January/February LD debate topic

Thanks for the debate QT. Fyi, DV = domestic violence. Final Rebuttal: == Definitions == Merriam Webster's gives an example of what it means by "recurring again and again": "repeated changes of plans." Obviously, if we are trying to decide where to go for dinner and we repeatedly change our plans, that means we change our plans two or more times. At most, Merriam Webster's differs from my definition because it asserts that repeated means at least *three* occurrences ("again *and* again") as opposed to two. Three abuse incidents is still a low threshold for retaliatory murder being "morally justified." == Alternatives to Deadly Force == My opponent cites a statistic here that the *violent victimization* rate of all married women is 2.16%. "Violent victimization" rate?? – that's a peculiar turn of phrase. My opponent takes this term to mean "murder." However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which compiles the data that Campbell is citing, notes that the violent victimization rate "includes rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault;" IT DOES NOT EVEN INCLUDE MURDER. [1] [2] So sure, 13% of all separated women are either assaulted, robbed, or raped by their former intimate partner. But the two HUGE problems with this study are that: 1) the statistics are referring to *all* women, not women who were abused, so the statistics are not even resolutional, and 2) murder is not included, and a pre-emptive murder to prevent an assault that has not even occurred yet seems ridiculously excessive. As already noted, the *real* base rate for domestic violence murders is .025%. Even though we now know Campbell's study is NOT EVEN APPLICABLE to murder, if we apply a six fold increase to this base rate, that's still only a .15% chance of being murdered. My opponent next says that women must return to protect their children because the legal system fails them by failing to award custody. This proves that we need to reform our legal system in this regard (for example, using integrated domestic violence courts, as some jurisdictions already do). Legal reform is a "less drastic alternative" than allowing pre-emptive murder so that women can retain custody. If the law fails you, you can't resort to murder. That is the very definition of vigilante justice. Leaving is *always* an option. There are battered women's shelters precisely to help women leave. The key takeaway is: TAKE THE KIDS WITH YOU. Your husband leaves for work – take the kids and leave. == Immanence Requirement == My opponent says that women in abusive relationships cannot predict the next attack. Then they should *leave.* The goal should *not* be for them to *try* to put themselves into a confrontational situation, the goal should be to *avoid* confrontation entirely. The immanence requirement is not a "male based construct* but rather the only check on pre-emptive murder and vigilante justice. Without the immanence requirement, a woman could kill an abuser *after* leaving him. She could hire a contract killer with no repercussions. She could kill him if he hit her 3 times, even if he entered a program and hasn't hit her in *years.* Without the immanence requirement, if I lose to a bigger man in a bar fight, I can shoot him in the back as he walks away because I'm worried that he might try to beat me up again next week. This is obviously a ridiculous standard for self-defense. It completely opens to the door to justified revenge killings. My opponent claims it is *logical* to fear death when you live with an abuser. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there is only a 0.025% chance of being murdered by your abuser. It is more logical to pre-emptively kill your car to prevent a road fatality. Abusers are bad people because they hit their intimate partners, but 99.975% of them are not murderers. == Slippery Slope == My opponent claims that the police can investigate whether the murder was justified. The very problem with this is that the only other witness to the domestic violence in these cases is already dead. Alleging domestic violence will become an easy way to get away with murder. Remember, the state would need to prove that no domestic violence occurred *beyond a reasonable doubt.* Even men could start using this defense, since some men are abused. In essence, my opponent is claiming that allowing vigilante justice in *some* circumstances is okay because the state can investigate whether those exceptional circumstances have occurred. However, since a high burden of proof is on the state, this is especially problematic. Allowing more murders and placing the burden on the (already overburdened) state to prove that all these murders were "justified" seems like a bad idea. In addition, the state cannot *just* relax the immanence standard for domestic violence because this would be incoherent and illogical. When the Court sets a precedent, it applies in all cases. Allowing domestic violence pre-emptive murder would have to allow all pre-emptive murder by abolishing the immanence standard or so riddling it with exceptions that is becomes completely ineffectual. == Proportionate forfeiture of rights == There is a reason that domestic violence is not a capital offense: we as a society do not believe that domestic violence merits a forfeiture of the right to life. Only murder merits a forfeiture of the right to life. I argued that two incidents of DV was too low a threshold to forfeit one's right to life. In response, my opponent claims, under proportionality, that two incidents of DV is not enough to merit a forfeiture of the right to life but habitual DV is. However, even 2 incidents violate the social contract; this is not consistent with her overall position under social contract theory. In addition, it will be further confusing for police if 2 incidents are insufficient to justify a murder, but 3 or more are. [Or maybe not even 3 - the term habitual is vague, arbitrary, and subject to personal interpretation] *This is a reason to vote Con right now.* My opponent draws an arbitrary and unenforceable distinction between 2 incidents and 3 or more ("habitual") incidents. This takes out her social contract argument as internally inconsistent and takes out her arguments about legal investigation as those are now impractical. Police will have the impossible task of discerning whether DV occurred a few times or "habitually." == Social Contract == Property is considered by the UDHR and John Locke as a "basic right." Therefore, an intellectual property violation would break the social contract, as would any theft. Therefore, you could murder anyone who steals from you or pirates your intellectual property if we declare that violating the social contract leads to the forfeiture of all rights. == Legal investigations == My opponent says documentation of bruises will exist. Most DV victims refuse to report the crime to the police, out of shame, and would thus not have documentation. A DV victim that *is* rational enough to document the abuse prior to murdering her husband is rational enough to decide to leave instead. Think how calculating one would have to be to collect evidence of DV prior to the murder in order to prove the DV in court. Kids might know, but not all abuse victims have kids. Friends and family often don't know because DV victims hide the abuse. == Natural Rights == I don't really care if Scruton – whoever that is – equates rights to duties. Positive rights are duties. Negative rights are supposed to be "inalienable." How can we talk about *inalienable* rights and then let the right to life be ALIENATED by 3 acts of domestic violence? My opponent then cites Barnes, who attacks the definition of the word "natural," but natural rights just means "inalienable" rights, i.e. rights that exist absent the social contract. When Hobbes talks about a state of nature, he is not talking about the "state of the blue jays and the grass," but rather the absence of society. == Value of Humanity == Allowing disproportionate responses to immanent threats respects dignity. Allowing pre-emptive murder so *destroys* the value of human life that is sets an extremely dangerous precedent. Saying an abuser forfeits his right to life is like saying that murdering him in his sleep is no more morally wrong than "taking out the trash" or "swatting a fly." It is hard to believe that the only way to respect a crime victim's dignity is to allow him or her to commit an even worse crime. == Concluding remarks == Under the necessity principle, a response is only morally justified if there is no less drastic alternative. I have offered a less drastic alternative: *leave.* Remove yourself from that situation. My opponent points out why some women may not like this option or that it may be difficult psychologically to achieve this outcome. As far as morality is concerned, that's … too … bad. You can't murder your only cigarette distributor because it's psychologically difficult to quit smoking. An alternative doesn't become *moral* just because some people see it as *the only way out.* Many murder-suicide perpetrators see their final act as *the only way out.* This doesn't justify the morality of the act. Morally, we are supposed to judge acts under the veil of ignorance. When judging the morality of an act, we are supposed to judge the act itself without knowing anything about the perpetrator. That's why a *justification* defense must prove that the act itself was not morally wrong without appealing to any excuses regarding the *agent* of the act in question. Remember, saying that "a woman suffers from psychological traumas that make leaving difficult" is an excuse defense: we can feel empathy and be lenient without condoning the act itself. We can even reduce her sentence or, in extreme cases, let her go free entirely, (as we do with insanity and temporary insanity defenses), but we *cannot* condone the act of murder itself as *morally justified.* What kind of message does that send? The message it sends is that taking the law into your own hands is okay. That vigilante justice is okay. It sets the precedent that the State no longer has a monopoly on the use of legitimate deadly force, which leads to a breakdown in the social contract and results in Hobbes' dystopia where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Lastly, if my opponent loses the social contract, she fails to meet her burden under the resolution of justifying nonconfrontational homicides in repeated DV cases. And she does lose this point for 3 reasons: 1) It is internally contradictory - a few cases of DV don't justify murder but "habitual" DV does?, 2) the justification of vigilante justice turns this argument by undermining the social contract, and 3) the right to life is inalienable. Remember, if *any* violation of the social contract - meaning threats against life, liberty, or property - results in a disproportionate forfeiture of *all* rights, including the right to life, then society will clearly break down into a slew of pre-emptive of post-hoc vigilante justice. For all these reasons, I urge a Con vote. [1] http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov... [2] http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org...