Topicality
Curtail means through law
Interpretation:
Curtailing domestic surveillance means to reduce through legislative measures. Prefer
contextual evidence of today’s ongoing surveillance debate
Buttar 13 (Shahid Buttar, constitutional lawyer from Stanford Law school and executive director of the Bill of Rights
Defense Committee political group. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18122-the-nsa-vs-usa#)
The sustained grass-roots uproar over domestic surveillance has reached the ear of
Congress, which is considering more than a dozen legislative measures to curtail the
National Security Agency's various programs that spy on Americans en masse. While
most address merely the pieces of the problem, one in particular would address the
many facets hidden even in the wake of the Snowden leaks.
Violation: The affirmative does not pass a legislative action that reduces domestic
surveillance programs.
Standards
1. Limits: Abusive affirmatives decrease limits and force debates to be about nondomestic legislation, which hurts core topic education. Without limits the
debate becomes too broad and uneducational.
2. Ground: The negative loses core link ground for Disadvantages and
Counterplans like Executive Order CPs. This hurts fairness in debate
3. Predictability: It is not predictable that the aff would avoid legislative
curtailment, that puts a research burden on the negative to research for every
single agent or alternative action to curtailment. This kills in-depth debates and
education.
Voters: Vote on Topicality are the impacts of fairness and education as stated above.
Effects T Bad
Interpretation:
The affirmative must directly result in the decrease of domestic surveillance through
USFG action
Violation: The affirmative enacts an act that then repeals two other acts that then
results in less justification when surveillance programs justify their actions in court.
Standards
1. Limits: Abusive affirmatives decrease limits forcing negative teams to do
research on every single congressional document that pertains to other
congressional documents. This hurts core topic education because we can never
question the legislation itself.
2. Ground: The negative loses core case arguments and CP ground because we
can’t mitigate solvency of vague acts we don’t know of and vagueness on
method takes out core Method CPs. This hurts fairness in debate
3. Predictability: It is not predictable that the aff would pick legislation that affects
other legislation. This kills in-depth debates and education because we can’t
engage specifics on their political discussion.
4. Topical Version of the AFF: The USFG should repeal the FISA Act. OR The USFG
should remove the legal basis for domestic mass surveillance programs. Both
would result in the exact same aff the difference is we can attack the
mechanism in which the legal basis is removed.
Voters: Vote on Topicality are the impacts of fairness and education as stated above.
Notes: Some background knowledge. The Surveillance State Repeal Act is a bill that was only
introduced to congress. It repeals the Patriot Act (which already expired) and the FISA Act (which
tends to be currently used to justify surveillance practices). This is abusive because rather than having
the plan merely “curtail domestic surveillance” or “repeal the FISA Act” it argues for passing of an act
that then manipulates other acts. This overlimits the topic in favor of the aff because then any team
can choose one of the thousands of congressional documents that talk about other documents and
use it as their plan. You can’t possibly be expected to do extensive research. A nice add-on to your
analysis is that if you go to www.congress.gov (the website where you can see current legislation
being discussed, proposed, rejected, or passed) and you search “surveillance” you get 136 pages of
results with 25 results on each page. And that is with the legislation Filter and the current 2015-2016
congress filter ON.
AT - Curtail means through law
We meet: We are a form of legal action. The USFG will enact the Surveillance State
Repeal Act, a piece of legislation.
Counter-Interpretation:
Curtailing simply means to reduce or limit. The neg assumes the Framer’s connotation,
prefer our denotation
Merriam Webster 15 (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curtail)
: to make less by or as if by cutting off or away some part <curtail the power of the
executive branch> <curtail inflation>
Reasons to Prefer:
1. Limits: Overlimiting the topic to exclude our aff makes it impossible for
affirmatives to pass an Act pertaining to domestic surveillance. Which is the
exact kind of real world policy education at the topic’s core.
2. Ground: No ground lost. Neg gets all generic links to politics, terrorism, and XO
CP ground. Just pass the act through an executive order.
3. Predictability: The aff is predictable. It is passing legislation that curtails
domestic surveillance. Exactly what their topicality says is topical. If you think
we’re reasonably topical then education isn’t hurt.
Don’t Vote on Topicality: Make the negative prove the in round abuse. The negative
must prove we are 100% non-topical since this is an all or nothing issue.
Effects T Good
We meet: The plan doesn’t take too many steps. This legislative action mimics that of
real world policy making when curtailing domestic surveillance.
Counter-Interpretation:
The affirmative can take one step to topical action.
Reasons to Prefer
1. Limits: Overlimiting the topic to exclude our aff makes it impossible for
affirmatives to pass an Act pertaining to domestic surveillance. Which is the
exact kind of real world policy education at the topic’s core.
2. Ground: No ground lost. Neg gets all generic links to politics, terrorism, and XO
CP ground. They also get full access to the case advantages and government
solvency through neg generics.
3. Predictability: The aff is predictable. It is passing legislation that curtails
domestic surveillance. All advantages and links are generic topic ground.
4. Fairness: Steps are required in all plans. Allowing the neg to decide how many
steps are needed results in hyper specific plan texts that justify A-spec or Ospec requiring page long plan texts.
5. Topical Version: the 1AC plan is the topical version. Their alternatives lead to
the same result. Make the negative point out a specific argument they don’t get
off the 1AC but would get from the topical versions.
Don’t vote on topicality: Make the negative prove the in round abuse. The negative
must prove we are 100% non-topical since this is an all or nothing issue.