BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Protection of prisoner's rights

Justice! The U.S. Justice System is built on protecting innocent people. The main strategy is then to remove dangerous elements from society, and using punishments (like the death sentence) to deter wrong behavior that harms the society. The purpose of the entire legal system is to protect the rights of the innocent. It does not increase the antagonism between prisoners and society as the opposition assumes. In this way, innocent citizens are protected from more harms and dangerous people, which brings us back to our point – protecting more people. Our purpose of testing on death-penalized prisoners should not be understood as punishment meant to seek retribution or revenge. The fact that the opposition suggested such a motive reflects a much darker understanding of the justice system, and one which we do not wish to represent. In the same light, rehabilitation also seeks to protect innocent people because it guarantees that criminals who will be reintroduced into society will not make the same mistakes twice. However, since death row convicts will never be released back to the general public, there is no need for this consideration.
Protection of prisoner's rights

The fourteenth Amendment of the United States states that all citizens should have equal protection rights. Although prisoner's are often times deprived on their right of liberty, for death-row prisoners their right of life as well, they should not be deprived for their basic human rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom to sue the prison or government etc. if they are being unfairly maltreated. The prison and government still have the obligation to provide them with food, clothing, and in some cases the opportunity to work and even learning(there are some university debating societies in the United States visit prisoners and held parliamentary debates with them, some of them are pretty good: ). Of course we understand that for the case of death-row prisoners, debating might sound too fancy but the point here is that they should not be excluded the basic human rights as mentioned above regardless of what sentence they got. In the case of medical treatment, they should have the basic right of informed consent. One fact is that, prisoner's rights are most likely to be ignored because of the stereotype mindset that criminals don't deserve rights and not giving them basic rights it's part of the punishment they should get. Such a mindset is fundementally wrong and dangerous. First of all, Putting them in prison or to die is already the punishement. Such a mindset makes the group of prisoners the easiest one to be discriminated and taking advantage of. Prisoners are the most volunarable group of people that least likely to get legal assistance which is unfair and unconstitutional.
Defending on Opp's Argument 2

I am afraid the refutation itself reveals that the prop takes a very unethical attitude toward medical experiment. There are cases that doctor's ethics challenged by the circumstances, but there's no analogy between the situation of two patients prop mentioned and the experiment on prisoners. First of all, experiment on prisoners does not necessarily lead to better result or quick discovery of the vaccine. In fact, it might need more attention or supervision than normal volunteers as the death-row prisoners are in special custody that not always fit for a specific condition required by an experiment. For any doctors or pharmacautical companies, the real dilemma is that it's completely aganist their ethics to use anyone for medical experiment without informed consent. It's not only unethical but also illegal. For death-row prisoners, although they have a foreseeable desease of life, it does not mean they can be deprived of the right of consent and be used as convenient objects. Medical ethics is not a mere ideal in perfect conditions, but a very basic line of work all doctors and pharmacautical companies abide by.
Against morality and medical ethics

Medical ethics is an ideal with perfect circumstances. For instance, medical ethics says to never ignore a patient in need of treatment. However, if a doctor has two patients both in need of emergency treatment, they have to make a decision based on who has the greatest chance of being saved. Under this circumstance, we believe that our choice is the best of all. We cannot imagine the result of mass use of an untested vaccine on humans without medical experiments on humans before. So fundamentally, medical ethics are to protect more people, which stands on our side.
Defending on Opp's Argument 3

Justice! Protection is one of the purposes of Justice System, which we explained earlier that already been achieved when the criminals are putting in prison. It quiet assertive to say that treating prisoner's like guinea pigs would not increase the antagonism between prisoners and society, as it is such an obvious discriminative plan to tramp a prisoner's basic human rights. Such a discrimination can't be more explicit when the propostion says"since the death row convincts will not be released back to the general public, there's no need for this consideration." We say this sounds more like an eye-to-eye retribution instead of real consideration for the goal of justice system in the long-term. A much better way is to treat the prisoners as responsible decision makers with their basic rights, who could realize their crime or "debt" as the prop states, and voluntarily choose to take part in the experiment, rather than to force them to participate no matter what. The thing here is not that since they will not be released back to society so don't bother to care about them, but that even in prison these death-row convicts as well as other prisoners will have an opportunity to be reformed with respect of equal basic rights and realize what they still can do for the greater good--and that's a real powerful or functioning justice system should aime for. We as oppostion aim for protecting innocent people as well. But unlike the proposition side, we realize that real security and protection of innocent people could not be achieved by force or violence without legal or moral consideration.
Arranging marriages is an insult to the very nature of marriage, which should be about creating a lo...

Arranging marriages is an insult to the very nature of marriage, which should be about creating a loving and lasting partnership and family. It reduces a central part of what is fundamentally a religious ceremony (and every religion, including Islam, guarantees choice) to a commercial transaction and therefore undermines family values. This is even more an issue where people come into a country where marriage is seen as a central value that should be free, where it is a specific challenge to any moral code.
To allow arranged marriages leads to unacceptable pressure on those involved. They are often reliant...

To allow arranged marriages leads to unacceptable pressure on those involved. They are often reliant on the parents who wish them to take part in arranged marriages for their futures as well as their current welfare. Moreover, the line between what constitutes an arranged and what constitutes a forced marriage is so hazy it can’t be policed, as is the line between legitimate and illegitimate influence. To protect from the latter we must stop the former. The law can help children who are often seeking bargaining chips to help them evade the pressure to marry from their family and community.
Arranged marriage is bad both for the individual women concerned and for women generally in society....

Arranged marriage is bad both for the individual women concerned and for women generally in society. In the former case this is because they are very vulnerable. Often they are from far away from home, don’t speak the local language or dialect and are totally reliant on the husband’s house and family. The lack of a support network, the language to appeal for help or knowledge of their rights makes women in arranged marriages disproportionately likely to suffer abuse. In the latter case, arrangement commodifies women who are bartered between the male heads of houses. This is not acceptable within an egalitarian model of citizenship and does not fit with a western model of rights.
The practice of arranged marriage separates communities, helping to stop integration and encourage d...

The practice of arranged marriage separates communities, helping to stop integration and encourage distrust between communities. This applies largely where it occurs among immigrant populations and helps to maintain a language barrier and an associated cultural ghettoisation. This doesn’t just create a group of people who can feel trapped between two cultures and unsure of whether they have a place in their host society, and a poverty trap associated with the language barrier that creates further segregation. It also helps to foster distrust in the wider community by holding to such a radically alien value, particularly where it is opposed to our notion of equal rights.
Arranged marriage is not a true ‘cultural value’ that is in some sense inviolate. Every major religi...

Arranged marriage is not a true ‘cultural value’ that is in some sense inviolate. Every major religion including Islam guarantees the legitimacy of freedom of choice in marriage. Further, the extent to which this is custom is a product of a patriarchal culture that oppresses women and an element of that culture which maintains the imbalance of power between the genders. Although we cannot intervene in countries that hold to such a value system, we can stop such a system being imported. True multiculturalism itself relies on some basic shared value of commitment to a tolerant and fair society.
Arranged marriage provides a cover for illegal immigration. We attempt to challenge false marriages ...

Arranged marriage provides a cover for illegal immigration. We attempt to challenge false marriages with non-nationals such as mail order brides for just this reason but are unable to properly examine most overtly arranged marriages because of the danger of being seen as culturally insensitive. Where arranged marriage is truly traditional and not motivated at least in part by immigration it is equally traditional that brides leave home to go to their husband’s house. You don’t see many European or American Asians leaving their home to go and live in their husband’s home country.
Arranging marriages is an insult to the very nature of marriage, which should be about creating a lo...

Arranged marriages are very much ‘real’ marriages. Vastly more marriages than not in human history would fall under any sensible definition of arrangement. More than that, an unusually small number of arranged marriages actually end in divorce. Maybe we should look harder at whether Pop stars marriages constitute ‘real’ marriages if we are about to make that distinction. More seriously, millions of people marry for the ‘wrong’ reasons: financial security, desire for children, parental pressure and lack of choice among potential partners. It is pure romanticism to claim that marriages must be love matches or they should be stopped. This only serves to illustrate that it is impossible to make any sensible division between what is and isn’t an arranged marriage and therefore quixotic to attempt a ban.
To allow arranged marriages leads to unacceptable pressure on those involved. They are often reliant...

Arranged marriages do involve choice. The difference is merely that whole families are involved together in both considering the best options and in helping to achieve what is wanted. This is particularly fitting in a social system which places high value on the way in which the extended family work together, and ensures that there is family support and shared expectations which contribute to the longevity of the marriage. Many of what we would call arranged marriages are actually either parents just introducing their children to potential partners, or effecting the negotiations necessary for marriage after their children have already chosen a partner. Most importantly, it is totally illogical for the government to intervene to stop people having the marriages that they and their family have chosen in the name of freedom of choice. This is exactly why the distinction between arranged and forced marriages is so important in providing protection for those who really need it without authoritarianism creeping in.
Arranged marriage is bad both for the individual women concerned and for women generally in society....

Arranged marriages in Europe and North America have idiosyncratically low levels of abuse and marital violence. The institution of marriage always creates interdependence and therefore scope for abuse and danger and the police and outsiders always find it more difficult to intervene where violence is within a marriage. This is a criticism of marriage per se, and not arrangement, and we can’t ban marriage. The vulnerability of those without language skills is an accepted fact of immigration policy, again it applies to all immigration and not to arranged marriages. Finally, most marriage organisers are actually women, as in the ‘Auntie’ system in India. They gain prestige and authority through their role. This doesn’t seem to oppress women. What you are really saying is that Islamic societies are patriarchal and that Muslims have arranged marriages. The latter does not in any sense cause the former. They are discrete social facts.
The practice of arranged marriage separates communities, helping to stop integration and encourage d...

It is not just groups practising arranged marriage who maintain cohesive communities. Afro-Caribbean and Jewish people in Western Europe both maintain a distinct cultural life while taking part fully in the life of this country. In fact their cultural contributions are one of the most valuable additions to the societies in which they live. The basis of multiculturalism is to understand the social and even economic value that can accrue from having people with different perspectives and traditions living together. Furthermore, in the second and third generations of immigrant families from the subcontinent we can already see barriers breaking down so that there is greater understanding and cross-fertilisation of the ideas these immigrant communities have brought.
Arranged marriage is not a true ‘cultural value’ that is in some sense inviolate. Every major religi...

Both young and old people affirm the fact that arranged marriage is a cultural tradition and any ethnographic data confirms it, not to mention the frequency of arrangement throughout the world. As we have pointed out there is no conflict between arrangement and a guarantee of free choice, the two are entirely consistent. Who is going to stand up and tell ethnic minorities that they don’t know whether they want arranged marriages and whether or not it really is part of their culture? It is just ethnocentrism writ large. Furthermore, how can we possibly insist that immigrants respect our virtues of ‘toleration’ if that amounts to denying them cultural freedom?
Arranged marriage provides a cover for illegal immigration. We attempt to challenge false marriages ...

We have made pathetically small progress in stamping out mail order brides which just goes to show how completely unenforceable a much more complex system of regulation over arranged marriages would be. More important to remember is that these marriages last in exceptionally high numbers beyond the time required to receive a passport so they would be legitimate even in countries where marriages which are for the primary purpose of immigration are barred. Finally, it is totally legitimate that husbands and wives should be able to choose the country where they have the best chances of making a good life to set up their homes, and this only serves to prove why brides from the third world might make the free choice to marry.
The U.S. Government uses “extraordinary rendition” as “torture by proxy”. They deliver suspects of ...

The U.S. Government uses “extraordinary rendition” as “torture by proxy”. They deliver suspects of terrorism to countries which are known to practice torture, and expect certain results from those countries, in the form of information extracted. They are thereby violating the UN Convention against Torture (CAT), which forbids countries to render persons to states which practice torture, and also U.S. domestic law, which also prohibits this.
How does the U.S. Government know the difference between “harsh interrogation” and “torture”, and o...

How does the U.S. Government know the difference between “harsh interrogation” and “torture”, and on what grounds does it base it’s belief that it is “more likely then not” that torture won’t take place? The work of the C.I.A., by its nature, is secretive. So, even if the C.I.A. does research and obtains agreements, the general public can never check whether these agreements hold any water. Since the C.I.A. is being held responsible to fight terrorism, they might even have an incentive to bend the rules a bit – as long as they can later show results to the public.
What if the C.I.A. makes mistakes? Because the victims are held in detention without recourse to any...

What if the C.I.A. makes mistakes? Because the victims are held in detention without recourse to any kind of judge, they have no possible way of getting out. Even worse, when someone might be released out of this type of detention, the victim has no way of seeking redress since the operation was covert. An example of this is the case of Khalid El-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, who suddenly disappeared in 2003. After he resurfaced in Albania in 2004, he claimed he was “kidnapped” by the C.I.A. and tortured under the policy of “extraordinary rendition”, until the C.I.A. realized their mistake and released him, without excuse, and without any compensation of any kind. Since there is no official record, his attempts to make a case against the C.I.A. has failed. Worse still, a U.S.-judge dismissed his case, under the argument that pursuing the case would be a severe threat to national security
For every example of an “effective” rendition, one has to ask: is it worth it? Because for every ter...

For every example of an “effective” rendition, one has to ask: is it worth it? Because for every terrorist successfully caught and convicted after rendition, there may be many more mistakes. For every Ramzi Youssefs, there might be dozens of Khalid El-Masris, Abu Omars, Majid Mahmud Abdu Ahmads, Muhammad Bashmilas, and many more. On top of that: consider the loss of reputation that the practice of extraordinary rendition has caused the U.S.A. to suffer amongst it chief allies. In 2007 the E.U. adopted a report condemning this particular U.S. policy, and this was followed by a massive public outcry. Such American tactics simply play into the hands of terrorists who seek to stir hatred against America and divide it from its allies. And finally: does the pretext of a terrorist threat really justify taking away a person’s basic human right to due process? Especially as many experts believe that torture is an ineffective method of acquiring reliable intelligence in any case.
The people targeted by extraordinary rendition are citizens, not combatants, and more importantly, h...

The people targeted by extraordinary rendition are citizens, not combatants, and more importantly, human beings. If there is a reasonable suspicion of terrorism against these people, the U.S.A. should follow the normal route of asking the country where the suspect is living for to extradite him. The suspect can then be tried for a normal U.S. criminal court, where the public eye will ensure his or her right to due process. But more importantly, even if you view this person as a “combatant”, then still he or she has the fundamental human right to due process. The U.S. should not itself violate the fundamental democratic rights it proclaims to defend in this war against terror.
The U.S. Government uses “extraordinary rendition” as “torture by proxy”. They deliver suspects of ...

The U.S. Government does not render persons to countries with the purpose of having them tortured, as reaffirmed by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006. The U.S. Government may render suspects of terrorism for “harsh interrogation”, but harsh interrogation is legal both under CAT and domestic law, which determines torture as “inducing severe pain”. In any case, the main reasons for rendering a terrorist suspect to another country for questioning have more to do with that state’s role in the investigation than with particular interrogation techniques practiced there. The destination state may be better placed to interrogate the suspect in his own language, and may have detailed background information to inform the questioning process that the USA lacks. The suspect may also be accused of plotting atrocities in the state to which he has been rendered by the USA, so they have a legitimate interest in interrogating him first. \ Finally, when ratifying the Convention Against Torture in 1994, the U.S.A. made the reservation that it can render persons to countries when they believe that it is more likely then not that a person won’t be tortured – so, under the U.S. interpretation of CAT, the U.S.A. can render persons to countries that practice torture, as long as the U.S.A has reason to believe that it will not torture in this specific case.
How does the U.S. Government know the difference between “harsh interrogation” and “torture”, and o...

The C.I.A. has a policy in practice where it obtains “diplomatic assurance” that torture will not be used. Under customary international law, the U.S.A. is obliged to act “in good faith”. So, when America is gives diplomatic assurance by another government, it would be a diplomatic blunder not to trust that guarantee. Also, imagine the consequence if it were one day proved that the C.I.A. rendered a person, knowing they would be tortured: not only would the persons involved lose their jobs, but also the reputation of the C.I.A. would be severely damaged. That’s why the C.I.A. has an incentive to make sure that these assurances are believable.
What if the C.I.A. makes mistakes? Because the victims are held in detention without recourse to any...

To ensure that the C.I.A. does not make any mistakes, it has started researching so-called “erroneous renditions”. In the case of Khalid El-Masri, the C.I.A. has never admitted kidnapping him. The C.I.A. does suspect, and is trying to catch a German-based terrorist with the name Khalid Al-Masri, and it might be possible that this person is using the similarity in names to create a backlash against the C.I.A. Regardless of the merits of this particular case, it is clearly in the interests of America’s enemies to blacken its name and undermine its security forces through accusations of torture. So murky and unsubstantiated stories about rendition should not be believed uncritically.
For every example of an “effective” rendition, one has to ask: is it worth it? Because for every ter...

What people should not forget is that extraordinary renditions save lives. It is used to bring people who are known or believed to be terrorists, to justice. These suspects are often stateless or hide in places where ordinary processes of law do not work – extraordinary rendition is then the only possible way of tracking them down, getting the necessary information from them, and bringing them to justice. They carry information which could save thousands of lives – the U.S.A. would be foolish not to try and get that out of them. An example of this is Ramzi Youssef, who masterminded the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and plotted to blow up airlines over the Pacific Ocean. After a rendition to the U.S.A., he was convicted and now serves a life-sentence. Without rendition, who knows how many people he would have killed?