Round 4—Aff vs CUNY AM
1AC
PLAN TEXT
Plan: The United States should make legal and regulate nearly all prohibited
cannabis sativa L. in the United States.
ADVANTAGE
The advantage is global warming
Warming is real and anthropogenic—positive feedback loops
Nordhaus, 12 ("Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong", William is a professor of
economics at Yale, Ph.D. from MIT, foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of
Engineering Sciences, previously served on the committee of the National Academy of Sciences,
February 22, www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skepticsare-wrong/)
The first claim is that the planet is not warming. More precisely, “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of
global warming for well over 10 years now.” It is easy to get lost in the tiniest details here. Most people will benefit from
stepping back and looking at the record of actual temperature measurements. The figure below shows data
from 1880 to 2011 on global mean temperature averaged from three different sources.2 We do not need any complicated
statistical analysis to see that temperatures are rising , and furthermore that they are higher in the last
decade than they were in earlier decades.3 Nordhaus-graph-032212 One of the reasons that drawing conclusions on temperature
trends is tricky is that the historical temperature series is highly volatile, as can be seen in the figure. The presence of short-term
volatility requires looking at long-term trends. A useful analogy is the stock market. Suppose an analyst says that
because real stock prices have declined over the last decade (which is true), it follows that there is no upward trend. Here again, an
examination of the long-term data would quickly show this to be incorrect. The last decade of temperature and stock market data is
not representative of the longer-term trends. The finding that global temperatures are rising over the last
century-plus is one of the most robust finding s of climate science and statistics. 2. A second
argument is that warming is smaller than predicted by the models: The lack of warming for more than a
decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can
cause. What is the evidence on the performance of climate models? Do they predict the historical trend accurately? Statisticians
routinely address this kind of question. The standard approach is to perform an experiment in
which (case 1) modelers put the changes in CO2 concentrations and other climate influences in a
climate model and estimate the resulting temperature path, and then (case 2) modelers calculate
what would happen in the counterfactual situation where the only changes were due to natural
sources, for example, the sun and volcanoes, with no human-induced changes. They then compare the actual temperature
increases of the model predictions for all sources (case 1) with the predictions for natural sources alone (case 2). This
experiment has been performed many times using climate models . A good example is the analysis
described in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (for the actual figure, see the
accompanying online material4). Several modelers ran both cases 1 and 2 described above—one including
human-induced changes and one with only natural sources. This
experiment showed that the projections of
climate models are consistent with recorded temperature trends over recent decades
only if human impacts are included. The divergent trend is especially pronounced after 1980. By 2005,
calculations using natural sources alone underpredict the actual temperature increases
by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade, while the calculations including human sources track the actual temperature trend very
closely. In reviewing the results, the IPCC report concluded: “No climate model using natural forcings [i.e.,
natural warming factors] alone has reproduced the observed global warming trend in the second half of
the twentieth century.”5 3. The sixteen scientists next attack the idea of CO2 as a pollutant. They write: “The fact is
that CO2 is not a pollutant.” By this they presumably mean that CO2 is not by itself toxic to
humans or other organisms within the range of concentrations that we are likely to encounter, and indeed higher CO2
concentrations may be beneficial. However, this is not the meaning of pollution under US law or in standard
economics. The US Clean Air Act defined an air pollutant as “any air pollution agent or
combination of such agents, including any physical, chemical, biological, radioactive…substance or matter which
is emitted into or otherwise enters the ambient air.” In a 2007 decision on this question, the Supreme Court ruled
clearly on the question: “Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons are without a doubt ‘physical [and]
chemical…substance[s] which [are] emitted into…the ambient air.’ …Greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious
definition of ‘air pollutant.’”6 In economics, a pollutant is a form of negative externality—that is, a byproduct of
economic activity that causes damages to innocent bystanders. The
question here is whether emissions of CO2
and other greenhouse gases will cause net damages, now and in the future. This question has been
studied extensively. The most recent thorough survey by the leading scholar in this field,
Richard Tol, finds a wide range of damage s, particularly if warming is greater than 2 degrees
Centigrade.7 Major areas of concern are sea-level rise, more intense hurricanes, losses of
species and ecosystems, acidification of the oceans, as well as threats to the natural and
cultural heritage of the planet. In short, the contention that CO2 is not a pollutant is a rhetorical
device and is not supported by US law or by economic theory or studies. 4. The fourth contention
by the sixteen scientists is that skeptical climate scientists are living under a reign of terror about their
professional and personal livelihoods. They write: Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many
young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up
for fear of not being promoted—or worse…. This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example,
in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they
believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and
some were condemned to death. While we must always be attentive to a herd instinct, this lurid tale is misleading in the extreme.
Some background on Lysenko will be useful. He was the leader of a group that rejected standard genetics and held that the acquired
characteristics of an organism could be inherited by that organism’s descendants. He exploited the Soviet ideology about heredity,
the need for agricultural production, and the favor of a powerful dictator—Stalin—to attract adherents to his theories. Under his
influence, genetics was officially condemned as unscientific. Once he gained control of Russian biology, genetics research was
prohibited, and thousands of geneticists were fired. Many leading geneticists were exiled to labor camps in Siberia, poisoned, or
shot. His influence began to wane after Stalin’s death, but it took many years for Soviet biology to overcome the disastrous
consequences of the Lysenko affair.8 The idea that skeptical climate scientists are being treated like Soviet
geneticists in the Stalinist period has no basis in fact. There are no political or scientific
dictators in the US. No climate scientist has been expelled from the US National Academy of Sciences. No skeptics
have been arrested or banished to gulags or the modern equivalents of Siberia. Indeed, the dissenting authors are at the
world’s greatest universities, including Princeton, MIT, Rockefeller, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Paris. I can
speak personally for the lively debate about climate change policy. There are controversies about many details of climate science and
economics. While some claim that skeptics cannot get their papers published, working papers and the Internet are open to all. I
believe the opposite of what the sixteen claim to be true: dissident voices and new theories are encouraged because they are critical
to sharpening our analysis. The idea that climate science and economics are being suppressed by a modern
Lysenkoism is
pure fiction. 5. A fifth argument is that mainstream climate scientists are benefiting
from the clamor about climate change: Why is there so much passion about global warming…? There are several reasons,
but a good place to start is the old question “cui bono?” Or the modern update, “Follow the money.” Alarmism over climate is of
great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow.
Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to
This argument
is inaccurate as scientific history and unsupported by any evidence. There is a suggestion that
work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet.
standard theories about global warming have been put together by the scientific equivalent of Madison Avenue to raise funds from
government agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF). The fact is that the first precise calculations about
the impact of increased CO2 concentrations on the earth’s surface temperature were made by
Svante Arrhenius in 1896, more than five decades before the NSF was founded. The skeptics’
account also misunderstands the incentives in academic research. IPCC authors are not
paid . Scientists who serve on panels of the National Academy of Science do so without monetary
compensation for their time and are subject to close scrutiny for conflicts of interest. Academic advancement
occurs primarily from publication of original research and contributions to the advancement of
knowledge, not from supporting “popular” views. Indeed, academics have often been subject to harsh political attacks when their
views clashed with current political or religious teachings. This is the case in economics today, where Keynesian economists are
attacked for their advocacy of “fiscal stimulus” to promote recovery from a deep recession; and in biology, where evolutionary
biologists are attacked as atheists because they are steadfast in their findings that the earth is billions rather than thousands of years
old. In fact, the argument about the venality of the academy is largely a diversion. The big money in
climate change involves firms, industries, and individuals who worry that their economic
interests will be harmed by policies to slow climate change. The attacks on the science of global warming are
reminiscent of the well-documented resistance by cigarette companies to scientific findings on the dangers of smoking. Beginning in
1953, the largest tobacco companies launched a public relations campaign to convince the public and the government that there was
no sound scientific basis for the claim that cigarette smoking was dangerous. The most devious part of the campaign was the
underwriting of researchers who would support the industry’s claim. The approach was aptly described by one tobacco company
executive: “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general
public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.”9
Warming is accelerating now due to co2 emissions
Braganza 11 (Karl, Manager, Climate Monitor at the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, The Bureau presently operates
under the authority of the Meteorology Act 1955, which requires it to report on the state of the atmosphere and oceans in support of
Australia's social, economic, cultural and environmental goals. His salary is not funded from any external sources or dependent on
specially funded government climate change projects. Karl Braganza does not consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any
company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations “The greenhouse effect is real:
here’s why
,” http://theconversation.edu.au/the-greenhouse-effect-is-real-heres-why-1515)
In public discussions of climate change, the full range and weight of evidence underpinning the current science can be difficult to
find. A good example of this is the role of observations of the climate system over the past one hundred years or more. In the
current public discourse, the focus has been mostly on changes in global mean temperature. It
would be easy to form the opinion that everything we know about climate change is based upon the observed rise in global
temperatures and observed increase in carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution. In other words, one could
have the mistaken impression that the entirety of climate science is based upon a single
correlation study. In reality, the correlation between global mean temperature and carbon dioxide
over the 20th century forms an important, but very small part of the evidence for a
human role in climate change. Our assessment of the future risk from the continued build up of greenhouse gases
in the atmosphere is even less informed by 20th century changes in global mean temperature. For example, our
understanding of the greenhouse effect – the link between greenhouse gas concentrations and global surface air
temperature – is based primarily on our fundamental understanding of mathematics,
physics, astronomy and chemistry. Much of this science is textbook material that is
at least a century old and does not rely on the recent climate record. For example, it is a
scientific fact that Venus, the planet most similar to Earth in our solar system, experiences surface temperatures of nearly 500
degrees Celsius due to its atmosphere being heavily laden with greenhouse gases. Back on Earth, that fundamental
understanding of the physics of radiation, combined with our understanding of climate change
from the geological record, clearly demonstrates that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations
will inevitably drive global warming. The observations we have taken since the start of 20th century have confirmed
our fundamental understanding of the climate system. While the climate system is very complex, observations
have shown that our formulation of the physics of the atmosphere and oceans is largely correct,
and ever improving. Most importantly, the observations have confirmed that human activities, in
particular a 40% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations since the late 19th century, have had a discernible
and significant impact on the climate system already. In the field known as detection and attribution of climate
change, scientists use indicators known as of climate change. These fingerprints show the entire climate system
has changed in ways that are consistent with increasing greenhouse gases and an enhanced
greenhouse effect. They also show that recent, long term changes are inconsistent with a range of
natural causes. A warming world is obviously the most profound piece of evidence. Here in Australia, the decade ending
in 2010 has easily been the warmest since record keeping began, and continues a trend of each
decade being warmer than the previous, that extends back 70 years. Globally, significant warming
and other changes have been observed across a range of different indicators and through a
number of different recording instruments, and a consistent picture has now emerged. Scientists
have observed increases in continental temperatures and increases in the temperature of the lower atmosphere. In the oceans,
we have seen increases in sea-surface temperatures as well as increases in deep-ocean heat
content. That increased heat has expanded the volume of the oceans and has been recorded as a
rise in sea-level. Scientists have also observed decreases in sea-ice, a general retreat of glaciers and decreases in snow cover.
Changes in atmospheric pressure and rainfall have also occurred in patterns that we would
expect due to increased greenhouse gases. There is also emerging evidence that some, though not all,
types of extreme weather have become more frequent around the planet. These changes are again
consistent with our expectations for increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Patterns of temperature change that are uniquely
associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect, and which have been observed in the real world include: greater warming in polar
regions than tropical regions greater warming over the continents than the oceans greater warming of night time temperatures than
daytime temperatures greater warming in winter compared with summer a pattern of cooling in the high atmosphere (stratosphere)
with simultaneous warming in the lower atmosphere (troposphere). By way of brief explanation, if the warming over the
20th century were due to some deep ocean process, we would not expect to see continents
warming more rapidly than the oceans, or the oceans warming from the top down. For increases
in solar radiation, we would expect to see warming of the stratosphere rather than the observed
cooling trend. Similarly, greater global warming at night and during winter is more typical of
increased greenhouse gases, rather than an increase in solar radiation. There is a range of other
observations that show the enhanced greenhouse effect is real. The additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
has been identified through its isotopic signature as being fossil fuel in origin. The increased
carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans is being recorded as a measured decrease in ocean
alkalinity. Satellite measurements of outgoing long-wave radiation from the planet reveal
increased absorption of energy in the spectral bands corresponding to carbon dioxide, exactly as
expected from fundamental physics . It is important to remember that the enhanced greenhouse effect is not the only
factor acting on the climate system. In the short term, the influence of greenhouse gases can be obscured by other competing forces.
These include other anthropogenic factors such as increased industrial aerosols and ozone depletion, as well as natural changes in
solar radiation and volcanic aerosols, and the cycle of El Niño and La Niña events. By choosing a range of indicators, by averaging
over decades rather than years, and by looking at the pattern of change through the entire climate system, scientists are able to
clearly discern the fingerprint of human-induced change. The climate of Earth is now a closely monitored thing; from instruments in
space, in the deep ocean, in the atmosphere and across the surface of both land and sea. It’s now practically certain that
increasing greenhouse gases have already warmed the climate system. That continued rapid
increases in greenhouse gases will cause rapid future warming is irrefutable.
Warming causes disasters and extinction—comparatively the biggest impact
Doebbler 11. Curtis, International Human Rights Lawyer. Two threats to our existence. Ahram
Weekly. July 2011. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1055/envrnmnt.htm
Climate change is widely acknowledged to be the greatest threat facing humanity. It will
lead to small island states disappearing from the face of the earth, serious global threats to
our food and water supplies, and ultimately the death of hundreds of millions of the
poorest people in the world over the course of this century. No other threat -- including war,
nuclear disasters, rogue regimes, terrorism, or the fiscal irresponsibility of governments -- is
reliably predicted to cause so much harm to so many people on earth, and indeed to the
earth itself. The International Panel on Climate Change, which won the Nobel Prize for its evaluation of thousands of
research studies to provide us accurate information on climate change, has predicted that under the current scenario of "businessas-usual", temperatures
could rise by as much as 10 degrees Celsius in some parts of the world.
This would have horrendous consequences for the most vulnerable people in the
world. Consequences that the past spokesman of 136 developing countries, Lumumba Diaping,
described as the equivalent of sending hundreds of millions of Africans to the furnace. Yet for more
than two decades, states have failed to take adequate action to either prevent climate change or to deal with its consequences. A
major reason for this is that many wealthy industrialised countries view climate change as at worst an inconvenience, or at best even
a potential market condition from which they can profit at the expense of developing countries. Indeed, history has shown them that
because of their significantly higher levels of population they have grown rich and been able to enslave, exploit and marginalise their
neighbours in developing countries. They continue in this vein.
Marihuana prohibition destroys the hemp industry—inconsistent enforcement
stifles hemp research and viability
Keller 13—Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
(Nicole, “NOTE: THE LEGALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR INDIANA'S BIOFUEL
INDUSTRY”, 23 Ind. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 555, 2013, lexis, dml)
The Act placed a $ 1 tax on anyone who "imports, manufactures, produces, compounds, sells, deals in, dispenses,
prescribes, administers, or gives away marihuana." n74 Although legislative history shows that industrial
hemp was not an intended target of the law, and "Harry J. Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics (FBN) (the predecessor to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)), told the Senate Committee that those
in the domestic industrial hemp industry 'are not only amply protected under this act, but they can go ahead and raise
hemp just as they have always done it[,]'" n75 the wording of the law effectively prohibited industrial
hemp cultivation . n76 Specifically, §1(b) of the Act says,
The term "marihuana" means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the
seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or
preparation of such plant, its seeds, or resin- but shall not include the mature stalks of such plant, fiber produced
from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or
preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber, oil, or cake, or the sterilized seed of such plant which
is incapable of germination. n77
It is clear that Congress tried to exclude industrial hemp from the legislation (i.e. "but shall not
include the mature stalks of such plant" n78 ), but for practical purposes there is no way for a
farmer to produce the "mature stalks of such plant" without growing "the seeds thereof." n79
After the passage of the Act, hemp farmers were confused about the impact the Act would have on
their operations. n80 Letters were sent to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics asking what should be done about the hemp that
had been harvested but not yet sold. n81 People wanted to know if even having it was a violation of the new law. n82 The letters also
urged the Bureau to conduct [*563] research on the benefits of the hemp plant. n83 Officials, unsure about the exact
properties of hemp, gave conflicting answers and enforced the new law
inconsistently . n84 Moreover, there was never any formal research to determine if hemp was
a viable crop for big industry and if it could be produced without the psychoactive effect found in
marijuana. n85 Thus, for some time, the hemp industry mostly died in America. n86
legalization’s key to stimulate the industry
Smith-Heisters 8—policy analyst at Reason Foundation
(Skaidra, “Illegally Green: Environmental Costs of Hemp Prohibition”, Reason Foundation Policy Study 367, March 2008, dml)
Prior to prohibition in the United States, industrial hemp was the subject of considerable excitement and speculation. The same is
true today. The development of regionally and commodity-specialized industrial hemp breeds and
processing capability, including complementary processing infrastructure and other innovation in the U.S.
market, has been stifled through severe regulation of this plant. Examination of the unique qualities of
hemp suggests that hemp prohibition affects a broad array of enterprises, ranging from those that may have
mainly local economic significance, to global industries and products that are present every day in our lives. The newest
technological applications of this ancient crop may be the most promising.
Nations that followed the United States in prohibiting hemp cultivation have, for the most part, rescinded these laws—some more
than a decade ago. A report by the Congressional Research Service in 2005 noted that, “the United States is the only
developed nation in which industrial hemp is not an established crop.”91 It seems likely that the
United States cannot maintain hemp prohibition indefinitely. Reasons given for hemp prohibition in the
United States make little sense today. Drug enforcement officials have argued that hemp shouldn’t be grown because it
looks like marijuana; in that case, the USDA should stop growing kenaf, which, as its Latin name Hibiscus cannabinus suggests, has
a palmate leaf that can be mistaken for marijuana. Others have argued that hemp shouldn’t be grown because the market for it is too
speculative, and the crop may turn out to be unprofitable; in that case, corn (subsidized by the USDA at $9.4 billion in 2005) should
top the list of prohibited crops.
The Report to the Governor’s Hemp and Related Fiber Crops Task Force in Kentucky (1995) stated:
Selection of adapted varieties, crop management practices, harvesting technology and several other agronomic aspects may require a
significant research and development effort if hemp is to be a large scale crop. Yet there is no reason to believe that these production
issues are insurmountable....
Hemp and kenaf may have a slight advantage over certain other annual row crops with regard to
potential environmental impacts. This might result from projected requirements for less pesticide and modest
reductions in soil erosion.
The Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station, directed by the state legislature to report on the feasibility of industrial
hemp, concluded in 2005:
A strong argument in favor of industrial hemp is the positive impact it has on the environment. It
has been found to be a very good rotational crop, and the environmental benefits are numerous....
Clearly, industrial hemp has a lot of potential as an alternative crop in the U.S. and Maine. However,
this
potential will never be realized unless the production of industrial hemp is legalized....
Until then, it is difficult to predict the future importance of industrial hemp as an agricultural
crop.92
In North Dakota, where officials are leading the effort to reinstitute hemp cultivation, a white paper commissioned by the state
legislature in 1998 optimistically summarized, “Basically, industrial hemp is easier on the land than any other
crops except for legumes such as clover and alfalfa.”93
Considering the whole life cycle of industrial hemp products, below-average
inputs required during the
cultivation of hemp are only a small part of the potential environmental benefit. Comparisons of
industrial hemp to hydrocarbon or other conventional industrial feedstocks show that, generally,
hemp requires substantially less energy for manufacturing, often is suited to less-toxic
means of processing, and provides competitive product performance (especially in terms of durability,
light weight, and strength), greater recyclability and/or biodegradability, and a number of value-added applications
for byproducts and waste materials at either end of the product life cycle. Performance areas where industrial hemp
may have higher average environmental costs than comparable raw materials result from the use of water and fertilizer during the
growth stage, greater frequency of soil disturbance (erosion) during cultivation as compared to forests and some field crops, and
often relatively high water use during the manufacturing stage of hemp products. Unlike petrochemical feedstocks,
industrial hemp production offsets carbon dioxide emissions, helping to close the carbon
cycle. Overall, social pressure and government mandates for lower dioxin production, lower
greenhouse gas emissions, greater bio-based product procurement, and a number of other
environmental regulations seem to directly contradict the wisdom of prohibiting an evidently useful
and unique crop like hemp.
Ultimately, the environmental costs incurred by the prohibition of hemp cultivation in the United
States cannot be calculated purely in the abstract. The full potential for industrial hemp in
domestic agriculture and industry can only be tested by unrestricted inclusion in the U.S.
market , along with other top biological feedstocks.
hemp will be competitive in the biofuels market, ends unsustainable corn
production, and curbs emissions
Keller 13—Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
(Nicole, “NOTE: THE LEGALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL HEMP AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN FOR INDIANA'S BIOFUEL
INDUSTRY”, 23 Ind. Int'l & Comp. L. Rev. 555, 2013, lexis, dml)
Among the products derivable from the industrial hemp plant, and the product most relevant to this Note, is
hemp as a biofuel. In a time of high gas prices, political instability, and increasing
concerns over the environmental effects of fossil fuel consumption, it is natural to seek an
alternative. Globally, the use of biofuels as an alternative to petroleum products is gaining
momentum. n48 The United States alone consumed approximately 11.7 million gallons of ethanol in 2011 n49 and over 549
[*560] million gallons of biodiesel in the first 9 months of 2011. n50 In Canada, hemp biofuel research is underway to produce
cellulosic ethanol. n51 Cellulosic ethanol is ethanol produced from the non-food parts of feedstock and is a more efficient source of
energy. n52 Currently, the majority of feedstock for biofuels comes from corn, soybeans, or wheat.
n53 However,
in addition to being an inefficient source of fuel, the diversion of these
commodities for fuel production is at the expense of the world food supply . n54 The United
States has recognized the issue and has "announced a $ 510 million initiative meant to spur
development of a new US bio-fuel industry that utilizes non-food crops[.]" n55 The initiative is meant to
examine sources such as algae or wood chips; n56 however, there is a more efficient source: industrial hemp.
"When compared to other plant species of active interest in biofuel production, Hemp derives 100% more
cellulose
than species under active investigation." n57 Furthermore, "[h]emp is Earth's number one
biomass resource; it is capable of producing 10 tons per acre in four months." n58 Hemp
biomass fuel products require a minimal amount of specialization and processing and "[t]he
hydrocarbons in hemp can be processed into a wide range of biomass energy sources, from
fuel pellets to liquid fuels and gas." n59 These facts alone make industrial hemp the ideal
source for both ethanol and biodiesel production. Yet, industrial hemp, in addition to its fibrous
plant matter, also produces seeds wherein lies a rich source of hemp [*561] oil, and this oil can
also be used for fuel. n60
Industrial hemp's fuel capabilities and desirability is further enhanced by the fact that "[i]ndustrial hemp can be grown in
most climates and on marginal soils. It requires little or no herbicide and no pesticide[.]" n61 The
hemp plant is also known to improve soil conditions for rotational crops, n62 and it is a cleanburning fuel, contributing no greenhouse gases. n63 Yet, industrial hemp is not seriously
considered as a feedstock input, n64 largely because industrial hemp is illegal to grow in the United
States.
Hemp solves slows emissions and curbs global warming
Kozloff 2013 (Nikolas [received his doctorate in Latin American history from Oxford
University]; Fighting climate change and creating “green jobs”: Is hemp the silver bullet?; Apr 1;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikolas-kozloff/fighting-climate-change_b_2982614.html;
kdf)
As if all these potential benefits were not enough, advocates hope that hemp could also be used to create a new biofuel. To be sure, the planet needs to shift away from fossil fuels which exacerbate climate
change , though in practice some bio-fuels fail to measure up. As I argue in my last book, No Rain in the Amazon: How South
America's Climate Change Affects the Entire Planet, corn-based ethanol based in the American Midwest does not put much of a dent
in our global warming problem. Though Brazil's program of sugar cane ethanol is somewhat better than
corn from an environmental standpoint, the crop still eats up land and leads to deforestation in
sensitive bio-diverse areas such as the cerrado. Moreover, sugar cane requires fertilizer and
deprives poor peasant farmers of land which could otherwise be used to grow food. So, how does
hemp stack up when compared to corn or sugar cane? Writing in Salon, Steven Wishnia remarks that hemp oil for bio-fuel "is
unlikely to be practical." At 50 gallons per acre, he explains, "even if every acre of U.S. cropland were used for
hemp, it would supply current U.S. demand for oil for less than three weeks." Nevertheless, hemp
biomass can be converted into many diverse fuels such as methane, methanol and gasoline. Moreover, planting hemp
arguably represents a more efficient use of land and resources than corn or sugarcane. That is so
because hemp can be used for fuel but also for food and, according to AlterNet, its seeds contain "roughly four times the cellulose
biomass potential of corn." Best of all, hemp grows very fast and leaves the soil in good shape. In addition to bio-fuel, could hemp
also lead to other benefits --- like helping restore the earth's climate equilibrium? The short answer seems to be, yes. As hemp
grows, it "sequesters" or captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Hemp is able to
sequester such large amounts of carbon because it grows very tall --- between 9 and 12 feet to be exact --within a very short span of time. Furthermore, when hemp is manufactured into masonry this acts
as a carbon sink: the carbon is literally locked into the building material.
Curbing emissions now is critical to solve warming
Carnesale 11 (Albert Carnesale, PhD in Nuclear Engineering, UCLA Chancellor Emeritus,
Professor of Public Policy and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, “America’s Climate
Choices,” March 2011, http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-onreports/reports-in-brief/ACC-final-brief.pdf)
In the judgment of this report’s authoring committee, the environmental, economic, and humanitarian risks
posed by climate change indicate a pressing need for substantial action to limit the
magnitude of climate change and to prepare for adapt ing to its impacts. There are many reasons why it
is imprudent to delay such actions, for instance: • The sooner that serious efforts to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions proceed, the lower the risks posed by climate change, and the less
pressure there will be to make larger, more rapid, and potentially more expensive reductions later. • Some climate change
impacts, once manifested, will persist for hundreds or even thousands of years, and will be
difficult or impossible to “undo.” In contrast, many actions taken to respond to climate change could be reversed or
scaled back, if they some how prove to be more stringent than actually needed.
We live in the Anthropocene, the era of existence characterized by rampant
environmental destruction and a rapidly warming planet—institutional solutions
are key to respond—local action fails on its own, but isn’t mutually exclusive with
the plan
Biermann 14—Environmental Policy Analysis, VU University
(Frank, “The Anthropocene: A governance perspective”, The Anthropocene Review 2014 1: 57, dml)
The classification of a new epoch in planetary history as the ‘Anthropocene’ is fundamentally
changing how we understand our political systems. The transition from the Holocene to an Anthropocene
signifies a new role for humankind: from a species that had to adapt to changes in their natural
environment to one that has become a driving force in the planetary system (Steffen et al., 2011;
Zalasiewicz et al., 2011). Yet the human species, as the defining element of this notion of an Anthropocene,
remains a highly abstract concept. It masks the multitude and variety of human agency, the differences in human
resources and the diversity of human desires. It masks, in particular, the political nature of human society.
Following Aristotle, humans are a zoon politikon, a ‘political animal’ that distinguishes itself from other
species by its capacity to collectively organize its affairs through joint institutions. This
political characteristic of humans is fundamental also for the notion of the Anthropocene.
The
Anthropocene is political ; it has to be understood as a global political
phenomenon (see, in more detail, Biermann, forthcoming).
To start with, the Anthropocene creates, changes or reinforces multiple interdependence relations
within and among human societies. For one thing, it creates new forms and degrees of
interdependence among the more than 190 formally sovereign countries and their national jurisdictions.
Some of these new interdependencies emerge from functions of the Earth System that transform local
pollution into changes of the global system that affect other places that have (much) less
contributed to the problem, with examples being climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion,
the global distribution of persistent organic pollutants and the global spread of species with
potential harm for local ecosystems. Countries are also becoming more interdependent when
local environmental degradation leads to transregional or global social, economic and political
crises, for instance through decreases in food production that raise global food demand and prices. In short, the Anthropocene
creates a new dependence of states, even the most powerful ones, on the community of all other nations. This is a defining
characteristic as well as a key challenge that requires an effective institutional framework
for global cooperation.
Second, the Anthropocene
increases the functional interdependence of human societies. For example,
political response strategies in one economic sector are likely to have repercussions for many
others. Functional interdependence also relates to the mutual substitutability of response options, which poses special problems
of international allocation. In climate governance, for example, for every global policy target there are an
unlimited number of possible combinations of local responses across nations and time frames
with equal degrees of effectiveness. In short, increased functional interdependence in the
Anthropocene requires new degrees of effective policy coordination and
integration , from local to global levels.
Third, the Anthropocene creates new intergenerational dependencies that pose novel political challenges. Causation and effect of transformations of the Earth System are usually separated by (often several)
generations. Sea-level rise, for example, is expected within a time-range of 100 years and more. Such planning horizons exceed the tenure and often the lifetime of present political leaders. Among other things,
this poses the questions of international credibility and trust that future governments will reciprocate and comply with international rules, and the problem of democratic legitimacy of policies in the
intergenerational context. What rights and responsibilities do present generations – and their representatives in parliament – owe to their unborn successors? And to what extent can present generations be held
accountable for activities of their ancestors, for instance regarding the burning of fossil fuels in Europe before the greenhouse effect became more widely known in the 1990s?
Fourth, the Anthropocene comes with persistent uncertainty about the causes of Earth System transformation, its impacts, the links between various causes and response options, and the broader effects of
policies. Most transformations, such as global climate change, are non-linear and might accelerate, or slow down, at any time. Surprises in system behaviour can be expected, but are by definition unforeseeable.
This creates a new political context, as exemplified by Ulrich Beck’s notion of a global ‘risk society’.
Finally, the Anthropocene is an epoch that sees the human species with extreme variations in wealth, health, living standards, education and most other indicators that define wellbeing. According to the World
Bank, the richest 20% of humanity account for 76.6% of the world’s total private consumption. The poorest 20%, on their part, account for just 1.5% of global wealth. Almost half of humanity – roughly, 3 billion
people – lives on less than US$2.5 per day (Chen and Ravallion, 2008). 850 million people lack sufficient food. The poorest 25% of humanity still has no access to electricity (United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), 2007). About one-third of all children in developing countries are underweight, and every day, 20,000 children die of poverty (United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2004). Today, 1
billion people lack sufficient access to water, and 2.6 billion have no basic sanitation (UNDP, 2006). Politics in the Anthropocene has to operate in this global situation of large inequalities in resources and
entitlements.
All these
developments call for a new perspective also in political science. One such new perspective is a
Earth
System governance paradigm is a response and a reaction in the social sciences to the notion of an
Anthropocene (and related concepts such as Earth System analysis). It accepts the core tenet of the Anthropocene, that is,
the understanding of the Earth as an integrated, interdependent system transformed by
newly emerging paradigm in the social sciences, ‘Earth System’governance (Biermann, 2007; Biermann et al., 2009). The
the interplay of human and non-human agency. The focus of Earth System governance is not
‘governing the Earth’, or the management of the entire process of planetary evolution. Instead, Earth System
governance is about the human impact on planetary systems. It is about the societal
steering of human activities with regard to the longterm stability of geobiophysical
systems.
The notion of Earth System governance now underpins a 10-year global research initiative under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. This initiative
– the Earth System Governance Project – was launched in 2009 and has evolved into a broad, vibrant and global community of researchers who share an interest in the analysis of Earth System governance and in
the exploration of how to reform the ways in which human societies (fail to) steer their co-evolution with nature at the planetary scale. More than 2500 colleagues are subscribed to the Earth System Governance
newsletter, and about 250 researchers belong to the group of lead faculty and research fellows closely affiliated with the Project. The term ‘Earth System governance’ already generates about 450,000 Google hits
daily.
Research on Earth System governance needs to address both analytical and normative questions. The analytical theory of Earth System governance studies the emerging phenomenon of Earth System governance
as it is expressed in hundreds of international regimes, international bureaucracies, national agencies, local and transnational activist groups, expert networks, etc. The analytical perspective is, in short, about how
the current governance system functions.
The normative theory of Earth System governance is the critique of the existing systems of
governance in light of the exigencies of Earth System transformation in the Anthropocene. The normative theory
understands Earth System governance as a political reform programme that will benefit
from both evidence-based policy research and more fundamental social science critiques of
underlying systemic driving forces. Such critiques are surely needed, given that – to name one example – after 20 years
of global negotiations and national policies, carbon dioxide emissions in 2010 still grew by 5.9% to a new record high (Peters et al.,
2012). In the academic community, pleas for drastic change in global governance are becoming a frequent feature of scientific
gatherings. For example, the 2011 Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability called in its Stockholm Memorandum for
‘strengthening Earth System Governance’ as one of eight priorities for coherent global action (Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on
Global Sustainability, 2011). One year later, the 2012 State of the Planet Declaration, supported by various global
change programs and international agencies, called
for ‘[f]undamental reorientation and restructuring of
national and international institutions’. It is fundamental, the Declaration continues, ‘to overcome barriers to
progress and to move to effective Earth-system governance. Governments must take action to
support institutions and mechanisms that will improve coherence, as well as bring about
integrated policy and action across the social, economic and environmental pillars’ (Co-chairs
of the Planet under Pressure Conference, 2012: C1).
A press release preceding this Declaration, supported by the International Council for Science and others, even requests governments to fundamentally ‘overhaul’ the entire UN system (Planet Under Pressure
Conference, 2012). In the preparation to the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development, members of the Earth System Governance research alliance had advanced a number of proposals for such an
overhaul of the UN system, for example to create a new World Environment Organization and a UN Sustainable Development Council; to better monitor and support private governance mechanisms; to
strengthen the involvement of civil society in international institutions; and to more often rely on qualified majority-voting as opposed to the more common system of consensus-based decision-making (Biermann
et al., 2012).
Yet Earth
System governance is not only about strengthening global institutions, which are merely part
technological change and incremental policies at local and
of the entire effort. Notably, also
national levels will remain a driving force of progress in Earth System
governance. For instance, just cutting down the emissions of black carbon and methane – which is a precursor of tropospheric
ozone – could be a win-win solution by reducing global mean warming by around 0.5°C by the middle of the 21st century (Shindell
et al., 2012). Incremental change by national and regional policies is possible, too. For example, a mix of
technological change and climate change policy has allowed the European Union member
countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 18% from 1990 while growing their economies at the
same time by 48% (European Commission, 2013).
Transformations in social behaviour are crucial as well, moving from a focus on mere cooperation and efficiency to broader notions of ‘sufficiency’ (Princen, 2003). Large-scale changes of lifestyles are likely to be
non-linear and might depend on ‘social tipping points’ (Lenton et al., 2008: 1792). There is ample historic precedence of drastic changes in perceptions of good and appropriate lifestyles, often motivated by
religion, national renaissance (for example, Gandhism) or philosophy. Environment-related changes in public perceptions of good and appropriate living include the public ban on smoking as inappropriate
behaviour for movie actors, politicians and other perceived role models; the change in perception of whale-meat consumption that is hardly affected by a recovery in some species stocks; and the rising social
movement of vegetarianism. Another example is the increasing acceptance of bicycles as default vehicle of transportation in cities. In October 2013, 70 top managers of Dutch companies publicly left their
chauffeur-driven cars behind in support of a week-long national ‘Low Car Diet’ campaign, thus accepting a partial redefinition of the appropriate lifestyle in the most affluent segments of society (Takken, 2013).
The branding of bicycle transportation as the ‘new normality’ is also rapidly taking off in parts of North America. New York City, for instance, has, in recent years, increased its network of bicycle lanes by 700 km
and counts today 73,000 members in its bicycle sharing programme, with 35,000 rides per day (Kuin, 2013).
would mean throwing out the baby with the bathwater if
intergovernmental institutions were discarded. The UN system and international negotiations do not
However, it
The
one needs the other . In a world of over 190 independent nation states, there is no
way around strong and effective international cooperation .
stand in an antagonistic relationship with local action and non-state movements.
Effective international cooperation must be a basis for Earth System governance in the
Anthropocene. A concerted effort is needed to bring these institutions in line with the
exigencies of the changed political context of Earth System transformation.
In sum, in the course of the 21st century the Anthropocene is likely to change the way we understand
political systems both analytically and normatively, from the village level up to the United
Nations. This makes the Anthropocene one of the most demanding, and most interesting, research
topics also for the field of political science, which has to develop novel, more effective and more
equitable governance systems to cope with the challenges of Earth System transformation.
Students interrogating environmental issues through policy debate is critical to
developing sustainable solutions
Cotgrave and Alkhaddar 6 – Alison Cotgrave has a PhD in Sustainability Literacy, she is
currently the Deputy Director of the School of the Built Environment and a researcher in
construction education, she is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Rafid Alkhaddar
has a PhD in Civil Engineering and currently teaches at the School of the Built Environment
John Moores University in Liverpool as a Professor of Water and Environmental Engineering
(March 2006, “Greening the Curricula within Construction Programmes,” Journal for Education
in the Built Environment, Vol.1, Issue 1, March 2006 pp. 3-29,
http://131.251.248.49/jebe/pdf/AlisonCotgrave1(1).pdf)
Environmental education ¶ Many writers have determined that the main aim of environmental education
is to change attitudes, that will in turn change behaviour. As long ago as 1976, Ramsey and Rickson identified
that it has long been known that the basis for many environmental problems is irresponsible behaviour.
Without a doubt, one of the most important influences on behaviour is attitude, that in turn is
influenced by education. Campbell Bradley et al. (1999) stress the need for trying to change
young people’s environmental attitudes because young people ultimately will be
affected by, and will need to provide, solutions to environmental problems arising from
present day actions. As future policymakers, the youth of today will be responsible for ‘fixing’
the environment and they will be the ones who must be persuaded to act now in order to
avoid paying a high price to repair damage to the environment in the future , if indeed it is
repairable. Therefore it appears that effective environmental education, which
changes the attitudes of young people, is crucial. ¶ The (then) Department for Education (DFE) report,
commonly known as the ‘Toyne Report’ (DFE, 1993), concluded that as education seeks to lead opinion, it will do so more effectively
¶ if it keeps in mind the distinctive nature of its mission, which is first and foremost to improve ¶ its students’ understanding. Their
concern may well be awakened as a result; but it must be ¶ a properly informed concern. This does not necessarily mean treating the
environment as a purely scientific issue, but does mean that the respective roles of science and ethics need to ¶ be distinguished, and
the complexities of each need to be acknowledged. Failure to do this may lead all too readily to an
‘environmentalism’ which, by depicting possibilities as certainties, can only discredit itself in the
long run and feed the complacency which it seeks to dispel. ¶ McKeown-Ice and Dendinger (2000) have
identified the fact that scientific knowledge and ¶ political intervention will not solve the environmental problem on their own, thus
implying that ¶ something additional is required to change behaviour. As has already been discussed, ¶ behaviour changes
can only occur if attitudes change and this can be achieved through education. As Fien (1997) identifies,
environmental education can play a key role by creating awareness, and changing
people’s values, skills and behaviour . ¶ Introducing environmental elements into the
curriculum can therefore be seen as a potentially effective way of transferring knowledge. This
should in turn improve attitudes that will lead to improvements in environmental behaviour .
Graham (2000) believes that it is crucial that building professionals not only participate in the creation
of projects that have low environmental impact, but equally it is important that they learn to
conceive, nurture, promote and facilitate the kind of paradigm changes seen as necessary to
create a sustainable society. ¶ There are however limitations as to what education can achieve on its own, for as Jucker
(2002) believes, if we do not do everything we can to transform our political, economic and social systems into more sustainable
structures, we might as well forget the educational part.
Discussion of energy policymaking is key to change---changes both individuals and
states
Kuzemko 12 Caroline, CSGR University of Warwick, Security, the State and Political Agency:
Putting ‘Politics’ back into UK Energy, http://www.psa.ac.uk/journals/pdf/5/2012/381_61.pdf
This observation brings us on to the way in which debates
particularly
amongst policymakers, started to shift
The energy sector became increasingly
and narratives within political circles,
within parliament and
. A plethora of new papers, debates and policy documents on energy emerged over this time, despite the round of energy reviews and the new White Paper that
had been produced immediately prior to this period (see in particular Havard 2004; Ofgem 2004; DTI 2005a, 2005b, 2006a, 2006b and 2006c; JESS 2006).
referenced in these
proliferating
policy
and other government
documents in terms of potential supply insecurity
(FCO 2004; Straw in
Plesch et al 2004). Echoing media, academic and think-tank narratives, direct links can be found between fears of supply insecurity and Russia (FAC 2008; see also House of Commons 2007; Ofgem 2009: 1). In particular, in 2007 the Foreign Affairs Committee
(FAC) produced a report entitled ‘Global Security: Russia’ (FAC 2008). This is where we see how assumptions about resource nationalism and energy ‘politicisation’ as wrong affect perceptions (Straw in Plesch et al 2004; DTI 2007: 19). The FAC report focuses on
certain political frameworks in non-OECD producer countries, particularly Russia, which may not allow new reserves to be developed properly making them ‘unstable’ suppliers (Havard 2004; FCO 2004). This in turn had negative implications for energy prices
(Straw in Plesch et al 2004; DTI 2007: 19). What was also evident over this time, however, was the rising amount of reports produced by political institutions outside of those directly responsible for policymaking, the Energy Directorate of th e DTI and the
independent regulator, Ofgem. The Foreign Office, House of Commons committees and parliamentary offices, such as that of Science and Technology, all started to produce reports on energy focused on energy security (FCO 2004; POST 2004; Fox 2006; House of
Lords 2006; House of Commons 2007; FAC 2007). Energy security was added, by the UK, to formal forums for international negotiation. In 2005, during the October EU Summit at Hampton Court, the issue of ‘energy security’ was added to the agenda (Offerdahl
2007). In a paper prepared for conference delegates energy is characterised as a sector which was by then becoming an issue of national security (Helm 2005b: 2). Increasing dependence on Russia for supplies of, particularly gas, is seen as a source of threat to the
security of EU, and by extension UK, energy supply. Likewise, energy security was made top of the agenda in the G8 Summit of 2006 (G8 2006). In 2006 Prime Minister Tony Blair used his annual Lord Mayor’s speech to highlight energy security concerns (DTI
Growing political interest in energy, outside of those institutions formally responsible for
energy policymaking, indicates the extent to which energy was becoming subject
to political
debate and deliberation
2006c: 4).
, once more,
. What is also interesting to note at this time is the degree to which the deliberation of energy becomes formalised through various new institutions. In July 2004, in the immediate aftermath of the
Yukos affair, the new Energy Act had conferred on the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry a fixed duty to report annually on energy security matters to Parliament (DTI 2005a). Thus a specific political process was put in place to revisit energy security at least
annually. Changes related to the need to deliberate more formally had also started to take place within the DTI and FCO in th at new resources were allocated to energy analysis (Interview 5). The 2007 White Paper acknowledged that energy had not up until the mid
2000s existed as a discrete area of foreign policy. Again, as such, it had less dedicated capacity assigned to it. The paper announced that, for the first time, the UK would have ...an integrated international energy strategy which describes the action we are taking to
help deliver secure energy supplies and tackle climate change. (DTI 2007: 8) Concurrent with the degree to which energy was re-entering elite political debates at both the national and international levels, which in itself indicates a degree of deliberative
repoliticisation, there were a number of policy alterations made relating to changing interpretations of energy and international markets. It could be argued that energy security had, in 2003, been assumed to exist, especially given the degree to which energy
governance was still understood to be heading in a promarket direction (Thomas 2006: 583; Jegen 2009: 1; Lesage et al 2010: 6; EC 2011: 14). For example the energy supply objective had been worded such that the UK should continue to “maintain the reliability
of… supplies” (DTI 2003: 11). Energy security, although still an objective, had been an assumed outcome of marketisation which explains why competitive markets had been the principal objective of energy policy at that time (cf. Helm 2005). By contrast, however,
energy security is understood to be something that needs to be established, as one of the
‘immense’ challenges
and
to require further political action to achieve
This refocus of objectives onto achieving energy security
added to the political pressures
being brought to bear on energy policymakers given the degree to which supplies continued to
be considered ‘insecure’
These changes in policy objectives, political institutions, and the
addition of political capacity to deliberate energy are understood have taken place partly in
response to political pressures to change emanating from outside energy policy circles,
by 2007
facing the UK as a nation,
furthermore,
(DTI 2006c: Introduction and 4).
, over time,
(Kuzemko 2012b: ).
i.e. the DTI
and Ofgem. Ofgem officials report a higher degree of ‘outside’ political interference in their practices (Interview 15), and it has been widely claimed that both the 2006 Energy Review and 2007 White Paper were researched and compiled specifically because the DTI
and Ofgem understood the political need to respond to the crisis (CEPMLP 2006; House of Commons 2007a). As these processes of deliberation intensified it started also to become clear that the state had lost considerable capacity to understand the complexities of
energy. Government was considered to be more responsible, given that the narrative was of national energy supply security, bu t lacking in information and knowledge both about what was happening and what to do about it. Ultimately this resulted in the formation
of a new government institution, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), with specific mandates to deliver on energy and climate security.
The state is crucial to solving warming. Its involvement is inevitable and
indispensable.
Eckersley 4 Robyn, Reader/Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Melbourne, “The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty”, MIT
Press, 2004, Google Books, pp. 3-8
While acknowledging the basis for this antipathy toward the nation- state, and the limitations of state-centric analyses of global
ecological degradation, I seek to draw attention to the positive role that states have played, and might
increasingly play, in global and domestic politics. Writing more than twenty years ago, Hedley Bull (a protoconstructivist and leading writer in the English school) outlined the state's positive role in world affairs, and his
arguments continue to provide a powerful challenge to those who somehow seek to "get beyond
the state," as if such a move would provide a more lasting solution to the threat of armed conflict
or nuclear war, social and economic injustice, or environmental degradation.10 As Bull argued, given
that the state is here to stay whether we like it or not, then the call to get "beyond the
state is a counsel of despair, at all events if it means that we have to begin by abolishing or
subverting the state, rather than that there is a need to build upon it.""¶ In any event, rejecting the
"statist frame" of world politics ought not prohibit an inquiry into the emancipatory
potential of the state as a crucial "node" in any future network of global ecological
governance. This is especially so, given that one can expect states to persist as major sites of social and
political power for at least the foreseeable future and that any green transformations of the
present political order will, short of revolution, necessarily be state-dependent. Thus, like it or
not, those concerned about ecological destruction must contend with existing institutions and,
where possible, seek to "rebuild the ship while still at sea." And if states are so implicated in ecological destruction,
then an inquiry into the potential for their transformation even their modest reform into something that is at least more conducive
to ecological sustainability would seem to be compelling.¶ Of course, it would be unhelpful to become singularly
fixated on the redesign of the state at the expense of other institutions of governance. States are not
the only institutions that limit, condition, shape, and direct political power, and it is necessary to keep in view the
broader spectrum of formal and informal institutions of governance (e.g., local, national,
regional, and international) that are implicated in global environmental change. Nonetheless, while the
state constitutes only one modality of political power, it is an especially significant one because of its historical claims to exclusive
rule over territory and peoples—as expressed in the principle of state sovereignty. As Gianfranco Poggi explains, the political
power concentrated in the state "is a momentous, pervasive, critical phenomenon. Together with
other forms of social power, it constitutes an indispensable medium for constructing and
shaping larger social realities, for establishing, shaping and maintaining all broader and more
durable collectivities."12 States play, in varying degrees, significant roles in structuring life chances, in
distributing wealth, privilege, information, and risks, in upholding civil and political rights, and
in securing private property rights and providing the legal/regulatory framework for capitalism.
Every one of these dimensions of state activity has, for good or ill, a significant bearing on the
global environmental crisis. Given that the green political project is one that demands farreaching changes to both economies and societies, it is difficult to imagine how such changes
might occur on the kind of scale that is needed without the active support of states. While it is often
observed that states are too big to deal with local ecological problems and too small to deal with global ones, the state nonetheless
holds, as Lennart Lundqvist puts it, "a unique position in the constitutive hierarchy from individuals
through villages, regions and nations all the way to global organizations. The state is inclusive of
lower political and administrative levels, and exclusive in speaking for its whole territory and
population in relation to the outside world."13 In short, it seems to me inconceivable to advance
ecological emancipation without also engaging with and seeking to transform state power.¶ Of course, not all
states are democratic states, and the green movement has long been wary of the coercive powers that all states reputedly enjoy.
Coercion (and not democracy) is also central to Max Weber's classic sociological understanding of the state as "a human community
that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory."14 Weber believed that the
state could not be defined sociologically in terms of its ends* only formally as an organization in terms of the particular means that
are peculiar to it.15 Moreover his concept of legitimacy was merely concerned with whether rules were accepted by subjects as valid
(for whatever reason); he did not offer a normative theory as to the circumstances when particular rules ought to be accepted or
whether beliefs about the validity of rules were justified. Legitimacy was a contingent fact, and in view of his understanding of
politics as a struggle for power in the context of an increasingly disenchanted world, likely to become an increasingly unstable
achievement.16¶ In contrast to Weber, my approach to the state is explicitly normative and explicitly concerned with the purpose of
states, and the democratic basis of their legitimacy. It focuses on the limitations of liberal normative theories of the state (and
associated ideals of a just constitutional arrangement), and it proposes instead an alternative green theory that seeks to redress the
deficiencies in liberal theory. Nor is my account as bleak as Weber's. The fact that states possess a monopoly of control over the
means of coercion is a most serious matter, but it does not necessarily imply that they must have frequent recourse to that power. In
any event, whether the use of the state's coercive powers is to be deplored or welcomed turns on the purposes for which that power is
exercised, the manner in which it is exercised, and whether it is managed in public, transparent, and accountable ways—a judgment
that must be made against a background of changing problems, practices, and under- standings. The coercive arm of the
state can be used to "bust" political demonstrations and invade privacy. It can also be used to
prevent human rights abuses, curb the excesses of corporate power, and protect the
environment.¶ In short, although the political autonomy of states is widely believed to be in
decline, there are still few social institution that can match the same degree of capacity and
potential legitimacy that states have to redirect societies and economies along more ecologically
sustainable lines to address ecological problems such as global warming and pollution, the buildup
of toxic and nuclear wastes and the rapid erosion of the earth's biodiversity. States—particularly when they
act collectively—have the capacity to curb the socially and ecologically harmful consequences of
capitalism. They are also more amenable to democratization than cor- porations, notwithstanding the ascendancy of the
neoliberal state in the increasingly competitive global economy. There are therefore many good reasons why
green political theorists need to think not only critically but also constructively about the state
and the state system. While the state is certainly not "healthy" at the present historical juncture, in this book I nonetheless
join Poggi by offering "a timid two cheers for the old beast," at least as a potentially more significant ally in the
green cause.17
Pragmatic warming policy is effective and key to prevent the impact
Simpson 10 (Francis, College of Engineering, Vanderbilt University, “Environmental
Pragmatism and its Application to Climate Change The Moral Obligations of Developed and
Developing Nations to Avert Climate Change as viewed through Technological Pragmatism”,
Spring 2010 | Volume 6 | Number 1)
Pragmatism and Footprinting¶ Environmental pragmatism is a relatively new field of environmental ethics that seeks to move
beyond the strictly theoretical exercises normal in philosophy and allows the environmental movement
to formulate substantial new policies (Light, 1). Environmental Pragmatism was initially posited by Bryan Norton and evolved to not take a
stance over the dispute between non-anthropocentric and anthropocentric ethics. Distancing himself from this dispute, he preferred to distinguish between strong and
weak anthropocentricism (Light, 290-291, 298). The main philosophers involved in advancing the debate in environmental pragmatism include Eric Katz, Andrew Light,
and Bryan Norton.
This particular discipline advocates moral pluralism, implying that the
environmental problems being faced have multiple correct solutions. Light argues that the
urgency of ecological crises requires that action is necessary through negotiation and compromise. While
theorists serve to further the field of environmental ethics and to debate the metaethical basis
of various environmental philosophies, some answers to questions are best left to private discussion
rather than taking time to argue about them publically (introduction of pragmatism). Pragmatism believes that if two theories
are equally able to provide solutions to a given problem, then debate on which is more is argued that: “the commitment to solving
environmental problems is the only precondition for any workable and democratic political
theory” (Light, 11). While the science behind a footprint is well understood, what can the synthesis of environmental pragmatism and footprinting tell us about the
moral obligation to avert climate change? How does grounding the practice of sustainability footprinting in environmental pragmatism generate moral prescriptions for
averting climate change?¶ Environmental Pragmatism necessitates the need for tools in engineering to be developed and applied to avert the climate change problem, since
pragmatism inherently calls for bridging the gap between theory and policy/ practices. With the theory of
pragmatism in mind, further research and development of tools such as life-cycle analysis and footprinting are potential policy tools that are necessary under a pragmatist
viewpoint so that informed decisions can be made by policy makers. Since the role of life-cycle analysis and footprinting attempt to improve the efficiency and decrease the
overall environmental impact of a given process, good, or service, environmental pragmatism would call for the further development and usage of these tools so that we can
By utilizing footprinting and life-cycle
analysis, it becomes possible to make environmentally conscious decisions not only based
upon a gut instinct but additionally based on sound science. Finally, in regards to averting climate change, footprinting and life-cycle
continue to develop sustainably and fulfill our moral obligation to future generations.
analysis offer another dimension to traditional cost-benefit analysis and can allow for our moral obligation to future generations to weigh into final decisions which will
eventually result in policies and/ or a production of a good or service. Since traditional cost benefit analysis does not account for the environment explicitly, pragmatism
Climate change modeling
inherently contains many unknowns in terms of future outcomes and applied simplifications, but these factors should
not be enough to hold us back from an environmental pragmatism stand point. Rather
than hiding behind a veil of uncertainty with the science, the uncertainty of the
possible catastrophic outcomes demands action on the part of every human individual. Environmental pragmatism
could also adopt a view point like the precautionary principle where a given action has great uncertainty, but also great consequence (Haller). Since we are
attempting to protect human lives and prevent unnecessary suffering, environmental
pragmatism would dictate that we should take action now and stop debating the
theoretical aspects of this problem. A moral obligation exists to protect human life, and it
becomes our obligation to avert climate change. Despite the relatively high economic costs of averting climate change, it is worth
noting that the creation of green jobs and new sectors will help to stimulate the economy rather than completely hindering it. People inherently fear
change, and it is my opinion that averting climate change requires a drastic change in our
consumption patterns, an important reason why people are resisting averting climate change. From an environmental pragmatism viewpoint, it is humanities
responsibility to avert climate change before it is too late since we have a moral obligation to
protect the future of humanity and the biosphere.
would call for the application of these tools to ensure that the environment is adequately protected for future generations.¶
We’re not saying “state’s always good” or “only talk about the state”, but the
question of how to engage is one that can’t be ignored if we are to secure survival.
The terminal impact to climate change should determine our decisions—we should
prioritize addressing the crisis of the Anthropocene first
Rowan 14—Wageningen University
(Rory, “Notes on politics after the Anthropocene”, from After the Anthropocene: Politics and geographic inquiry for a new epoch,
Prog Hum Geogr February 7, 2014, dml)
The recent popularity of the
Anthropocene within the social sciences, humanities, and arts relies in part on the fact that it
answers a certain subterranean yearning for a framework in which to address macro-scale concerns after
the eclipse of ‘globalization’, a term that seemed to slip off the critical agenda as it sank into the sediment of our political
unconscious. The Anthropocene hence presents an opportunity for critical thinking to reconnect with
macroscalar concerns in a way that escapes the ideological over-determinations of
globalization while engaging with the deep ramifications of anthropogenic
environmental change through an examination of the planet’s material processes. Whereas ‘the global’ suggests a
relatively flat, anthropocentric conception of the Earth focused on the construction of social relations on the surface, ‘the planetary’,
by contrast, points to a more complex, volumic, stratified understanding of an Earth constituted through dynamic geo-social
entanglements. Accordingly, the Anthropocene creates opportunities to cast the planet itself as a key player in the drama of human
politics rather than simply its stage.
This raises the question of what consequences an engagement with the planet has for political
thought. What challenges might the Anthropocene present to political thought, and what forms of politics might be
adequate to face them? In the space remaining I examine these questions with regard to three broad areas: the relationship
between the scale and form of politics; the subject of the Anthropocene; and the relationship between technology and politics.
First, while it seems clear that the Anthropocene calls for thinking through the relationship between politics and the planet, it is
important not to assume that a certain scale of politics maps naturally against a certain form of politics. More precisely, thinking
does not require a totalizing
understanding of politics confined to technocratic dreams of a World State
about politics in planetary terms
or reactionary Big Space geopolitics . How a planetary politics might be understood
depends not simply on questions of scale (itself a social constituted and politically contestable concept) but on
how the political is conceived. Hence, the Anthropocene marks an occasion to return to
fundamental questions of political thought, but within an expanded conceptual horizon
produced by a new planetary circumstance. To my mind the political is best understood as a terrain of
contestation in which struggles take place on numerous fronts, across different geographic and
temporal scales, the chance of successfully shaping social forces being increased if hegemonic
alliances can be built across struggles. The Anthropocene potentially widens the scope of the
political because understanding social forces as embedded in a dynamic
relationship with geophysical forces opens up both as potential objects and sites
of political struggle .
However, this is not to suggest that the scale of the challenges raised by the Anthropocene has no
implication for the form of politics that might take shape in its wake. Indeed, the
Anthropocene raises concerns of such vast geographic and temporal scope and depth
that any response must involve questions of long-term planning,
sustained funding, and significant transnational cooperation
and collective organization that effectively render certain forms of politics
inadequate. This is especially, perhaps uncomfortably, true of conceptions of politics widely
celebrated on the critical Left that emphasize temporary occupations, local direct
action, or horizontal and non-representational modes of organization . Yet the
Anthropocene seems to demand that some of the problems the critical Left prefers to
shy away from, such as representation and institutionalized power, need to be
faced anew unless the future is to be ceded to ever more intensive forms of
capitalist exploitation, environmental degradation, and the possibility of mass
unemployment, escalating food insecurity, resource wars, and increasingly
This is not to claim that politics
should be constituted around macro-scale concerns alone , but that
reactionary forms of identity politics.
these must make up a key element of any politics that recognizes the significance
of the Anthropocene.
Second, there is the question of the subject of the Anthropocene and its implications for politics, already the topic of heated debate.
Some have advanced the term Capitalocene as an alternative to Anthropocene on the grounds that the historically specific set of
social relations structured around capital accumulation mark a more accurate genesis of global climate change than the activity of a
singular, universal humanity, or anthropos. This argument has much to commend it, at once insisting that the Anthropocene not
become a depoliticizing meta-abstraction that conceals the constitutive fractures of sociopolitical relations and highlighting the
dominant role that the historical development of the capitalist world economy has had in producing it. I am, nonetheless,
apprehensive for two reasons. First, the concept of the Capitalocene seems to emphasize social relations internal to the human
sphere when perhaps the most important aspect of the Anthropocene is that it allows the distinction between the social and the
natural, the human and the inhuman to be muddied by way of their mutually constitutive intrusions. Second, even if it can be
granted that capitalist social relations created the conditions for the Anthropocene,
the Anthropocene’s effects will be universal , shaping all future human
communities (although unevenly) regardless of what new forms of social relations may replace
capitalism. Even if we regard the Anthropocene to be capitalogenic it
has something of a universal address,
affecting the lives of everyone even if ‘all’ are not responsible for it equally . In this light,
anthropos can be understood not as a pre-constituted identity but rather as the object of
political contestation in the struggle to define the terms of future human existence on the planet.
In signalling a crisis in our fundamental conceptual categories and our relation to the planet, the Anthropocene appears
to raise that old political question: what is to be done? However, it also complicates this question, throwing
ideas of agency into a new, problematic light. The question of what then is coupled with its more difficult, demanding twin: how is
it to be done? This brings me to the third area of concern: technology. Any attempt to address the long-term,
macro-scalar challenges that the Anthropocene presents must be willing to engage with
the question of the relationship between politics and technology. This is not to evoke a simple
means-ends discussion but to recognize that socio-political formations are bound up with specific
technological platforms and energy regimes, so that any alternative future politics must
make technology not only a tool but a crucial terrain of struggle . Nick Srnicek and Alex
Williams, authors of the recent #Accelerate manifesto, have been germane in questioning the critical Left’s knee-jerk
reaction to the question of technology and the ease with which discussions slip into wellworn critiques of ‘enframing’, ‘instrumental reason’, and ‘apparatuses’ that
exclusively address technology’s ‘great danger’ rather than its ‘saving power’ (Srnicek
and Williams, 2013). The Anthropocene should not lead us to simply recoil in horror at the effects of
industrialization or remain paralysed by the sense that technological progress can only make
things worse. A more open debate about technology and climate politics does of course not
mean cultivating a naive technophilia or uncritically accepting geo-engineering’s promise of sublime
technical fixes, but rather acknowledging the key role technology must play in any
attempt to secure a more socially just and ecologically sound future within the
horizon of the Anthropocene. Facing trenchant socioecological challenges that afford neither
clear exits nor ‘pure’ positions means jettisoning perspectives that reject technological
intervention into complex environments in principle. The question then is not one of abandoning the
critique of technology as such, or ignoring the interests served by particular technologies, but
rather of making the subjectivities, relations, and forms of life that they might open or foreclose,
produce, or negate, sites of political struggle. For example, a ‘progressive’ Leftist approach to the
question of ‘climate technologies’ might require a program to establish rigorous institutional
norms to effectively govern their use and a radical pluralization of the sites of
decision-making and subjects empowered to decide – a difficult labour indeed. Yet the central point
remains: political struggles need to be fought over technology rather than against
technology. If technology is rejected or neglected as the object of political struggles, then our
fate is left to the nostalgia of localist escapisms, the passivity of Leftist melancholia or
the reactionary psychosis of Right-wing identity politics, all wholly compatible with the
enormous adaptive capacities and increasingly catastrophic trajectory of capitalist economics.
Climate change should frame your decision calculus and you should prioritize its
impact in evaluation—they have to prove they have a better approach. The aff is a
form of political experimentation, which is more valuable than critical
skepticism—situating climate change as central creates new openings for diverse
political projects to coalesce, but latching onto institutional solutions is key
Lehman and Nelson 14—University of Minnesota
(Jessi and Sara, “Experimental politics in the Anthropocene”, from After the Anthropocene: Politics and geographic inquiry for a
new epoch, Prog Hum Geogr February 7, 2014, dml)
Experimentation therefore requires building collectivities capable of democratically
identifying experimental trajectories, and ensuring that the potential benefits and
negative impacts of experimentation are equitably distributed. Political practice has always
involved experimentation and a necessary embrace of the unknown, as well as strategic and adaptive
engagements with emerging and indeterminate situations. In considering the possibilities for experimentation,
scholars and activists would do well to look to past and present social movements and ask what
approaches to alliance-building and political organizing may be most conducive to an
experimental project. But the Anthropocene also emphasizes anew the imperative to act on
diverse timescales by building durable institutions of democratic engagement
while also responding to the real urgency of ecological crisis . An overarching question is: how
do we establish organizing structures that are resilient and adaptive to changing circumstances,
that respond to urgent situations without foreclosing political deliberation? Battistoni
(2013) suggests
the ‘need to consider climate change
a background condition for
all politics’ , a unifying framework in which diverse political projects can
find common ground as well as a ‘lever to wedge open cracks of possibility’. The
prospect that the very possibility of a future is at stake can free our political imaginaries,
can open up avenues for action that might otherwise seem far-fetched (Battistoni, 2013).
Such avenues must necessarily be experimental. We do not aim in the brief space available here to specify what this
project should look like (in fact, we would stress that it is necessarily emergent from particular conditions), but only to
highlight that any responsible practice will require negotiating these questions , and in
doing so should attend equally to innovations in organizing strategy as to those in the sciences.
Drawing on and extending the legacies of political organizing (such as HIV/AIDS activism in the 1980s, or the
anti-nuclear movement; Battistoni, 2013) may enable truly experimental practices rather than simply
promoting what Last (2012: 718) recognizes as an increasingly pervasive ‘experimental aesthetic’ that
often actually serves the status quo.
2AC
K
The 1ac’s approach is pedagogically sound – inculcating skills linked explicitly to normative political
adoption creates the potential for effective political contestation
Donohue, 13 [2013 Nation al Security Pedagogy: The Role of Simulations, Associate Professor of Law,
Georgetown Law,
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2172&context=facpub]
Student Organizations and Journals Mirroring law schools’ growing institutional focus on national security law is increased student
interest in the field, manifest through student organizations and student - run journals. Of the top 100 ranked law schools, nearly three
dozen have student organizations relating to national security law. 94 Sixteen of these have military law societies. 95 In the law review realm, not only have mainstream journals increasingly published articles in this area, but eight
journals have adopted a strong focus on this area, with three solely dedicated to nat ional security law: the Georgetown Law - Syracuse Law Journal of National Security Law and Policy , the annual William Mitchell College of Law
Journal of the National Security Forum , and the Harvard Law’s National Security Journal (initiated in Spring 2010). 96 These institutional developments suggest that law schools, as a structural matter, are responding to the growing
Thus far, the approach has been an organic process of responding on a case - by - case basis. The problem is
that, for the most part, these programs and institutions are situated within traditional models, thus reflecting the
dominant divisions and pedagogical aims of the broader institutions. Yet many of these approaches were adopted with a view towards the pra ctice
of law generally, and not with specific focus on the challenges facing lawyers that want to move into national security law. III. L EGAL P EDAGOGY The practice of law , as suggested above, is deeply
political in nature, with lawyers not merely providing a service to the community, but exercising government power and seeking to limit the
same. This makes the profession susceptible to political shifts. It is thus perhaps unsurprising that the compromise forged between conflicting aims ( the practical realities of the practice of law, paired with the aspirations of
demand for well - trained students.
critical distance and debate) r epeatedly surface s in the wake of military conflict. It was , after all, following the Civil War t hat Harvard confronted the outmoded, receptive nature of legal education. Subjected to recitation of
treatises prepared years in advance, students had little to no agency in the classroom. 97 Harvard Law Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell sent shock waves through the system when he introduced three fundamental
innovations, the aim of which was to inculcate academic achievement in students: he began sequencing courses, he created the case method of teaching, and he invented the (now infamous) issue - spotter examination, requiring
students to respond in writing to complex hypothetical problems. 98 At the time, Oxford and Cambridge considered a liberal education to be sufficient preparation for the professions; the study of common law and other
professional educ ation was left to the apprenticeship process. Students would be asked merely to present clients’ complaints in the appropriate legal form (i.e., the correct “writ” or “form of action”, as appropriate to the facts of
the case) to gain access to the courts. Students would be asked merely to present c lients’ complaints in the appropriate legal form (i.e., the correct “writ” or “form of action”, as appropriate to the facts of the case) to gain access to
the courts. Moskovitz explains, “Students listened to lectures (some by professors, but many by judge s and practicing lawyers) and read textbooks that distilled the rules from the cases. Both activities were essentially passive: the
student absorbed information but did not interact much with the teacher.” innovations thus flew in the face of both U.S. norms and those adopted across the Atlantic. 99 They at once recognized the importance of the practice of
law, while providing to the legal academy the distinction of critical scholarly analysis. The decision to expand into the practice of law subsequently created divisions within the research university. Scholars saw their role as ensuring
that students obtained a certain distance from the law and, as s uch, could subject it to more rigorous critique. The goal of practitioners in many ways proved the opposite: to immerse students so directly in the law as to give them
new evaluations of legal pedagogy have accompanied the country’s
engagement in military hostilities . World War I , for instance, gave way to the Reed Report, which considered how those returning from war would seek to re - shape the existing
fluency in the practice of the same. In the ensuing years,
institutions. Jerome Frank’s work, calling for greater engagement of the academy in the practice of law, bookended World War II. The close of Vietnam witnessed the first ABA Task Force Report on the role of legal education. The
Cramton Report was soon followed by the MacCrate Report — coinc ident with the ending of the Cold War. A crucial weakness in many of these studies is that they have assumed the practice of law writ large to be the object of
much of the discussion assumes as a given the division between doctrinal and clinical
education, missing in the process the potential for developing a new framework for legal education. Perhaps most importantly, these
the inquiry — obfuscating, in the process, the practice of law in discreet contexts. Simultaneo usly,
inquiries, like many that mark the current pedagogical debate, have failed to appreciate the importance of the goals most appropriate to national security law. A . Limitations of the Current Pedagogical Debate One problem with
the current pedagogical debate in the legal academy is th at it is almost entirely grounded in a general understanding of the practice of law. There is very little new about this approach. In 1978, for instance, t he ABA’s Task Force
on Lawyer Competency: The Role of Law Schools , chaired by Dean Roger Cramton, i dentified three competencies required for the practice of law writ large : (1) knowledge about law and legal institutions; (2) fundamental skills;
and (3) professional attributes and values. 100 Instead of considering any of the sub - fields in depth, the repor t focused on general legal education. It identified fundamental skills as legal analysis, legal research, fact investigation,
written and oral communication, interviewing, counseling, negotiation, and organization. 101 Professional values, in turn, centered on discipline, integrity, 99 A LFRED Z ANTZINGER R EED , T RAINING FOR THE P UBLIC P ROFESSION
OF THE L AW (1921), p. 23 (“In accordance with this tradition of the ultimate responsibility of lawyers for their own educational qualifications, the English universities have not only been denied any control over the admission of a
law student to practice. They have not even been made directly responsible for providing any portion of his education, in whi ch they participate only as volunteer agencies. In the field of general education they offer much more
than the practitioners demand. [...]The conception...of institutional instruction in technical law as an essential part of a lawyer’s education, whether giv en in a university or whether given elsewhere, has never thoroughly
reestablished itself in England sinc the decay of the original Inns of Courts. The pedagogical doctrine that this should constitute a distinct intermediate phase of his preparation, to be entered upon after he had completed his
general education but before his practical training begins, is still more foreign to English thought. As a rule, an English student, having secured such general education as he thinks worth while or can afford, pro ceeds directly into a
lawyer’s office.”) See also B RUCE A. K IMBALL , T HE I NCEPTION OF M ODERN P ROFESSIONAL E DUCATION : C. C. L ANGDELL , 1826 - 1906 (2009), p. 161. 100 A MERICAN B AR A SSOCIATION , S ECTION OF L EGAL E DUCATION AND
A DMISSIONS TO THE B AR , R EPORT AND R EC OMMENDATIONS ON THE T ASK F ORCE ON L AWYER C OMPETENCY : THE R OLE OF L AW S CHOOLS (1979), at 9 - 10 [Hereinafter Cramton Report]. 101 Id. 21 conscientiousness,
continued professional development, critical self - assessment, and hard work. 102 The report was not uncritical of the current state of play: w hile legal education did a r elatively good job of providing students with the knowledge
of law, and legal analytical skills, as well as legal research and writing, it failed in three essential respects: (a) developing some of the fundamental skills underemphasized by traditional le gal education; (b) shaping attitudes, values,
and work habits critical to the individual’s ability to translate knowledge and relevant skills into adequate professional performance; and (c) providing integrated learning experiences focused on particular fi elds of lawyer practice.
103 The Report offered dozens of recommendations to address the gap. 104 Ten years later, following the end of the Cold War, the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal E ducation and Admissions to the Bar appointed yet
another task force to look at the role of legal education in preparing attorneys for practice. Once again, it took a cookie - cutter approach to the subject, assuming legal education prepared students for a uniform fi eld. Chaired by
Robert MacCrate, the resulting 414 - page report included within it a “Statement of Fundamental Lawyering Skills and Professional Values”, in which it highlighted ten fundamental skills and four values to guide those seeking to
enter the pr ofession. 105 The goal of legal education was and ought to be developing students’ skills with regard to problem - solving, legal analysis and reasoning, legal research, factual investigation, communication, counseling,
negotiation, litigation and ADR, organiz ation and management of legal work, and recognizing and resolving legal dilemmas . 106 With the aim of legal education thus defined, the report went on to note the fundamental values of
the profession: the provision of competent representation, striving to p romote justice, fairness, and morality, working to improve the profession, and professional development. 107 Cognizant of the critiques that would inevitably
follow, the Report noted that the skills and values thus presented was not definitive; instead, the y provided a starting point for further discussion of different areas of the profession. The aim was not to lock schools into a specific
curriculum, to create criteria for accreditation, or to cement bar examiners into one approach. In achieving these goa ls, the Report emphasized the importance of clinical education: Clinics have made, and continue to make, an
invaluable contribution to the entire legal education enterprise. They are a key component in the development and advancement of skills and values throughout the profession. . . . clinics provide students with the opportunity to
integrate, in an actual practice setting, all of the fundamental lawyering skills. In clinic courses, students sharpen their understanding of professional responsibility an d deepen their appreciation for their own values as well as those
of the profession as a whole. 108 102 Id., at 10. 103 Id., at 14. 104 Id., at 3 - 7, recommendations 3 - 5. 105 A MERICAN B AR A SSOCIATION S ECTION OF L EGAL E DUCATION AND A DMI SSION TO THE B AR , L EGAL E DUCATION
AND P ROFESSIONAL D EVELOPMENT : A N E DUCATIONAL C ONTINUUM , R EPORT OF THE T ASK F ORCE ON L AW S CHOOLS AND THE P ROFESSION : N ARROWING THE G AP (1992) [hereinafter, MacCrate Report]. 106 MacCrate
. Not only must students understand these processes ,
but they must take into account the way in which processes unique to national security law influence lawyers’ ability to engage
in traditional legal analysis and recommendation. The opportunity, for instance, for lawyers to engage in considered debate about legal interpretations or to have their work cross checked by other attorneys, perhaps even more steeped in these fields, may be limited . Baker explains, Lawyers tend to focus on t he formal aspects of constitutional government – legislation, the oversight
Report, supra , at 121 - 22. 107 MacCrate Report, supra , at 140 - 41. 108 MacCrate Report, supra ,at 238. 25 la wyer
Baker argues,
hearing, the Justice Department opinion, and presidential statements. For sure, these legal events dominate constitutional history and precedent. However, much of constitutional practice within each branch, and between each
branch, is informal in nature, outside public view, and without documentation. 126 Beyond the informal nature of such processes is the classified context within which government attorneys operate. Two salient p oints here stand
out: first is the difficulty of working collaboratively in a classified context when time is of the essence . That is, even where a number of legal experts may be privy to the information, the abbreviated timeline under which national
security attorneys must work limits the extent to which collaboration may occur. The second point centers on limitations on the number of individuals with whom a lawyer can discuss the specific matter in question. There may be
decisions reached in these contexts may have significant implications:
they may shift the U.S. legal posture on domestic and international instruments, with formidable consequences for operations, U.S. policy, and safety
and security. These characteristics of national security law mean that law schools must sharpen students’ analytical skills, as well as their substantive
very few legal experts with whom an attorney can consult. Nevertheless,
knowledge. That is, schools must not just teach students how to think about the law, but they must convey a significant amount of what the law actually is so that students have some idea of the current authorities
and the framing and the groundwork on which future initiatives are built. Simultaneously, they must make students aware of the way in which formal and informal process influences the quality of their legal analysis and
understanding, and help them to develop different tools to manage such processes to ensure better performance. With the black letter law in national security rapidly changing and growing, law schools must further look at what
the emerging topics are and adjust existing courses and offer new top ics accordingly. This is a different model than the relative stasis marking much of the 20 th Century. Most schools have generally agreed over the course of
decades that criminal law, criminal procedure, constitutional law, civil procedure, contracts, tor ts, and property, merit attention. Eventually schools began to offer courses in new areas, such as international law, and
environmental law. But the sudden explosion in national security law here means two things: first, the re - evaluation of traditional classes to include new and emerging areas. Material support provisions, new surveillance
authorities, and the difference between Title III orders and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants may thus become an important part of Criminal Procedure . Regulatory courses, in turn, may need to expand to include
new financial regulations unique to the national security world. Second, rapid changes suggest the construction of new courses, offering both novel combinations of subjects as well as new substa ntive areas, such as courses
focused on international law and habeas corpus, pandemic disease and consequence management law, intelligence law, or cyber threats. 126 B AKER , supra note 5 , at 63. 26 As a pedagogical matter then, examination of new and
emerging areas must be incorporated into the doctrinal study of legal authorities, even as the processes at work in the national security realm are featured. Active review of courses across the board wi ll further accomplish this aim
— an approach somewhat antithetical to traditional approaches to teaching, where faculty members typically offer (relatively static) introductory courses, paired with upper level courses on matters of particular interest. New
organization may therefore be required to bring national security law faculty and curriculum together, as an intellectual and structural enterprise, to consider the breadth and range of current course offerings. b. “ Washington
Context ” While recognizing t he importance of legal authorities and processes, in the field of national security law, both may be overridden by considerations unique to what may be called the “ Washington context ” . The inherent
political friction between the branches of government, the institutional frictions between Departments and Agencies, and the interpersonal components that accompany the exercise of power all influence the manner in which
national security l aw evolves. To the extent that law schools ignore this aspect of the practice, they do students a great disservice. To take an example that arose in one of my course s , students may (correctly) read HSPD 5 and the
Homeland Security Act of 2002 to mean th at the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to order an evacuation. To act on this authority, however, without direct communication with (and permission from) the White
House, would be inappropriate. This type of Washington - based, p olitical a uthority is critical to the exercise of power. Herein lies the rub: national security instruments often incorporate power that has significant domestic and
The stakes are high. It is thus imperative that students understand the broader authorities and
processes at work. Such processes extend beyond the executive branch to dealings with Congress — a branch often
sidelined in law school curricula. Lawyers working in the field, from the executive branch and legislati ve branches to private industry, must understand the political
processes in Congress in order to be more effective . The relative strength of different committees, the contours of legislative oversight, the range of policy documents applicable to
the field (and required by Congress via statute), the formal and informal mechanisms to obtain information relating to executive branch national
security matters, the role of party politics — all of this proves relevant. Understanding political authority extends to chain of command, as well as inter - agency processes. c. Policy
international political ramifications.
Environment The “ Washington context” can be distinguished from a second way in which political considerations enter into national security law: namely, the broader policy environment. On e way to understand this is in terms of
the push and pull of policymaking. In the former realm, law constitutes just one of many competing demands that policymakers take into account before deciding which actions to pursue. In the latter area, the impact of the actions
the role
that law plays may be just one of many competing demands on the policymaker’s decision - making strategy. In order
to secure a place for legal considerations, lawyers must therefore be cognizant of the different pressures influencing the
process. Part of this is 27 learning how to communicate clearly with those involved in making and implementing
policy . It also entails developing a feel for when and how to initiate appropriate participa tion. That is, lawyers must insert themselves into the conversation, representing the interests of law itself. I n policy discussions,
lawyers are often n ot seated at the table. T hey may be a “plus one” in the discussion, and, in this capacity, they mus t come to terms with the fact that the law is only one consideration at
play. They may have to accept being relegated to a supporting role, with their recommendation overridden. In this context, they must grapple with not just personality management, but issues related to ego and
subordination. They must then decide how to react to this situation, when and how to take the initiative, when to concede, and when to pr oceed through other channels. In brief, they must learn both
taken is felt in both the domestic and international arena. Each constitutes an ex ante consideration for lawyers operating in this domain. Within government practice, in determining which course to set,
how to insert legal considerations into what is essentially a policy debate
, and how to treat the outcome of such efforts in
the context of professional and personal goals . At the back end, legal recommendations carry with them strong policy implications. It is worth noting at the ou tset that t here is disagreement over whether national security lawyers
need to take this into account. Professor John Yoo, for instance, argues that it is not the national security lawyer’s role to think about the policy impact of legal advice given — even when delivered at the highest levels of
government . 127 The logic behind this is that separating law from policy is essential to good lawyering , and that to combine policy considerations with strict legal analysis undermines the strength of the intellectual endeavor, as
well as the integrity of the advisory system itself. As an ex ante consideration, taking into account either competing interests or the resulting policy impact thus runs counter to the purpose of obtaining strict legal advice. Instead, it
is for policymakers to balance competing concerns and to determine the most approp riate course of action. There is much to commend this strict adherence to the distinction between law and policy. The problem with this
approach, however, is that it results in a sort of false silo, where lawyers ostensibly operate in a manner completely insulated from policy concerns. In national security law, this is simply not the case. Law and policy — for reasons
discussed in Part I of this Article — often overlap. The result of attempting to ignore the policy side of the eq uation, moreover, may sidel ine law at the front end: i.e., when lawyers present not just a particular legal analysis, but act
to insert considerations of law qua law into the policymaker’s decisionmaking process . Here, identifying and thinking about competing policy concerns provi des lawyers with important knowledge about how and when to insert
legal considerations. Failure to take account of policy concerns may further entail a breach of professional responsibility and ethical obligations at the back end . It may be, for instanc e, that there is no legal bar to acting in a certain
manner. ( It is precisely for this reason that criminal law continues to evolve. ) But absence of prohibition does not automatically translate into permission for action. A strict legal analysis may thu s suggest legality, where the actual
The role of national security law is here of great importance: as an
exercise of power — indeed, at one extreme, the most coercive powers available to the state — failure to
take into account the implications of the legal analysis may suggest a failure of professional responsibility. d .
Adaptation and Evolution 127 John Yoo, Remarks , Debate on Guantanamo Bay Detainees, Oct. 12, 2005, Stanford Law School, Co - sponsored by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society. 28 Not only
must students learn about legal and authorities and processes, the Washington context, and policy concerns, but they must learn how
to adapt and evolve to deal with new and emerging bureaucratic and administrative structures. Innovation is the hallmark
of this skill, and it is one that requires a different kind of learning than dominates in doctrinal settings. 128 In the national security world, p olitical
implications of such actions would run contrary to legal or ethical norms.
leadership rapidly changes, with constant movement of personnel. Institutions themselves are in flux: the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, as aforemen tioned, placed twenty - two executive branch agencies —
some of which were major and complex organs of the government, such as the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Secret Service, the Transportation Security Administration, and the Federal Emergency
Management Agency — under one umbrella, growing by 2012 to some 216,000 people. 129 DHS agencies continue to evolve and morph as the mission of the Department steadily expands. The Department of Defense’s creation of
NORTHCOM similarly generated two new domestic intelligence institutions and a substantial infrastructure to support the command. Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and others
those who take up positions within
these entities need to be able to quickly adapt to new and changing legal and political authorities and processes. So, too, must those
outside of government, who need to respond to new initiatives and rapidly changing institutional
arrangements. The sheer size of the infrastructure and the number of new initiatives requires the ability to work in a fluctuating environment and to quickly iden tify changing power structures. 2 . Factual Chaos
and Uncertainty One of the most important skills for students going into national security law is the ability to deal with factual
chaos. This significantly differs from the traditional model of legal edu cation, which tends to provide students with a set of facts, which they must then analyze. In contrast, l awyers working in national security law must
have had to adapt to the new environment, in the process shifting i nstitutional structures. Collectively, what these characteristics mean is that
figure out what information they need, integrate enormous amounts of data from numerous sources, determin e which information is reliable and relevant, and proceed with analysis and recommendations. These
recommendations, moreover, must be based on contingent conditions: facts may be classified and unavailable to the legal analyst, or facts may change as new
information emerges. This is as true for government lawyers as it is for those outside of governmental structures. They must be aware of what is known, what is unsure, what is unknown, and the possibility of changing
circumstances , and they must advise their clients, from the beginning, how the legal analysis might shift if the factual basis were to be altered. a. Chaos Concern about information overload in the national security environment is
not new: in the 1970s scholars discussed and debated how to handle the sequential phases of 128 For rel ated discussion of innovation in the context of self - learning for corporate law, see Karl S. Okamoto, Learning and Learning -
to - Learn by Doing: Simulating Corporate Practice in Law School , 45 J. OF L EGAL E D ., 495 (1995). 129 The Department of Homeland Security, the Executive Branch, available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/our -
the digital revolution has
exponentially transformed the quantitative terms of reference, the technical means of collection and analysis , and the volume of information
available. At the same time, t he number of s ources of information — not least in the online world — is staggering. Added to this is the
rapid expansion in national security law itself: myriad new Executive Orders, Presidentia l Directives, institutions, programs, statutes , regulations,
government/executive - branch (accessed Jan. 6, 2012). 29 intelligence gathering and analysis in a manner that yielded an optimal result. 130 But
lawsuits, and judicial decisions mean is that national security law itself is rapidly changing. What this means is that l awyers inside and outside of government must keep abreast of constantly e volving provisions. The international
arena too is in flux, as global entities, such as the United Nations, the European Court of Human Rights, the G7/G8, and other countries introduce new instruments whose reach includes U.S. interests. Rapid geopoliti cal changes
relating to critical national security concerns, such as worldwide financial flows, the Middle East, the Arab Spring, South American drug Cartels, North Korea, the former Soviet Union, China, and other issues increase the importance
of keeping up on what is happening globally, as a way of understanding domestic concerns. Further expanding the information overload is the changing nature of what constitutes national security itself. 131 In sum, the sheer
amount of information the national security l awyer needs to assimilate is significant. The basic skills required in the 1970s thus may be the same — such as the ability (a) to know where to look for relevant and reliable information;
(b) to obtain the necessary information in the most efficient manner possible; (c) to quickly discern reliable from unreliable information; (d) to know what data is critical; and (e) to ascertain what is as yet unknown or contingent on
the volume of information, the diversity of information sources, and the heavy reliance on
technology requires lawyers to develop new skills . They must be able to obtain the right information
and to ignore chaos to focus on the critical issues. These features point in opposite directions — i.e., to both a broadening of knowledge and a narrowing of focus. A law
other conditions. But
school system built on the gradual and incremental advance of law, bolstered or defeated by judicial decisions and solidified through the adhesive nature of stare decisis appea rs particularly inapp osite for this rapidly - changing
environment. An important question that will thus confront students upon leaving the legal academy is how to keep abreast of rapidly changing national security and geopolitical concerns, in an information - rich world, in a m
Part of staying ahead of the curve means
developing a sense of timing — when to respond to important legal and factual shifts — and identifying the best means of doing so. Again, this
applies to government and non - government employees. How should students prioritize certain information and then act upon it?
This, too, is an aspect of information overloadNational security law proves an information - rich, factually - driven environment. The ability to deal with such chaos, however, may be
anner that allows for capture of relevant information, while retaining the ability to focus on the immediate task at hand.
further hampered by gaps in the information available and the difficulty of engaging i n complex fact - finding — a skill often under - taught in law school. Investigation of relevant information may need to reach far afield in order to
generate more careful legal analysis. Uncertainty here plays a key role. In determining, for instance, the contours of quarantine authority, lawye rs may need to understand how the pandemic in question works, where there have
been outbreaks, how it will spread, what treatments are available, which social distancing measures may prove most effective, what steps are being taken locally, at a state - leve l, and internationally, and the like. Lawyers in non profit organizations, legal academics, in - house attorneys, and others, in turn, working in the field, must learn how to find out the relevant information before commenting on new programs and initiative s, agreeing to contractual
. The key here is learning to
ask intelligent questions to a ccommodate for chaos and uncertainty to generate the best legal analysis possible. It may be the case that national security lawyers are not aware of the facts they are
terms, or advising clients on the best course of action. For both government and non - government lawyers, the secrecy inherent in the field here is of great consequence
missing — facts that would be central to legal analysis. This phenomenon front - loads the type of advice and discussions in which national security lawyers must engage. That is, it means that analysis must be given in a transparent
manner, i.e., contingent on a set of facts as are then currently known, with indication given up front as to how that analysis might change, should the factual basis shift. This is particularly true of government attorneys, who may be
advising policymakers — who may or may not have a background in the law and who may have access to more information than the attorney. Signaling the key facts on which the legal decision rests and indicating how such
analysis might change if the facts change, provides for more robust consideration of critically important issues. c. Creative Problem Solving Part of dealing with factu al uncertainty in a rapidly changing environment is learning how
to construct new ways to address emerging issues. Admit t edly, m uch has been made in the academy about the importance of problem - based learning as a method in developing students’ critical thinking skills. 132 Problem solving, however, is not merely a method of teaching. It is itself a goal for the type of activities in which lawyers will be engaged. The means - ends distinction is an important one to make here, as problem - solving in a classro om
problem - solving as an ends suggests the accumulation
of a broader set of tools , such as familiarity with multidisciplinary approaches, creativit y and originality,
sequencing, collaboration, identification of contributors’ expertise and how to leverage each skill set. This
environment may be merely a conduit for learning a specific area of the law or a limited set of skills. But
goal presents itself in the context of fact - finding, but it draws equally on strong understanding of legal authorities and pr actices , the Washington context, and policy considerations . Similarly, l ike the factors highlighted in the
first pedagogical goal, adding to the tensions inherent in factual analysis is the abbreviated timeline in which national security attorneys must op erate. Time may not be a commodity in surplus. This context means that legal
education must not only develop students’ complex fact - finding skills and the ability provide contingent analysis, but it must teach them how to
swiftly and efficiently engage i n these activities. 3 . Critical Distance As was recognized more than a century ago, analytical skills by themselves are insufficient training for
individuals moving into the legal profession. 133 Critical thinking provides the necessary distance from the law that is required in
order to move the legal system forward. Critical thought, influenced by the Ancient Greek tradition, finds itself bound up in the Socratic method of dialogue that continues to
define the legal academy. But it goes beyond such const ructs as well. Scholars and educators disagree, of course, on what exactly critical thinking entails. 134 For purposes of our present discussion, I understand it as the meta conversation in the law. Whereas legal analysis and substantive knowledge focus o n the law as it is and how to work within the existing structures, critical thought provides distance and allows students to engage in purposeful
discussion of theoretical constructs that deepen our understanding of both the actual and potential constructs of law. It is inherently reflective. For the purpose of practicing national security law, critical thought is paramount. Part
because of the unique conditions that tend to accompany the introduction of national
security provisions: often introduced in the midst of an emergency, new powers frequently have
significant implications for distribution of authority at a federal level, a diminished role for state and local government in the federalism realm, and a
direct impact on individual rights. 135 Constitutional implications demand careful scrutiny. Yet at the time of an attack, enormous pressure is on officials and legislators to act and to be seen
of the reason for this is
to act to respond. 136 With the impact on rights, in particular, foremost in legislators’ minds, the first recourse often is to make such powers temporary. However, they rarely turn out to be so, instead becoming embedded in the
legislative framework and providing a baseline on which further measures are built. 137 In order to be withdrawn, legislators must demonstrate either that the provisions are not effective or that by withdrawing them, no violence
This steady ratcheting effect means
that new powers, introduced in the heat of the moment, may become a permanent part of the statutory and re gulato ry regime. They may not
operate the way in which they were intended. They may impact certain groups in a disparate manner . They may have unintended and detrimental consequences. For all of this, it is necessary
for national security lawyers to be able to view such provisions, and related policy decisions, from a distance and
to be able to think through such authorities outside of the contemporary regime. There are many other reasons such critical analysis
matters that reflect in other areas of the law. The ability to recognize problems, articulate underlying assumptions and values, understand how
language is being used, assess whether argument is logical, test conclusions, and determine and analyze pertinent information depends on
will ensue Alternatively, legislators woul d have to acknowledge that some level of violence may be tolerated — a step no politician is willing to take.
critical thinking skills. Indeed, one could draw argue that it is the goal of higher education to build the capacity to engage in critical thought. Deeply humanistic theories underlie this approach. The ability to develop discerning
judgment — the very meaning of the Greek ter m, κριτιχοσ , provides the basis for advancing the human condition through reason and intellectual engagement. There is yet another way in which critical thought presents in national
security law which may seem somewhat antithetical to the legal enterprise: particularly for government lawyers and consultants, there may be times in which not providing legal advice, when asked for it, may be as important as
providing legal analysis. That is, it may be important not to put certain options on the table, with a legal justification behind them. Such concerns are bound up in considerations of policy, professional respons ibility, and ethics.
They may also relate to questions as to who one’s client is in the wo rld of national security law. 138 I t may be unclear whether and at what point one’s client is a supervisor, the legal (or political) head of an agency, a cross agency organization, the White House, the Constitution, or the American public. Depending upon this determination, the national security lawyer may or may not want to provide legal advice to one of the potential clients. A
lternatively, such a lawyer may want to call attention to certain analyses to other clients. Determining when and how to act in these circumstances requires critical distance. 4 . Nontraditional Written and Oral Communication Skills
Law schools have long focused on written and oral communication skills that are central to the practice of law. Brief writing, scholarly analysis, criminal complaints, contractual agreements, trial advocacy, and appellate arguments
What is perhaps unique about the way communication skills present in the national security
world is the importance of modes of communication not traditionally recognized via formal models, such as
constitute standard far e.
concise (and precise) oral briefings, email exchanges, private and passing conversations, agenda setting, meeting injects, and communications built on swiftly evolving and uncertain information. For m any of these types of
exchanges — and unlike the significant amounts of time that accompany preparation of leng thy legal documents (and the painstaking preparation for oral argument that marks moot court preparations) —
speed may
be of the essence. Much of the activity that goes on within the Executive Branch occurs within a hierarchical system, wherein those closes t to the issues have exceedingly short amounts 138 For a thoughtful
discussion of who constitutes the client in national security law, see B AKER , supra note 5, chapter 10. 33 of time to deliver the key points to those with the authority to exercise government power. Unexpected events, shifting
conditions on the ground, and deadlines require immediate input, without the opportunity for lengthy consideration of the different facets of the issue presented. This is a different type of activity from the preparation of an
appellate brief, for instance, involving a fuller exposition of the issues involved. It is closer to a blend of Sup reme Court oral argument and witness cross - examination — although national security lawyers often may not have the
luxury of the months, indeed, years, that cases take to evolve, to address the myriad legal questions involved. Facts on which the legal anal ysis rests, moreover, as discussed above, may not be known. This has substantive
implications for written and oral communications. Tension between the level of legal analysis possible and the national security process itself may lead to a different norm than in other areas of the law. Chief Judge Baker explains,
If lawyers insist on knowing all the facts all the time, before they are willing to render advice, or, if they insist on
preparing a written legal opinion in response to every question, then na tional security process would become dysfunctional. The delay
alone would cause the policymaker to avoid, and perhaps evade, legal review . 139 Simultaneously, lawyers cannot function without some opportunity to look
carefully at the questions presented and to consult authoritative sources. “The art of lawyering in such context,” Baker explains, “lies in spotting the issue, accurately identifying the timeline for decision, and applying a meaningful
degree of formal or informal review in r e s p o n s e . ” 140 The lawye r providing advice must resist the pressure of the moment and yet still be responsive to the demand for swift action. The resulting written and oral
communications thus may be shaped in different ways. Unwilling to bind clients’ hands, particularly in li ght of rapidly - changing facts and conditions, the potential for nuance to be lost is considerable. The political and historical
overlay of national security law here matters. In some circumstances, even where written advice is not formally required, it ma y be in the national security lawyer’s best interests to commit informal advice to paper in the form of
an email, notation, or short memo.
The process may serve to both provide an external check on the pressures that have been
internalized, by allowing th e lawyer to separate from the material and read it. It may give the lawyer the opportunity to have someone subject it to scrutiny. Baker suggests that “on issues of importance, even where
the law is clear, as well as situations where novel positions are taken, lawyers should record their informal advice in a formal manner so that they may be held accountable for what they say, and what they don’t s a y . ” 141
Written and oral communication, may occur at highly irregular moments — yet it is at these moments (in th e elevator, during an email exchange, at a meeting, in the course of a telephone call), that critical legal and constitutional
Yet it is important that students are prepared for these
types of written and oral communication as an ends in and of themselves. 5 . Leadership, Integrity and Good J udgment National security law often takes place in a high s takes
decisions are made. This model departs from the formalized natur e of legal writing and research .
environment. There is tremendous pressure on attorneys operating in the field — not least because of the coercive 139 B AKER , supra note 5 , at 65. 140 Id. 141 B AKER , supra note 5 , at 66. 34 nature of the authorities in question
. The classified environment also plays a key role: m any of the decisions made will never be known publicly; nor will they be examined outside of a small group of individuals — much less in a court of law. In this context,
Decisions may result
in the death of one or many human beings, the abridgment of rights, and the bypassing of protections
otherwise incorporated into the law. The amount of pressure under which attorneys are thus placed is of a different order of magnit ude than many other areas of the law. Overlaying this
leadership, integrity, and good judgment stand paramount. The types of powers at issue in national security law are among the most coercive authorities available to the government.
pressure is the highly political nature of national security law and the necessity of understanding the broader Washington context, within which individual decision - making , power relations and institut ional authorities compete .
Policy concerns similarly dominate the landscape . It is not enough for national security attorneys to claim that they si mply deal in legal advice. T heir
analyses carry consequences for
those exercising power, for those who are the targets of such authorities , and for the public at large. The function of leadership in this context may be more about process than substantive authority. It
may be a willingness to act on critical thought and to accept the impact of legal analysis. It is closely bound to integrity and professional responsibility and the ability to retain good judgment in extraordinary circumstances. Equally
important in considerations of leadership and good judgment is the classified nature of so much of what is d one in national security law. All data , for instance, relating to the design, manufacture, or utilization of atomic weapons,
the production of special nuclear material, or the use of nuclear material in the production of energy is classified from birth. 142 N ational security information (NSI), the bread and butter of the practice of national security law, is
similarly classified. U.S. law defines NSI as “ ..information which pertains to the national defense and foreign relations (National Security) of the U nited States and is classified in acco rdance with an Executive Order.” Nine primary
Executive Orders and two subsidiary ones have been issued in this realm . 143 The sheer amount of information incorporated within the classification scheme is here relevant. While original classification authorities have steadily
decreased since 1980, and the number of original classification decisions is beginning to fall, the num bers are still high: in FY 2010, for instance, there were nearly 2,300 original classification authorities and almost 225,000 original
classification d e c i s i o n s . 144 The classification realm , moreover, in which national security lawyers are most active , is e xpanding . Namely, d erivative classification decisions — i.e., classification resulting from the
incorporation, paraphrasing, restating, or generation of classified information in some new form, is increasing . In FY 2010, there were more than 76 million such decisions made. 145 This number is tr ipple what it was in FY 2008.
Legal decisions and advice tend to be based on information already classified relating to programs, initiatives, facts, intelligence, and previously classified legal opinions . The key issue here is that with so much of the essential
information, decisionmaking, and executive branch jurisprudence necessarily secret, lawyers are limited in their opportunity for outside appraisal and review . Even w ithin the executive branch, stove - piping occurs. The use of
secure compartmentalized information (SCI) further compounds this problem as only a limited number of individuals — much less lawyers — may be read into a program. This diminishes the opportunity to identify and correct
errors or to engag e in debate and discussion over the law . O nce a legal opinion is drafted, the opportunity to expose it to other lawyers may be restricted . The effect may be felt for decades, as successive Administrations
reference prior legal deci sions within certain ag encies. The Office of Legal Counsel, for instance, has an entire body of jurisprudence that has never been made public, which continues to inform the legal analysis provided to the
President. Only a handful of people at OLC may be aware of the previous d ecisions. They are prevented by classification authorities from revealing these decisions, resulting in a sort of generational secret jurisprudence. Questions
related to professional responsibility thus place the national security lawyer in a difficult position: not only may opportunit ies to check factual data or to consult with other attorneys be limited, but the impact of legal advice
rendered may be felt for years to come. The problem extends beyond the executive branch . There are limited opportunities , for instance, for external ju dicial review. Two elements are here at work: first, v ery few cases relating
to the many national security concerns that arise make it into court. Much of what is happening is simply not known. Even when it is known, it may be impossible to demonstrate standing — a persistent problem with regard to
challenging, for instance, surveillance programs underway. Second , courts have historically proved particularly reluctant to intervene on national security matters. J udicially - created devices such as politica l question doctrine and
state secrets underscore the reluctance of the judiciary to second - guess the executive in this realm. The exercise of these doctrines is increasing in the post - 9/11 environment. Consider state secrets. While much was made of
some 5 - 7 state secrets cases that came to court during the Bush Administration, in more than 100 cases the executive branch formally invoked state secrets, which the courts a c c e p t e d . 146 Many times judges did not even
bother to look at the evidence in question, before blocking evidence and/or dismissing the suit. In numerous additional cases, the courts treated the claims as though state secrets had been asserted — even where it had not been
formally invoked. 147 In light of t he pressure put on national security lawy ers in the performance of their duties, the profound consequences of m any national security decisions, the existence of stovepiping even within the
executive branch, and limited opportunity for external review , the practice of national security law depends upon a particularly rigorous and committed adherence to ethical standards an d professional responsibility. In other
words, this is a unique world in which there are enormous pressures, with potentially few external consequences for not acting in accordan ce with high standards. It thus becomes particularly important, from a pedagogical
perspective, to think through the types of situations that may present to national security attorneys, and to address the types of questions related to professional respons ibility that will confront them in the course of their careers
. Closely related to this area is the necessity of exercising good judgment and leadership. This skill, like many of those discussed, may also be relevant to other areas of the law; however, th e type of leadership called f or in the
world described above may 146 See Laura K. Donohue, The Shadow of State Secrets , U. P ENN . L. R EV . (2009). 147 Id. 36 be different in important ways. Good judgment, for instance, may mean any number of things, depending
upon the attorney’s position within the political hierarchy. Policymaking positions, fo r instance, may be considerably different from the provision of legal advice to policymakers. Leadership , too , may mean something different in
a field intimately tied to political circumstance. It may mean breaking ranks with the political hierarchy, visibly adopting unpopular public or private positions, creating new bureaucratic structures to more effectively r espond to
threats, resigning when faced by unethical situations, or holding off clients until the attorneys within one’s group have the opportunity to look at issues while still being sensitive to the political needs of the institution. Recourse in
such s ituations may be political, either through public statements and use of the media, or by going to different branches of government for a solution. 6 . Creating Opportunities for Learning In addition to the above skills, national
lawyers must be a ble to engage in continuous self - learning in order to improve their performance. In other words, they must be able to generate frameworks
for identifying new and emerging legal and political authorities and processes , systems for handling factual chaos an d uncertainty, mechanisms to ensure critical distance, evaluating written
and oral performance, and analyzing leadership skills. Law schools do not traditionally focus on how to teach students to continue
their learning beyond the walls of academia. Yet it is vital for their future success to give students the
wherewithal to create conditions of learning. Some of this learning may be generated by interpersonal feedback. Supervisors, law partners, and formal and informal mentors
security
have traditionally perfor med a similar function. But in a highly political environment, where personnel frequently change, individuals repeatedly cross agencies in the course of their career, and classification limits cross pollination, such opportunities may be limited. Thus, w hile feedback and growth may involve students’ ability to create and inculcate mentoring relationships, it may equally depend upon creating peer - to - peer learning
opportunities, gaining feedback from colleagues, developing ex ante markers for reaching certa in goals, and following through with ex post analysis of one’s performance. In addition to the foregoing, n ational security lawyers
need to be able to perform the six goals in tandem. That is, they need to be able to integrate these different skills into one experience. It is thus incumbent on law schools not just to emphasize these skills, but to give students the
opportunity to layer their experiences. Students must learn to perform on all these fronts at once. Recognizing the importance of integrativ e learning, of course, is not new; however, for reasons discussed below, the structures
that have been more broadly adopted within the legal academy to accomplish this aim are, on the whole, ill - suited to the substantive nature of the skills students need to develop as well as the task of performing such skills in
near - simultaneous manner
Permutation do both
The perm’s effective---no cooption as “their cause” can become “our cause”
Bhambra 10—U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of Humanities, U Brighton
(Identity Politics and the Need for a ‘Tomorrow’,
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow_)
We suggest that alternative models of identity and community are required from those put forward by essentialist theories, andthat these are offered by the work of two theorists, SatyaMohanty and Lynn
Hankinson Nelson. Mohanty’s ([1993] 2000)post-positivist, realist theorisation of identity suggests a way through the impasses of essentialism, while avoiding the excessesof the postmodernism that Bramen,
identities must be understood as theoretical
constructions that enable subjects to read the world in particular ways; as such, substantial claims about
identity are, in fact, implicit explana-tions of the social world and its constitutive relations of power.
Experience – that from which identity is usually thought to derive– is not something that simply occurs, or announces its meaningand significance in a selfevident fashion: rather, experience is always a work of interpretation that is collectively produced (Scott 1991).
among others, derides as aproposed alternative to identity politics. For Mohanty ([1993]2000),
Mohanty’s work resonates with that of Nelson (1993), whosimilarly insists upon the communal nature of meaning ork nowledge-making. Rejecting both foundationalist views of knowledge and the postmodern
alternative which announces the“death of the subject” and the impossibility of epistemology,Nelson argues instead that, it is not individuals who are theagents of epistemology, but communities. Since it is not
possiblefor an individual to know something that another individualcould not also (possibly) know, it must be that the ability to makesense of the world proceeds from shared conceptual frameworksand practices.
Thus, it is the community that is the generator andrepository of knowledge. Bringing Mohanty’s work on identity astheoretical construction together with Nelson’s work on episte-mological communities therefore
suggests that, “identity” is one of the knowledges that is produced and enabled for and by individu-als in the context of the communities within which they exist. The post-positivist reformulation of “experience” is
necessary here as it privileges understandings that emerge through the processing of experience in the context of negotiated premises about the world, over experience itself producing self-evident knowledge (selfevident, however, only to the one who has “had” the experience). This distinction is crucial for, if it is not the expe-rience of, for example, sexual discrimination that “makes” one afeminist, but rather, the paradigm
through which one attempts tounderstand acts of sexual discrimination, then it is not necessary to have actually had the experience oneself in order to make theidentification “feminist”. If being a “feminist” is not
a given factof a particular social (and/or biological) location – that is, beingdesignated “female” – but is, in Mohanty’s terms, an “achieve-ment” – that is, something worked towards through a process of analysis
feminism is some-thing that is “achievable” by
men. 3 While it is accepted that experiences are not merely theoretical or conceptual constructs which can be
transferred from one person to another with transparency, we think that there is some-thing
politically self-defeating about insisting that one can only understand an
experience ( or then comment upon it) if one has actually had the experience oneself . As
Rege (1998) argues, to privilege knowledge claims on the basis of direct experience , orthen on claims of authenticity, can
lead to a narrow identity poli-tics that limits the emancipatory potential of the
movements or organisations making such claims . Further, if it is not possible to understand an
experience one has not had, then what point is there in listening to each other ? Following Said,
such a view seems to authorise privileged groups to ignore the discourses of disadvantaged ones,
or, we would add, to place exclusive responsibility for addressing injustice with the oppressed
themselves. Indeed, as Rege suggests, reluctance to speak about the experi-ence of others has led to an assumption on the part of some whitefeminists that “confronting racism is the sole
responsibility of black feminists”, just as today “issues of caste become the soleresponsibility of the dalit women’s organisations” (Rege 1998).Her argument for a dalit feminist standpoint, then, is
not made in terms solely of the experiences of dalit women, but rather a call for others to “educate
themselves about the histories , the preferred social relations and utopias and the struggles of the
marginalised” (Rege 1998). This, she argues, allows “their cause” to become “our cause”, not as a form
of appropriation of “their” struggle, but through the transformation of
subjectivities that enables a recognition that “their” struggle is also “our” struggle .
Following Rege, we suggest that social processes can facilitate the understanding of experiences, thus making those
experi-ences the possible object of analysis and action for all, while recognising that they are not
equally available or powerful forall subjects. 4 Understandings of identity as given and essential,
then, we suggest, need to give way to understandings which accept them as socially
constructed and contingent on the work of particular,overlapping, epistemological communities that agree that this orthat is a viable and recognised identity.
Such an understanding avoids what Bramen identifies as the postmodern excesses of “post-racial” theory, where in this “world without borders
(“rac-ism is real, but race is not”) one can be anything one wants to b e: a black kid in Harlem can be Croatian-American, if that is whathe chooses, and a white kid from
Iowa can be Korean-American”(2002: 6). Unconstrained choice is not possible to the extent that,as Nelson (1993) argues, the concept of the epistemological community requires any individual knowledge claim to sustain itself in relation to standards of
evaluation that already exist and thatare social. Any claim to identity, then, would have to be recog-nised by particular communities as valid in order to be
success-ful. This further shifts the discussion beyond the limitations of essentialist accounts of identity by
recognising that the commu-nities that confer identity are constituted through their shared
epistemological frameworks and not necessarily by shared characteristics of their members
conceived of as irreducible . 5 Hence, the epistemological community that enables us to
identify our-selves as feminists is one that is built up out of a broadly agreed upon paradigm
for interpreting the world and the relations between the sexes: it is not one that is premised upon possessing the
and interpretation – then two implications follow. First,that not all women are feminists. Second, that
physical attribute of being a woman or upon sharing the same experiences. Since at least the 1970s, a key aspect of black and/orpostcolonial feminism has been
to identify the problems associated with such assumptions (see, for discussion, Rege 1998, 2000). We believe that it is the
identification of injustice which calls forth action and thus allows for the construction of healthy
solidarities. 6 While it is accepted that there may be important differences between those who
recognise the injustice of disadvantage while being, in some respects, its beneficiary (for example, men, white
people, brahmins), and those who recognise the injustice from the position of being at its effect (women, ethnic
minorities,dalits), we would privilege the importance of a shared political commitment to
equality as the basis for negotiating such differences . Our argument here is that thinking through
identity claims from the basis of understanding them as epistemological communities militates
against exclusionary politics (and its asso-ciated problems) since the emphasis comes to be on
participation in a shared epistemological and political project as opposed to notions of fixed
characteristics – the focus is on the activities indi- viduals participate in rather than the characteristics they aredeemed to possess. Identity is thus defined further as a function of activity
located in particular social locations (understood asthe complex of objective forces that influence the conditions in which one lives) rather than of nature or origin (Mohanty 1995:109-10). As such, the
communities that enable identity should not be conceived of as “imagined” since they are
produced by very real actions, practices and projects.
The FG has a legacy of a bunch of really bad stuff – slavery, genocide, settler
colonialism – the list is almost endless – however that is not a reason to reject the
law – there is still hope to constructively use the federal government
Smith 2012 (Andrea, “The Moral Limits of the Law: Settler Colonialism and the Anti-Violence
Movement” settler colonial studies 2, 2 (2012) Special Issue: Karangatia: Calling Out Gender
and Sexuality in Settler Societies)
What this story troubles is social justice movements’ investment in the morality of the law.
Despite the US legal system’s complicity in settler colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and
white supremacy since its inception, they advocate strategies for change that rest on the
presupposition that the law can somehow be made to support the end of sexism, racism and
classism. Historically, as more radical racial and social justice organisations were either crushed
or co-opted by the US governments during the 1970s, these movements shifted from a focus on a
radical restructuring of the political and economic system to a focus on articulating identity
based claims that did not necessarily challenge the prevailing power structure.13 If groups were
not going to directly challenge the state, they could then call on the state to recognise their
claims to equality and redress from harms perpetrated by other social actors. Ironically, then,
the same US government that codified slavery, segregation, anti-immigrant racism, and the
genocide of indigenous peoples, now becomes the body that will protect people of colour
from racism. The fact that the US itself could not exist without the past and continuing
genocide of indigenous peoples in particular does not strike liberal legal reformists as a
contradiction. Bell suggests that it may be possible to engage in legal reform in the midst of
these contradictions if one foregoes the fantasy that the law is morally benevolent or even
neutral. In doing so, more possibilities for strategic engagement emerge. For instance, in the
‘Racial Preference Licensing Act’, Bell suggests that rather than criminalise racial
discrimination, the government should allow discrimination, but tax it. Taxes accrued from this
discrimination would then go into an ‘equality’ fund that would support the educational and
economic interests of African-Americans.14 As I have argued elsewhere, the law enforcement
approach has been similarly limited in addressing the issues of gender violence when the
majority of men do, or express willingness to engage in, it.15 As a result, criminalisation has not
actually led to a decrease in violence against women.16 Anti-violence activists and scholars have
widely critiqued the supposed efficacy of criminalisation.17 As I will discuss later in this essay,
Native women in particular have struggled with the contradictions of engaging the legal system
to address the legacies of colonial gender violence. While there is growing critique around
criminalisation as the primary strategy for addressing gender violence, there has not been
attention to what other frameworks could be utilised for addressing gender violence. In
particular, what would happen if we pursued legal strategies based on their strategic effects
rather than based on the moral statements they propose to make?
While fiat might not be “real”, accepting our discussion of the state as
“a heuristic” and not as “a descriptor”, creates a contingent toolkit
that best recognizes the complexity of politics
Zanotti 14 (Dr. Laura Zanotti is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech. Her research and
teaching include critical political theory as well as international organizations, UN peacekeeping, democratization and
the role of NGOs in post-conflict governance.“Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency
in the Global World” – Alternatives: Global, Local, Political – vol 38(4):p. 288-304, obtained via school library being
awesome.)
While there are important variations in the way international relations scholars use governmentality theory, for the purpose of my argument I identify
two broad trajectories. 2 One
body of scholarship uses governmentality as a heuristic tool to explore
modalities of local and international government and to assess their effects in the contexts where they
are deployed; the other adopts this notion as a descriptive tool to theorize the globally
oppressive features of international liberalism. Scholars who use governmentality as a heuristic tool tend
to conduct inquiries based upon analyses of practices of government and resistance. These
scholars rely on ethnographic inquiries, emphasizes the multifarious ways government works in practice (to
include its oppressive trajectories) and the ways uneven interactions of governmental strategies
and resistance are contingently enacted. As examples, Didier Bigo, building upon Pierre Bourdieu, has encouraged a research
methodology that privileges a relational approach and focuses on practice; 3 William Walters has advocated considering governmentality as a research
program rather than as a ‘‘depiction of discrete systems of power;’’ 4 and Michael Merlingen has criticized the downplaying of resistance and the use of
‘‘governmentality’’ as interchangeable with liberalism. 5 Many other scholars have engaged in contextualized analyses of governmental tactics and
resistance. Oded Lowenheim has shown how ‘‘responsibilization’’ has become an instrument for governing individual travelers through ‘‘travel
warnings’’ as well as for ‘‘developing states’’ through performance indicators; 6 Wendy Larner and William Walters have questioned accounts of
globalization as an ontological dimension of the present and advocated less substantialized accounts that focus on studying the discourses, processes
and practices through which globalization is made as a space and a political economy; 7 Ronnie D. Lipschutz and James K. Rowe have looked at how
localized practices of resistance may engage and transform power relations; 8 and in my own work, I have studied the deployment of disciplinary and
governmental tools for reforming governments in peacekeeping operations and how these practices were hijacked and resisted and by their targets. 9
Scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool focus instead on one particular trajectory of
global liberalism, that is on the convergence of knowledge and scrutiny of life processes (or biopolitics) and
violence and theorize global liberalism as an extremely effective formation, a coherent and
powerful Leviathan, where biopolitical tools and violence come together to serve dominant
classes or states’ political agendas. As I will show, Giorgio Agamben, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and Sergei Prozorov tend to
embrace this position. 10 The distinction between governmentality as a heuristic and governmentality as
a descriptive tool is central for debating political agency . I argue that, notwithstanding their critique of
liberalism, scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool rely on the same ontological
assumptions as the liberal order they criticize and do move away from Foucault’s focus on
historical practices in order to privilege abstract theorizations. By using governmentality as a
description of ‘‘liberalism’’ or ‘‘capitalism’’ instead of as a methodology of inquiry on power’s contingent
modalities and technologies, these scholars tend to reify a substantialist ontology that ultimately reinforces
a liberal conceptualization of subjects and power as standing in a relation of externality
and stifles the possibility of reimagining political agency on different grounds.
‘‘Descriptive governmentality’’ constructs a critique of the liberal international order based upon an
ontological framework that presupposes that power and subjects are entities possessing
qualities that preexist relations. Power is imagined as a ‘‘mighty totality,’’ and subjects as monads endowed
with potentia. As a result, the problematique of political agency is portrayed as a quest for the ‘‘liberation’’ of a
subject ontologically gifted with a freedom that power inevitably oppresses. In this way, the
conceptualization of political agency remains confined within the liberal struggle of ‘‘freedom’’ and
‘‘oppression.’’ Even researchers who adopt a Foucauldian vocabulary end up falling into what Bigo has identified as ‘‘traps’’ of political science
and international relations theorizing, specifically essentialization and ahistoricism. 11 I argue here that in order to reimagine political
agency an ontological and epistemological turn is necessary, one that relies upon a relational
ontology. Relational ontological positions question adopting abstract stable entities, such as
‘‘structures,’’ ‘‘power,’’ or ‘‘subjects,’’ as explanations for what happens. Instead, they explore how these pillar concepts of the
Western political thought came to being, what kind of practices they facilitate, consolidate and result from, what ambiguities and aporias they contain,
and how they are transformed. 12 Relational ontologies nurture ‘‘modest’’
conceptualizations of political agency and also
question the overwhelming stability of ‘‘mighty totalities,’’ such as for instance the international liberal
order or the state. In this framework, political action has more to do with playing with the cards that are
dealt to us to produce practical effects in specific contexts than with building idealized
‘‘new totalities’’ where perfect conditions might exist. The political ethics that results from nonsubstantialist ontological positions is one that privileges ‘‘modest’’ engagements and weights political choices with regard to the
consequences and distributive effects they may produce in the context where they are made
rather than based upon their universal normative aspirations. 13
Focus on the debate-space to the exclusion of challenging state institutions fails –
doesn’t spill out
Todd Gitlin 97; formerly served as professor of sociology and director of the mass communications program at the University of
California, Berkeley, and then a professor of culture, journalism and sociology at New York University. He is now a professor of
journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph.D. program in Communications at Columbia University. He was a long-time political
activist( from the Left) – “The Anti-Political Populism of Cultural Studies” – Dissent Magazine – Spring 1997 – modified for abelist
language – http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1893
Consolation: here is an explanation for the rise of academic cultural studies during precisely the years when the right has held
political and economic power longer and more consistently than at any other time in more than a half century. Now, in effect, "the
cultural is political," and more, it is regarded as central to the control of political and economic resources. The control of popular
culture is held to have become decisive in the fate of contemporary societies--or at least it is the sphere in which opposition can find
footing, find breathing space, rally the powerless, defy the grip of the dominant ideas, isolate the powers that be, and prepare for a
"war of position" against their dwindling ramparts. On this view, to dwell on the centrality of popular culture is more than an
academic's way of filling her hours; it is a useful certification of the people and their projects. To put it more neutrally, the
political aura of cultural studies is supported by something like a "false consciousness" premise: the
analytical assumption that what holds the ruling groups in power is their capacity
to muffle, deform, paralyze, or destroy contrary tendencies of an emotional or ideological nature. By
the same token, if there is to be a significant "opposition," it must first find a base in
popular culture--and first also turns out to be second, third, and fourth, since
popular culture is so much more accessible, so much more porous, so much more changeable than
the economic and political order. With time, what began as compensation hardened--became institutionalized-into a tradition. Younger scholars gravitated to cultural studies because it was to them
incontestable that culture was politics. To do cultural studies, especially in connection with identity politics,
was the politics they knew. The contrast with the rest of the West is illuminating. In varying degrees, left-wing intellectuals in
France, Italy, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain and elsewhere retain energizing attachments to Social Democratic, Green, and other leftwing parties. There, the association of culture with excellence and traditional elites remains strong. But in the Anglo-American
world, including Australia, these conditions scarcely obtain. Here, in a discouraging time, popular culture emerges as a consolation
prize. (The same happened in Latin America, with the decline of left-wing hopes.) The sting fades from the fragmentation of the
organized left, the metastasis of murderous nationalism, the twilight of socialist dreams virtually everywhere. Class
inequality may have soared, ruthless individualism may have intensified, the conditions of life for the
poor may have worsened, racial tensions may have mounted, unions and social democratic
parties may have weakened or reached an impasse, but never mind. Attend to popular culture, study it
with sympathy, and one need not dwell on unpleasant realities. One need not be unduly vexed by
electoral defeats. One need not be preoccupied by the ways in which the political culture's center of gravity has moved rightward--or
rather, one can put this down to the iron grip of the established media institutions. One need not even be rigorous about what one
opposes and what one proposes in its place. Is capitalism the trouble? Is it the particular form of capitalism practiced by
multinational corporations in a deregulatory era? Is it patriarchy (and is that the proper term for a society that has seen an upheaval
in relations between women and men in the course of a half-century)? Racism? Antidemocracy? Practitioners of cultural studies, like
"opposition" and "resistance" permits--rather,
remain "left" without having to face the
the rest of the academic left, are frequently elusive. Speaking cavalierly of
cultivates--a certain sloppiness of thinking, making it possible to
most difficult questions of political self-definition.
The situation of cultural studies conforms to the contours of our
political moment. It confirms--and reinforces--the current (inaction) paralysis: the incapacity of social movements and dissonant
sensibilities to imagine effective forms of public engagement. It substitutes an obsession with popular culture for coherent
economic-political thought or a connection with mobilizable populations outside the academy and across identity lines. One must
underscore that this is not simply because of cultural studies' default. The default is an effect more than a cause. It has its reasons.
The odds are indeed stacked against serious forward motion in conventional politics. Political power is not only beyond reach, but
functional majorities disdain it, finding the government and all its works contemptible. Few of the central problems of
contemporary civilization are seriously contested within the narrow band of conventional discourse. Unconventional politics, such as
it is, is mostly fragmented and self-contained along lines of racial, gender, and sexual identities. One cannot say that cultural
studies diverts energy from a vigorous politics that is already in force. Still, insofar as cultural
studies makes claims for itself as an insurgent politics, the field is presumptuous and misleading. Its attempt to legitimize the
ecstasies of the moment confirms the collective withdrawal from democratic hope. Seeking to find political energies in audiences
who function as audiences, rather than in citizens functioning as citizens, the dominant current in cultural studies is
pressed willy-nilly toward an uncritical celebration of technological progress. It offers no resistance to the primacy of
visual and nonlinear culture over the literary and linear. To the contrary: it embraces technological innovation as soon as the latest
developments prove popular. It embraces the sufficiency of markets; its main idea of the intellect's democratic commitment is to
flatter the audience. Is there a chance of a modest redemption? Perhaps, if we imagine a harder headed, less wishful cultural
studies, free of the burden of imagining itself to be a political practice. A chastened, realistic cultural studies would divest itself of
political pretensions. It would not claim to be politics. It would not mistake the academy for the larger society. It would be less
romantic about the world--and about itself. Rigorous practitioners of cultural studies should be more curious about the world that
remains to be researched--and changed. We would learn more about politics, economy, and society, and in the process, appreciate
better what culture, and cultural study, do not accomplish. If we wish to do politics, let us organize groups, coalitions,
demonstrations, lobbies, whatever; let us do politics. Let us not think that our academic work is already that.
The alt is IDENTITY but not POLITICS---failure to envision a future in
which their identity claims will no longer be needed results in a reactionary
politics that entrenches the status quo
Bhambra 10—U Warwick—AND—Victoria Margree—School of Humanities, U Brighton
(Identity Politics and the Need for a ‘Tomorrow’,
http://www.academia.edu/471824/Identity_Politics_and_the_Need_for_a_Tomorrow_)
The quotation with which this article begins comes from the end of the novel where the character Paul D is speak-ing to fellow
former slave Sethe of the need to move be- yond the terms of a past disfigured by slavery. We
begin with this for two reasons. First, it expresses the central problematic ad-dressed within this article: the question of the place of history in the
present, and how this helps or hinders the opening up of future possibilities. Second, the
novel addresses how the opening up
of a new future can also be achieved by shifts in understand-ing which result from allowing
alternative interpretations of the past. Specifically in Beloved , Paul D moves from a condemnation of Sethe for her
alleged inhumanity in having killed her own child (“you got two legs, not four, Sethe” ((1987) 1997: 165)), to a new understanding of the “gendered
division of labour on which slavery was built” (Mohanty 2000: 61) and thus to acceptance of the validity of her claims to have killed as a human being ,
and as a mother (to save her own child from becoming a slave like her-self, to refuse to be a reproducer of slaves). As such, Paul D arrives at a fuller
understanding of their shared historical experience as slaves, and this new knowledge constitutes the basis for develop-ing the “tomorrow” of which he
speaks.¶ In what follows we use the metaphor of “tomorrow” in order to address contemporary debates about “identity politics”. Recent years have witnessed a general backlash
against identity politics both in the academy and the public sphere (Bickford 1997, Young1997, Farred 2000, Bramen 2002). Among the various pro-tagonists of this “backlash”,
politicised
identities, based upon experiences of injustice and discrimination, begin to “fetishise” (Ahmed 2004)
their own wounding. For Brown, this results in a reactionary politics aimed at recrimination,
instead of action to redress the injustice. Our intention in the present article is to situate ourselves within this debate about the
Bramen (2002) gives particular atten-tion to work by Wendy Brown (1995) on “wounded attachments”. This is her term for a condition in which
value of iden-tity politics as well as to engage with the specific issues raised by Brown’s work. We will argue that the objections to “identity “raised by Brown and others must be
this need not lead to a wholesale abandonment of the politics of
identity. Rather, we wish to demonstrate that the problem with identity politics is the way in which the
“identity” very often comes to replace the “politics”. To avoid such a substitution, we argue that “identity” may be
re-theorised as that which is continually pro-duced and reproduced by political projects in
the present, and on the basis of a shared vision of the future. The argument of this article is thus that
politicised identities might instead be thought of in terms of an explicit affirmation of the
provisionality of a political identity that is oriented to a “tomorrow” in which the
identity will no longer be required. In this way, the power of “identity” as a site of
resistance is maintained, while ameliorating the conservative effects of the
entrenched identities that Brown criticises. As such, this article also addresses the wider contemporary debate in emancipatory politics, which concerns
taken seriously, but that
The key issue here is that of the extent to which political
discourse should be focused around the past – on origins, memory, history, trauma and so forth – or the extent
to which it should be future-oriented. Critics such as Brown (1995) and Grosz (2000)have expressed a fear that too great a
weight upon the past has proved constraining for radical movements, and that an emphasis
upon the future – the (more) just future that political action intends to bring about –
is required as a corrective to this (Ahmed2004). However, such a demand brings with it the vexed question of the place of memory, and
specifically, the memorialising of pain and exclusion. As Brown’s own equivocation on the issue suggests, “the counsel of forgetting [...] seems
inappropriate if not cruel”(p 74) for many oppressed groups who have yet to have their pain recognised, or to understand themselves the deferred effects of
atraumatic past (Kilby 2002). The arguments presented in this paper are threefold. First, we argue for a rethinking of “politicised
identities” in terms of a commitment to a desired future, as a corrective to the conservative
effects that frequently accompany “identity” (here identified as “exclusionary politics” and “reification of identities”). Second, we argue, however, that such an
emphasis upon the future need not and should not entail an abandonment of the commitment to
address traumatic pasts. Third, we argue that a productive identity politics is one which understands the
identity of the political group-ing as provisional, since it is based on the need to respond to an existing injustice, and therefore,
the proper orientation of radical politics in terms of the tense of political dis-course.
oriented to a future in which that injustice, and hence, the need for the identity claim, is no longer pre-sent. Central to the development of our thesis will be an engagement with
work on experience and identity by Satya Mohanty, and com-munities and knowledge by Lynn Hankinson Nelson.
Debate can be a productive space for inculcating the seeds of institutional change—
but it must avoid a focus on questions of identity in favor of contingent bonds
centered around collectivist political engagement—our alternative is utilizing
debate as a deliberative space to create policy change
Brown 95—prof at UC Berkeley (Wendy, States of Injury, 47-51)
The postmodern exposure of the imposed and created rather than discovered character of all knowledges—of the power-surtuscd,
struggle-¶48¶produced quality of all truths, including reigning political and scientific ones—simultaneously exposes the
groundlessness of discovered norms or visions. It also reveals the exclusionary and regulatory function of these norms: white
women who cannot locate themselves in Nancy Hartsock’s account of women’s experience or women
s desires, African American women who do not identify with Patricia Hill Collinss account of black
women’s ways of knowing, are once again excluded from the Party of Humanism —this
time in its feminist variant . ¶Our alternative to reliance upon such normative claims would seem to be
engagement in political struggles in which there are no trump cards such as “morality” or
“truth."Our alternative, in other words, is to struggle within an amoral political habitat for
temporally bound and fully contestable visions of who we are and how we ought to live. Put
still another way, postmodernity unnerves feminist theory not merely because it deprives us of uncomplicated subject standing, as
Christine Di Stefano suggests, or of settled ground for knowledge and norms, as Nancy Hartsock argues, or of "centered selves and
“emancipatory knowledge," as Seyla Bcnhabib avers. Postmodernity unsettles feminism because it erodes the moral ground that the
subject, truth, and normativity coproduce in modernity. When contemporary feminist political theorists or analysts complain about
the antipolitical or unpolitical nature of postmodern thought—thought that apprehends and responds to this erosion—they arc
protesting, inter' aha, a Nictzschcan analysis of truth and morality as fully implicated in and by power, and thereby dplegitimated
qua Truth and Morality Politics, including politics with passionate purpose and vision, can thrive without a strong theory of the
subject, without Truth, and without scientifically derived norms—one only need reread Machiavelli, Gramsci, or Emma Goldman to
see such a politics flourish without these things. The question is whether fnninist politics can prosper without a
moral apparatus, whether feminist theorists and activists will give up substituting Truth and Morality for
politics. Are we willing to engage in struggle rather than recrimination , to develop
our faculties rather than avenge our subordination with
moral and
epistemological gestures , to fight for a world rather than conduct process
on the existing one ? Nictzschc insisted that extraordinary strengths of character and mind would be necessary to operate
in thce domain of epistemological and religious nakedness he heralded. But in this heexcessively individualized a challenge that
more importantly requires the deliberate development of postmoral and antirelativist political spaces,
practices of deliberation, and modes of adjudication.¶49¶The only way through a crisis of space is to invent a new
space —Fredric Jameson. “Postmodernism"¶Precisely because of its incessant revelation of settled practices and identities as
contingent, its acceleration of the tendency to melt all that is solid into air. what is called postmodernity poses the
opportunity to radically sever the problem of the good from the problem of the true , to decide
“what we want” rather than derive it from assumptions or arguments about “who
we are.”Our capacity to exploit this opportunity positively will be hinged to our success in
developing new modes and criteria for political judgment . It will also depend upon our willingness to break
certain modernist radical attachments, particularly to Marxism’s promise (however failed) of meticulously articulated connections
betwreen a comprehensive critique of the present and norms for a transformed future—a science of revolution rather than a politics
of oneResistance, the practice most widely associated with postmodern political discourse, responds to without fully meeting the
normativity challenge of postmodernity. A vital tactic in much political w’ork as wrcll as for mere survival, resistance by itself does
not contain a critique, a vision, or grounds for organized collective efforts to enact either. Contemporary affection for the politics of
resistance issues from postmodern criticism’s perennial authority problem: our heightened consciousncss of the will to power in all
political “positions” and our wrariness about totalizing analyses and visions. Insofar as it eschew’s rather than
revisesthese problematic practices, resistance-as-politics does not raise the dilemmas of
responsibility and justification entailed in “affirming” political projects and norms. In this respect,
like identity politics, and indeed sharing with identity politics an excessively local viewpoint and
tendency toward positioning without mapping , the contemporary vogue of resistance is more a
symptom of postmodernity’s crisis of political space than a coherent response to it. Resistance
goes nowhere in particular, has no inherent attachments, and hails no particular
vision ; as Foucault makes clear, resistance is an effect of and reaction to power, not an
arrogation of it .¶What postmodernity disperses and postmodern feminist politics requires are cultivated
political spaces for posing and questioning feminist political norms, for discussing the nature of “the good”
for women. Democratic political space is quite undcrtheonzed in contemporary feminist thinking, as it is everywhere in latctwentieth-ccntury political theory, primarily bccausc it is so little in evidence. Dissipated by the increasing tcchnologizing of wouldbe political conversations and processes, by the erosion of boundaries around specifically political domains ¶50¶and activities, and by
the decline of movement politics, political spaces are scarcer and thinner today than even in most immediately prior epochs of
Western history. In this regard, their condition mirrors the splayed and centrifuged characteristics of postmodern political power.
Yet precisely because of postmodernity’s disarming tendencies toward political disorientation, fragmentation, and technologizing,
the creation of spaces where political analyses and norms can be proffered and contested is supremely important.¶Political space is
an old theme in Western political theory, incarnated by the polis practices of Socrates, harshly opposed by Plato in the Republic,
redeemed and elaborated as metaphysics by Aristotle, resuscitated as salvation for modernity by Hannah Arendt. jnd given
contemporary spin in Jurgen Habermas's theories of ideal speech situations and communicative rationality. The project of
developing feminist postmodern political spaces, while enriched by pieces of this tradition, necessarily also departs from it. In
contrast with Aristotle’s formulation, feminist political spaces cannot define themselves against the private sphere, bodies,
reproduction and production, mortality, and all the populations and issues implicated in these categories. Unlike Arendt’s, these
spaces cannot be pristine, ratified, and policed at their boundaries but are necessarily cluttered, attuned to earthly concerns and
visions, incessantly disrupted, invaded, and reconfigured. Unlike Habermas, wc can harbor no dreams of nondistorted
communication unsullied by power, or even of a ‘common language,’* but wc recognize as a permanent political condition partiality
of understanding and expression, cultural chasms whose nature may be vigilantly identified but rarely “resolved,” and the powers of
words and images that evoke, suggest, and connote rather than transmit meanings.42 Our
spaces, while requiring
some definition and protection , cannot be clean, sharply bounded, disembodied, or permanent: to engage
postmodern modes of power and honor specifically feminist knowledges, they must be heterogenous, roving,
relatively noninstitutionalized, and democratic to the point of exhaustion.¶Such spaces are crucial
for developing the skills and practices of postmodern judgment , addressing the problem of “how to
produce a discourse on justicc . . . when one no longer relies on ontology or epistemology.”43 Postmodemity’s dismantling
of metaphysical foundations for justice renders us quite vulnerable to domination by technical
reason ¶51¶unless we seize the opportunity this erosion also creates to develop democratic
processes for formulating postepistemelogical and postontological judgments. Such judgements
require learning how to have public conversations with each other, arguing from a
vision about the common (“what I want for us") rather than from identity (“who I
am”),and from explicitly postulated norms and potential common values rather than false
essentialism or unreconstructed private interest.44 Paradoxically, such public and comparatively
impersonal arguments carry potential for greater accountability than arguments
from identity or interest. While the former may be interrogated to the ground by others, the
latter are insulated from such inquiry with the mantle of truth worn by identitybased speech . Moreover, postidentitypolitical positions and conversations potentially replace a politics
of difference with a politics of diversity—differences grasped from a perspective larger than
simply one point in an ensemble.Postidentity public positioning requires an outlook that
discerns structures of dominance within diffused and disorienting orders of power, thereby stretching
toward a more politically potent analysis than that which our individuated and
fragmented existences can generate . In contrast to Di Stefano's claim that 'shared identity” may constitute a
more psychologically and politically reliable basis for “attachment and motivation on the part of potential activists,” I am suggesting
that political conversation oriented toward diversity and the common, toward world rather than self, and
involving a conversion of ones knowledge of the world from a situated (subject)
position into a public idiom,offers us the greatest possibility of countering postmodern
social fragmentations and political disintegrations.¶ Feminists have learned well to identify and
articulate our "subject positions —we have become experts at politicizing the “I”that is produced
through multiple sites ofpower and subordination. But the very practice so crucial to
making these elements of power visible and subjectivity political may be partly at
odds with the requisites for developing political conversation among a complex and
diverse “we.” We may need to learn public speaking and the pleasures of public argument not
to overcome our situatedness , but in order to assume responsibility for our
situations and to mobilize a collective discourse that will expand them . For the political
making of a feminist future that does not reproach the history on which it is borne, we may need to loosen our
attachments to subjectivity, identity, and morality and to redress our underdeveloped
taste for political argument.
Anti-blackness isn’t an ontological antagonism – conflict is inevitable – mediating
that conflict is vital to alter contingent practices
Hudson, 13 [Peter, Political Studies Department, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg , South Africa, has been on the editorial board of the Africa Perspective: The
South African Journal of Sociology and Theoria: A Journal of Political and Social Theory and
Transformation, and is a member of the Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism, The
state and the colonial unconscious, Social Dynamics: A journal of African studies, 2013, p.
Taylor and Francis]
Thus the self-same/other distinction is necessary for the possibility of identity itself. There always has to exist an outside, which is also inside, to the
extent it is designated as the impossibility from which the possibility of the existence of the subject derives its rule (Badiou 2009, 220). But although
the excluded place which isn’t excluded insofar as it is necessary for the very possibility of inclusion and identity may be universal (may be
considered “ontological”), its content (what fills it) – as well as the mode of this filling and its reproduction – are
contingent . In other words, the meaning of the signifier of exclusion is not determined once
and for all: the place of the place of exclusion, of death is itself over-determined , i.e. the very framework
for deciding the other and the same, exclusion and inclusion, is
nowhere engraved in ontological
stone but is political and never terminally settled. Put differently, the “curvature of intersubjective space”
(Critchley 2007, 61) and thus, the
specific modes of the “othering” of “otherness” are nowhere decided in
advance (as a certain ontological fatalism might have it) ( see Wilderson 2008). The social does
not have to be divided into white and black, and the meaning of these signifiers is never necessary – because they are
signifiers. To be sure, colonialism institutes an ontological division, in that whites exist in a way barred to blacks – who are not. But this ontological
relation is really on the side of the ontic – that is, of all contingently constructed identities, rather than the ontology of the social which refers to the
ultimate unfixity, the indeterminacy or lack of the social. In this sense, then, the white man doesn’t exist, the black man doesn’t exist (Fanon 1968, 165);
and neither does the colonial symbolic itself, including its most intimate structuring relations – division is constitutive of the social, not the colonial
division. “Whiteness”
may well be very deeply sediment in modernity itself, but respect for the “ontological difference” (see Heidegger 1962,
sedimented that it becomes difficult even to identify the
very possibility of the separation of whiteness from the very possibility of order, but from this it does not follow that the
“void” of “black being” functions as the ultimate substance, the transcendental signified on which all
possible forms of sociality are said to rest. What gets lost here, then, is the specificity of colonialism, of
26; Watts 2011, 279) shows up its ontological status as ontic. It may be so deeply
its constitutive axis, its “ontological” differential. A crucial feature of the colonial symbolic is that the real is not screened off by the imaginary in the way
it is under capitalism. At the place of the colonised, the symbolic and the imaginary give way because non-identity (the real of the social) is immediately
inscribed in the “lived experience” (vécu) of the colonised subject. The colonised is “traversing the fantasy” (Zizek 2006a, 40–60) all the time; the void
of the verb “to be” is the very content of his interpellation. The colonised is, in other words, the subject of anxiety for whom the symbolic and the
imaginary never work, who is left stranded by his very interpellation. 4 “Fixed” into “non-fixity,” he is eternally suspended between “element” and
“moment” 5 – he is where the colonial symbolic falters in the production of meaning and is thus the point of entry of the real into the texture itself of
colonialism. Be this as it may, whiteness
and blackness are ( sustained by ) determinate and contingent
practices of signification; the “structuring relation” of colonialism thus itself comprises a knot of significations which, no matter
how tight,
can always be undone . Anti-colonial – i.e., anti-“white” – modes of struggle are not (just) “psychic” 6
involve the “ reactivation ” (or “de-sedimentation”) 7 of colonial objectivity itself. No matter how
sedimented (or global), colonial objectivity is not ontologically immune to antagonism. Differentiality, as
but
Zizek insists (see Zizek 2012, chapter 11, 771 n48), immanently entails antagonism in that differentiality both makes possible the existence of any
identity whatsoever and at the same time – because it is the presence of one object in another – undermines any identity ever being (fully) itself. Each
element in a differential relation is the condition of possibility and th e condition of impossibility of each other. It is this dimension of antagonism that
the Master Signifier covers over transforming its outside (Other) into an element of itself, reducing it to a condition of its possibility. 8 All
symbolisation produces an ineradicable excess over itself, something it can’t totalise or make sense of, where its production of meaning falters. This is
its internal limit point, its real: 9 an errant “object” that has no place of its own, isn’t recognised in the categories of the system but is produced by it –
its “part of no part” or “object small a.” 10 Correlative to this object “a” is the subject “stricto sensu” – i.e., as the empty subject of the signifier without
an identity that pins it down. 11 That is the subject of antagonism in confrontation with the real of the social, as distinct from “subject” position based
on a determinate identity. As we’ve seen under colonialism, (the real of) non-meaning is brought into the logic of the system – the colonised directly
experiences the void of non-identity as the meaning of its subject-position (or social “identity”). Under capitalism, “proletariat” designates this (nondesignated) “part of no part,” this object without a designated place, this non-totalisable excess produced by the system that can’t integrate it, however,
as it is not recognised in its categories. Note that under capitalism, the working class first has to separate itself from itself qua working-class before it
can become proletariat – it has to “go through” self-dissolution, whereas the colonised is always already “dissolving.” The colonised, unlike proletariat
(but like working-class), has a designated place, but in that place the colonised experiences the void of no identity – its specificity is to be a non-identity
recognised in the categories that produce it. It is an excess of non-meaning, but it is part of the system. In this way, colonialism integrates its “part of no
part” but, precisely, as part. The real doesn’t erode the system (from within), but is included as its ballast – the destitution of the colonised is the
condition of possibility of the plenitude of the coloniser. Under capitalism, the worker is provided with the imaginary identity of full ego-subject, and
this resists the effect produced when capitalism reaches its limit, the dislocation effect produced by the excess or underside of working-class identity,
which capitalist categories (subject worker) cannot absorb. 12 Under colonialism, the colonised is not provided with the imaginary identity of egosubject, the “identity” he is provided with gives him nothing to hang onto in the first place: his “steady state” is vacillation. But this “inclusion” of the
real is just how colonialism works: it deals with its real differently from capitalism. As long as the colonised is thrown into anxiety by his attachment to
whiteness (his two impossibles being sole coordinates of his “identity”), he remains integrated into the colonial symbolic: colonialism works by
“emptying” the colonised subject, whereas capitalism works by immersing the worker in an imaginary plenitude. Colonialism works via a different
(from capitalism) “placement” of the object that doesn’t have a place, the object small a. Colonialism immediately folds the point where it fades or stalls
into its own internal logic, whereas capitalism never stops interpellating workers as imaginary subjects. Does this mean the colonial symbolic is
immune from antagonism – i.e. where the real doesn’t disturb the system, how is the system to be disturbed, and transformed? In Laclau and Mouffe’s
(1985, chapter 3) terms, the difference between the system and its outside (which it can’t totalise, and which thus “antagonises” it) is directly embodied
in the coloniser/colonised split, difference; with the result that non-being is “domesticated” in a way it can’t be in capitalism, which remains stuck to
the imperative of reproducing the working class while keeping the excess of the proletariat at bay, outside the system. Colonialism seems to have done
the impossible: internalised “antagonism.” But note that in one sense, the position of the colonised is not different from that of the working class – both
have to separate 13 from their names (capitalist and colonial, respectively) as a necessary moment of their emancipation. The colonised has to separate
although always already dissolved, because his dissolution is itself still tied to the white master signifier. His non-identity is an identity from which he
must separate himself, just as the working class needs to separate itself from itself as a named in capitalist categories. In both cases, the subject is
pinned to a signifier (race, class) from which it must free itself. And in neither case does this operation of separation depend on anything but itself – it
has to be understood as an operation in which the subject sustains itself. 14 So in answer to the question posed above – the specific articulation of real
and symbolic in the colonial does not render the colonised incapable of designifiying and resignifying itself: the lack of an identity to start with on the
part of the colonised doesn’t disqualify it because the
very process of antagonistic subjectivisation can never
depend on , express any set of identities whatsoever.
Recognition and representation is key—legibility and coherence of struggles is best
able to shift political concerns
Ribot 14—Professor of Geography and Director of the Social Dimensions of Environmental
Policy Initiative at the University of Illinois
(Jesse, “Cause and response: vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene”, The Journal of Peasant Studies Vol. 41, Iss. 5, 2014,
dml)
Representation is one means by which individuals, households and groups can shape the political
economy that shapes their entitlements. Social movements are another (see Luhmann 2002, 138–41, Peet and
Hartwick 2009, 286–7). The criterion Fraser (2008) calls for is participatory parity. This does not mean symbolic forms of
participation without real influence over the projects in which people participate (Ribot 1996, Swyngedouw 2005, Mansuri and Rao
2012). The ability to influence authorities and the rules they make and implement produces the
very entitlements that spell security and create the flexibility that enables people to buffer themselves
against the unpredictable but expected stresses of life. Of course, to be functional, representation
requires powers – representatives need discretionary authority, means and resources to respond
to people's needs and aspirations; people must have resources and knowledge to act as citizens
to influence those who govern (Ribot et al. 2008). Poverty is not only a basis of vulnerability but it is also
disenfranchising – undermining the ability of the poor to influence those who govern.
To be represented is to be seen and responded to. To demand representation is to see the
possibility of response. Making vulnerability legible is part of the process of understanding
where those possibilities lie – the job of research and of voice. The legibility that churches and governments produce
is matched with occlusions and illusions that divert attention. They do not want citizens to see what they see – they
want to externalize causality so that citizens and victims displace their frustrations onto God and nature or turn them on
themselves. Citizens must insist that government sees, and they must show that citizens know their
rulers know. It is in this context where citizen sanctioning of government could result in response. To insist on security
requires knowledge of vulnerability, its causes, and the channels of possible redress. It requires
the material resources and time to analyse, organize and exercise the counter-power that
translates voice into response. The obvious question, with no obvious answer, is ‘how’ to create such
representation or parity given the asymmetries of power in society and the vesting of authority in science
and expertise.35
Polanyi (1944) described capitalism's double movement in which capital can destroy its very inputs – labour and land – but people
respond to the risks and damages by demanding protections. Fraser (2011) sees a third, emancipatory, movement, demanding that
both capitalism and social protections be subject to public scrutiny. Capitalism can be both damaging and emancipatory. The rules
that guide it and its effects need to be disciplined and subject to public judgment. Social and environmental protections too provide
shelter from the downsides of capitalism – e.g. the systems that generate and shroud risk. These social and environmental
protections – social security systems, fortress conservation and climate policies – also affect redistributions with negative and
positive consequences. Rights of recourse and representation must constantly be asserted and re-
asserted to make visible and to subject to public scrutiny the links between risk, cause,
responsibility and blame as they shape the interdependence that makes sustainability of life
possible (Butler 2009, 14, 23).
1AR
K
aff is a better step the Drug war mass incarceration entrenches racism
Alexander 6 [2006, Michelle Alexander is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of the
Civil Rights Clinic at Stanford Law School, “Federalism, Race, and Criminal Justice”, Chapter 16
in “Awakening from the Dream Civil Rights Under Siege and the New Struggle for Equal
justice”, pp. 219-228]
Most Americans today can look back and see slavery and Jim Crow laws for what they were-extraordinary and immoral forms of
social control used to oppress black and brown people. However, few believe that a similar form of social control exists today. What I
have come to recognize is that, contrary
to popular belief, a new form of social control does exist, as
disastrous and morally indefensible as Jim Crow -the mass incarceration of people of color.
There is an important story to be told that helps explain the role of the criminal justice system in resurrecting, in a new guise, the
same policies of racial segregation, political disenfranchisement, and social stigmatization that have long oppressed and controlled
all people of color, particularly African Americans. The story begins with federalism and its evolving methods of maintaining white
supremacy. A recent twist has been added; one that the civil rights community has failed to explain to those who do not read reports issued by
the Bureau of Justice Statistics or Supreme Court decisions. In 1980, 330,000 people were incarcerated in federal and state prisons7 - the vast
majority of whom were people of color. 8 Since then, the number has more than quadrupled to over 1.3 million.9 When prison and jail
populations are combined, the number jumps to over two million. 10 Although
African American men comprise less
than seven percent of the population, they comprise half of the prison and jail population.11 Today,
one out of three African American men is either in prison, on probation, or on parole.l2 Latinos
are not far behind. They are the fastest growing racial group being imprisoned, comprising 10.9 percent of all state and federal inmates
in 1985, and nineteen percent in 2003.13 We know how this happened. In 1980, the Reagan administration ushered in the
War on Drugs, another major backlash against civil rights. Although we typically think of the Reagan era backlash as
attacking affirmative action and civil rights laws, the War on Drugs is perhaps the most sweeping and damaging
manifestation of deliberate indifference-or downright hostility-to communities of color. This
war, which continues today, has nothing to do with solving drug abuse, and everything to do with
creating a political environment in which communities of color can be lawfully targeted for mass
incarceration.l4 Not unlike slavery and Jim Crow, mass incarceration provides the white elite with
social benefits . By segregating, incarcerating, and rendering unemployable huge segments of
the black and brown population, the racial hierarchy remains intact . By denying blacks an
equal and adequate education, barring them from certain forms of employment, and relegating
them to the worst neighborhoods, the white elite has ensured that whites will never occupy the bottom rung of
that hierarchy. Today, slavery and Jim Crow laws no longer exist, and affirmative action has opened doors to some, upsetting the
racial caste system. Mass incarceration, however, has emerged as a new, and arguably more durable, form of social controL's In
addition to protecting their social position, mass incarceration provides white elites with clear economic and political benefits. The
prison industry is hugely profitable. Marc Mauer's excellent book Race to Incarcerate documents the unprecedented expansion of
our criminal justice system and the ways that the race to incarcerate has devastated communities of color.16 He cites promotional
literature from the prison industry, one piece of which stated: "While arrests and convictions are steadily on the rise, profits are to be
made-profits from crime. Get in on the ground floor of this booming industry now." I? Prisons have become central to the
development of many small, predominately white, rural communities, not unlike the economic base formerly provided by
plantations in the rural South.18 Moreover, the Thirteenth Amendment, which bars slavery, provides an exception
for forced labor in prisons.'9 Corporations like Victoria's Secret, therefore, commonly use prison labor, paying
prisoners sweatshop wages.20 On the political front, felon disenfranchisement laws in many states, especially those
with large black populations, have tilted the scales of power in favor of the·white electorate . 21 In
fourteen states, a felon permanently loses the right to vote; in seven states, one in four black
men has been permanently disenfranchised.22 A total of 1.4 million black men, or thirteen percent of the black male adult
population, are either temporarily or permanently disen-franchised.23 The 2000 presidential election illustrated the
dramatic effects of felon disenfranchisement. Florida disenfranchises the most, including six hundred
thousand who have served their sentences and have been discharged from the criminal justice
system. Had those people been allowed to vote, Al Gore could have won Florida by more than
thirty-one thousand votes.24 To make matters worse, mass incarceration results in fewer
legislative seats for communities of color .25 Because the Census Bureau counts inmates as
living where they are incarcerated, rural communities that house large prisons gain a
disproportionate number of elected officials representing them in their state legislature and
Congress.26 Meanwhile, no one is representing the people of color behind bars, and the communities
from which they came lose representatives because their population has declined.27 Quickly, quietly,
and with virtually no political opposition, this new form of social control has become entrenched in the social,
political, and economic structure. Like slavery and Jim Crow, mass incarceration is predicated on the
inferiority of a certain class of people, defined largely by race. The genius of the new system is
that it successfully blames the victim; black and brown people are segregated, stripped of
political rights, and used for the economic benefit of propertied whites because they chose to engage
in criminal behavior. That the overwhelming majority of inmates lack a basic education and only ever earned monthly
incomes ofless than one thousand dollars goes unreported.28 Similarly, scant attention is given to the recent resegregation of
schools, and how staggering proportions of black youth graduating from their segregated, under-funded schools can barely read
(discussed in chapters 3 and 12).29 The school-to-prison track for black and brown youth reflects no racial bias, we are told; rather,
these kids have chosen a life of crime. We should not be confused or distracted by such rhetoric. While the strategies and mechanisms of
control have changed, the
goals and beneficiaries remain the same. The backlash against the Civil Rights
Movement has produced a new method of control on a scale that was unimaginable just twenty
years ago. And this system is built to last.