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First Ky. Debate
The first demonstration debate at the Kentucky thirty-seventh annual
National High School Debate Institute was staged in front of the entire
camp on Saturday afternoon. UK Fellows Stephen Bailey(Isidore Newman) and
Andrew Ryan(Caddo Magnet) defended the affirmative against David
Harkin(Grapevine) and Kamal Ghali(Caddo Magnet)on the negative.
The following report was filed my institute instructor John Day, University of
Southern California:
The affirmative claimed that existing due process protections surrounding
juvenile civil commitment hearings are inadequate, resulting in the extreme
abuse of juvenile rights. The affirmative further maintained that only
Supreme Court action could solve the existing civil commitment dilemmas
because: (1) unification of federal circuit courts over this issue is
necessary, and (2) that only a Supreme Court precedent could provide
juveniles with meaningful appellate review to protect them from biased
state judges.
The negative had four off case positions. First, they argued that the aff.
was not "establishing a program" because only legislative action can
topically act in this way. Second, they argued that the aff. did not
"reduce juvenile crime" because they only altered procedures surrounding
civil commitment without even any espoused crime reduction. Third, they
offered the States CP (which mirrored the mandates of the aff. plan except
for Supreme Court action and which also acceded federal jurisdiction over
juvenile crime to the states). Finally, they ran the Federalism DA as the
net benefit for the counterplan.
The 2NR only went for the States CP and the Federalism net benefit.
(Apparently they were convinced by Andrew Ryan's topicality defense that
they reduced juvenile crime by decreasing juvenile perjury during the civil
commitment hearings). The 2AR's primary arguments consisted of the
following: (1) the permutation of having the Supreme Court act along with
the CP's state action avoids the Federalism link because the SC's
establishment of a Due Process claim eliminates any possible state
jurisdiction in the civil commitment area; (2) solvency arguments against
the CP that without appellate review and circuit court unification provided
by federal (Supreme Court) action, there is no meaningful check against the
capriciousness of biased state court judges; and (3) that the case
outweighs whatever risk of Federalism that was left after a series of
uniqueness arguments.
The decision was for the negative. The general institute voted 72 to 42
for the negative. The fellows voted 7-1 for the negative (with Joshua
Friess at the very lonely bottom). Generally speaking, the consensus was
that the affirmative never adequately answered the following arguments and
thus lost: (1) the CP fiat allows for evasion of the affirmative's
offensive solvency arguments; (2) the CP provided uniqueness for the
Federalism DA because of the fact that it had the Supreme Court accede
jurisdiction to the states; and (3) that the permutation did not evade the
Federalism link because of the negative's carded (and dropped) arguments
that SC action on jurisdictional issues surrounding juvenile crime are key
to reinvigorating federalism. Thus, the ultimate evaluation was that the
CP solved for almost all of the case and that whatever solvency was not
captured was outweighed by the fairly substantial risk of Federalism. All
and all, an excellent first debate on this topic.
Other Fellows debates coming up in the days ahead. They will be staged by
Fellows Rashad Hussain(Greenhill), Emily Wynes(Iowa City West), Misti Hewatt
(South Gwinnett), Ryan Cotton(St. Mark's), Trace Johnson(Westminster), Mark
Molle(Bronx Science), Josh Friess(Brookfield), Josh Goldberg(Greenhill),
Michael Risen(MBA), and Nathan Haratani(El Cerrito).
PEACE, LOVE, And UNDERSTANDING,
J.W. Patterson, Inst. Director
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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