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document.doc DDI 20101

Drones Case Neg TOPICALITY................................................................................................................................... 2T- Reduce =/= Eliminate................................................................................................................32NC Reduce =/= Eliminate............................................................................................................41NC Shell – Presence is not weapons systems...............................................................................52NC explodes limits........................................................................................................................6T-CIA............................................................................................................................................... 7T- Ban =/= Eliminate...................................................................................................................... 8Reduce: cut down on; make a reduction in....................................................................................8Ban: prohibit especially by legal means or social pressure...........................................................8INTERNATIONAL LAW ILAW Frontline.........................................................................................9ILAW Frontline............................................................................................................................. 10ILAW- no impact........................................................................................................................... 14ILAW- US not key......................................................................................................................... 16ILAW- no precedent......................................................................................................................17ILAW- drones legal....................................................................................................................... 18ILAW inevitable............................................................................................................................ 19AT-ILAW solves Heg..................................................................................................................... 20BioDefense Extentions.................................................................................................................. 21PAKISTAN RELATIONS FRONTLINE..........................................................................................22Pakistan relations Frontline.........................................................................................................23Pakistan- Relations High..............................................................................................................25Pakistan- don’t mind drones.........................................................................................................26RoboWar 1NC............................................................................................................................... 27Virtual Warfare 1NC.....................................................................................................................29Drones Good Ext........................................................................................................................... 32CIVILIAN CASUALTIES................................................................................................................34Drones Don’t kill civilians- extentions..........................................................................................35DISADVANTAGE LINKS...............................................................................................................36Plan Popular................................................................................................................................. 37Plan Unpopular............................................................................................................................. 38Redeployment links/case turns.....................................................................................................40CPGS Link.................................................................................................................................... 42Laser/Compensation Links...........................................................................................................43Court Stripping DA 1NC...............................................................................................................45Court Stripping 2NC- UNX...........................................................................................................50Court Stripping 2NC- UNX...........................................................................................................51Court Stripping 2NC Links...........................................................................................................54Court Stripping 2NC- Impacts- Judicial Independance................................................................56COUNTERPLANS......................................................................................................................... 57Cite don’t rule CP 1NC.................................................................................................................58Cite don’t rule CP Theory.............................................................................................................60Pakistan Relations CP................................................................................................................... 61Force Multiplier PIC 1NC.............................................................................................................622NC force multpliers.................................................................................................................... 64Force Multipliers EXT..................................................................................................................65Force Multipliers Democracy Impact 2NC...................................................................................66Fem IR Link.................................................................................................................................. 67

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TOPICALITY

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T- Reduce =/= Eliminate

Reduce excludes eliminate.Words and Phrases 2002 (vol 36B, p. 80)

Mass. 1905. Rev.Laws, c.203, § 9, provides that, if two or more cases are tried together in the superior court, the presiding judge may “reduce” the witness fees and other costs, but “not less than the ordinary witness fees, and other costs recoverable in one of the cases” which are so tried together shall be allowed. Held that, in reducing the costs, the amount in all the cases together is to be considered and reduced, providing that there must be left in the aggregate an amount not less than the largest sum recoverable in any of the cases. The word “reduce,” in its ordinary signification, does not mean to cancel, destroy, or bring to naught, but to diminish, lower, or bring to an inferior state.—Green v. Sklar, 74 N.E. 595, 188 Mass. 363.

They eliminate all use of drones

Limits- Justifying eliminate means any card that says “troops bad” could be considered a solvency advocate, explodes possible cases

Voter fairness and education

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2NC Reduce =/= Eliminate

A substantial reduction is distinct from complete removal

General board of church and society of the United Methodist church 2004(“Okinawa: Removal or Reduction of U.S. Military Bases (#6113, 2008 BOR)” http://www.umc-gbcs.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=frLJK2PKLqF&b=2954235&ct=4206941&notoc=1)

Be it resolved, that the 2004 General Conference support the strong, unceasing efforts of the Okinawan government and its people to achieve the complete removal or substantial reduction of U.S. military bases and U.S. military personnel on the island of Okinawa and other islands in Okinawa Prefecture of Japan, and the return of those lands for peaceful, constructive purposes; and that a copy of this petition be sent to the President of the United States, the U.S. secretary of state, and the U.S. secretary of defense for consideration and action, and that a copy be sent to the governor of Okinawa and the prime minister of Japan for their information.

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http://www.umc-gbcs.org/site/apps/nlnet/content3.aspx?c=frLJK2PKLqF&b=2954235&ct=4206941&notoc=1


1NC Shell – Presence is not weapons systems

1. Definition - Presence consists of infrastructure, troops and agreements and exercises conducted with the host country but excludes weapons systems

J.E. Peterson, Ph.D. Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Middle East Institute, an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and more. 2008. “Foreign Military Presence and its Role in Reinforcing Regional Security: A Double-Edged Sword.” Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research. pp. 183-205. <http://www.jepeterson.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/Foreign_Military_Presence_in_the_Gulf.pdf>Table 7.2 Levels of Foreign Military Presence o : present in the Gulf x : not present in the Gulf ? : uncertain if present in the Gulf1. intervention and occupation" 2. proximate expeditionary force in region - power projection 3. bases and other permanent installations (ranging from full bases, with the FMP enjoying internal sovereignty, to small support functions, such as naval replenishment or technical facilities) 4. non-permanent deployed units 5. joint or multilateral exercises 6. pre-positioning and access agreements 7. offshore naval presence 8. "offshore" ready deployment capability (e.g. from neighboring countries or regions) 9. mutual or multilateral security treaties or agreements (CENTO, NATO, SEATO) 10. arms and equipment transfers 11. "technical" facilities (intelligence, space, communications) 12. aircraft over-flights (generally unseen and uncontroversial but reverses on occasion of aircraft trouble or in time of conflict or crisis)13. surrogate forces (support for revolutionary or irredentist movements; Cuba in Africa

2. Violation- Drones aren’t military presence

3. Standardsa. Allowing weapons explodes limits- there are thousands of different weapons systems that could possibly be removed

b. prefer our definition- inclusive, sets clear limits

Voting issue for fairness and education

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2NC explodes limitsPossible aircrafts that could be removed

Wikipedia accessed 2010("List of military aircraft of the United States" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_aircraft_of_the_United_States)

Attack * A-1 Skyraider - Douglas (formerly designated AD) * A-2 Savage - North American (formerly designated AJ) * A-3 Skywarrior - Douglas (formerly designated A3D) * A-4 Skyhawk - Douglas (formerly designated A4D) * A-5 Vigilante - North American (formerly designated A3J) * A-6 Intruder - Grumman (formerly designated A2F) o EA-6 Prowler (electronic warfare variant) * A-7 Corsair II - Vought * A-8 - skipped to avoid confusion with the AV-8 Harrier II * YA-9 - Northrop * A-10 Thunderbolt II - Republic * A-11 - o applied to the prototype SR-71 Blackbird[10] o allegedly assigned to the secret A-11 Astra. * A-12 Avenger II - McDonnell Douglas/General Dynamics * F/A-18 Hornet - McDonnell Douglas [11] o F/A-18E/F Super Hornet - Boeing [2] + EA-18G Growler - Boeing [2] * A-26 Invader - Douglas (redesignated from B-26 in 1966) * A-29 Tucano - Embraer * A-37 Dragonfly - Cessna (originally designated AT-37) Bombers *B-1 Lancer *B-2 Spirit Cargo * C-1 Trader - Grumman (formerly designated TF) * C-2 Greyhound - Grumman * C-3 - Martin * C-4 Academe - Gulfstream * C-5 Galaxy - Lockheed * C-6 - Beechcraft * C-7 Caribou - de Havilland Canada * RC-7 ARL - (redesignated as EO-5 in 2004) * C-8 Buffalo - de Havilland Canada * C-9 - McDonnell Douglas * KC-10 Extender - Douglas * C-11 Gulfstream II - Gulfstream * C-12 Huron - Beechcraft * C-13 - skipped * YC-14 - Boeing * YC-15 - McDonnell Douglas * C-16 - reserved for various projects, but never assigned * C-17 Globemaster III - Boeing C-17 with Mt. Rainier in the background * C-18 - Boeing * C-19 - Boeing * C-20 Gulfstream - Gulfstream * C-21 Learjet - Learjet * C-22 - Boeing * C-23 Sherpa - Short * EC-24 - Douglas * VC-25 - Boeing * C-26 Metroliner - Fairchild * C-27 Spartan - Alenia * C-28 - Cessna * C-29 - BAE Systems * C-30 - designation reserved (in 1988/89), but never assigned * C-31 Troopship - Fokker * C-32 - Boeing * C-33 - Boeing * C-34 - skipped at U.S. Army request to avoid confusion with T-34; this aircraft became the UC-35A * C-35 Citation Ultra/Encore - Cessna * YFC-36 - designation reserved but never assigned for YAL-1 * C-37 Gulfstream V - Gulfstream * C-38 Courier - Israel Aircraft Industries * C-39 - designation changed to C-40 for unrevealed reasons * CT-39 - Transport version of T-39 for US Navy * C-40 Clipper - Boeing * C-41 Aviocar - CASA C-212 series 200 [2] * C-42 - skipped to avoid possible legal issues with trademarked name of Ikarus C-42 light sport plane * C-43 - skipped to avoid confusion with T-43 * C-44 - skipped to avoid confusion with T-44 * KC-45 - Airbus/Northrop Grumman [2] * CT-49 - Trainer / Cargo version of Boeing 707-320B for NATO. * KC-767 - Boeing [2] * UC-880 - Convair [12] Drone * Q-1 Predator*Warrior General Atomics *MQ-1C Warrior *Q-2 Pioneer *Q-3 Dark Star *Boeing Dark Star USAF.jpg *Q-4 Global Hawk *Q-5 Hunter *Q-6 Outrider *Q-7 Shadow *Q-8 Fire Scout *Q-9 Reaper*Altair General Atomics *Q-10 SnowGoose *Q-11 Raven *Q-14 Dragon Eye *Q-15

Neptune *Q-16 T-Hawk *Q-17 SpyHawk *Q-18 Hummingbird *Non-sequential designations *Q-170 Sentinel Electronic Warfare E-1 Tracer *E-2 Hawkeye *E-3 Sentry *E-4 Nightwatch *E-5 Eagle *E-6 Mercury *E-7

Skipped *E-8 Joint STARS *E-9 Widget *E-10 MC2A Fighter * F-1 Fury - North American (previously designated FJ) * F-2 Banshee - McDonnell (previously designated F2H) * F-3 Demon - McDonnell (previously designated F3H) * F-4 Phantom II - McDonnell Douglas (previously designated F4H) * F-5 Freedom Fighter - Northrop * F-6 Skyray - Douglas (previously designated F4D) * YF-7 Sea Dart - Convair (previously designated YF2Y) * F-8 Crusader - Vought (previously designated F8U) * F-9 Cougar - Grumman (previously designated F9F) * F-10 Skyknight - Douglas (previously designated F3D) * F-11 Tiger - Grumman (previously designated F11F) * YF-12 - Lockheed * F-13 - skipped * F-14 Tomcat - Grumman * F-15 Eagle - McDonnell Douglas * F-16 Fighting Falcon - General Dynamics/Lockheed Martin * YF-17 Cobra - Northrop * F/A-18 Hornet - McDonnell Douglas o F/A-18E/F Super Hornet - Boeing [2] * F-19 - officially skipped; rumored to be still classified * F-20 Tigershark - Northrop * F-21 Kfir - Israel Aircraft Industries * F-22 Raptor - Lockheed Martin [2] o FB-22 (proposed bomber variant) [2] * YF-23 Black Widow II - Northrop/McDonnell Douglas * YF-24 - Classified project[13][14] * F-35 Lightning II - Lockheed Martin [2] * YF-110 - Designation used for captured MiG-21s and new-build J-7s[13] * YF-112 - Su-22 obtained from Egypt or Allegedly used for captured MiGs[13] * YF-113 - Designation used for captured MiG-17s and MiG-23s[13][15] * YF-113G - possible USAF "black project"[13] * YF-114 - Designation used for captured MiG-17s[13] * YF-116 - Rumored designation of captured MiG-25 * F-117 Nighthawk - Lockheed * YF-117D Tacit Blue[13] * YF-118 - Rumored designation of MiG-29 * YF-121 rumoured Black Project[13] * The Boeing Bird of Prey is believed to have received a "YF-1xx" designation.[13]

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T-CIA

A. Interpretation- The CIA is not part of the US militaryCIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, 2010 https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-vision-mission-values/index.htmlMissionThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers.

And, the CIA currently controls drones in AfghanistanReuters, A world-renowned news agency, 6-2-2010, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE650292.htm

The United States is believed to control the fleet of drones from CIA headquarters in Virginia, coordinating with civilian pilots near hidden airfields in Afghanistan and Pakistan who fly the drones remotely, according to Alston, an Australian who teaches at New York University School of Law.

B. Violation: The affirmative calls for a ban/withdrawal of all UAVs, including CIA drones, which are not part of the military

C. Standards:1. Limits allowing the affirmative to withdraw CIA UAVs explodes the topic because it set a precedent which justifies withdrawing civilians from any topically designated country. This destroys the resolution.

D. Voter for Fairness and Education

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE650292.htm

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-vision-mission-values/index.html

https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-vision-mission-values/index.html


T- Ban =/= Eliminate

A. Interpretation: Reduce is to cut downPrinceton University, No date, wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwnReduce: cut down on; make a reduction in

And to ban only means to prohibit use, not to cut down on. Princeton University, No date, wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwnBan: prohibit especially by legal means or social pressure

B. Violation: the aff only bans the drones, which means that they don’t reduce. A reduction in missions is not topical.

C. Standards:

1. Limits This explodes the topic because it allows affirmatives to ban missions of certain troops, but not pull them out of the country. This allows the aff to spike out of almost every disad link as well as garner advantages off of the end of missions while spiking out of case turns due to troop reduction.

D. T is a voter for fairness and education

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http://www.google.com/url?ei=YWFUTKfpAYT68AbZu8SPBA&sig2=2fsH_r8BztDobEEox0y-qg&q=http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn%3Fs%3Dban&sa=X&ved=0CBwQpAMoAA&usg=AFQjCNFcN3XZ1TnreVttF2tuxcIPGE38rA

http://www.google.com/url?ei=lGFUTPHUMcT38Ab0q9mgBA&sig2=odhnbMwYRzRUXuIjXQQhag&q=http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn%3Fs%3Dreduce&sa=X&ved=0CA4QpAMoAA&usg=AFQjCNHFzJlyA1A90nP2FFKToCLES7HggA


INTERNATIONAL LAW

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ILAW Frontline1. Drones don’t violate ILAW

David Rittgers- a legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute, served three tours in Afghanistan as a Special Forces officer and continues to serve as a reserve judge advocate, February 25, 2010, The Wall Street Journal, “Both Left and Right Are Wrong about Drones”, online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575085511472753150.html

Liberal critics should refrain from erroneously labeling drone strikes as "nonjudicial killings." Even the most controversial drone strikes—those that kill American citizens who have joined al Qaeda affiliates overseas—are permissible under the laws of war.Neither Congress nor the courts should micromanage tactical decisions such as whether the president can order soldiers to seize a particular hill or employ a certain weapon. Referring to drone strikes as "nonjudicial" implies that the courts should be given the ability to rule out specific drone attacks. Vetting these targets for accuracy of intelligence and minimization of collateral damage is essential, and the record continues to improve on that front.

2. International law is unenforceable

Rachel A. Bahn Presidential Management Fellow at USAID 2008 "Reputational Risk and Enforceability in International Law" SAIS Review Volume 28, Number 2, Summer/Fall, Project Muse

The lack of an automatic enforcement mechanism represents the greatest challenge to the development of international organizations and the body of international public law that they represent. Evidence of the impact of this non-enforceability is found in all areas of the international realm—economic, humanitarian, and political-strategic. However, the nature of political-strategic affairs heightens the impact of possible damage to national reputation and sets this branch of international law and organization apart. The World Trade Organization (WTO) has no absolute means through which to ensure compliance with its standards, even when its Dispute Settlement Panel determines that a member state has violated the WTO’s international liability and must alter its behavior or face retaliation from the harmed state. More to the point, there is no absolute means to ensure compliance with WTO standards. One need only look to the gambling case brought against the United States by the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda in order to verify the ineffectiveness of WTO panel decisions. In 2003, Antigua and Barbuda brought a legitimate complaint to the WTO that the United States had improperly restricted the sale of online gaming and betting services from the island nation. Nevertheless, even after the complaint was raised, the United States, another WTO member state, refused to comply with WTO standards, due in part to domestic political and ethical concerns about gambling.1 Because Antigua and Barbuda has little leverage against the United States, its WTO-sanctioned countermeasures (to the tune of $221 million)have been ineffective, permitting the behemoth to continue barring the sale of gambling services across its national borders.2 Subsequent to the WTO ruling, the United States retroactively altered its commitment to the General Agreement on Trade in Services—effectively continuing to violate its previously agreed international economic obligations.3 Humanitarian bodies have proven no more adept at ensuring compliance with international norms and standards. The authority and eventual judgment of human rights tribunals may be flaunted by states unwilling to deliver the politically powerful to the judgment of the international community. For years, Serbia refused to deliver a number of suspected Serbian war criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [End 1] so that their actions could be considered and judged on the international stage.4 (Included among these war criminals was Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general who was responsible for the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, and Radovan Karadzic, the former Serbian president.5 ) To date, Serbia has refused to directly deliver either Mladic or Karadzic. Both men remain fugitives from international law.6 The United Nations and the body of international humanitarian and political law that it represents are similarly at the mercy of member states that choose to enforce or disregard their agreed-upon commitments and obligations. This is most evident in the case of the Security Council, where a single member may utilize its veto block action on the part of the entire UN. Without an international police force to ensure compliance with the will of the majority, absolute compliance with international norms remains a hope rather than a certainty.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704240004575085511472753150.html


ILAW Frontline3. Drones are legal under ILAW

Chris Jenks- Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. Presently serving as the Chief of the International Law Branch, Office of The Judge Advocate General, Rosslyn, Virginia, 2009, “LAW FROM ABOVE: UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS, USE OF FORCE, AND THE LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT”, North Dakota Law Review, 85 N. Dak. L. Rev. 649, Lexis

Analyzing UAS strikes in Pakistan under both jus ad bellum and jus en bello provides a useful vehicle by which to consider not only the ultimate question of legality, but the framework used to do so. Implicit in the analysis are questions that require a determination of the parameters of self defense under the U.N. Charter, and even whether the Charter applies. [*671] Similarly, how the conflict in the FATA is characterized, either internally or externally, shapes the analysis, as does whether Pakistan consents to the strikes.This article argued that in the jus ad bellum context, UAS strikes are permissible as preventive use of force in self defense if Pakistan does not consent to the strikes. In the more likely event that Pakistan consents to the strikes, then they are at the implicit behest of Pakistan as part of a conflict against a mutual enemy. The LOAC informs the analysis at all stages, particularly in terms of the conduct of the strikes themselves, jus en bello. UAS raise situational awareness on the battlefield to unprecedented levels, but this should not be mistaken for omniscience.

4. International law is too weak to prevent war and environmental desturction

Jack L. Goldsmith- law professor at Harvard University and Eric A. Posner is the Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, April 2005, American Enterprise Institute, “The Limits of International Law”, online at http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/sugimoto/law.pdf

We can conveniently use 9/11 as the date on which this optimism ended, but there were undercurrents of pessimism even earlier. The UN played a relatively minor role in bringing the conflicts in the Balkans to the end. Members of the Security Council could not agree on the use of force in Kosovo, and the NATO intervention was thus a violation of international law. The various international criminal tribunals turned out to be cumbersome and expensive institutions, they brought relatively few people to justice, and they stirred up the ethnic tensions they were meant to quell. Aggressive international trade integration produced a violent backlash in many countries. Treaty mechanisms seemed too weak to solve the most serious global problems, including environmental degradation and human rights abuses.

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http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/sugimoto/law.pdf


ILAW Frontlin5. ILAW has momentum now

Antonio Scalia, Supreme Court Justice, August 20, 2009, “Outsourcing American Law Foreign Law in Constitutional Interpretation”, American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/docLib/20090820-Chapter2.pdf

In many other cases, however, opinions for the Court have used foreign law for the purpose of interpreting the Constitution. The first such case I am familiar with was a 1958 decision involving the Eighth Amendment, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. In Trop v. Dulles, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment forbids the penalty of forfeiture of citizenship because inter alia, “The civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime.” 6 Reliance upon foreign law has been made with increasing frequency in Eighth Amendment cases. In Coker v. Georgia, a 1977 case, the Court noted that “out of 60 major nations in the world surveyed in 1965, only three retained the death penalty for rape where death did not ensue.” 7 In Enmund v. Florida, a 1982 case, the Court noted that the doctrine of felony murder (murder that occurs in the course of a felony is made a capital crime under the laws of many states) “has been abolished in England and India, severely restricted in Canada and a number of other Commonwealth countries, and is unknown in continental Europe.” 8 In a 1988 case, Thompson v. Oklahoma, the Court noted that “other nations that share our Anglo-American heritage” and “the leading members of the Western Europe community” opposed the death penalty for a person less than 16 years old at the time of the offense. 9 (I must interject that almost all of those countries also opposed the death penalty when a person was more than 16 years old at the time of the offense — but never mind.) In Atkins v. Virginia, decided in 2002, the Court thought it relevant that, “within the world community, the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved.” That was deemed relevant to the Court’s interpretation of our Eighth Amendment. Recently the Court has expanded the use of foreign law beyond the area of the Eighth Amendment. For example, in Lawrence v. Texas, decided in 2003, the Court relied upon action of the British Parliament and a decision of the European Court of Human Rights in declaring that laws punishing homosexual conduct were unconstitutional under the American Constitution. 11 Individual Justices have urged the relevance of foreign law in other cases as well. I expect, or rather I fear, that the Court’s use of foreign law in the interpretation of the Constitution will continue at an accelerating pace. That is so for three reasons. First, because the “living Constitution” paradigm for the task of Constitutional interpretation prevails on the Court and indeed in the legal community generally. Under this view, it is the task of the Court to make sure that the current Constitution comports with, as we have put the point in the Eighth Amendment context, “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” 12 Thus, a Constitutional right to abortion, which assuredly did not exist during the first few centuries of our country’s existence, does exist today. Likewise, a constitutional right to homosexual conduct.

6. Citing International Law does not set precedent

Adam Liptak-the Supreme Court correspondent of The New York Times, September 18, 2008, “U.S. Court Is Now Guiding Fewer Nations” New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18legal.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnlx=1221753717-8pdanTsDalyAfCQgzjrVvQ&pagewanted=print

Judicial citation or discussion of a foreign ruling does not, moreover, convert it into binding precedent. Chief Justice John Marshall, sitting as a circuit court judge, discussed the question in 1811. “It has been said that the decisions of British courts, made since the Revolution, are not authority in this country,” he said. “I admit it — but they are entitled to that respect which is due to the opinions of wise men who have maturely studied the subject they decide.” Indeed, American judges cite all sorts of things in their decisions — law review articles, song lyrics, television programs. State supreme courts cite decisions from other states, though a decision from Wisconsin is no more binding in Oregon than is one from Italy. “Foreign opinions are not authoritative; they set no binding precedent for the U.S. judge,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a 2006 address to the Constitutional Court of South Africa. “But they can add to the story of knowledge relevant to the solution of trying questions.” But Professor Fried said the area was a minefield. “Courts have been citing foreign law forever, but sparingly, for very good reason,” he said. “It is an invitation to bolster conclusions reached on other grounds. It leads to more impressionistic, undisciplined adjudication.”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18legal.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnlx=1221753717-8pdanTsDalyAfCQgzjrVvQ&pagewanted=print

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/18/us/18legal.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnlx=1221753717-8pdanTsDalyAfCQgzjrVvQ&pagewanted=print


ILAW Fronline7. Biodiversity loss doesn’t cause extinction

Mark Sagoff, Senior Research Scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, March 1997, College of William & Mary Law Review 38 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 825 (“INSTITUTE OF BILL OF RIGHTS LAW SYMPOSIUM DEFINING TAKINGS: PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE FUTURE OF GOVERNMENT REGULATION: MUDDLE OR MUDDLE THROUGH? TAKINGS JURISPRUDENCE MEETS THE ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT”, Lexis Nexis)

Perhaps twenty species of birds have vanished in the United States since 1492; of those, fifteen have vanished in Hawaii. n340 What specific losses in ecosystem services, such as those listed above, have occurred as a result? Mammals that have become extinct include Goof's pocket gopher, Shaman's pocket gopher, and the Tacoma pocket gopher-all of which disappeared this century. "The loss of a species from a particular area may have little or no net effect on the ability of the ecosystem to perform its ecological processes if competitors take the species' place." n341 Has any ecosystem service diminished owing to the loss of these gophers? Or have other species, including many other kinds of gophers, simply taken their place? [*905] To be sure, if extinctions continue at present rates indefinitely, at some point there may be too few viable species ready, willing, and able to substitute for those that have been lost. How much of a "buffer" exists? How many "extra" rivets are in the wings? Many ecologists follow Paul Ehrlich, Peter Raven, and others in declaring that with every extinction we run the risk of calamitous damage to the environment. n342 Although one may agree with ecologists such as Ehrlich and Raven that the earth stands on the brink of an episode of massive extinction, it may not follow from this grim fact that human beings will suffer as a result. On the contrary, skeptics such as science writer Colin Tudge have challenged biologists to explain why we need more than a tenth of the 10 to 100 million species that grace the earth. Noting that "cultivated systems often out-produce wild systems by 100-fold or more," Tudge declared that " the argument that humans need the variety of other species is, when you think about it, a theological one." n343 Tudge observed that "the elimination of all but a tiny minority of our fellow creatures does not affect the material well-being of humans one iota." n344 This skeptic challenged ecologists to list more than 10,000 species (other than unthreatened microbes) that are essential to ecosystem productivity or functioning. n345 "The human species could survive just as well if 99.9% of our fellow creatures went extinct, provided only that we retained the appropriate 0.1% that we need." [*906] The monumental Global Biodiversity Assessment ("the Assessment") identified two positions with respect to redundancy of species. "At one extreme is the idea that each species is unique and important, such that its removal or loss will have demonstrable consequences to the functioning of the community or ecosystem." n347 The authors of the Assessment, a panel of eminent ecologists, endorsed this position, saying it is "unlikely that there is much, if any, ecological redundancy in communities over time scales of decades to centuries, the time period over which environmental policy should operate ." n348 These eminent ecologists rejected the opposing view, "the notion that species overlap in function to a sufficient degree that removal or loss of a species will be compensated by others, with negligible overall consequences to the community or ecosystem." n349 Other biologists believe, however, that species are so fabulously redundant in the ecological functions they perform that the life-support systems and processes of the planet and ecological processes in general will function perfectly well with fewer of them, certainly fewer than the millions and millions we can expect to remain even if every threatened organism becomes extinct. n350 Even the kind of sparse and miserable world depicted in the movie Blade Runner could provide a "sustainable" context for the human economy as long as people forgot their aesthetic and moral commitment to the glory and beauty of the natural world. n351 The Assessment makes this point. "Although any ecosystem contains hundreds to thousands of species interacting among themselves and their physical environment, the emerging consensus is that the system is driven by a small number of . . . biotic variables on whose interactions the balance of species are, in a sense, carried along." n352

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ILAW- no impact

International law isn’t key to global cooperation

Samuel Estreicher, Law Professor at NYU, 2003, “Rethinking the Binding Effect of Customary International Law,” Virginia Journal of International Law Association, Fall, 44 Va. J. Int'l L. 5,

As for the subsidiary law that an increasingly interdependent world needs in advance of treaties, traditional CIL could not easily play this role as it was essentially backwards looking. The new, instantaneous customary law tries to play this role, but in a way that hardly comports with legitimacy. Without relying on CIL, states, international organizations, and other actors have ample means of identifying problems requiring interstate cooperation, drafting instruments that might command state support, and marshaling the forces of moral suasion. It is hard to see that the "law" aspiration of CIL offers the prospect of a significant incremental gain. In any event, the ultimate question is whether any such benefit warrants the accompanying costs—to which I now turn.

International law has no force – the US can break it at will – this dooms its success

Michael Stokes Paulsen, Distinguished University Chair and Professor of Law, The University of St.Thomas School of Law, June 2009, Yale Law Journal – “The Constitutional Power to Interpret International Law”

Thus, though treaties are part of the supreme law of the land under the U.S. Constitution, their legal force as they concern the international law obligations of the United States is, as a matter of U.S. law, always limited by (1) the Constitution’s assignment of certain indefeasible constitutional powers to the President and to Congress with respect to foreign affairs and war; (2) the power of Congress to enact inconsistent, overriding or limiting legislation; (3) the fact that many treaty commitments do not create self-executing U.S. domestic law obligations; and (4) the President’s foreign affairs executive power to interpret, apply, suspend (in whole or in part), or even terminate a U.S. treaty’s international obligation as a matter of U.S. law. It is worth pausing to consider exactly what all of this means, for its implications are mildly stunning, especially with respect to U.S. war powers: it means that a treaty of the United States that is the law of the land under Article VI of the Constitution—be it the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions or any other major agreement at the center of the contemporary regime of international law—may not constitutionally limit Congress’s power to declare war or the President’s Commander-in-Chief power to conduct war as he sees fit. It means that Congress always may act to displace, or disregard, a treaty obligation. It means that the President, too, always may act independently to displace, or disregard, a treaty obligation. It means that treaties, as a species of international law with the strongest claim to U.S. domestic constitutional law status, never meaningfully constrain U.S. governmental actors. Their force is utterly contingent on the prospective actions and decisions of U.S. constitutional actors. 55 This conceptualization threatens all that the community of “international law” scholars hold most dear. For it seems to say that the United States may disregard the seemingly most sacred of international law treaty obligations almost at will. The answer to such a charge is yes, this analysis suggests precisely that. At least it does so as a matter of U.S. constitutional law. This does not mean, of course, that the United States must or should disregard important international law treaty obligations as a foreign policy matter. It certainly does not need to do so; other nations might validly regard such actions as a breach of international law; such nations might become very angry at the United States’s actions (or they might not); and such breaches, and reactions, may have serious international political repercussions. These are very serious policy considerations. But as a matter of U.S. constitutional law, it remains the case that Congress, and the President, may lawfully take such actions, hugely undermining the force of such international treaties as binding national law for the United States. The conclusion is blunt, but inescapable: international law in the form of U.S. treaties is primarily a political constraint on U.S. conduct—a constraint of international politics—more than a true legal constraint. The “binding” international law character of a treaty obligation is, as a matter of U.S. law, largely illusory.

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Ilaw- no impactIts impossible to quantify the strength of international rights law

Douglass Cassel, Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law, Spring 2001, Chicago Journal of International Law, 2 Chi. J. Int'l L. 121, p. 131

Quantifying the ultimate benefit for rights protection of all these interacting processes, or even demonstrating a clear qualitative impact, would require an enormously sophisticated methodology, coupled with a herculean effort to gather a range of data, much of which may not exist or may not be reliable. Perhaps some day such an ambitious research agenda will be attempted. In the meantime, judgment, based on experience, and tested for plausibility against the leading international relations-international law theories, is the best guide for policy.

CIL has no independent normative force

Jack L. Goldsmith, Prof. of Law @ Chicago, and Eric A. Posner, Prof. of Law @ Chicago, 2k [40 Va. J. Int'l L. 639, “Understanding the Resemblance Between Modern and Traditional Customary International Law]

The significance of this "new" CIL is controversial. Many believe it is incoherent and illegitimate. Others view it as a happy development for international law generally and-because the new CIL primarily concerns human rights-for world justice.' In this essay we suggest that both critics and proponents of the new CIL proceed from a faulty premise. The faulty premise is that CIL- either the traditional or the new-influences national behavior. In our view, the new CIL is no less coherent or legitimate than the old. But this is not because the new CIL is particularly coherent or legitimate, whatever those terms may mean in this context. It is because the commentators misunderstand how CIL, new or old, operates. CIL, new and old, reflects patterns of international behavior that result from states pursuing their national interests. These interests, along with the relative power of each state and other exogenous features of the international environment, determine which rules of CIL emerge in equilibrium. In both the traditional and new varieties, CIL as an independent normative force has little if any effect on national behavior.

CIL is basically irrelevant to anything that matters

Francis A. Boyle, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1980. [10 Cal. W. Int'l L.J. 193 (1980), THE IRRELEVANCE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE SCHISM BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS]

In this view of international politics, international law is devoid of any intrinsic significance within the calculus of international political decision-making. International law might indeed be pertinent to, if not determinative of, the microcosmic elements of international relations. However, such relevance, when multiplied by the minimal importance of these matters, becomes inconsequential when compared to the irrelevance of international law to conflicts involving vital national interests. International law is therefore irrelevant to those matters which count the most, or more forcefully, to those matters which count for anything in international relations.

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ILAW- US not keyOther countries courts fill in

Ole W. Pederson- Professor at Newcastle, PhD, School of Law, University of Aberdeen, September 18, 2008, “Fading influence of the US Supreme Court”, International Law Observer, online at http://internationallawobserver.eu/2008/09/18/fading-influence-of-the-us-supreme-court/

It appears that it is not only the EU whose authority is fading. Today’s NY Times has a very interesting story on the influence of the US Supreme Court, which is well worth a read. The article states that the number of citations of US Supreme Court cases in other jurisdictions is in decline compared to just ten years ago. There are many reasons for this, according to, inter alia, Thomas Ginsburg of University of Chicago and Aharon Barak, former president of the Israeli Supreme Court. One reason is the rise in the numbers of constitutional courts elsewhere, which has, through time, created a rich jurisprudence on constitutional law rendering the need to cite US cases less essential. Additionally, US foreign policy may play a part in the diminishing influence of the oldest constitutional court in world. Finally, the reluctance of the US Supreme Court itself to cite foreign law when adjudicating may play a role. This final point is perhaps the most interesting. Whereas European (including the ECJ and the ECtHR), Australian and Canadian courts do not shy away from referring to foreign law, it has always been a sensitive topic in the US where many scholars favour leaving aside foreign law. This approach has its clear democratic justification but as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg said in 2006 in an address to the South African Constitutional Court: “[F]oreign opinions are not authoritative; they set no binding precedent for the U.S. judge. But they can add to the store of knowledge relevant to the solution of trying questions. Yes, we should approach foreign legal materials with sensitivity to our differences, deficiencies, and imperfect understanding, but imperfection, I believe, should not lead us to abandon the effort to learn what we can from the experience and good thinking foreign sources may convey.”

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http://internationallawobserver.eu/2008/09/18/fading-influence-of-the-us-supreme-court/

http://internationallawobserver.eu/2008/09/18/fading-influence-of-the-us-supreme-court/


ILAW- no precedentLack of framework for using international law means they can’t establish a coherent precedent

Ernesto J. Sanchez, ASIL member and law clerk at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington D.C., J.D., University of Pennsylvania, December 2005, Connecticut Law Review, 38 Conn. L. Rev. 185, p. 190, Lexis

Foreign laws, however, do not stem from the same philosophical base, but from different circumstances, philosophies, traditions, and ideas. A foreign law does not reflect an American constitutional principle or tradition, but merely represents the needs and characteristics of a different society and culture, even though some of these traits may outwardly resemble American ones. Consequently, foreign laws' relevance to the circumstances surrounding an American legal issue with no external implications whatsoever remains quite questionable. And the range of these laws, and the social, cultural, and legal concepts they represent, is simply so vast and diverse that a judge could probably find some foreign law supporting any outcome when considering a specific issue. To date, Justice Breyer has offered what appears to be the most detailed framework for an internationalist approach to judicial decisionmaking -- reference to "standards roughly comparable to our own constitutional standards in roughly comparable circumstances." n25 Given each national legal system's own unique characteristics and idiosyncrasies, the absence of any more specific guidelines for a judge to determine how to apply non-American legal principles to purely domestic issues, utilizing a method entirely consistent with the Constitution and the ideas it reflects, remains problematic.

One plan not spillover - no change in US stance

Andrew Moravcsik- Professor of Politics and director of the European Union Program at Princeton University., former policy-maker who currently serves as Nonresident Senior Fellow of The Brookings Institution, 2004, "The Paradox of US Human Rights Policy" in American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, p. 197

This is a sobering conclusion, for it suggests that U.S. ambivalence toward international human rights commitments is not a short-term and contingent aspect of specific American policies. It is instead woven into the deep structural reality of American political life.'*' This is so not, for the most part, because international human rights commitments are inconsistent with a particular understanding of democratic ideals like popular sovereignty, local control, or expansive protection of particular rights shared by most Americans. It is true, rather, because a conservative minority favored by enduring domestic political institutions has consistently prevailed in American politics to the point where its values are now embedded in public opinion and constitutional precedent. The institutional odds against any fundamental change in Madison's republic are high. To reverse current trends would require an epochal constitutional rupture— an Ackermanian "constitutional moment"—such as those wrought in the United States by the Great Depression and the resulting Democratic "New Deal" majority; in Germany, France, and Italy by the end of World War II; and in all European countries through a half century of European human rights jurisprudence.1'' Short of that, this particular brand of American ambivalence toward the domestic application of international human rights norms is unlikely to change anytime soon.

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ILAW- drones legalDrones are legal under ILAW

The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2010, “The Drone Wars” online at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704130904574644632368664254.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

As for Mr. Alston's concerns, the legal case for drones is instructive. President Bush approved their use under his Constitutional authority as Commander in Chief, buttressed by Congress's Authorization for the Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its affiliates after 9/11. Gerald Ford's executive order that forbids American intelligence from assassinating anyone doesn't apply to enemies in wartime. International law also allows states to kill their enemies in a conflict, and to operate in "neutral" countries if the hosts allow bombing on their territory. Pakistan and Yemen have both given their permission to the U.S., albeit quietly. Even if they hadn't, the U.S. would be justified in attacking enemy sanctuaries there as a matter of self-defense. Who gets on the drone approved "kill lists" is decided by a complex interagency process involving the CIA, Pentagon and White House. We hear the U.S. could have taken out the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki after his contacts with Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hassan came to light in November, missing the chance by not authorizing the strike. Perhaps al-Awlaki's U.S. citizenship gave U.S. officials pause, but after he joined the jihad he became an enemy and his passport irrelevant.

It is impossible to know is drones violate ILAW

Scott Shane, December 3, 2009, “C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan”, New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&adxnnlx=1280271621-8iMosAsJ5vqHxWZNwEybtw

Pakistan’s public criticism of the drone attacks has muddied the legal status of the strikes, which United States officials say are justified as defensive measures against groups that have vowed to attack Americans. Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur for extrajudicial executions and a prominent critic of the program, has said it is impossible to judge whether the program violates international law without knowing whether Pakistan permits the incursions, how targets are selected and what is done to minimize civilian casualties.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&adxnnlx=1280271621-8iMosAsJ5vqHxWZNwEybtw


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704130904574644632368664254.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines


ILAW inevitableUse of CIL is inevitable and will only gather strength over time—it’s only a question of how not if

Steven G. Calabresi, Professor of Law, Northwestern University, and Stephanie Dotson Zimdahl, J.D. candidate, Northwestern University, Law clerk to Judge Frank Easterbrook, April 2005. [SSRN, The Supreme Court and Foreign Sources of Law: Two Hundred Years of Practice and the Juvenile Death Penalty Decision, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=700176]

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared unconstitutional state laws prohibiting homosexual sodomy, in part, by considering decisions of the European Court of Human Rights, brought the issue of the Supreme Court's consideration to center stage. But, Justice Kennedy's opinion in Simmons stands to move the debate to an even higher level of attention and importance. By citing foreign sources of law as further support for the Court's own views of what punishments violate the Eighth Amendment, the Simmons Court showed what may be at stake in the outcome of this debate between the six liberal justices and the three conservatives led by Justice Scalia. The depth of the support for citing foreign sources of law suggests that the movement to do this is just beginning and will only gather force over time. In the wake of Simmons, the debate on the Court is no longer over whether to cite foreign sources of law but over when and how to cite them. This portends a sea change in the Court's doctrine.

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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=700176


AT-ILAW solves HegILAW doesn’t solve heg—juicial incorporation has NO influence on other states’ perceptions.David T. Hutt, J.D., Ph.D., legal trainer in Washington, and former Adjunct Assistant Professor at Le Moyne College, and Lisa K. Parshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Gov’t at Daemen College, 2007. [33 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 113, Divergent Views on the Use of International and Foreign Law: Congress and the Executive versus the Court]

More importantly, the degree to which the judicial branch relies on foreign materials has far less of an impact than any legislative or executive willingness to defer to international law and standards. In the foreign arena, the courts' use of foreign law is unlikely to have any impact on the world opinion of the U.S. beyond the Strasbourg elite. Foreign populations are much more likely to be exposed, or actually care about decisions made by the President in military or foreign relations matters, than decisions of a very distant Supreme Court on purely U.S. domestic law. The policies of the Departments of Defense, Justice, and State hence are more closely watched by the politicians and populace in foreign lands then the decisions of five or more U.S. justices. In other words, comparative constitutionalism has more important political implications in the domestic arena than in the international arena, and even in the domestic realm, the legal implications may be slight.

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BioDefense Extentions

No species snowball – Ecosystems are resilientRoger A Sedjo 2k, Sr. Fellow, Resources for the Future, Conserving Nature’s Biodiversity: insights from biology, ethics & economics, eds. Van Kooten, Bulte and Sinclair, p 114As a critical input into the existence of humans and of life on earth, biodiversity obviously has a very high value (at least to humans). But, as with other resource questions, including public goods, biodiversity is not an either/or question, but rather a question of “how much.” Thus, we may argue as to how much biodiversity is desirable or is required for human life (threshold) and how much is desirable (insurance) and at what price, just as societies argue over the appropriate amount and cost of national defense. As discussed by Simpson, the value of water is small even though it is essential to human life, while diamonds are inessential but valuable to humans. The reason has to do with relative abundance and scarcity, with market value pertaining to the marginal unit. This water-diamond paradox can be applied to biodiversity. Although biological diversity is essential, a single species has only limited value, since the global system will continue to function without that species . Similarly, the value of a piece of biodiversity (e.g., 10 ha of tropical forest) is small to negligible since its contribution to the functioning of the global biodiversity is negligible. The global ecosystem can function with “somewhat more” or “somewhat less” biodiversity, since there have been larger amounts in times past and some losses in recent times. Therefore, in the absence of evidence to indicate that small habitat losses threaten the functioning of the global life support system, the value of these marginal habitats is negligible. The “value question” is that of how valuable to the life support function are species at the margin. While this, in principle, is an empirical question, in practice it is probably unknowable. However, thus far, biodiversity losses appear to have had little or no effect on the functioning of the earth’s life support system, presumably due to the resiliency of the system, which perhaps is due to the redundancy found in the system. Through most of its existence, earth has had far less biological diversity. Thus, as in the water-diamond paradox, the value of the marginal unit of biodiversity appears to be very small.

Impact is small – Scientists confirm.Stevens 91 –Journalist of the New York Times [William K. , “Species Loss: Crisis or False Alarm,” New York Times. August 20,. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE1D61E3EF933A1575BC0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all] APWhile species constitute a "valuable endowment" and should be protected, there is "a total lack of evidence" of a biological holocaust, said Dr. Julian Simon, a University of Maryland economist. He is perhaps better known for arguing that the world's resources, coupled with human ingenuity, can support a surging population. "We're being asked to take the entire scenario on faith " and on the judgment of those who advance it, he said. The warnings of mass extinction, he said, "seem like guesswork and hysteria." Other dissenters say there is a problem, but that its dimensions simply cannot be known at the moment. No one even knows the true number of species in the world, they say. This is acknowledged by Dr. Wilson and others who share his view. Only 1.4 million species have been identified worldwide, but estimates of South American species alone range from 5 million to 50 million, and estimates of global species range up to 100 million. "When you deal with that kind of error, it's hard to say what's happening," said Dr. Michael A. Mares, a zoologist at the University of Oklahoma who is an expert on neotropical habitats. Likewise, he said, it is difficult to come up with a rate of extinction when the geographical distribution of organisms is not known. "Most of them are invertebrates," he said. "We really don't have a good handle on whether or not they're going extinct and how rapidly. The problem is data right now." More should be known, he said, before the poor countries of the world are asked to make large sacrifices to preserve tropical forests. For his part, Dr. Mares said, he believes that the wolf is not yet at the door. "The wolf is coming," he said, "but he's coming later." It is "understandable that there's disagreement," said Dr. Jared Diamond, an ecologist at the University of California at Los Angeles who has examined the problem. "What people are arguing about is what's going to happen in the future." Predicting the stock market, with its well-known variables and wealth of data, is a far more certain pursuit than predicting the future of species, he said.

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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=


PAKISTAN RELATIONS FRONTLINE

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Pakistan relations Frontline

1. They only ban drones in Afghanistan, means they don’t solve drone use in Pakistan

2. Civilians support Drones


Interestingly, residents of the tribal areas where the attacks actually occur, who bitterly resent the militants’ brutal rule, are far less critical of the drones, said Farhat Taj, an anthropologist with the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy. A study of 550 professional people living in the tribal areas was conducted late last year by the institute, a Pakistani research group. About half of those interviewed called the drone strikes “accurate,” 6 in 10 said they damaged militant organizations, and almost as many denied they increased anti-Americanism.

Dr. Taj, who lived at the edge of the tribal areas until 2002, said residents would prefer to be protected by the Pakistani Army. “But they feel powerless toward the militants and they see the drones as their liberator,” she said.

3. Pakistan secretly supports drones


In an interview this week with the German magazine Der Spiegel, the Pakistani prime minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, said the drone strikes “do no good, because they boost anti-American resentment throughout the country.” American officials say that despite such public comments, Pakistan privately supplies crucial intelligence, proposes targets and allows the Predators to take off from a base in Baluchistan.

4. Relations high now- intelligence sharing

Eric Schmitt covers the nation's war on terrorism for The New York Times, and Mark Mazzetti has covered national security from the newspaper's Washington bureau since April 2006, May 13, 2009, “In a First, U.S. Provides Pakistan With Drone Data”, New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/asia/14drone.html?fta=y

As a compromise, the American military in Afghanistan a few months ago offered to increase the amount of sensitive surveillance information it shared with the Pakistani military. American officials said the information could help Pakistani forces combat an increasingly lethal militancy that was spreading not only in the tribal areas, but also in the settled areas of Swat and Buner, closer to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. American and Pakistani officials said that such information-sharing initiatives could build trust between the security services of both nations.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/asia/14drone.html?fta=y






Pakistan Relations FL5. US and Pakistan cooperating now

Ben Arnoldy- Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, August 7, 2009, Christian Science Moniter, “Strike on Mehsud could spur stronger US-Pakistan cooperation”, Lexis

US officers have complained for years that Pakistan has been reluctant to help kill or capture some Taliban leaders who operate in the lawless tribal region along the Afghan border.But the US drone strike that apparently killed senior Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud (click here for the Monitor's story on the strike) on Wednesday couldn't have pleased Pakistani officials more, since Mr. Mehsud led an army of 10,000 militants who were more focused on overthrowing the Pakistani government than on returning Taliban rule to Afghanistan.Pakistani analysts say the strike was made possible by marrying American technology to Pakistani ground intelligence. They say the US may now get more Pakistani cooperation in hunting down militant leaders who are based in Pakistan but conduct most of their attacks on the other side of the border. The US will now probably be seeking a "quid pro quo," says Imtiaz Gul, head of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. Mr. Gul argues that the US is going to have the following conversation with Pakistan: "We [the US] took care of a person who was inflicting damage against Pakistan - now you take care of those going after the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan." The apparent killing of Mehsud "should clear the way for greater coordination as far as the other militants are concerned," he adds. Cooperation until now has been hampered by mistrust on both sides. Just as US commanders have complained that the Afghanistan-focused Taliban haven't been a priority for Pakistan, some Pakistani officials have complained the US has ignored "actionable intelligence" on Mehsud in the past.

6. Can’t solve-CIA will still launch drones from PakistanJeremy Page, Staff writer for The Sunday Times, 2009, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5762371.ece

The US was secretly flying unmanned drones from the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan as early as 2006, according to an image of the base from Google Earth. The image — that is no longer on the site but which was obtained by The News, Pakistan's English language daily newspaper — shows what appear to be three Predator drones outside a hangar at the end of the runway. The Times also obtained a copy of the image, whose co-ordinates confirm that it is the Shamsi airfield, also known as Bandari, about 200 miles southwest of the Pakistani city of Quetta. An investigation by The Times yesterday revealed that the CIA was secretly using Shamsi to launch the Predator drones that observe and attack al-Qaeda and Taleban militants around Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5762371.ece


Pakistan- Relations High

US-Pakistan relations high even with drones in Pakistan

Dr Syed Javed Hussain, noted columnist and analyst from Pakistan who has been writing since 1984. Currently he is teaching at a university in North Africa, 4-12-2010, http://pakistan.suite101.com/article.cfm/us-pakistan-fast-growing-relations

Pakistan US relations are going from strength to strength. Since Sept 11, 2001 both countries have seen that global war on terror can't be won unless they, having vital interests at stake, come even closer together and fight off their common enemy with greater dedication and commitment. As of today, 11th April, 2010, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Syed Yousif Raza Gilani, is on a state visit to US to attend Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit and is receiving high profile exposure in Media and grand receptions at all official levels. The age-long ice seems to be melting and in the absence of the fog of suspicion and misunderstanding now leadership of both countries is looking at the future that is built upon mutual trust and cooperation.

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http://pakistan.suite101.com/article.cfm/us-pakistan-fast-growing-relations


Pakistan- don’t mind drones

Pakistan requests drones for help

Eric Schmitt covers the nation's war on terrorism for The New York Times, and Mark Mazzetti has covered national security from the newspaper's Washington bureau since April 2006, May 13, 2009, “In a First, U.S. Provides Pakistan With Drone Data”, New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/world/asia/14drone.html?fta=y

In mid-March, the American military in Afghanistan flew a demonstration mission of a Predator drone along a stretch of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to show the kind of imagery and communications information the Predator could provide. The Americans transmitted the information to a border coordination center near the Khyber Pass operated by American, Pakistani and Afghan personnel, and the information was sent through Pakistani security databases. The test run went well enough that Pakistan subsequently requested a small number of additional Predator reconnaissance flights to support their operations in the border tribal areas.

Opposition declining

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, January 22, 2010, New York Times, “C.I.A. Deaths Prompt Surge in U.S. Drone Strikes”, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23drone.html?

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a military analyst in Lahore, said public opposition had been declining because the campaign was viewed as a success. Yet one Pakistani general, who supports the drone strikes as a tactic for keeping militants off balance, questioned the long-term impact.

Drones lower on agenda


So far the reaction in Pakistan to the increased drone strikes has been muted. Last week, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani of Pakistan told Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration’s senior diplomat for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the drones undermined the larger war effort. But the issue was not at the top of the agenda as it was a year ago.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23drone.html?




RoboWar 1NC1. An unmanned army would deter conflicts from happening

ANDREA SHALAL-ESAR and JUSTIN POPE , 2/8/03, “MILITARY TECHNOLOGY; War without death”, The Advertiser

Many wars would not start, it's argued, with the immense deterrent of an unmanned army. While facing impossible odds have not forced Saddam Hussein to back down in his standoff with the US, the unmatchable odds of facing an unmanned army might avoid future conflicts. No wonder harnessing an unmanned army, even a heavily robot-assisted army, has been something US military commanders dream of. Vice president of US company Foster-Miller's military robot division, Arniss Mangolds, explained: "When you see a robot coming down (on the battlefield), it's interesting and even if it has a weapon on it, maybe it's a little scary and you give it a little respect. But if you're standing somewhere and see 10 robots coming at you, it's scary."

2. Coordinated military bots deter

Associated Press, January 14, 2003, “New robots well trained for war”, online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078710/

Robots will someday master many of the complex, individual tasks required in combat, experts insist. Then, something even more powerful will follow: robots that work together. It’s a prospective weapon whose effectiveness would derive at least partly from the sheer terror it could impose on an enemy. “When you see one robot coming down, it’s interesting and even if it has a weapon on it, maybe it’s a little scary and you give it a little respect,” said Arniss Mangolds, vice president of Foster-Miller’s robot division. “But if you’re standing somewhere and see 10 robots coming at you, it’s scary.”

3. Bad robots are decades away

Associated Press, January 14, 2003, “New robots well trained for war”, online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078710/

In future wars, robots may drop from the sky by the hundreds from unmanned aircraft, swarming like giant insects over battlefields in coordinated, terrifying assaults. But that is a decades-away scenario. For now, military planners and robot designers are simply trying to improve devices — some of which could see action soon in Iraq — by incorporating lessons from Afghanistan, where robots saw their first significant military action.

4. If the US doesn't use the tech, others still will

James John Bell is a writer for Sustain, a national environmental information group based in Chicago, October, 2002http://www.zmag.org/zmagsite/oct2002/commentary/bell1002.htm#bio

Hermes and other robots are being tested by a few different military companies and will be left behind to assist U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Present-day cloning, nanotechnology and robotics research are beginning to blur the lines between human and machine. Laboratory-created biotech organisms, cloned lifeforms, and advanced robotic machines are now proliferating around the globe. As these technologies advance they begin to represent a great challenge to the political order and stability of the world. This is why the US military and other militaries are aggressively backing research into many of these new technologies. The nuclear arms race of the twentieth century has become the biorobotics arms race of today.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078710/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078710/


RoboWar 1NC5. Artificial intelligence impossible

Isaac Asimov, visionary genius, 1990, First Contact, p. 26-27

But computers do change, if not as a result of their own inner capacities, then because human beings are forever building new ones of improved design. Will we ever be the agents for the evolution of computers that are examples of true “artificial intelligence”? I doubt it. One must first understand the true complexity of the human brain as it has evolved over three and a half billion years . The human brain consists of 10 billion neurons and 90 billion auxiliary cells. No computer, either now or in the foreseeable future, is going to contain 100 billion switching units. And even if a computer were to contain so many units, the neurons of the brain are interconnected with extraordinary complexity, each being connected to dozens or thousands of others in a manner that passes our understanding. Computers don’t have even the beginnings of such complexity. And even if we learn to duplicate the complexity, too, then the fact remains that the units in computers are switches that move from on to off and back to on, and nothing more. The neurons of the brain , on the other hand, are enormously complex structures of macromolecules of various types whose functions we do not entirely understand.

6. Drone use wont expand

Abu Muqawama- blog dedicated to following issues related to contemporary insurgencies as well as counterinsurgency tactics and strategy, April 16, 2010, quoting Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst, “On Drone Strikes” online at http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/archive/201004

No matter their merits, the use of drones is unlikely to expand beyond the tribal areas, says Riedel. FATA is unique, “you couldn’t do what we’re doing here in other parts of the world.” The FATA has a 5th century infrastructure and is not urbanized. Expanding programs into Baluchistan would increase collateral damage and cross Pakistani red lines.

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Virtual Warfare 1NCThe pilots still feel connectedMarc Pitzke, Staff Writer for Spiegel Online International, 2010, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,682420,00.html (Callahan is Air Force Major Bryan Callahan, 37. Callahan flew drones for four years in Nevada and now serves as assistant branch chief at the Air Combat Command Headquarters in Langley, sharing responsibility for all US drones worldwide.)

Despite the distance, the drone pilots feel as if they're on the front line. "You get more attached than you would think from being in Nevada," Callahan says. "Killing someone with an RPA is not different than with an F-16. We're well aware that if you push that button somebody can go away. It's not a video game. You take it very seriously." This new technology, Singer writes, is worryingly "seductive," because it creates the perception that war can be "costless." Nonetheless, it creates psychological wounds, former CIA lawyer Vicki Divoll warns in the New Yorker. "Mechanized killing is still killing."

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,682420,00.html


Drones Good 1NCDrones are destroying Al Quida

DR NOOR UL HAQ, April 30, 2010, “AFGHANISTAN: US EXIT STRATEGYOPERATION MOSHTARAK, RECONCILIATION AND REINTEGRATION” Islamabad Policy Research Institute, online at http://www.ipripak.org/journal.shtml

The current optimism stems from three developments. One is that Operation Moshtarak in central Helmand Province is resulting in the expulsion of Taliban paramilitaries and their replacement by a governmental administration protected by Afghan security forces. A second is that preparations are being made for an operation to take control of the city of Kandahar later this year, this being seen as the key centre of Taliban influence across the whole of Afghanistan. The third is the evidence that the very extensive use of armed drones, especially in western Pakistan, is having a massive, destabilising impact on the viability and perhaps even the survival of al-Qaida as a movement. The drone attacks, in particular, have been presented by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, as having had a devastating impact on the ability of the al-Qaida movement to operate. The CIA alone mounted 22 drone attacks in the first ten weeks of 2010, compared with 53 during the whole of 2009. While most of these have been in western Pakistan, armed drones have also been used extensively in Afghanistan, with the US military heavily involved as well as the CIA. The overall effect is reported to be that the command and control capabilities of the al-Qaida movement have been greatly diminished, to the degree that it is now struggling to maintain any sense of cohesion, let alone have the capability for mounting new attacks. The al-Qaida leadership , in short, is concentrating primarily on its own survival.

Drone program has been successful

Jane Mayer, graduated with honors from Yale in 1977 and continued her studies in history at Oxford, October 26, 2009, “THE PREDATOR WAR”, The New Yorker, online at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer

The Predator program is described by many in the intelligence world as America’s single most effective weapon against Al Qaeda. In May, Leon Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, referred to the Predator program as “the only game in town” in an unguarded moment after a public lecture. Counterterrorism officials credit drones with having killed more than a dozen senior Al Qaeda leaders and their allies in the past year, eliminating more than half of the C.I.A.’s twenty most wanted “high value” targets. In addition to Baitullah Mehsud, the list includes Nazimuddin Zalalov, a former lieutenant of Osama bin Laden; Ilyas Kashmiri, Al Qaeda’s chief of paramilitary operations in Pakistan; Saad bin Laden, Osama’s eldest son; Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi, an Algerian Al Qaeda planner who is believed to have helped train operatives for attacks in Europe and the United States; and Osama al-Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan, Al Qaeda operatives who are thought to have played central roles in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa. Juan Zarate, the Bush counterterrorism adviser, believes that “Al Qaeda is on its heels” partly because “so many bigwigs” have been killed by drones. Though he acknowledges that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the group’s top leaders, remain at large, he estimates that no more than fifty members of Al Qaeda’s senior leadership still exist, along with two to three hundred senior members outside the terror organization’s “inner core.” Zarate and other supporters of the Predator program argue that it has had positive ripple effects. Surviving militants are forced to operate far more cautiously, which diverts their energy from planning new attacks. And there is evidence that the drone strikes, which depend on local informants for targeting information, have caused debilitating suspicion and discord within the ranks. Four Europeans who were captured last December after trying to join Al Qaeda in Pakistan described a life of constant fear and distrust among the militants, whose obsession with drone strikes had led them to communicate only with elaborate secrecy and to leave their squalid hideouts only at night. As the Times has reported, militants have been so unnerved by the drone program that they have released a video showing the execution of accused informants. Pakistanis have also been gripped by rumors that paid C.I.A. informants have been planting tiny silicon-chip homing devices for the drones in the tribal areas.

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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer

http://www.ipripak.org/journal.shtml


Drones Good 1NC

Drones effectively counter terror- little collateral damage


One of Washington’s worst-kept secrets, the drone program is quietly hailed by counterterrorism officials as a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray. But despite close cooperation from Pakistani intelligence, the program has generated public anger in Pakistan, and some counterinsurgency experts wonder whether it does more harm than good. Assessments of the drone campaign have relied largely on sketchy reports in the Pakistani press, and some have estimated several hundred civilian casualties. Saying that such numbers are wrong, one government official agreed to speak about the program on the condition of anonymity. About 80 missile attacks from drones in less than two years have killed “more than 400” enemy fighters, the official said, offering a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage, however, was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: “We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists.”

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Drones Good Ext.Drone wars stop terror

Mosharraf Zaidi-a columnist for the News (Pakistan) and Al-Shorouk (Egypt), has advised governments and international organizations on how to deliver aid in Pakistan and Afghanistan, May 12, 2010, “The Consensus About Drones - Part II”, online at http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2010/05/12/the-consensus-about-drones-part-ii/

The third fact, and the most problematic, in terms of policy, is that drone attacks have been the most effective instrument in beheading the organizations capacities of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Pakistan’s Fata.Baitullah Mehsud is the most high-profile target of the drones for Pakistanis. But long-time followers of global counter-terrorism know that drones have helped destroy the operational capacity of Al-Qaeda gradually, since 2004. This effectiveness is an argument that, for many Americans, civilians and officials, trumps all considerations. The suggestion that this holds true for Pakistani officials military and political alike is not beyond the realm of the possible.This is where Pakistan is its own worst enemy. It is perfectly legitimate for Pakistanis to have an emotional position about the drones. It is not however, so legitimate for Pakistani government officials to use the drones as a negotiating tool with the US government . If there is a compelling Pakistani national security argument in favour of the drones, then the Pakistani people deserve to hear it . Of course, my money is on the fact that there isn’t. If there was, that argument would already have been made.

Drones solve terror


The U.S. will continue to engage in proxy fights against al Qaeda franchises in the Horn of Africa, Yemen and the Philippines for the foreseeable future. Large, long-term troop deployments such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan will be the exception, not the rule, in this fight. Engaging governments to defeat internal terrorist and insurgent groups is the most cost-effective way to fight this war, and supporting those governments with the surgical use of drones is an effective technique. Drone strikes remain a valuable tool in this struggle, and all signs indicate that they are here to stay.

Drones disrupt terror operations

JANE PERLEZ -chief The New York Times correspondent in Pakistan, and PIR ZUBAIR SHAH, April 4, 2010, New York Times, “Drones Batter Al Qaeda and Its Allies Within Pakistan”, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05drones.html

A stepped-up campaign of American drone strikes over the past three months has battered Al Qaeda and its Pakistani and Afghan brethren in the tribal area of North Waziristan, according to a mid-ranking militant and supporters of the government there.The strikes have cast a pall of fear over an area that was once a free zone for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, forcing militants to abandon satellite phones and large gatherings in favor of communicating by courier and moving stealthily in small groups, they said.

Drones prevent terror


The case is easy. Not even the critics deny its success against terrorists. Able to go where American soldiers can't, the Predator and Reaper have since 9/11 killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al Qaeda suspects, the Uzbek, Yemeni and Pakistani heads of allied groups and hundreds of militants. Most of those hits were in the last four years. "Very frankly, it's the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership," CIA Director Leon Panetta noted last May. The agency's own troubles with gathering human intelligence were exposed by last week's deadly bombing attack on the CIA station near Khost, Afghanistan.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/05/world/asia/05drones.html


http://www.mosharrafzaidi.com/2010/05/12/the-consensus-about-drones-part-ii/


Drones Good Ext.UAVs are critical to taking out al-Qaeda leaders. Steven Simon, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies for the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affair, Vol. 88, Issue 4 (July/August 2009), Page 134-135, 2009, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora88&id=727&type=text&collection=journals Thus, if the core concern is terrorism, Washington should concentrate on its already effective policy of eliminating al Qaeda's leadership with drone strikes. In what amounts to a targeted killing program, the United States uses two types of unmanned aerial vehicles-the Predator and the faster, higher-altitude Reaper, which can carry two Hellfire missiles and precision-guided bombs-to attack individuals and safe houses associated withal Qaeda and related militant groups, such as the Haqqani network. Most of these strikes have taken place in North or South Waziristan, as deep as 25 miles into Pakistani territory There were about 36 against militant sites inside Pakistan in 2008, and there have been approximately 16 so far in 2009. Among the senior al Qaeda leaders killed in the past year were Abu Jihad al-Masri, al Qaeda's intelligence chief; Khalid Habib, number four in al Qaeda and head of its operations in Pakistan; Abu Khabab al-Masri, al Qaeda's most experienced explosives expert, who had experimented with biological and chemical weapons; and Abu Laith al-Libi, the al Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. Some 130 civilians have also been killed, but improved guidance and smaller warheads should lead to fewer unintended casualties from now on.

Drones are critical to Counterterrorism and Pakistani region stability

Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention, Council on Foreign Relations, 6-2-2010, http://www.cfr.org/publication/22290/raising_the_curtain_on_us_drone_strikes.html

Unmanned drone strikes are an essential tool for killing terrorists who provide guidance and operational support for international terrorism. The apparent killing of al-Yazid represents an important small victory, given his connections to terrorist plots abroad, and his declarations last summer that al-Qaeda would use nuclear weapons against the United States (RFE/RL). Such targeted killings, however, are only one element of national power that is part of the Obama administration's six-month-old Afghanistan and Pakistan Regional Stabilization Strategy.

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http://www.cfr.org/publication/22290/raising_the_curtain_on_us_drone_strikes.html

http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora88&id=727&type=text&collection=journals

http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/fora88&id=727&type=text&collection=journals


CIVILIAN CASUALTIES1. Reports overstate death toll


A spokesman for the C.I.A., Paul Gimigliano, defended the program without quite acknowledging its existence. “While the C.I.A. does not comment on reports of Predator operations, the tools we use in the fight against Al Qaeda and its violent allies are exceptionally accurate, precise and effective,” he said. “Press reports suggesting that hundreds of Pakistani civilians have somehow been killed as a result of alleged or supposed U.S. activities are — to state what should be obvious under any circumstances — flat-out false.”

2. Drones reduce casualties

Eric Schmitt covers the nation's war on terrorism for The New York Times, and Christopher Drew covers military contracting and Pentagon spending for The New York Times, April 6, 2009, New York Times, “More Drone Attacks in Pakistan Planned”, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/world/asia/07drone.html?fta=y

Marc Garlasco, a former military targeting official who now works for Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy group, said the drones had helped limit civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the Air Force uses them to attack people laying roadside bombs and to attack other insurgents.

3. Drones kill less civilians than the alternative


Civilian casualties are hard to verify, since independent observers often can't access the bombing sites, and estimates vary widely. But Pakistani government as well as independent studies have shown the Taliban claims are wild exaggerations. The civilian toll is relatively low, especially if compared with previous conflicts. Never before in the history of air warfare have we been able to distinguish as well between combatants and civilians as we can with drones. Even if al Qaeda doesn't issue uniforms, the remote pilots can carefully identify targets, and then use Hellfire missiles that cause far less damage than older bombs or missiles. Smarter weapons like the Predator make for a more moral campaign.

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Drones Don’t kill civilians- extentions

All their stats and civilian casualty evidence is wrong and full of overestimations.C. Christine Fair, Assistant Professor for the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, 5-12-2010, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/28/drone_warsDuring his testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 2009, David Kilcullen, a former counterinsurgency advisor to Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus, said it was time for the United States to "call off the drones." Later that month, Kilcullen and Andrew M. Exum, who served as an Army Ranger in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to 2004, published a provocative editorial in the New York Times, titled "Death From Above: Outrage from Below," in which they estimated that over the "past three years" drones had killed just 14 "terrorist leaders" at the price of some 700 civilian lives. "This is 50 civilians for every militant killed," they wrote, "a hit rate of 2 percent." Their conclusion? Drone strikes produce more terrorists than they eliminate-an assertion that has become an article of faith among drone-strike opponents.It would be a damning argument -- if the data weren't simply bogus. The only publicly available civilian casualty figures for drone strikes in Pakistan come from their targets: the Pakistani Taliban, which report the alleged numbers to the Pakistani press, which dutifully publishes the fiction. No one has independently verified the Taliban's reports -- journalists cannot travel to FATA to confirm the deaths, and the CIA will not even acknowledge the drone program exists, much less discuss its results. But high-level Pakistani officials have conceded to me that very few civilians have been killed by drones and their innocence is often debatable. U.S. officials who are knowledgeable of the program report similar findings. In fact, since January 1 there has not been one confirmed civilian casualty from drone strikes in FATA.

Civilian death due to operator error

Dexter Filkins- master's degree in international relations from Oxford University, foreign correspondent for The New York Times, May 30, 2010, New York Times, “Operators of Drones are faulted in Afhgan Deaths” online at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per

The American military on Saturday released a scathing report on the deaths of 23 Afghan civilians, saying that “inaccurate and unprofessional” reporting by Predator drone operators helped lead to an airstrike in February on a group of innocent men, women and children. The report said that four American officers, including a brigade and battalion commander, had been reprimanded, and that two junior officers had also been disciplined. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who apologized to President Hamid Karzai after the attack, announced a series of training measures intended to reduce the chances of similar events.

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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/dexter_filkins/index.html?inline=nyt-per

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/28/drone_wars


DISADVANTAGE LINKS

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Plan PopularThink Tanks oppose drones

Ibrahim Sajid Malick -a freelance journalist based in New York. Previously he worked for following Pakistani media; The Daily News, Frontier Post, Morning News, Muslim, June 7, 2010, “Drone Attacks May Stop, But Is That Good News?”, Express Tribune, online at http://tribune.com.pk/story/18685/drone-attacks-may-stop-but-is-that-good-news/

However, there is a growing opposition to drone strikes from anti-war activists with journalists and powerful American think tanks now joining the fray. While the anti-war activists are viewed by the American media as irrelevant, one can hardly say that about elite think tank analysts. The Council on Foreign Relations, America’s most influential center-to-right think tank yesterday challenged the Obama administration to publicly debate the drone strategy. Mind you, CFR does not oppose the war on terror per se, but questions the claimed efficacy of unmanned armed drones to lead the effort.

There is growing opposition to drones


Until organised opposition began to grow against the drone attacks, it was easy for the US government to silence Pakistani opposition with diplomatic equivocations. But with the inclusion of American journalists and major military strategists in the opposition to drones, it is becoming challenging for Obama to continue with the drone attacks. While there are several strands of argument (some are anti-war, some are pro-war), all have one thing in common; they are all anti-drones. Given this growing opposition, Barack Obama will have to curb, if not stop altogether, his drone programme in the very near future.

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http://tribune.com.pk/story/18685/drone-attacks-may-stop-but-is-that-good-news/



Plan Unpopular

Drones are militaries favorite weapon

Christopher Drew, March 17, 2009, New York Times, “Drones Are Weapons of Choice in Fighting Qaeda”, online at http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/17-4

And Pentagon officials say the remotely piloted planes, which can beam back live video for up to 22 hours, have done more than any other weapons system to track down insurgents and save American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan The planes have become one of the military's favorite weapons despite many shortcomings resulting from the rush to get them into the field. An explosion in demand for the drones is contributing to new thinking inside the Pentagon about how to develop and deploy new weapons systems.

Drones are bipartisan


Yet with few other tools to use against Al Qaeda, the drone program has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and was escalated by the Obama administration in January. More C.I.A. drone attacks have been conducted under President Obama than under President George W. Bush. The political consensus in support of the drone program, its antiseptic, high-tech appeal and its secrecy have obscured just how radical it is. For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killing in a country where the United States is not officially at war

Drones popular

David Kilcullen, the author of “The Accidental Guerrilla,” was a counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus from 2006 to 2008. and Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, was an Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to 2004, May 16, 2009, “Death From Above, Outrage Down Below”, New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

The appeal of drone attacks for policy makers is clear. For one thing, their effects are measurable. Military commanders and intelligence officials point out that drone attacks have disrupted terrorist networks in Pakistan, killing key leaders and hampering operations. Drone attacks create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers. And, because they kill remotely, drone strikes avoid American casualties.

Drones Bipartisan


The strikes, carried out from a secret base in Pakistan and controlled by satellite link from C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia, have been expanded by President Obama and praised by both parties in Congress as a potent weapon against terrorism that puts no American lives at risk. That calculation must be revised in light of the Khost bombing, which revealed the critical presence of C.I.A. officers in dangerous territory to direct the strikes.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17exum.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1



http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/17-4


Plan UnpopularMilitary loves UAVs

Charles Duhigg, April 15, 2007, New York Times, “The Pilotless Plane that Only Looks Like Child’s Play”, Lexis

For years, such planes -- known as U.A.V.'s, for unmanned aerial vehicles -- were pariahs within the military industry, scorned by commanders who saw them as threats to the status quo. But during the last several years, U.A.V.'s have amassed unusual political firepower. ''For a long time, the only thing most generals could agree on was that they didn't want any unmanned vehicles,'' says Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. ''Now everyone wants as many as they can get.'' In fact, only a decade ago, crucial Air Force commanders were lobbying to prevent battlefield deployment of U.A.V.'s, according to Congressional staff members. By 2005, however, John P. Jumper, then the Air Force chief of staff, had sufficiently about-faced to tell Congress that ''we're going to tell General Atomics to build every Predator they can possibly build.''

Drones are Obamas favorite weapon

Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of international relations and history at Boston University, April 25, 2009, “Obama’s sins of omission”, Boston Globe, online at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/25/obamas_sins_of_omission/

There are differences, to be sure. Bush counted on high-tech manned aircraft above and mechanized ground forces below to make quick work of any foe, with Iraq the point of main effort. Ostensibly learning from Bush's failures, Obama is taking a modified approach, centering his attention on "Af-Pak." His preference is for high-tech unmanned aircraft, the weapon of choice for an expanded Israeli-style program of targeted assassination in Pakistan. Meanwhile, when it comes to ground forces, Obama's inclination is to park the tanks and get troops out among the people, as his intensified effort to pacify Afghanistan suggests.

Government loves drones

Jane Mayer, graduated with honors from Yale in 1977 and continued her studies in history at Oxford, October 26, 2009, “THE PREDATOR WAR”, The New Yorker, online at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the defense contractor that manufactures the Predator and its more heavily armed sibling, the Reaper, can barely keep up with the government’s demand. The Air Force’s fleet has grown from some fifty drones in 2001 to nearly two hundred; the C.I.A. will not divulge how many drones it operates. The government plans to commission hundreds more, including new generations of tiny “nano” drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.

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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/26/091026fa_fact_mayer

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/04/25/obamas_sins_of_omission/


Redeployment links/case turns

Cancelling drones leads to ground troops in Pakistan


For one, Obama was not swayed by Pakistani rhetoric, or international pressure. What works in changing course is home grown opposition. Secondly, drone attacks may stop but if we read between the lines, think tanks and military strategists are suggesting that the US should instead send ground troops. Thus the question Pakistanis must really answer is: would you rather have boots on the ground or pilot-less predators in the sky? I understand this question sounds rather fatalist but Pakistan has limited choices. Pakistan cannot confront America militarily and it shouldn’t.

Drone attacks prevent troops in Pakistan


First, not all terrorists targeted in drone attacks can be feasibly taken alive. This is especially true of those who reside in the many areas dominated by local insurgent groups and therefore out of reach of national governments. For example, putting troops on the ground in the Pakistani tribal areas, where numerous drone attacks have been carried out, is both tactically and diplomatically problematic. Last May, CIA Director Leon Panetta called drones the "only game in town" when it comes to certain parts of Pakistan, and this will remain the case for the long term.

More work needed in Pakistan after drones


To be sure, simply ending the drone strikes is no more a strategy than continuing them. Stabilizing Pakistan will require a focus on securing areas, principally in Punjab and Sindh, that are still under government control, while building up police and civil authorities and refocusing aid on economic development, security and governance. Suspending drone strikes won’t fix Pakistan’s problems — but continuing them makes these problems much harder to address.

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Redeployment links

Scott Conroy- campaign reporter for CBS news, August 1, 2007, “Obama Vows To Hunt Terrorists In Pakistan”, online at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/01/politics/main3122558.shtml

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists even without local permission if warranted — an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. "Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005 . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Scott Conroy- campaign reporter for CBS news, August 1, 2007, “Obama Vows To Hunt Terrorists In Pakistan”, online at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/01/politics/main3122558.shtml

Obama's comments touched on an area of growing concern among members of both parties and the national security establishment about the resurgence of al Qaeda's organization in Pakistan, reports CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs. Obama will likely be criticized by some for threatening to send troops into a nuclear-armed Muslim nation without its cooperation. But the tough talk highlights the growing concern about al Qaeda's growing threat to the U.S. homeland and puts Obama out in front of a popular goal — capturing or killing the terrorist group's leadership. Thousands of Taliban fighters are based in Pakistan's vast and jagged mountains, where they can pass into Afghanistan, train for suicide operations and find refuge from local tribesmen. Intelligence experts warn that al Qaeda could be rebuilding to mount another attack on the United States. Musharraf has been a key ally of Washington in fighting terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, but has faced accusations from some quarters in Pakistan of being too closely tied to America. The Bush administration has supported Musharraf and stressed the need to cooperate with Pakistan, but lately administration officials have suggested the possibility of military strikes to deal with al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Analysts say an invasion could risk destabilizing Pakistan, breeding more militancy and undermining Musharraf. The Pakistani Foreign Office, protective of its national sovereignty, has warned that U.S. military action would violate international law and be deeply resented. A military invasion could be risky, given Pakistan's hostile terrain and the suspicion of its warrior-minded tribesmen against uninvited outsiders.

Control of border key to prevent invasion

Tom Hayden – American social and political activist and politician, May 22, 2009 (“The Long War Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more ahead”, May 22, Global Research, http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=20854)

The US and NATO can barely invade Afghanistan, which has 32 million people spread over 250,000 square miles, larger than Iraq. Pakistan, with 172 million people living over 310, 000 square miles, simply cannot be invaded. But in a crisis, it is conceivable that American advisers, even ground troops, might be sent to occupy the 10,000 square miles on Pakistan's side of the border. That might result in an anti-American revolution in the streets across Pakistan.

Tom Hayden – American social and political activist and politician, May 22, 2009 (“The Long War Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and more ahead”, May 22, Global Research, http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/article.php?id=20854)

The US will demand that Pakistan's armed forces fight the Taliban, which the American military has driven into Pakistan. Pakistan will demand billions in US aid without giving guarantees that they will shift their security deployments in accord with Washington's will. The US will make clear that it will go to extreme lengths to prevent a scenario in which Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falls into the Taliban's hands. No one on the US side acknowledges that this spiraling disaster was triggered by US policies over the past decade.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/01/politics/main3122558.shtml

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/01/politics/main3122558.shtml


CPGS Link

Drones used to reach around world- replacement will be needed


Advances in unmanned aerial vehicle technology allow the United States to reach around the globe and target terrorists in areas where our troops cannot go for tactical or diplomatic reasons. Drone attacks have increased significantly in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the past six months while civilian casualties have decreased.

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Laser/Compensation LinksUAV contractors have political clout


For years, such planes -- known as U.A.V.'s, for unmanned aerial vehicles -- were pariahs within the military industry, scorned by commanders who saw them as threats to the status quo. But during the last several years, U.A.V.'s have amassed unusual political firepower. ''For a long time, the only thing most generals could agree on was that they didn't want any unmanned vehicles,'' says Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. ''Now everyone wants as many as they can get.'' In fact, only a decade ago, crucial Air Force commanders were lobbying to prevent battlefield deployment of U.A.V.'s, according to Congressional staff members. By 2005, however, John P. Jumper, then the Air Force chief of staff, had sufficiently about-faced to tell Congress that ''we're going to tell General Atomics to build every Predator they can possibly build.'' This transformation is, in many ways, a reflection of how the military's priorities and goals have changed over the last decade. It is also a testament to how much clout General Atomics has amassed in a short period of time. More than one official has learned the hard way that when the pilot of the General Atomics corporate jet says he's flying back at noon, he means it. And that pilot is likely to be Thomas J. Cassidy Jr., a 34-year Navy veteran, former rear admiral, onetime commander of the station where the ''Top Gun'' flight school is based and now the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. Mr. Cassidy's belly may hang a bit over his belt now, but he's so authentic that when the producers of the film ''Top Gun'' needed someone for a bit part who oozed power, they cast him.Which is only fitting, for while General Atomics boasts elaborate technological gizmos and martial splendor, its authority also derives from its political savvy. In the last decade, the company has outgunned some of the nation's biggest corporate heavyweights in the battle for prized military contracts. Soon, analysts say, Americans may rely on a host of General Atomics military devices, including magnetic cannons that use pulses of electricity to drop ammunition on distant targets, radar systems that can see through even the densest clouds and guns that shoot laser beams.

UAV contractors have wealthy contracts now


By the time a Predator-launched missile killed a suspected Al Qaeda leader in 2002, even the public was accustomed to hearing about unmanned planes' successes. Voicing enthusiasm for U.A.V.'s became an easy way for the military brass to show that it had signed on to Mr. Rumsfeld's program. ''Predators became emblematic of what Rumsfeld wanted,'' said Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute. ''Suddenly, everyone was saying they were ordering Predators, whether they actually wanted them or not.'' That shift has been profitable for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. The company, which remains privately held, refuses to disclose its revenue or profits. But it now employs more than 2,400 workers and has sold more than 200 unmanned planes since 1993, according to a spokesman. In 2005, the Air Force announced that it was ordering enough Predators to equip 15 squadrons over five years, at a price of $5.7 billion. The Department of Homeland Security has bought two Predators for border control, and Italy and Turkey have also bought planes. A research firm, the Teal Group, predicts that the handful of U.A.V. manufacturers will collect about $55 billion worldwide over the next 10 years. General Atomics is expected to dominate a large portion of that market, said Philip Finnegan, an analyst at Teal.

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Laser/compensation LinksGeneral Atomics has political clout


This is an exploding marketplace, and we intend to claim a larger market share as it grows bigger and bigger,'' said Gemma Loochkartt, a spokeswoman for Northrop Grumman. ''Being a leader in this sector is important to maintaining leadership within the defense industry.''So General Atomics is aggressively building on its existing clout. Unlike many other military contractors, which wait for a guaranteed contract to build new products, General Atomics has set aside what some analysts estimate at $50 million to build the next generation of Predators.''We can move faster because we're smaller, and we make sure people know that,'' says Mr. Blue, who, at 72, still actively guides the company's strategic direction. General Atomics has upgraded its manufacturing with a diverse range of automated and laser-guided tools that allow it to quickly change design specifications and produce custom-built planes, a flexibility that analysts say is almost unrivaled within the military industry.Despite a demand for its products that far outpaces supply, the company has kept the Predator relatively cheap -- about $19.2 million a plane, according to a study that the Government Accountability Office released last year. ''For the military, $19 million is almost an impulse buy,'' said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense research firm in Washington.YET however much General Atomics competes on price, some of its most dexterous strategies have involved overtly political tactics.In 2006, a study conducted by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity and other watchdog groups said that General Atomics had spent $660,000, more than any other company, sending Congressional staff members on trips. Company executives said the jaunts allowed staffers to help educate foreign governments about the Predator's successes, although they acknowledge that they also improved the company's relationships in Washington.

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Court Stripping DA 1NC1.Move towards CIL is gradual and sustainable in the squoMark C. Rahdert, Prof. of Law @ Temple, ‘7 (56 Am. U.L. Rev. 553, “Comparative Constitutional Advocacy,”)

The American tradition of legal and constitutional isolation is slowly breaking down and will continue to do so. There are several factors contributing to this development, including the increasing globalization of American law, the interaction and exchange among judicial officials of different nations, the international convergence of constitutional norms, and the increasing sophistication and progressivism of foreign constitutional courts. A. Globalization and its Constitutional ImplicationsGlobalization of the law is eroding American constitutional isolation. Globalization of American law has advanced along many fronts, most notably in areas related to trade and finance, but also in environmental law, intellectual property, and other important domains. Where globalization has occurred, it has introduced into the American judicial process a new need for attention to comparative legal analysis. While most of these developments do not have direct constitutional implications, they carry overtones that can indirectly introduce a comparative element into American constitutional discourse.

For example, the United States has agreed to abide by and enforce a variety of international legal principles that constrain domestic discretion both to adopt restrictive policies toward foreign trade and to provide preferential treatment for domestic competitors in global markets. Two prominent examples are U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Such agreements introduce comparative elements into U.S. judicial decision-making. They create the possibility of conflict between their terms and domestic laws, contracts, or other legal arrangements. When that occurs, U.S. courts will be called upon to interpret the language of the multinational agreements, determine the extent (if any) of their legally cognizable conflict with domestic laws or regulations, and decide how the conflict will be resolved. Conflict between international trade arrangements and domestic law has constitutional overtones because, under Article VI's Supremacy Clause, such international free trade obligations become part of the "supreme law of the land" in the United States, binding upon government and private citizens alike. Under the constitutional doctrine of preemption, the international trade obligations adopted at the national level displace conflicting state and local law. They also become judicially binding in domestic as well as international commercial arrangements, for example by rendering certain contractual arrangements illegal or defeating claims based on domestic protective legislation that conflicts with international legal commands.

Globalization of this sort obliges greater consideration of transnational and comparative principles and materials in American courts. It not only promotes awareness of international and comparative precedents, but it also creates a pressure for conscious complementarily of decision-making between American and foreign tribunals, which in turn requires comparative analysis. In litigation over domestic application, American courts must interpret the international agreements in question. When they do so, they must be aware that other foreign national tribunals will also interpret the same agreements, and that international tribunals may exist to provide final authoritative interpretation of disputed questions.

The U.S. courts thus may well have occasion to consider: (1) how other world tribunals have interpreted the provisions of the international agreement in question; (2) whether similar domestic law conflicts have been detected in other participating nations; and (3) if so, how other court systems have chosen to resolve those conflicts. At a minimum, U.S. courts probably would not want to give the international norms more restrictive effect in the United States than they received abroad. And while the U.S. courts might not be required to interpret the international agreements in the same way as foreign courts, divergent interpretation could trigger various forms of international conflict. This conflict may range from international litigation, to legal and diplomatic responses by other nations (or in some cases even by foreign corporations or citizens) whose interests are harmed by the U.S. interpretation, to economic or legal retaliation by foreign states whose interests are negatively affected by the U.S. decision.

Given the prospect for such international consequences, it would behoove American courts to attend carefully to potential interpretative divergences from foreign tribunal. At a minimum, American courts need to know what foreign and international courts have said regarding the trade provisions in question before adopting a different interpretation. Where possible, the American courts should probably harmonize U.S. interpretation with the weight of interpretation elsewhere; alternatively, they should have good cause, solidly grounded in U.S. law and policy, for adopting any interpretation that is at odds with comparative precedent. In either event,

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they need to know what comparative law is on the interpretative issues in question in order to make an intelligent decision. They should not depart from comparative precedent lightly, let alone ignorantly or absent-mindedly.

Ultimately, of course, authoritative U.S. interpretation of disputed provisions in international trade agreements becomes the responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court is most likely to take up this duty where the terms of the agreement are subject to competing plausible interpretations. That possibility could emerge (as with domestic statutory law) through a conflict in interpretation by lower federal courts, or between federal and state tribunals. In the case of international agreements, it could also arise because of a conflict in interpretation between a lower U.S. court and a foreign tribunal.

In such a case, the Supreme Court's interpretation will perform the important constitutional function of providing uniformity in federal law. But the Court's choice among competing interpretations of international agreements will carry additional constitutional significance. This occurs both because the choice will affect how the provision in question preempts other American laws, and because the choice will have implications for the exercise of national legislative and executive powers. Although the Court may not be technically required to consider foreign interpretations of the disputed treaty language, there are powerful constitutional policy reasons for doing so. A decision at odds with international precedent, for example, could affect the President's ability to conduct foreign policy by triggering international litigation, inviting retaliatory measures by other states, or leading to sanctions against the United States in international tribunals.

As globalization progresses, and as U.S. participation in international agreements proliferates, the circumstances in which both the Supreme Court and lower federal courts need to be aware of foreign precedents will increase. As they do, judicial demand for information about foreign law will grow, as will the need for both advocates and judges proficient in understanding and utilizing international and foreign precedent. Over time, the inevitable effect will be more extensive knowledge and use of foreign legal decisions in American courts.

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Court Stripping 1NC2. Using CIL as binding law would mobilize opposition to the Court and cause stripping efforts.David T. Hutt, J.D., Ph.D., legal trainer in Washington, and former Adjunct Assistant Professor at Le Moyne College, and Lisa K. Parshall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Gov’t at Daemen College, 2007. (33 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 113, Divergent Views on the Use of International and Foreign Law: Congress and the Executive versus the Court)

In its last few terms, the United States Supreme Court has utilized foreign and international law to justify decisions in three high-profile cases involving matters of constitutional interpretation. In these decisions, the High Court explicitly referenced international and foreign decisions in striking down the death penalty for the mentally retarded,' invalidating statutes prohibiting same- sex sodomy, and declaring the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional. Although these rulings avoided any claim that foreign and international legal decisions are dispositive to domestic constitutional interpretation, the Court's use of foreign and international legal material set in motion expressions of outrage by Congress, including the introduction of legislation designed to reign in such practice.

This article addresses the apparent divergence of views between the legal and political branches of the U.S. government regarding the role of foreign and international law in domestic constitutional interpretation and the formulation of U.S. law and policies. This basic thesis of a conflict emerging between the Court, and the Congress and the Executive in the appropriateness of internationalizing American law was recently articulated by Hadar Harris. Like Harris, we argue that executive policy decisions and congressional legislative action reveals much less receptivity to international and foreign law than exemplified in the recent trend in Supreme Court decision-making. From restrictions placed on U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court, to the Bush Administration's unilateral withdrawal from the Optional Protocol on the Vienna Convention for Counselor Relations, the political branches have taken a more restrictive, if not hostile, approach towards the importation of foreign legal jurisprudence than the Court. While we accept Harris' argument, we expand on his approach, providing more justification for the existence of the divergence, and considering possible reactions by the U.S. Supreme Court to the mounting political pressure over the continued use of "comparative constitutional analysis." In addition, we assert that the divergence ultimately impacts American law in different ways with disparate implications for the international and domestic arenas. In fact in several respects, the divergence highlights a contrast between the international and the domestic spheres of the three branches. The Supreme Court's decisions utilizing foreign law have primarily domestic consequences, whereas congressional and executive action have greater ramifications for U.S. relations with other nations and international organizations.

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Court stripping 1NC3. Court stripping turns the aff—means no future use of CIL and plan’s unenforced.David Kubiak, Project Censored award-winning journalist,’5 [ZMag, April 3, Introducing The Constitution Restoration Act, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=104&ItemID=7569]In other words, the bill ensures that God's divine word (and our infallible leaders' interpretation thereof) will hereafter trump all our pathetic democratic notions about freedom, law and rights -- and our courts can't say a thing. This, of course, will take "In God We Trust" to an entirely new level, because soon He (and His personally anointed political elite) will be all the legal recourse we have left.This is not a joke, a test, or a fit of libertarian paranoia. The CRA already has 28 sponsors in the House and Senate, and a March 20 call to lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby's office assures us that "we have the votes for passage." This is a highly credible projection as Bill Moyers observes in his 3/24/05 "Welcome to Doomsday" piece in the New York Review of Books: "The corporate, political, and religious right's hammerlock... extends to the US Congress. Nearly half of its members before the election-231 legislators in all (more since the election)-are backed by the religious right... Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups."This stunning bill and the movement behind it deserve immediate crash study on at least 3 different fronts.1. Its hostile divorce of American jurisprudence from our hard-won secular history and international norms. To again quote the Conservative Caucus: "This important bill will restrict the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court and all lower federal courts to that permitted by the U.S. Constitution, including on the subject of the acknowledgement of God (as in the Roy Moore 10 Commandments issue); and it also restricts federal courts from recognizing the laws of foreign countries and international law [e.g., against torture, global warming, unjust wars, etc. - ed.] as the supreme law of our land."Re the last point, envision some doddering judges who still revere our Declaration of Independence's "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," and suppose they invoke in their rulings some international precepts from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women or, God forbid, the Geneva Conventions. Well, under the CRA that would all be clearly illegal and, thank God, that's the last we'd ever hear from them

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Stripping 1NCCourt authority is key to democracyDudziak 2003 (Mary L. Dudziak; Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law and History, University of Southern California Law School. A.B. 1978, University of California, Berkeley; J.D. 1984, M.A., M.Phil. 1986, Ph.D. 1992, Yale. May, 2003, 101 Mich L Rev 1622, http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/search/journalssubmitForm.do)

At this moment in the history of American courts, it may be helpful to reflect on the lesson Widner offers about Tanzania. In a democracy, judicial legitimacy and authority ultimately flow from a public, from a culture, supportive of judicial review.n29 And as we can see in this example from Africa, support for the courts can depend on the very nature of judicial action. The courts and the people together worked to build a rule of law in Tanzania premised on the idea that the courts play a central role in a democracy: the protection of individual rights against government tyranny.In this sense, perhaps, Francis Nyalali also has a lesson for popular constitutionalism. He emphasizes a public conception, a political culture, not just on the nature of rights, but also on the role of courts in a democracy. And so, paradoxically, the popular constitutionalism we see in Building the Rule of Law is not only a popular constitutional vision about rights. It is also a popular vision of the importance of courts. How interesting that as African nations embrace judicial review, there is less consensus among American scholars that it matters to care about courts.

Democracy solves multiple scenarios for extinction

Larry Diamond, Snr Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, 1995 p. 6-7This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability , popular sovereignty, and openness . LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law,

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http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/search/journalssubmitForm.do


democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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Court wont rule on ILAW nowYitzchok Segal, J.D. candidate @ Fordham Law, Nov. 2006. [33 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1421, The Death Penalty and the Debate Over the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citation of Foreign and International Law,]

It is also critical to clarify the parameters of the issue. The debate over the Supreme Court's use of comparative law has generally been limited to its use as persuasive evidence; most ardent proponents of citing comparative materials do not suggest that the Court may cite foreign and international law in purely domestic issues as controlling precedent. For example, Justice Breyer is perhaps the Court's most vocal proponent of using comparative legal materials in U.S. constitutional interpretation, yet even he has stated that these materials are not controlling. See, e.g., Knight v. Florida, 528 U.S. 990, 996 (1999) (Breyer, J., dissenting) (stating "[o]bviously this foreign authority does not bind us"), overruled by Moore v. Kinney, 278 F.3d 774 (8th Cir. 2002); see also, e.g., Vicki Jackson, Yes Please, I'd Love to Talk With You, LEGAL AFF., July-Aug. 2004, at 44 ("[T]he Court's recent references to foreign decisions and practice do not treat them as binding."). But see Martin S. Flaherty, Judicial Globalization in the Service of Self-Government, 20 ETHICS & INT'L AFF. J. (forthcoming 2006). My thanks to the author for making this article available to me.

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Supreme continuously uses foreign sources, but explicitly avoids using it as binding.Vicki Jackson, professor of law at Georgetown University, author of Comparative Constitutional Law, August 2004. [Legal Affairs, Yes Please, I'd Love to Talk With You, http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=588]

In recent years, a number of United States Supreme Court justices have referred, in limited ways, to foreign or international legal sources while resolving constitutional questions. Of the current nine justices, at least six—Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer—have done so since 1992. Critics argue that such references to foreign law are an illegitimate, antidemocratic judicial usurpation of authority, or an effort to obscure the absence of solid grounding in U.S. law for a result based on "foreign fads" rather than "American conceptions" of law.

These critiques are off the mark and often counterproductive. Understanding references to foreign law in their legal and historic context should defuse unwarranted criticisms, highlight the benefits of well-informed uses of foreign and international legal sources, and focus attention on some genuinely difficult questions. While care must be taken in making legal comparisons, consideration of foreign legal decisions can contribute to our understanding of our own distinctiveness as a nation, illuminate common concepts, and challenge us to think more clearly about our own legal questions. Understanding foreign legal practice can also shed light on the justifications for government action—on which U.S. constitutional law will often turn—and on the possible consequences of different choices for the interpretation of our fundamental law.

It's important to note that the court's recent references to foreign decisions and practice do not treat them as binding. International law may be binding, as when Congress ratifies and implements a treaty. But that's a separate question from whether the Supreme Court should cite foreign or international sources merely as sources that are relevant and only if they have persuasive value, positive or negative. In this sense, foreign legal authority (or nonbinding international norms) shares characteristics of other forms of persuasive authority used in Supreme Court decisions. These include the rulings of lower federal courts and of state courts (even when interpreting their own state constitutions), law review articles, and even works of fiction by Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or George Orwell.

But critics could argue that state courts, even when interpreting distinct provisions of distinct state constitutions, do so within the tradition of U.S. constitutionalism in a way that is not true of foreign or international tribunals. And no one thinks that a work of fiction is a binding legal precedent, even when the court quotes from Othello on the importance of preserving the reputation of one's name. Does the Supreme Court's citation of a decision by a foreign court, not bound by United States law, imply that greater weight is being given to the decision than is warranted because it was made by a court? If that court is interpreting different provisions in a different legal tradition, why is its decision relevant at all? And what relevance could international covenants, not ratified by or binding in the U.S., have to U.S. constitutional questions?

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LET US GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING. Far from being generally hostile to foreign countries' views or laws, the founding generation had what the signers of the Declaration of Independence described as a "decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind." Federalist No. 63 explained:An attention to the judgment of other nations is important to every government. . . . [I]ndependently of the merits of any particular . . . measure, it is desirable . . . that it should appear to other nations as the offspring of a wise and honorable policy . . . [and] in doubtful cases, particularly where the national councils may be warped

Court Stripping 2NC Uniquenessby . . . passion or momentary interest, the presumed or known opinion of the impartial world may be the best guide that can be followed.While this passage was not directed to legal judgments of courts, the founding generation showed concern for how adjudication in our courts would affect other countries' regard for the United States. As the early Supreme Court noted, the judicial power of the United States was intended to include cases "in the correct adjudication of which foreign nations are deeply interested . . . [and in] which the principles of the law and comity of nations often form an essential inquiry."

In many early cases, the court referred to the "law of nations" (today called "international law") or other countries' practices. In 1804, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Murray v. Schooner Charming Betsythat "an act of Congress ought never to be construed to violate the law of nations if any other possible construction" exists. In 1812, in The Schooner Exchange v. McFaddon, the court relied on "the usages and received obligations of the civilized world" to hold that a foreign sovereign's vessel in a U.S. port was immune from judicial jurisdiction. And in determining three years later what the law of nations was in Thirty Hogsheads of Sugar v. Boyle, a case governed by that law, the court commented that "[t]he decisions of the Courts of every country, so far as they are founded upon a law common to every country, will be received, not as authority, but with respect."

In addition to its cases grounded in the law of nations, the early court also referred on occasion to foreign or international practices in interpreting the U.S. Constitution. In Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the court considered the law of nations in defining the status of Indian tribes and state authority under the U.S. Constitution. In some early constitutional cases, the law of nations was referred to by way of contrast to account for constitutional text. In Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842) the court explained that the "fugitive slave clause," which mandated the return of escaped slaves who crossed into other states, was necessary because otherwise the law of nations would not have required a free state to return an escaped slave.

In other cases, the practices of other nations were invoked both to support and to oppose particular interpretations of the Constitution. In the notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision, the majority cited discriminatory practices of European nations at the time of America's founding to support the view that the Constitution precluded national citizenship for African-Americans, while a dissent argued in favor of Scott's free status in part by relying on contemporary European practice and international law. In Fong Yue Ting v. United States (1893), the majority relied on foreign practice, the law of nations, and the inherent rights of sovereignty to support a broad national power to deport Chinese laborers. The dissent vigorously countered that the United States "takes nothing" from the practices of other countries that expelled people due to their religion or ethnicity.

In Fong Yue Ting and elsewhere, justices have demonstrated that they can draw on foreign

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practice as "negative" authority, just as they may find other foreign authority to be a positive support. In theYoungstown Steel case in 1952, the court held that President Harry Truman lacked constitutional power to take over the steel companies in anticipation of a strike. Justices Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson, in separate opinions, alluded to the dangers of dictatorship that other countries had recently experienced, with Jackson explaining features of the Weimar Constitution in Germany that allowed Adolf Hitler to assume dictatorial powers. He contrasted Germany's legal practice to that of France and Great Britain, where legislative authorization was required for the exercise of emergency powers, to support the conclusion that without more specific Congressional authorization the president could not take private property.

Foreign or international examples, both negative and positive, can also inform the court's determination of appropriate measures to protect U.S. constitutional rights. In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), canvassing examples of other countries' protections against abusive interrogation of suspects

Court Stripping 2NC Uniqueness

held in custody, the court urged that we should provide "at least as much" protection as countries such as England, Scotland, or India provided, because the United States has "a specific requirement of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, whereas other jurisdictions arrived at their conclusions on the basis of principles of justice not so specifically defined." On another issue, affirmative action, Justice Ginsburg, concurring in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), noted the provisions for "temporary special measures" to combat race or gender discrimination in two widely adopted international covenants. She did this in connection with the court's conclusion that individualized consideration of race in law school admissions was permissible under established U.S. law, but only for a limited period of time.

Foreign practice and decisions can also be helpful in evaluating the justifications for government action. In Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the court had to decide whether a state's prohibition on physician-assisted euthanasia was "reasonably related" to "legitimate" state interests. In concluding that the statute in question was constitutional, Chief Justice Rehnquist's opinion noted the debate in other countries, including the Netherlands' experience with physician-assisted suicides and the rejection of euthanasia in Canada and Britain. Foreign law can also help illustrate the possible consequences of different interpretive choices. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995), Justice Scalia's dissent, arguing in favor of the constitutionality of a ban on anonymous pamphleteering, relied in part on practices of "foreign democracies" to conclude that such a ban "is effective in protecting and enhancing democratic elections." Caution is important before reasoning from foreign legal practices to draw any conclusions about U.S. law, since each foreign system differs in important ways. But caution need not mean wholesale avoidance.

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Court Stripping 2NC LinksAff provokes mobilization—high levels of anti-Court sentiment will require stripping.Elizabeth Bulat Turner, J.D. candidate, Winter 2006. [23 Ga. St. U.L. Rev. 455, The Relevancy of Foreign Law as a Persuasive Authority and Congress’s Resposne to Its Use: A Preemptive Attack on the Constitution Restoration Act]

Congress and sectors of the public have joined Justice Scalia and similarly minded Justices in condemning the use of foreign law as judicial authority. In fact, there is a movement to prohibit using foreign law as persuasive authority or for any other purpose. Many even see the 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons as sparking a renewed interest in the movement against using foreign law, as well as contributing to it by "rekindl[ing] a fledgling effort.., in favor of an intellectual protectionism which would ban all 'foreign opinions' from American judicial decision-making."

Congressional backlash—they’ve explicitly signaled they don’t want binding CIL in the Court.Neal Devins, Goodrich Professor of Law and Professor of Gov’t, College of William and Mary, 2006. [Minnesota Law Review, Should the Supreme Court Fear Congress?]

The lesson here is simple: the Supreme Court can pursue its favored policies so long as Congress can pursue its favored policies. Congress's rejection of Court-packing in the 1930s and its failure to enact jurisdiction-stripping legislation in the 1950s or 1980s suggests that lawmakers are reluctant to challenge the premises of an independent judiciary Nevertheless, if Court decision making cuts at the core of lawmaker preferences, Congress may act and may act boldly. For that reason, the Court had good reason to retreat from both the Lochner era and from 1957 rulings protecting the civil liberty interests of Communists. The Burger era, in contrast, was a time in which Congress was divided over the soundness of Court rulings on abortion, school busing, and school prayer. A majority of members were willing to express disapproval through appropriation bans and other indirect challenges. A majority, however, could not coalesce around a more fundamental challenge to the Court's decision making.

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Court Stripping 2NC linksThis is the most controversial question

Yitzchok Segal, JD, ‘6 [Nov. 1, Fordham Urban Law Journal, The death penalty and the debate over the U.S. Supreme Court's citation of foreign and international law]

Indeed, the appropriateness of using foreign and international law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution is arguably the most controversial jurisprudential issue in recent years. It has invoked impassioned rhetoric and violent death threats aimed at Justice Ginsburg and former Justice O'Connor and has spawned an impressive, ever-growing body of literature comprised of articles by justices, legal commentators, and journalists. Outside the pages of the Court's official reporter, several Justices have spoken publicly about the proper role of comparative legal materials in U.S. constitutional interpretation. For instance, in a rare public debate, Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia argued the merits of citing foreign and international law in the Court's opinions.' Recently, at the nomination hearings of Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, senators fired questions at the candidates regarding the role of comparative legal materials, probing them to publicly announce their views on this explosive issue. Perhaps most strikingly, citations to foreign and international law by U.S. courts have provoked the proposal of a congressional resolution stating that "judicial determinations regarding the meaning of the laws of the United States should not be based in whole or in part on judgments, laws, or pronouncements of foreign institutions. Similarly, the Court's citations to comparative legal materials have provoked the proposal of a bill by several senators stating that in interpreting the Constitution, a court may not rely on "any constitution, law, administrative rule, Executive Order, directive, policy, judicial decision, or any other action of any foreign state or international organization or agency, other than English constitutional and common law."

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Court Stripping 2NC- Impacts- Judicial Independance

Stripping on international law compromises judicial independence-Turns case

Elizabeth Bulat Turner, J.D. candidate, Winter 2006. (23 Ga. St. U.L. Rev. 455, The Relevancy of Foreign Law as a Persuasive Authority and Congress’s Resposne to Its Use: A Preemptive Attack on the Constitution Restoration Act, Pg. 477-478)

In addition to ignoring history, denying judges the use of helpful parallel resources, and limiting the analysis of evolving standards of decency, other policy considerations warrant the rejection of section 201. First, the adoption of this section is contrary to the goal of an independent judiciary. The Framers thought it essential to have an independent judiciary. That independence has been cultivated and fostered from the date Article III courts came into existence. Section 201 seeks to impair the independence of the federal judiciary by dictating to the courts what they may and may not rely on when making judicial decisions. Indeed, the CRA makes it an impeachable offense for any judge to rely on an authority prohibited by section 201. Moreover, "Judicial independence means nothing if it does not allow for judges and justices to decide for themselves how to prioritize the sources on which they rely in deciding constitutional cases." In limiting what sources a judge can rely on at the risk of impeachment, Congress is not only dictating what authorities are permissible, but is, in effect, attempting to dictate outcomes. This flies in the face of an independent judiciary and, as such, was a result the Framers sought to avoid. For the checks and balances of our government to remain effective, an independent judiciary is essential, and the CRA puts those imperative checks and balances at risk through the degradation of the independent judiciary.

Stripping would result in rollback.Daniel O. Bernstine, J.D., L.L.M., Assoc. Prof. of Law, U. of Wisconsin Law School, Dec. 1982. (1982 Wis. L. Rev. 1157, p. BOOK REVIEW: HEARTS AND MINDS: THE ANATOMY OF RACISM FROM ROOSEVELT TO REAGAN. By Harry S. Ashmore)

One need not be a constitutional law scholar to realize that the laundry list of issues targeted by the jurisdiction-stripping legislation raises constitutional questions that federal courts, particularly the Supreme Court, have been actively addressing for many years. In essence, these legislative proposals are nothing more than attempts to eliminate federal court jurisdiction as a response to specific federal judicial decisions of which some members of Congress disapprove. In fact, these proposals are reminiscent of the attempt by southern members of Congress to overturn the Brown decision with the signing of the Southern Manifesto that Ashmore described. It is also no coincidence that these proposals are consistent with the Reagan administration's policy of "New Federalism" as well as with the revival of the morality of conservatism that swept many members of Congress into office during the 1980 presidential election. This jurisdiction-stripping legislation is an obvious attempt to reverse much of the constitutional doctrine that has been enunciated by the federal courts to date. If the proposed legislation is adopted, the federal courts would no longer be able to shape and develop constitutional doctrine and the state courts would be free to reinterpret the Constitution without review by the Supreme Court.

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COUNTERPLANS

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Cite don’t rule CP 1NCText:

The United States Supreme Court should rule that [the plan]. The United States Supreme Court will cite Customary International Law in the dicta of the majority decision.

1. Citing international law without relying on it moves the U.S. towards international law acceptance, making incorporation much more viable long-term.Martha F. Davis, Prof. of Law @ Albany, 2k (64 Alb. L. Rev. 417, ln)

The Supreme Court has never relied on the ICCPR as a basis for decision, despite its ratification by the United States in 1992. The amicus argued, however, that the ICCPR requires the United States to take action against gender-based violence perpetrated by both states and individuals as "an extreme form of gender-based discrimination." According to amicus, the UN General Assembly in its Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women cites the ICCPR as the source of the obligation to eliminate gender-based violence. In addition, the Human Rights Committee established to oversee state compliance with the ICCPR has "made it clear to dozens of states that providing remedies for gender-based violence is mandated under the Covenant." Perhaps most significantly in this domestic context, the United States' Executive branch had reported to the Human Rights Committee that VAWA was implementing legislation intended to meet U.S. obligations under the ICCPR.

Amici further argued that Congress had constitutional authority to enact VAWA to implement international customary law obligations. According to amici, this authority was contained in the Congressional constitutional power to "define and punish Piracies [and other offenses] ... against the Law of Nations." In addition, amici argued that the "necessary and proper" clause of article I, section 8, clause 18 supported application of international law.

The Court wholly ignored these arguments. Accepting them wholesale would likely have required a different result in the case. But adopting the modest step that I suggest, the Court could have acknowledged that international law constitutes persuasive and relevant authority, yet still concluded that domestic law nevertheless did not ultimately support Congress's power to enact the Violence Against Women Act civil rights remedy.

For example, focusing on the section 5 aspect of the case, the Court was presented with the question of whether Congress could exercise its remedial authority to implement the Equal Protection Clause by enacting a statute directed against private actors. Two nineteenth century cases had largely restricted such authority, but two more recent Supreme Court decisions had brought those earlier decisions into question.83 As presented to the Court in Morrison, this could have been approached as an open constitutional question.

In its decision, relying on the older opinions as probative of Congress's intent in crafting section 5, the Court in Morrison concluded that Congress's remedial authority is limited to state actors. Yet many international conventions and more recently adopted state constitutions take a different view. The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, for example, permits governments to regulate private actors in order to promote equality between women and men. South Africa's constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights likewise extend to private actors. The Supreme Court's opinion in Morrison would have been significantly enhanced had it acknowledged this international authority, explained how and why it differs from the domestic law applied by the Court, and why the Court doesn't find the international approach persuasive under the circumstances.

Though requiring only a small difference in the Court's approach to opinion-writing, this change would ensure a "transparency" of decision-making that is increasingly demanded from other branches of government. Further, it would give direction to Congress and as well as future litigants addressing the United States' international obligations . Ignoring the arguments entirely ensures that the debate over the role of international law in adjudicating domestic human rights claims remains at a very basic, undeveloped level, and that the Court seems unresponsive to changes in the larger world.

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Cite don’t rule CP 1NC

2. Using international law in a nonbinding way prevents the disad.Daniel Ryan Koslosky, Senior Fellow, Institute for Human Rights, Peace, and Development, University of Florida Levin College of Law; 2009, 31 U. Pa. J. Int'l L. 203, ARTICLE: TOWARD AN INTERPRETIVE MODEL OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE: A CASE STUDY OF EASTERN EUROPE,

Section 4 examines two case studies: the Lithuanian Constitutional Court and the Estonian Supreme Court. Both of these countries have similar normative experiences as constituent components of the Soviet Union, yet adopted dissimilar judicial structures and procedures. As such, a comparative study between these two countries will be helpful in deducing conclusions by looking for patterns and dissimilarities in their courts' reasoning while controlling for systemic variables of their legal systems. Specifically, this Article argues that the development of an independent judiciary in Estonia and Lithuania was done through utilizing, what I have termed, "external source legitimacy." By interpreting domestic constitutional norms in light of nonbinding international law, national courts can largely deflect political and popular pressures while simultaneously asserting their own legitimacy as a dispute arbiter.

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Cite don’t rule CP TheoryCite don’t rule Theory

1. So What—it’s a CP. All we have to prove is that relying on CIL is bad, not that some other grounds are super sweet.2. This is arbitrary and bad standard—fact that very few affs specified grounds on the Courts topic proves. Court’s aren’t the core of the topic anyway, so there’s no way this would be predictable or crucial ground for the aff or neg anyway.3. Sure—we’ll specify now [choose one].

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Pakistan Relations CP

Text- The United States Federal Government should disclose the use of unmanned combat air vehicles.

Acknowledging Drone program solves Pakistani Relations

Peter Bergen is a senior fellow and Katherine Tiedemann is a policy analyst at the New America Foundation, April 25, 2010, “No Secrets in the Sky”, New York Times, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26bergen.html

It’s possible, however, that the number is even lower. An American counterterrorism official told The Times in December that the civilian fatality rate is only 5 percent, saying that “just over 20” civilians and more than 400 militants were killed in 2009. Should the American government’s claims about the small number of civilian deaths be verified, some of the Pakistani hostility toward the United States might dissipate. This would be much easier if the now-classified videotapes of drone strikes were made available to independent researchers. Acknowledging the drone program would also help advance our efforts — and improve our profile — in the region by providing an excellent example of the deepening United States-Pakistan strategic partnership. Since January 2009, up to 85 reported drone strikes have killed militants who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistanis. A good deal of the intelligence that enables these strikes comes from the Pakistanis themselves. Last, Pakistanis once considered any military offensive against the Taliban as fighting America’s war. But because of the cumulative weight of the Taliban’s atrocities against politicians, soldiers, police and civilians, Pakistanis now believe that battling the militants is in the country’s own interest. As a result, over the past year, the public’s support for the Pakistani Army’s efforts in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan has surged. If Pakistan came clean about its involvement with the drones, public backing for the program might similarly increase.

Disclosure increases effectiveness


Third, the use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic — or, more accurately, a piece of technology — substituting for a strategy. These attacks are now being carried out without a concerted information campaign directed at the Pakistani public or a real effort to understand the tribal dynamics of the local population, efforts that might make such attacks more effective.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26bergen.html


Force Multiplier PIC 1NC

The United States Federal Government will not use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Afghanistan except when the Central Command (CENTCOM) orders the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to be used on Information Support Force Multiplier missions

Information support force multipliers are different from attack vehiclesTapan P Bagchi, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research and Adjunct Professor Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, 2006, “Force Multipliers Effects in Combat Simulations”.

Information support FMs improve the awareness of friendly forces over the battle area leading to improved coordination and management of defensive operations. Such FMs gather real time information. Their contribution is opportunity based where the combat potential enhancement may be very high, but they may not have any contribution otherwise. The object of this study is to assist in the evaluation of information support force multipliers. The goal is to enable strategists to analyze the contribution that these systems can possibly make in combat. Various systems that may be categorized as force multipliers include Bhashyam, 1995: Early warning (EW), surveillance (Svl.) and search radars, Night vision devices (NVD), Space based reconnaissance and surveillance (R & S) systems, Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) remotely piloted vehicle (RPV) used for surveillance, reconnaissance of battle-field, Command, control, communication, computers and Intelligence (C4I) systems, Signaling networks (SIGNET), and Human and Signal intelligence (HUMINT and SIGINT).

Information systems are key to hegJeremy Black, a British historian and a Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, 2004, Google books, “War and the New Disorder in the 21st Century.” Pg. X In the closing decade of the twentieth century there had been much talk of the obsolescence, no to say end, of war. Arguments varied, but a combination of the destructiveness and spread of atomic weaponry, a declining interest in both conquest and military service, and the supposed weakness, no to say collapse of the state combined to lead to such claims. If war was outdated for these reasons it was also, in a separate analysis, presented as pointless because of the overwhelming military hegemony of one state, the USA, the leading economic and scientific power in the world. The notion of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) was advanced in order to describe changes in the nature of military power and, in particular, both the technology of force and force projection, and likely character of future warfare. In specific terms, there was an emphasis on information as a force multiplier, as well as a measure of military capability, and also as an objective in war; ‘degrading’ the information systems of an opponent was seen as the way to victory as the USA monopolized the cutting edge of this technology and associated military ideas, it was seen as being a paradigm leap ahead of possible opponents.

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Force multipliers 1NCHeg collapse causes global nuclear conflict – ensures the US is drawn back inLieber 2005 – PhD from Harvard, Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown, former consultant to the State Department and for National Intelligence Estimates (Robert, “The American Era”, pages 53-54, WEA)Withdrawal from foreign commitments might seem to be a means of evading hostility toward the United States, but the consequences would almost certainly be harmful both to regional stability and to U.S. national interests. Although Europe would almost certainly not see the return to competitive balancing among regional powers (i.e., competition and even military rivalry between France and Germany) of the kind that some realist scholars of international relations have predicted,21 elsewhere the dangers could increase. In Asia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan would have strong motivation to acquire nuclear weapons – which they have the technological capacity to do quite quickly. Instability and regional competition could also escalate, not only between India and Pakistan, but also in Southeast Asia involving Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and possibly the Philippines. Risks in the Middle East would be likely to increase, with regional competition among the major countries of the Gulf region (Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) as well as Egypt, Syria, and Israel. Major regional wars, eventually involving the use of weapons of mass destruction plus human suffering on a vast scale, floods of refugees, economic disruption, and risks to oil supplies are all readily conceivable. Based on past experience, the United States would almost certainly be drawn back into these areas, whether to defend friendly states, to cope with a humanitarian catastrophe, or to prevent a hostile power from dominating an entire region. Steven Peter Rosen has thus fittingly observed, “If the logic of American empire is unappealing, it is not at all clear that the alternatives are that much more attractive.”22 Similarly, Niall Ferguson has added that those who dislike American predominance ought to bear in mind that the alternative may not be a world of competing great powers, but one with no hegemon at all. Ferguson’s warning may be hyperbolic, but it hints at the perils that the absence of a dominant power, “apolarity,” could bring “an anarchic new Dark Age of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world’s forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and civilization’s retreat into a few fortified enclaves.”23

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2NC force multpliers

DA accesses stability -Heg solves Middle Eastern stability and war.Christopher, New York Times staff writer, 2004 (December 30, Warren, http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=FB0B14F93C5D0C738FDDAB0994DC404482)

America has always been the indispensable party for progress in the Middle East. The brilliant efforts of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974 and 1975 brought about Israel's withdrawal from the Sinai and the peninsula's return to Egypt. President Jimmy Carter's legendary endeavors at Camp David in 1978 produced the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, which was supported by American financial assistance to both countries. That aid continues to yield returns today. And when Israel and Jordan negotiated a peace accord in July 1994, King Hussein, the present King's father, told me that the negotiations could not have succeeded without tangible support from the United States, which was forthcoming in the form of debt forgiveness and military equipment. But meaningful American involvement at this critical time will require more than words and dollars -- it must take the form of action. It will not be enough for President Bush to make broad policy statements, however eloquent. It will also require something beyond telephone diplomacy by Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice. Reliance on these hands-off methods promises a continuation of the past four years' failures.

Impact comparison: Prefer our Lieber 05 evidence, which specifically talks about US withdrawal from other foreign commitments. These withdrawals lead to the nuclear wars that Lieber goes on to describe.

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Force Multipliers EXT.

Surveillance is key to cutting down on civilian casualitiesTom Vanden Brook, Staff writer for USA TODAY, 2009, http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-07-13-recon_N.htm

U.S. forces in Afghanistan are relying more than ever on surveillance aircraft as they seek out insurgents , from cutting-edge drone technology to the venerable U-2 spy plane, according to interviews and information released at USA TODAY's request. These aircraft, military officials said, are being used heavily during Operation Khanjar (or "Strike of the Sword”), the Marine-led offensive in the Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. The military's need to identify insurgents and reduce civilian casualties is driving its increased reliance on intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has pressed for more flights by manned spy planes and unmanned drones, with live video feeds, so servicemembers can better see and identify their opponents.

Information is now the key on the battlefield and victoryTapan P Bagchi, SP Jain Institute of Management and Research and Adjunct Professor Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, 2006, “Force Multipliers Effects in Combat Simulations”.US and Israeli military now increasingly view command, control, communications and intelligence (C3I) as the strategic to enhance the capability of a combative force that is expected to be vibrant, fast reacting and effective. Information, rather than powerful hardware, is progressively proving to be a significant force multiplier (FM) in warfare. Knowledge of the enemy’s capability and intentions is often more value to a military commander than additional troops or fire power.

Force multipliers are key to victoryKK Singh, Chairman and CEO, Rolta India Pvt. Ltd., an intelligence company, June 2010, http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/geointelligence/2010/may-june/32-Geospatial-solutions-Geointelligence-is-key-in-precision-warfare_K-K-singh.htm

Militaries across the globe have realised that it is not the number of forces that ensures victory, but the side which harnesses technology as enabling force multiplier. India is also looking to rapidly modernise its armed forces to derive maximum benefit from state-of-the-art, cutting edge military technology and has increased its budget for defence and homeland security segments significantly.

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http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/geointelligence/2010/may-june/32-Geospatial-solutions-Geointelligence-is-key-in-precision-warfare_K-K-singh.htm

http://www.gisdevelopment.net/magazine/geointelligence/2010/may-june/32-Geospatial-solutions-Geointelligence-is-key-in-precision-warfare_K-K-singh.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-07-13-recon_N.htm


Force Multipliers Democracy Impact 2NC

Force multipliers and information techonologies are key to US soft power and Democracy.Fareed Zakaria, International Journal 54 Int'l J., 1999, pg. 14, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/intj54&type=Text&id=24

As Joseph Nye argues, information technologies serve as a 'force multiplier' of American soft power to expand its reach." Electronic mail and the worldwide web have allowed the United States to dominate the global traffic of information and ideas. Satellites carry American television programmes to people on opposite sides of the globe; international elites rely on American media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times - even for local news. Websites - 90 percent of which are based in the United States - provide Internet users the world over with access to everything from the New York Times to the Declaration of Independence. The United States Information Agency is using new information technologies, as it did with the Voice of America, to promote democracy via the Internet and the worldwide web. In fact, USIA, along with the United States Agency for International Development, is working to improve global access to the Internet and global access to American ideas.

Democracy solves multiple scenarios for extinctionLarry Diamond, Snr Research Fellow at the Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, 1995 p. 6-7

This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

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http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/intj54&type=Text&id=24

http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/intj54&type=Text&id=24


Fem IR Link 1NCThe affirmative cannot solve for drones – there must be a true separation between the body as a body and a body as a target. Feminists can make the distinction.Lauren Wilcox, Political Theory Colloquium, 12-11-2009, http://www.polisci.umn.edu/centers/theory/schedule.html

While making important contributions on the relationship between war, technology, and the legitimacy of killing, this work does not challenge the status of bodies as only important in regards to how they may be killed. Like the mainstream literature, much of the critical literature on precision bombing is complicit erasure of bodies in international relations. Critical projects such as those intent on demonstrating the ‘myth’ of precision bombing are similar in some respect to the feminist project of making visible the injurious nature of war as a counter to the narrative of glorious and humane war. Like feminist projects on making bodies visible, such critical projects suffer from similar issues, that is, the treatment of bodies as biological entities to be counted, identified and shown as an example of the brutal, violent nature of war. One of the most important feminist contributions in theorizing the body is work that highlights the ways in which strategic thought in International Relations ignores and in fact, necessarily obscures the gruesome realities of war and its impact on the human body. Beyond bemoaning the existence of euphemisms such as ‘collateral damage,’ ‘daisy cutters’ and ‘acceptable losses,’ some feminists have shown how certain abstract calculations about war are made possible by the erasure of human bodily suffering. Feminists have tried to correct theories of violence and war that work to obscure the reality of bodily violence while focusing on political, strategic, and tactic maneuverings. Such theories have been criticized by feminists for their abstraction which allows theorists to distance themselves from the horrors of war. Carol Cohn, in her landmark essay, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” (Cohn 1987) insists that this neglect of bodily harm is not an oversight, but rather is a precondition for the existence of the theory and the strategic apparatus underpinning it. The violence and destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons are literally made ‘unthinkable’: they cannot be discussed within the terms of strategic discourse.

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Fem IR links

Extend that the affirmative fails to create a separation of the body as a point of criticism and the body as a target- by using the body as an example of the violent nature of war, they fail to acknowledge the bodies that exist in internation relations- only a wholistic feminist approach can solve- that’s Wilcox

PGMs perpetuate the discourse of dehumanization of almost all things, including women.Lauren Wilcox, Political Theory Colloquium, 12-11-2009, http://www.polisci.umn.edu/centers/theory/schedule.htmlFeminist and other critical scholars have argued that discourses of dehumanization have enabled killings to take place from a distance that would not be tolerated at close range. Critical scholarship addressing contemporary warfare has often critiqued the use of precision guided munitions along with the portrayal of these weapons as a technological solution to the ‘fog of war’. ‘Precision bombing’ is seen as a myth, as such weapons often do not live up to alleged ability to strike their targets precisely, resulting in numerous deaths of civilians. Precision warfare is a technical fantasy, and serves as technology of validating a type of warfare that is only available to a few. Critical studies of precision bombing in contemporary warfare have argued that the legal and moral tenets of the just war doctrine and the laws of war have served to legitimize the high tech warfare associated with the use of PGMs (Smith 2002) (ah Jochnick and Normand 1994). The legitimacy accrued to the use of such technology is challenged by critics who see the benefits of the development and use of PGMs resulting less from a desire to spare civilians than to reduce the risks to servicemen and women and to garner and maintain support for overseas operations (Beier 2003) (Ignatieff 2001). Dubbed ‘risk-transfer warfare’ by Martin Shaw, risks that were once shouldered by combatants are now borne by local allies and civilians, who are at risk of being victims of small ‘accidental’ massacres, as well as indirect victims of infrastructural damage (Shaw 2002).

Link-Their construction of violence in the 1AC excludes women for a political sphere.

Lauren Wilcox, Political Theory Colloquium, 12-11-2009, http://www.polisci.umn.edu/centers/theory/schedule.html

While making important contributions on the relationship between war, technology, and the legitimacy of killing, this work does not challenge the status of bodies as only important in regards to how they may be killed. Like the mainstream literature, much of the critical literature on precision bombing is complicit erasure of bodies in international relations. Critical projects such as those intent on demonstrating the ‘myth’ of precision bombing are similar in some respect to the feminist project of making visible the injurious nature of war as a counter to the narrative of glorious and humane war. Like feminist projects on making bodies visible, such critical projects suffer from similar issues, that is, the treatment of bodies as biological entities to be counted, identified and shown as an example of the brutal, violent nature of war. One of the most important feminist contributions in theorizing the body is work that highlights the ways in which strategic thought in International Relations ignores and in fact, necessarily obscures the gruesome realities of war and its impact on the human body. Beyond bemoaning the existence of euphemisms such as ‘collateral damage,’ ‘daisy cutters’ and ‘acceptable losses,’ some feminists have shown how certain abstract calculations about war are made possible by the erasure of human bodily suffering. Feminists have tried to correct theories of violence and war that work to obscure the reality of bodily violence while focusing on political, strategic, and tactic maneuverings. Such theories have been criticized by feminists for their abstraction which allows theorists to distance themselves from the horrors of war. Carol Cohn, in her landmark essay, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,” (Cohn 1987) insists that this neglect of bodily harm is not an oversight, but rather is a precondition for the existence of the theory and the strategic apparatus underpinning it. The violence and destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons are literally made ‘unthinkable’: they cannot be discussed within the terms of strategic discourse.

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