civil forfeiture unchecked and unaccountable is used to engage in racial profiling.
Ben Fenwick 1 (Ben Fenwick, an award-winning journalist and former correspondent covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is joining Oklahoma Watch as enterprise editor. Fenwick has more than 25 years of journalism experience. He covered stories such as the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, the trial of Timothy McVeigh and the Moore tornadoes. In 2004, he was embedded with the Oklahoma National Guard reporting from Afghanistan for Reuters and other publications. In 2008, he was an embedded correspondent in Iraq reporting for the Oklahoma Gazette and the Tulsa World. Fenwick also has written for the New York Times, Reason magazine, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma Today, and other organizations. Most recently, he was news director at KGOU Radio, “Most Police Seizures of Cash Come from Blacks, Hispanics”, October 7, 2015)
Civil asset forfeiture
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Impede those efforts
This is indicative of a systemic problem when we give the police unbridles power with no responsibility.
Ben Fenwick 2 (Ben Fenwick, an award-winning journalist and former correspondent covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is joining Oklahoma Watch as enterprise editor. Fenwick has more than 25 years of journalism experience. He covered stories such as the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, the trial of Timothy McVeigh and the Moore tornadoes. In 2004, he was embedded with the Oklahoma National Guard reporting from Afghanistan for Reuters and other publications. In 2008, he was an embedded correspondent in Iraq reporting for the Oklahoma Gazette and the Tulsa World. Fenwick also has written for the New York Times, Reason magazine, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma Today, and other organizations. Most recently, he was news director at KGOU Radio, “Most Police Seizures of Cash Come from Blacks, Hispanics”, October 7, 2015)
Racism is prevalent
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Officers’ racial presumptions
The race and class based targeting of the war on drugs not only yields systemic impacts but also materializes into national disturbances like over incarceration which results in prison overflow and the same rhetoric used back then is resurfacing now.
Paul D. Butler (Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; Yale College, B.A.; Harvard Law School, J.D. For helpful comments on this Essay, I thank Kristin Henning, Allegra McLeod, Gary Peller, Louis Michael Seidman, Abbe Smith, Robin West, and the participants in a faculty workshop at Florida State University College of Law. I am also grateful for the excellent editorial assistance of Robert Quigley, Yale Law School, J.D. 2014, “Poor People Lose: Gideon and the Critique of Rights” 2013)
In 1960, the
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Of American leaders
Asset seizures without limits gives police officers the ability to invest in militarization projects.
Robert O’Harrow Jr. (Robert O’Harrow Jr. is a reporter with the investigative unit of The Washington Post who has focused on privacy, national security, federal contracting and the financial world. In two decades at The Post, he has won multiple journalism awards. They include the 2013 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Zero Day, a series about cybersecurity and cyberwar, and a regional Emmy for a Zero Day video. O’Harrow previously won the top prize from Investigative Reporters and Editors for exposing fraud, waste and abuse in homeland security contracting. He was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist twice. “Asset seizures fuel police spending”, October 11, 2014)
Police agencies have
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Floating slush fund
Militarizing police turns them into a militia oriented into eliminating the surrounding enemies in this case the public.
Jesse Singal (Singal has a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where my studies focused on on domestic policy, particularly inequality, the legal system, and how the two connect, and after grad school he spent nine months in Germany as a Bosch Fellow. “How Militarizing Police Can Increase Violence”, August 14, 2014)
Military equipment is
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Something is triggered
This is historically proven in Ferguson where civil forfeiture funds play a huge part in acquiring weaponry that turns the citizens into objects for state.
Eapen Thampy (Eapen Thampy is the Missouri Director of the Our America Initiative and the founder and Director of Americans for Forfeiture Reform, a nonpartisan advocacy organization advocating for the reform of America's asset forfeiture laws. “Police Militarization in Ferguson, Missouri Funded by Asset Forfeiture and Federal Partnerships.” August 15, 2014)
Those interested in
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Departments actual budgets
Thus the plan- The United States Federal Government should limit qualified immunity by forcing all police officers to justify their actions in civil asset forfeiture cases. Qualified immunity is trapped full of loopholes that excludes people’s cases from ever being discussed writing off their scenario by trapping them in a cycle that refuses to develop the law.
Alan K. Chen (He is a professor at Sturm College. He has also written numerous scholarly articles, and his work has been published in many of the leading national law journals, including the Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, and Iowa Law Review. Since joining the Sturm College of Law faculty in 1992, Chen has received several awards for his teaching, contributions to the law review, and pro bono legal work. "Qualified Immunity Limiting Access to Justice and Impeding Development of the Law”, 2015)
Qualified immunity means
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Becoming clearly established
Including these cases into the narrative of the court results in an explosion of unpublished opinions which are necessary to create substantive change and adhere to law development
David R. Cleveland, (David R. Cleveland received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry and Economics with a minor in Mathematics from Macalester college and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Minnesota. He is admitted to practice law in the state of Minnesota, is a registered solicitor for England and Wales and a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Clear As Mud: How The Uncertain Precedential Status Of Unpublished Opinions Muddles Qualified Immunity Determinations, 65 U. Miami L. Rev. 45 (2015)
Unpublished opinions should
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Level of abstraction