Ask The Panel: Jury Nullification
Resolved: Resolved: In the United States criminal justice system, jury nullification ought to be used in the face of perceived injustice.
To help you prepare for this year’s Nov/Dec topic, we have John Scoggin and Rebar Niemi ready to field any questions you have. Think of it like an “ask me anything,” so get your questions ready and have plenty of them! We will respond in the comments section below. Take a look at our panelists:
John Scoggin
John is a co-director of Premier, coach for Loyola in Los Angeles and private coach. His students have earned 77 bids to the Tournament of Champions in the last 7 years. He’s coached 2 TOC finalists, a TOC quarterfinalist, and champions of many major national tournaments across the country.
John has specific expertise in economics, policy-style argument, and strategy.
Rebar Niemi
Rebar is a former TOC elim contestant and a serial private coach — he now works with Dulles NB, Gig Harbor AB, and Millard North GB. His students have earned many bids and won many things.
Rebar has specific expertise in philosophy and kritik-style argument.
Post your questions below!
18 Comments
Kritikal negatives?
That beat the perm?
What util ground is there lit on?
At first glance the util ground on this topic is… not great. I suspect that many of the util arguments on the topic will stem from either the legal system as a whole being good or bad, something roughly following the form legal system produces X result, jury nullification does not, X is good/bad (depending on what side you are on.) Areas I can see being relevant are the war on drugs and the mass incarceration associated with it, and perhaps compliance with international law. The short of it is that util links on this topic are not quite as obvious, people are going to have to be creative to get it to work.
What are some good Ks on this topic that are not K affs?
My assumption is that you are referencing the fact that there is a lot of literature out there that critiques the legal system and that literature seems to most logically fit the affirmative on the topic. While there are certainly other Ks out there, the first one that comes to mind would be identity focused positions that reject the notion that nullification will work in their favor, I think holding the idea that legal Ks are only for the aff is not quite right. If we conceive of the aff as a K with nullification as the alt, other K alternatives that compete with nullification (perhaps something that doesn’t use the legal system at all) seem like good ways to subsume the offense of the aff.
Would a Nietzsche aff work on this topic? More specifically, the framework could be will to power and the contention would be jury nullification is a rebellion against the legal system? (And then some cards about how law and justice and fairness are just slave morality etc.)
Don’t know why it isn’t letting me reply to specific comments but I’ll aggregate. As an aside another term for jury null I’ve seen in some of the lit is jury review (like judicial review) and a lot of lit says it was intentionally built into the system by the founding fathers to serve as recourse to injustice.
1. The perm debate for most Ks will likely center around whether you can solve the harms of the legal system within the legal system. Aff has to win reform or action within system is sufficient, easiest perm is probably do the aff then the neg but it also begs the question of whether doing the aff is a good idea. Statism / CLS / CRT / anti-blackness can easily generate disads to the perm, but I’d back up a K with case neg arguments so you can win that the alt is preferable to perm because the perm still links to case turns / etc.
2. Util ground is like jnull = higher likelihood of systemic reform or jnull solves for x harm on the aff, on the neg it’s probably like courts clog/jnull creates x harm. You might be able to win bench trials as a neg advocacy is preferable to jury trial.
3. I am a firm believer that there are multiple decent warrants for why master’s tools won’t demolish master’s house. If jnull is indeed intrinsic to American cjs then why hasn’t it solved endemic problems already? That seems like a good start to any discussion of perm debate or what Ks you can go for. Also there’s probably some good k args about how perception of injustice tracks dominant order, and then there’s always the old justice is bad kinda thing (hagglund Derrida type thing). Schlag definitely negates too, progressive fallacy that the system can solve itself and isn’t built on violence and injustice in the first place.
4. That particular nietzsche aff sounds like it is bad bc jury null is definitely pro law. Now a will to power argument contested to the legal subject might be able to affirm. Look for specific ev to juries and null before you write some super generic nietzsche aff that treats any exercise of power as overcoming.
Can you be my coach
$ <3 $
Are you going to be at the gig harbor tournament on the 6th-7th
Also this might seem kind of literal but there’s probably a good ableist critique of perception to be had. That likely doesn’t end up permable. Another link on that story would be notion of “a jury of your peers” implying either generic subjectivity, comparativity of experience, or the notion that disability can be wholly understood and subsumed into public consciousness
What Aff/Util plans do you see? I’m talking slightly more nuanced than traditional advantage areas?
So the question is how can one parametricize.
1. Different perceived injustices. This seems definitely topical to me. If I say “nullify cases of nonviolent drug offenders” that seems to affirm. So choosing some subset of crimes that you identify as a perceived injustice (do you have to read polls? idk) could be a decent plan.
2. Selecting down the type of jury. This is a sketchier option in my opinion and I don’t really know what the lit base is like.
3. Maybe if you want you can identify a single case that is currently being tried to nullify, and make arguments for issue focus, synecdoche, perhaps even emotional/narrative appeal. This could be a very critical route, or it could be a more straight up position with nuanced ev and theory to back it up.
WHAT ARE GREAT VALUES FOR AFF AND NEG?
I am trying to argue equality for aff and i would like some advice. Should i provide a couple of suspects in my case or should i not?
Thanks
Three pieces of advice on values especially for state level competition.
1. Choose things that are at the very heart of what makes things good or bad. They’ll be broad and sometimes simplistic sounding at first. It’s up to you to make them fleshed out in the judges mind. You don’t need lots of cards, you need actual coherent explanation that replaces the function of meta ethics and other more technical framework arguments without recourse to jargon or complexity. Equality is a good start for a case theme, but what actually makes equality good. Could be a bunch of diff things or something really specific. To me it seems more like an instrumental value than an intrinsic one but it can be justified to be either.
2. Run topic contexted values whenever possible. Whether that means something in the lit or derived from the wording is up to you. Ought is usually morality, and then you define what we ought to do in the rest of your framework aka value and criterial analysis. You can “win on the value.” what that actually means is extending a framework argument that is embedded in your v-vc and is extended to exclude or turn the NC. Winning on the value is an inexact but meaningful to some phrase. I don’t recommend using it but I recommend recognizing what you can actually do with “the value.”
3. It is a strategic choice to engage the value debate. If you just run morality you can either concede or subsume any other value on the topic (90% of the competition will value morality or a subset you can coopt). You can also choose to strategically engage in the value debate, which is just a framework debate with fuzziness
Do you think a K of the phrase “perceived” because it delegitimizes and trivializes the suffering of those abused by the criminal justice system is viable on the neg?
What negs do you think will be good on the topic on state level? Hobbes Biopower? Also where could I get some blocks?
You can “get blocks” by cutting cards. Plus PDT briefs come out tomorrow, so that’s another option.