In the U.S., people have a constitutional obligation to change the laws they refuse to follow

Housekeeping: Putting citations in the comments is generally considered unacceptable on DDO. This is to prevent sources from being buried in comments and keep them in an easily accessible. Citations are part of an argumentative case so they belong in-round. Citations should be placed within the argument space- I ask that Pro past his citations from R2 in his next round out of fairness. If Pro does not post his citation in-round, I would ask judges to take this into consideration when voting. 1) Pro makes the fundamental mistake of equating a “constitutional obligation” with a “moral obligation.” A constitutional obligation is an obligation generated by the U.S. Constitution. A moral obligation is an obligation generated by morality. Moral obligations are a class of obligations distinct from Constitutional obligations. The Constitution generates obligations which may be moral, amoral or immoral. The U.S. Constitution sets up obligations for public officials and governmental bodies such as Congress and the Supreme Court which are incomprehensible in terms of moral obligation or run directly contrary to moral obligations. For example, the original U.S. Constitution included a Fugitive Slave Clause which created an obligation for States to return runaway slaves. This understanding of “constitutional obligation” is also consistent with the use of the phrase in the context of legal literature on the subject. My first source is a legal article which distinguishes between moral and constitutional obligation in the manner I have described [1]. This Resolution concerns “constitutional” obligations. Whatever Pro meant when he typed the Resolution, I accepted the debate spelled out by the Resolution; I cannot read Pro’s mind, I can only read the Resolution. The winner of this debate is whichever said best advocates their position in relation to the Resolution as it is written. This means Pro must show that people have a constitutional obligation to follow the law and change the laws they refuse to follow. Pro has not offered a single argument in favor of the Resolution at this point. The entirety of Pro’s case has focused on moral obligations to the government. Not once has Pro offered an argument showing that the Constitution obligates individuals to obey the law or try to change the law. [1] http://www.bu.edu... 2) Pro’s position is internally contradictory – Civil Disobedience is incompatible with an obligation to follow the law. As laid out in R1, the full resolution states that “people have a constitutional obligation to follow the law…” By definition, civil disobedience is NOT following the law in a principled manner. As Pro himself says: “a protestor refuses to abide by the offending law(s). “ An obligation to follow the law is incompatible with an obligation to change the law by refusing to follow the law. Pro’s entire argument in favor of civil disobedience invalidates the Resolution- Pro has argued the Con position and has made my case for me. The fact that Pro explained in R1 that he allowed for Civil Disobedience is irrelevant- the R1 “clarification” is simply incompatible with the Resolution. Note that this point holds regardless of whether we are talking about constitutional or moral obligation; Pro has argued against an obligation to follow the law. 3) Pro has the burden to show that the Constitution obligates individuals to change laws they disagree with. Pro is making a positive claim and so has the burden of proof. My response to his assertion is simply “where in the Constitution does it say individual citizens are obligated to change laws they refuse to follow?” If Pro can’t point out where the constitution creates such an obligation, he has lost this debate. 4) The Resolution implies obligations that are not found in the Constitution, such as the obligation to vote. The primary way individuals impact legislation in the U.S. is through democratic participation. If the Constitution created an obligation to change laws, it should compel individuals toward some definite action that would achieve that goal. Yet the Constitution does not obligate voting and certainly does not obligate civil disobedience. 5) Individuals have no obligation to follow the law. a) Statements about moral obligation have no Truth content – moral theory is a language game used to justify political power structures. The arguments Pro puts forth in defense of moral obligation are nothing more than linguistic games designed to play on the persuasive tendencies of the audience. Arguments like social contract theory have developed out of the political history of Western Civilization to create moral justifications for Western political practice. Their structure and ability to convince is contingent on the cultural milieu in which they were developed. Eastern conceptions of political life are radically different – societies that developed with Confucian conceptions of government developed slightly different arguments to justify their power structures. These arguments have no truth value; statements like “individuals have a moral obligation” are neither true no false because “moral obligation” only makes sense in the context of the morality language game. There is no “out there” or “objective” sense of morality, moral statements do not correspond to any True Reality. What does it mean to have a moral obligation? What actually IS a moral obligation? Pro has to offer some explanation of what it means to claim “moral obligations exist.” The entirety of Pro’s case is just an exercise in linguistic chess; the Resolution has no truth content and so cannot be true. The Resolution is thus negated. b) Even if moral obligations did exist, individuals have no obligation to laws forcibly imposed by the state. Individuals are born into societies with a complicated set of laws already in place. Individuals do not have the choice to accept or reject the laws of the state, they are simply forced to obey the law or be punished. To declare that individuals have an obligation to obey these rules is to accept that obligations to other individuals can be instituted by force and without consent. If a mob surrounded Pro’s house and told him he had an obligation to give them all his material possessions, no one would say Pro actually had that obligation. If a car salesman walked up to Pro on the street and handed him a pair of car keys then demanded payment for a car, no one would say Pro was obligated to pay for the car. In the same way, individuals do not have obligations to the state simply by virtue of any non-consensual power relations or benefits provided by the state. c) Pro’s argument for obligation to the law fails to prove a universal obligation Pro argues we have an obligation to uphold the law in order to prevent the rise of tyrants or the rule of anarchy. This argument means that the obligation is provisional; we have the obligation only insofar as we want to prevent the rise of tyrants or rule of anarchy. Many individuals would prefer anarchy to the existing U.S. government. These individuals do not desire the prevention of anarchy and so have no obligation to uphold the law.Pro must explain why an anarchist has an obligation to uphold the law or he has failed to uphold the Resolution.