The United States ought to make jury nullification illegal.

I'll go in the same order my opponent did, since his case more or less exists within lines of refutation to my case. First, go to the Sparf argument. 1. The intent of my argument is to say that jury nullification would be illegal. I am aware that just overturning Sparf wouldn't make jury nullification legal, but overturning Sparf is partially necessary insofar as it guarantees jury nullification, although it doesn't have to be dictated for juries. So yes, I am arguing for declaring jury nullification illegal and unconstitutional. In fact, I say this explicitly at the top of my case: it is the affirmative advocacy that the Supreme Court ought to come right out and declare this action unconstitutional, and thereby illegal. I'll get to the "illegal vs. unconstitutional" distinction in a bit. But for now, the purpose of my case is to make jury nullification illegal, which means I do advocate overturning any particular precedents. This, however, isn't the crux of the debate; the debate is about why jury nullification should be illegal, not how it should be illegal. So we can move on from this point, since I'm agreeing we should overturn these precedents. All my opponent's points do is specify more clearly what exactly it is I'm doing, it's not really a refutation of my case. 2. As to the illegal/unconstitutional distinction. If SCOTUS rules that affirmative action is unconstitutional (as it might do in the current Fisher v. University of Texas case, then the law becomes illegal, since the constitution is the ruling document of the land. My opponent's distinction between even says as much. I am arguing jury nullification should be illegal, partially because but not limited to the fact that it is unconstitutional. Extend the Haynie analysis in my initial case, which tells you that nullification thwarts due process, which is a guaranteed constitutional right. Nullification isn't. Group his responses to the objectivity framework at the top of my case and the US Court of Appeals analysis under the contention tag. 1. His challenge is for me to prove why jury nullification isn't objective. I do this through the US Court of Appeals analysis, which gives you several warrants as to why nullification isn't an objective metric for law. So this stands. However. .. 2. His response the US Court of Appeals analysis is to say that "there are twelve jurors. " One, there's no reason why this means objectivity exists. A unanimous decision isn't inherently an objective one. Especially since. .. 3. Where objectivity really becomes a problem is not within a single court case itself, but instead the multiplicity of cases. Since juries (A) don't communicate with other juries since that would create bias which lawyers would weed out and (B) a single jury nullification decision doesn't become normative law, it is false to suggest that juries provide an objective check on law. In state A where opinion about a law swings one way and in state B where it swings another, juries will come to different decisions. This brings out two impacts: (A) jury nullification is pragmatically ineffective, since it puts law in the hands of people in different, subjective situations, and (B) this also is unconstitutional because then defendant"s right to Equal Protection under the law, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, becomes violated because in different circumstances the law would apply in different ways. If a law doesn"t apply equally to all people, then by definition the Fourteenth Amendment is violated. This impacts back to the constitutionality standard he proposes in his refutation. Next go to the refutation on checks in the system. 1. He says that the fact we have voir dire is enough to check juries, since lawyers and judges will weed out the most impartial ones. However, an impartial juror could still nullify, since he/she could come to believe a law is wrong during the trial and not convict because of it, which creates all the problems I"ve already mentioned. 2. But even if his refutation holds, then jury nullification becomes unnecessary and impossible, since the system he describes only reinforces the notion of a jury as finder of the facts of the case, not of the justness of a law (a distinction I"ll get to in a moment). I don"t know why you"d support nullification if a jury could never possibly want to do it in the first place based on the selection process. Next go to his constitutional defense. 1. I would argue that even if it is constitutional, it"s still bad, based on all the harms I"ve already presented. But I would say it"s unconstitutional, and for these reasons. .. . 2. When he lists off all these different articles from the Constitution, he misses an important fact of the jury trial. The purpose of the jury is to determine innocence or guilt based on the facts of the case, not on whether or not the law itself is good or bad. The latter type of the debate is left up to the legislature, since they"re the ones we elected for the purposes of lawmaking. We didn"t elect juries for this purpose. Thus all the articles in the Constitution he cites don"t apply to nullification, because the type of trial those articles are addressing is the trial by jury, which involves the facts of the case, not the justness of the law itself. This is a crucial distinction he misses. 3. The above refutation also applies to his response to the due process argument in the Haynie analysis; when he cites the line from the Magna Carta saying "lawful judgment of his equals or the law of the land," the judgment of his equals is based on the law that already exists, not the jury"s opinion of the law. Thus, you can turn his analysis against him, as the distinction made by the Magna Carta supports my side of the debate. 4. I"m aware there"s no government document saying "due process is not harmed by jury nullification," but my opponent is ignoring the analytical warrants in the Haynie analysis. When he says that jury nullification comports with due process because In fact, Jury Nullification upholds [due process], since a jury nullifying a law and judging based on what is unanimously justifiable to them and not what is in conformation to the law is lawful and thus in accordance to the constitution. he directly contradicts himself, since if the jury is ruling based on what is justifiable to them, and what is justifiable to them could contradict the existing law, they are thwarting due process since due process means that a defendant gets legal process under the existing law, which the jury cannot contradict. This is the second impact to constitutionality I establish, which means now you have two reasons to see why nullification is unconstitutional. 5. The three concepts he presents for why the jury can nullify do not at all tie to nullification whatsoever. The fact a jury can render a verdict doesn"t mean it can render a bad one, as in the case of nullification. Lastly, look to his refutation of the jury disclosure point at the bottom of my case. 1. Jurors often can"t talk to the media, because many trials involve sensitive information which requires jury silence. 2. His responses ignore the warrants in the Leipold analysis, which tells us that most of the time we don"t hear the reason for why the jury decided the way they did. Thus, even though these checks may theoretically exist, they almost never play out in real life. One word: OJ Simpson. 3. Lastly, his entire point is self-contradictory. He says that "if something goes wrong, then the jury can tell people. " (1) I"ve already shown that in many cases they can"t, and (2) if jury nullification is good, which my opponent is arguing, then why does the jury need to say anything at all? Why would they go to the media complaining?