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

Con Case C1: Victor's Justice The Victor's Justice objection suggests atrocities committed in times of war should not be punished because the moralistic-legal decisions will always favor the winning side. This would not only excuse individual soldiers responsible for committing war crimes, it would also excuse the superiors who issued abusive orders in the first place. The consequence of CiRrK's argument is to shield all war criminals on the losing side from criminal culpability. If the Victor's Justice objection has any weight, then it would mean Nazi war criminals were unfairly punished after World War 2. This result is unacceptable because it goes against our deepest moral intuitions to excuse the actions of Nazi war criminals just because they were on the losing side. Fourtrouble starts his argument by claiming that the impact of my victor’s justice argument is that all war criminals, soldiers and superiors, culpable and nonculpable, would be shielded from prosecution. The issue with this argument, however, is that my (1) advocacy doesn’t extend to the point of protecting superiors (2) nor does it collapse the entire international justice system. In other words, the Con world would only shield soldiers from criminal culpability because that is the extent of the resolution. Throughout the literature such as Meernik and Posner, supporters of the victor’s justice argument do not claim to deconstruct the international regime, but rather to make the system aware of its systemic biases. The reason I play the victor’s justice argument in relation to the resolution is to critique the international regime’s justice system because, due to its systemic faults, undermines any notion of a fair system. The Con world allows for soldiers to be shielded from this system as a check against procedural injustice. Thus, Fourtrouble’s argument fails because it exceeds the bounds of the resolution and over assesses the impacted claims (or lack thereof) of the literature on this matter. The argument is essentially that punishment is communicative in natureand victor’s justice undermines this notion of punishment. His argument is an appeal to authority, as I alluded to in Round 1. Fourtrouble asserts the premise that punishment is communicative in nature without substantiating those claims. He tells us that people such as Nozick have advanced this claim. Under contention 2 I advised Fourtrouble that to prove his contention 2 he must substantiate it. I wrote: “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. If not my opponent is simply asserting an unwarranted position.” Unfortunately for Fourtrouble, this puts him in a strategic bind because (since the next round is the last round he cannot present new arguments or evidence) there is no possible way for him to offer substantiating evidence which blocks a portion of both his own case and his rebuttal. Second, he claims that the victor’s justice argument is unrelated to the purpose of punishment. That is true because the victor’s justice argument critiques that which is prior to the telos of punishment, namely it critiques the fundamental procedure for achieving that telos. My opponent’s second plank is that the orders defense would also shield soldiers who have committed military atrocities on the winning side, as well as the losing side. However, this is simply untrue. As per the nature of victor’s justice (establishing courts where the winner determines the nature of the court and trial) soldiers who have committed atrocities on the winning side are negligibly punished. For example, there was never a trial to determine the legitimacy of the bombing of Dresden or the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The reason? Because the Allies won the war. This is exactly the a facet of the procedural injustice that the victor’s justice argument critiques. The established international order is baised and undermines pretty much all notions of procedural fairness. Fourtrouble never directly responds to the three applicative problems that I outlined in Rd. 1 and instead tries to refute my contention from an overview level. Since the next round is the last round the 3 problems can be extended throughout the round. C2: Self-Defense Justification Fourtrouble makes the argument that a self-defense defense and an orders defense are not morally equivalent. This is pretty much irrelevant since are discussing criminal culpability in a court of law, but my response to his legal argument should respond to both arguments. His legal argument is that if a soldier was obeying orders out of fear for himself or his family then that is an acceptable defense within self-defense theory, but not an acceptable argument in the realm of an orders defense. My argument against this is that self-defense theory is inadequate in terms of an international legal defense, and as such my advocacy in this contention is that an orders defense can supplement the deficiency of a self-defense defense. The reason that it is inadequate is that self-defense must prove an immediate and foreseeable threat to one’s life. As mentioned in Rd. 1 about informants both soldier and civilian the threat may not be an immediate threat towards one’s life, rather it is the environment by which the soldier lives in which makes disobeying orders an existential threat towards one’s life. Therefore, since a self-defense defense requires immediacy as a criterion for legal validity, my argument is that the orders defense supplements this deficit in jurisprudence. This argument would thus apply to the asymmetric warfare argument. [1] Pro Case C1: Moral Judgment Fourtrouble defends his argument by asserting that my Williams’ evidence tells us that some experience an increase in moral character. However, if you refer to the analysis of the evidence I said that the realm of moral character which saw increases was that of duty and obedience, whereas traits such as compassions decreased. Fourtrouble argues further that having moral training is for the purpose of combating the desensitization that occurs in combat. But, he misses the point of the study which concludes that moral training has little and negligible effect on actually combating moral desensitization. Even though the intention is there, the result is not. Fourtroubles second defense is that of legal culpability. I would first like to point out that underdeveloped moral reasoning is a valid reason for shielding against culpability. For instance, minors are tried in a separate court system and are also ineligible for the death penalty. Why? Because minors have decreased moral awareness and judgment, according to the courts. As indicated by the study, soldiers have lost moral awareness and judgment and has supplemented this judgment with duty and obedience. In essence, soldiers wire themselves to be like automatons. Children have the capacity for moral reasoning but since their moral reasoning is underdeveloped the courts have made minors a special class. But in reference to my opponent’s analogies: first, the druggie has already violated the law and is exempt from special class status and second, the man who was struck with grief isn’t applicable because his moral reasoning was neither desensitized nor underdeveloped, but rather another faculty clouded his judgment. Desensitization is much different from a clouded judgment. C2: The Expressive Function of Punishment and its Consequences As I mentioned above this has been unwarranted and Fourtrouble has not substantiated it with any evidence. So this point is essentially stricken from the flow because next round is last round so he cannot provide evidence to back up the claims. [1] Oxford Journal. The Temporal Dimension of Self-Defense: Anticipation, Pre-emption, Prevention, Immediacy.