January/February LD Debate Resolved

Thanks for posting an argument THEBOMB, I'll present my case then rebut my opponents. Since we need institutions of Justice in order to make sure Justice is served negate the resolution The resolved presents the issue of Repeated Domestic Violence and offers Deadly Force as a Deliberate Response as a justified answer, but if we were to justify the resolved then we would be justifying vigilantism because we are saying it is ok to take the law into your own hands. The resolved is justifying Deadly Force as a Deliberate Response because it delivers Justice but at the point where we justify Vigilantism we are undermining institutions of Justice and Justice is lost because without these institutions Justice can't be delivered. Therefore my Value for this round is justice; Justice is defined as giving each their fair due. The reason I value Justice is because the resolved seeks it. The resolved presents the issue of Domestic Violence and justifies Deadly Force as a Deliberate Response to end this issue. My Value Criterion is to uphold Institutions that provide Justice. The word institutions can be defined as groups of people. Upholding Institutions of Justice will gain Justice because without them there would either be no reinforcement of punishment when a crime is perpetrated or unfair/disproportional responses from a possibly biased party. These institutions include the police force, and the due process system. So whoever can better uphold these Institutions of Justice should win the round. Contention I: The Aff creates a world of disproportional responses where people are able to take others natural rights without any necessity to due so and its considered justified Joshua Dressler, a law professor at Moritz College of Law, writes in his Book Battered Women sleeping Abusers: Some Reflections My Focus, is not with the case of the woman who uses deadly force against her abuser during an attack or because of an immediately impending one; rather, my focus is on the morally perplexing situation of the battered woman who kills her tormenter when he is not attacking. I am interested, in ‘nonconfrontational homicides,' such as when the abuse victim kills her abuser while he sleeps. The traditional rule, is that self-protective force can only be used to repel an ongoing unlawful attack or an imminent unlawful assault; and ‘imminent' or ‘immediate' has come to mean that the attack will occur momentarily, that it is just about underway. By definition, of course, no assault is taking place or imminent in nonconfrontational cases. Stemming from the common law, a core feature of self defense law is that the life of every person, even that of an aggressor, should not be terminated if there is a less extreme way to resolve the problem. Dressler 2 I fear that the result of expanding self-defense law to the extent required to justify the killing of a sleeping abuser would be the coarsening of our moral values about human life and, perhaps, even the condonation of homicidal vengeance. I believe that we should be very, very slow to suggest that the killing of a sleeping abuser is a ‘proper' or even ‘tolerable' moral or legal outcome. Impact: The danger of allowing nonconfrontational homicides to be considered morally permissible is a slippery slope. If a woman hits a man twice, according to the resolution, he can then light her bed on fire while she is in her bed and kill her. Her life has become forfeit. A whole slew of dangerous self-defense claims then become possible. When we affirm the resolved we are justifying the use of vigilantism. The bar for retaliatory murder is set extremely low by the people who believe they are victims. At this point institutions wouldn't be able to tell the difference between self-defense and retaliatory murder. This is why we must negate to ensure justice is served which is why I urge a negative ballad. Now on to my opponents case ===Definitions=== He doesn't cite any of his definitions. I agree with all of them except for deliberate response. Deliberate Response must be defined as a response characterized by deliberation, careful or slow in deciding [1] ===Framework=== 1st My opponents framework lacks a weighing mechanism therefore we must look to mine because my framework is weigh able. 2nd Cross-apply my NC it explains how Affing only blurs the line between Self-Defense and 1st degree murder. 3rd The Neg doesn't force anyone to sacrifice their right to self-defense because self-defense is characterized by necessity, in Domestic Abuse cases there is no necessity to kill your abuser. You can turn his sub point b and make that the warrant for this claim. Since Domestic Violence is a cycle and the abused must be rational in order to deliver a deliberate and justified response then the Aff doesn't meet the criteria's of self-defense. ===Contention 1=== Sub Point A- Dressler 3 "Self-defense, after all, is a justification defense, not an excuse defense. The claim of a defendant pleading self-defense is that she has acted properly or, at least, not wrongfully, in doing what she did. . . . [In contrast,] an excuse defense is recognized in the law when the actor has performed a wrongful act—an unjustified act—but we believe that she should not be blamed for her actions." Arguing that the woman has been so emotionally scarred that she should not be blamed for resorting to murder is an excuse defense: we empathize with the woman and will be lenient towards her, but her actions were still morally wrong. Dressler explains that justification defenses must prove that the act itself was justified, whereas excuse defenses seek to prove that the agent who committed the act should not be held fully culpable. The BTS or PTSD defense is an excuse defense that concedes the moral impermissibility of the act itself but seeks to excuse the act by appealing to the agent's lack of rationality. Sub Point B- Cross Apply the turn Sub Point C- Just because one feels they are in constant danger doesn't make the action of killing morally justified. It can make the action excusable because they saw it the only way fit out of the abuse but not justified. This kind of thinking only furthers the idea that violence can be used to resolve problems and furthers the patriarchal mindset the aff seeks to destroy. We need to end ALL violence being considered justified in order to end the Patriarchal mind set. There are alternatives such as the Domestic Violence Reduction Unit, founded in Portland Oregon in 1993, is now all over the world and represents the true end to Patriarchal violence. [2] ===Contention 2=== 1st Cross-Apply the NC 2nd I recognize the fact that running away doesn't help, that is why they must also seek help from authorities, cross-apply the DVRU alternative which also takes out the principle of necessity. ===Closing=== The Neg provides Moral options to the Abuse victim but using deadly force as a deliberate response can NOT be seen as Morally Permissible because it would only encourage and perpetuate the Patriarchal Mindset, break down institutions of justice, blur the line between self-defense and first degree murder, and the abuse victim can still use the deadly force but the action isn't morally permitted rather the victim is morally excused. Negate for all of these reasons. I now await my opponent :')