The "I was just following orders" defense should not shield soldiers from criminal culpability.

Pro Case C2: Consequences: expressive/communicative and democratic principles Fourtrouble tries to extend this argument cleanly and also cross-applies it to my Victor’s Justice argument so I will respond to this first. He argues that I have not sufficiently refuted it. The problem with this is that in Rd. 2 I clearly outlined a burden for him to meet in order to gain any argumentative ground on this argument. A burden of which has not been met this entire round. This argument relies on an ends based analysis – i.e. that punishment expresses to other people not to commit this crime and that it reinforces a democratic mindset. I wrote in Rd. 2: “My opponent argues that allowing the orders defense will result in consequences such as more abuses and inhumane acts. For this to be true my opponent needs to prove a strong correlation or causation of legal culpability and military cruelty.” This empirical connection must be proven because Fourtrouble’s claims are that a specific end result is garnered by having punishment on soldiers. He wrote in Rd. 2: “The second reason individual soldiers should be held responsible is because excusing them sends a wrong and dangerous message to other soldiers, the nation, and the world. Symbolic legal acts (such as allowing the superior orders defense) have measurable social effects… What's more, the message of individual responsibility in the context of war conveys democratic ideals of participation, individual autonomy, and freedom of expression. The message conveys a national and international desire to prevent military atrocities.” Thus, Fourtrouble has not met his burden to prove, in his own words, these measurable social effects. The request I asked of him in Rd. 2 of providing empirical not analytical evidence to support these claims has not been brought forth at all in the round. That is why I referred to this contention as unwarranted and unsubstantiated. Regardless if you agree with communicative punishment or not, Fourtrouble has not met this burden. Con Case C1: Victor's Justice Fourtrouble’s first argument against Victor’s Justice is essentially that my brightline of an orders defense is arbitrary and that Victor’s Justice would apply to all war criminals, including people like Himmler and Dr. Mengele. However, I don’t think Fourtrouble completely understood my argument from the last round. Since the resolution is confined to the orders defense, evaluation of the Negative/Con World is confined to this as well. But moreover, my argument extends further in saying that just because an argument can be used to prove the extreme does not negate its validity while used in the middle. My advocacy is that Victor’s Justice diminishes the legitimacy of the international court system, but the Negative World, by protecting soldiers from a biased and subjective court system which grants little protections to soldiers makes the Negative World comparatively more legitimate than Fourtrouble’s Affirmative/Pro World. As an anaology we can look to the U.S. as an example. The ACLU argues that the US system is biased and unfair because of wealth disparities that exist between poor defendants and rich defendants, but the ACLU doesn’t argue that the entire justice system should be rejected on this basis. My argument is the same: the orders defense will shield soldiers from an unjust and biased system without collapsing the system or leading to everyone charged with war crimes to be protected against culpability. His second argument is the expressive punishment argument, but as I noted above he has not met the burden in proving the efficacy of expressive punishment or entrenching democratic ideals. You can extend the three independent arguments which support the notion that soldiers should be shielded from criminal culpability. Refer to Rd. 2 for those three arguments. These three arguments should be enough to warrant a con ballot because any notion of due process or an impartial trial is thrown out the window in the status quo intentional justice system. Thus, the only way to maximize protection of innocent’s against an abusive court is to allow the orders defense as a shield for soldiers. This is comparatively more legitimate than the world my opponent provides. Fourtrouble appeals to intuition quite a bit in this round but the three applicative problems I proposed should clearly demonstrate that even if we intuitively feel people should be held accountable for their actions, we should also intuitively feel that a system which doesn’t protect innocent defendants, is biased, and subjective has no place in our conception of fairness and ought to be reformed. Thus, my advocacy protects soldiers until the time arrives that the system is reformed. C2: Self-Defense Fourtrouble misapplies my argument about self-defense and only relates it to the asymmetric argument. However, he misses the impact of the argument in terms of the argument posed by HLA Hart for Nazi soldiers. This argument can go cleanly extended. The analysis is that within an environment, such as Nazi Germany, where “informers” would rat out any moral dissenters among both civilians and soldiers, there is an existential threat against anyone who disobeys those orders. Remember I tell you in Rd. 2 that Fourtrouble appeals to ethics and morality to determine self-defense legitimacy, but I specifically separated that from this argument because the resolution is asking about criminal culpability, i.e. legal culpability, not moral culpability. He argues in the last round that I never responded to the moral aspect, but I did by saying it is irrelevant and extratopical. Moreover, extend the analysis that soldiers need the orders defense because immanency is a legal standard for a self-defense claim, but since immanency cannot be applied to environmental or existential threats than soldiers must have a defense which makes up for this deficit – the orders defense. This legal analysis goes unrefuted. This gives clear reason to vote Con because: (1) it is more topical since it is a legal analysis and not a moral analysis and (2) my advocacy is the most effective way to protect soldiers from being prosecuted because their government, e.g. Nazi Germany, would severely punish those that disobey orders. Pro Case C1: Moral Judgment The ultimate clash under this contention is whether moral desensitization warrants special legal privileges? Fourtrouble makes the argument that since soldiers can make moral judgments, they must be held accountable for those judgments. Moreover, he argues that children cannot make moral judgments based within what the law says. This point will be damning for Fourtrouble’s analysis on two levels: (1) children have the capacity to make moral judgments, but the law tells us it is not as developed as an adult. This is important because the law provides us with a scale of moral culpability; it is not a dichotomy as Fourtrouble makes it appear. And since he implicitly concedes to a legal standard, then we can legally apply this standard to soldiers. (2) Since he never refutes the substance of the study conducted we are led to the conclusion that soldier’s essentially move back on the scale of moral judgment because soldiers are desensitized to moral reasoning. Remember the study tells us that obedience and duty rise whereas compassion decreases. Link this to the standard applied in (1): soldiers, be being desensitized to moral reasoning, by extension have a reduce moral judgment (like that of a child’s) in comparison to a civilian adult. At this point, we can conclude that a simple capacity is not enough for legal culpability, but rather we must measure the culpability on a scale. Forutrouble’s last argument is that some soldiers have done good things – that great, but proves nothing. As long as the study proves in principle that soldiers have reduced moral reasoning than I have proven that soldiers cannot be held to the same legal standards as regular adults.