A0tu Debate on A nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security

[death11284]

Sample Case (my shit case basically, in a hurry, want an example):

Value:
Justice

Defined as: Violating no right or obligation by Black's law dictionary

This is the only logical definition for justice because this definition is objective versus subjective. Since all other definition are subjective, and justice is not universal you must look to the obligations and rights present in the social contract. Since it's the United States we are talking about we must look to the obligations and rights of the United States, set forth by the social contract.

Value Criterion:
Preservation of the Social Contract

Since the definition of justice says that we must look at justice as violating no right or obligation, we must look to the rights and obligations set forth by the United States. These are set forth by the multitude of social contracts within the United States, the most prominent of which is the Constitution.

Contention 1:
The United States has a Duty to it's people

[really long analysis]

Contention 2:
Security is intrinsically not upheld if rights are violated

[long analysis]


Those are REALLY long contention tag lines but you get the idea..I'll finish later
So I was talking about it awhile back, and everyone seemed to think it was a good idea. So finally, here it is, the official Debate thread. The resolutions will change monthly (so march 1 it will change)

Here is the sample format for a "case" I'll make one for this and post it as an example a bit later.

Value - this is what you are trying to achieve throughout your case, generally abstract. (ie justice, fairness etc) provide a reason as to why this in particular is what we should strive to achieve.

Value Standard - This is how you decide whether the value is being achieved
(for example, utilitarianism achieves my value of justice because utilitarianism takes into account all factors).

Contentions/Main Points: Basically these are the taglines of your case, say how they impact your standard, and say why they are important (impact).

Evidence: to prove correlations, statistics, etc. are definitely helpful. Cite all evidence, political science evidence really doesn't matter.

Definitions: define any word which is important to your case (such as justice) and say WHY it's the best definition. To achieve justice you have to know what justice is.

Resolution 1/31/08:
Resolved: A nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security.

Choose a Side and discuss.


This has been debated to death here so it's good In my opinion, but in this organized format the debates themselves will make a lot more sense..