Topic Analysis 3 Additional Readings 5

BFI 16 LD: QUALIFIED IMMUNITY

Resolved: The United States ought to limit qualified immunity for police officers.
File Author: Shaylee Tulane

Edited by: Kyle Cheesewright

Topic Analysis 3

Additional Readings 5

Value and Value Criterion 6

Values: 6

Retributive Justice: 6

Morality 6

Community safety 7

Criterions: 8

Consequentialism 8

Due Process 8

Reducing risks to individuals 9

Affirmative Case 10

Top of case: 10

Definitions: 11

Value and Criterion 12

Value Criterion: 13

Observation 1: 14

Qualified Immunity is based on reasonableness. 14

Contention 1: Qualified Immunities allow for police officers to be violent. 15

Subpoint A: Qualified immunity doesn’t allow for victims to receive justice. 15

Sub point B: Qualified immunity increases violence 17

Sub point C: limiting qualified immunity is key to reducing violence 20

Negative Case 21

Top of Case 21

Value and Criterion 22

Value criterion: 23

Contention 1: Qualified immunity increases police training. 24

Contention 2: Qualified Immunity is key to public safety 25

Definitions of Qualified Immunity: 27

Affirmative Evidence 28

A2: Public safety 28

A2: No police 30

A2: Qualified immunity prevents good policing 32

A2: Removing Police 33

Qualify immunity reduces reporting rates for domestic violence 34

Negative Evidence 36

A2: Filming police officers 36

A2: Qualified Immunity increases violence 37

A2: Qualified immunity reduces accountability. 39

Remove Absolute immunity. 39

Adding Attorney’s solves better 39

Topic Analysis

With the recent murders of Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, and 5 officers in Dallas, Texas, the topic about police and their strategies in keeping order could not be more relevant. This topic is asking debaters to consider a few key issues. First, are their institutional practices in Law enforcement that justify acts of violence? Second, how should policy makers best address the growing attention of police brutality? And third, what roles does law enforcement play in communities? This topic, unsurprisingly, has a large amount of literature behind it. But what is unique to this topic, is it is a clash of legal history and present activist agendas. The debater can do one of two things, which is either outlined below or written out, either one, they role play as a policy maker to generate possible solvency to the issue or to take a more generalized approach of talking about what is happening and how the topic either discourages it or encourages it.

From legal standpoint, qualified immunity is understood to be “Qualified immunity immunizes an officer from liability and suit unless the officer’s conduct violated clearly

established law of which an objectively reasonable officer would have known. [An] officer’s qualified immunity defense when the officer can show that an objectively reasonable officer would have relied on the lawyer’s advice to conclude that her intended conduct would not violate clearly established constitutional law” (Dawson, 2016, p.2). Qualified immunity therefore allows for police officers to not be held liable for actions that they take while on duty. Though there is some gray area for some scholars about off-duty officers, many agree that police officers who qualify for this immunity ought to be on-duty.

However, what debaters should be more aware about the idea of qualified immunity is not the idea it prevents officers from being held accountable for their actions, but rather the language of “reasonableness.” The idea of reasonableness is extremely vague and is difficult to pin down the exact bright line of what is considered reasonable and unreasonable. In addition, “reasonableness” does not account for racist practices within either a police department or in an individual officer. If a debater can hone in on what it means to be reasonable and unreasonable, I think it will provide a more nuanced debate on how do certain practices become institutionalized.
The last thing that debaters should consider when thinking through the resolution is what does it mean to limit? For the affirmative the word limit could allow the affirmative to find instances in which qualified immunity causes harm and would remove the immunity for those cases. “Limits” in the resolution allows the affirmative to parametrize the affirmative. While debating on the negative, debaters should be aware of the possibility for the affirmative to be very specific to one issue. Debaters should develop answers to and possible contentions to specific away qualified immunity can be used.
For the affirmative side, there are several strategies that one could take. For this file, the affirmative takes a more traditional approach of human dignity, justice and ending discrimination. There has been a lot of research on the link between the idea of “reasonable nature” and racial practices, but for the affirmative it is imperative that the debater to delve more deep in the exact links between how “reasonableness,” effects communities at large. But something to possibly considered for the affirmative, is not only the issue of police violence, but also how qualified immunity might allow for police officers to ignore certain crimes and or not investigate crimes. However, the negative has a couple of different ways to approach the negative. Either the negative could either argue that qualified immunity helps police do their job more effectively or they can argue that police should be gotten rid of entirely. If you choose latter strategy the negative should be aware of the possible affirmative argues the negative is not clashing with the negative. However, it could present an interesting conversation is the necessary function of policing. When debating this topic, the negative should to be aware of how they structure their cases so it is not merely defensive. The negative approach in this file is to advocate that qualified immunities allow for better policing and de-escalation of violence.
There are a few sets of value and value criterion pairs that debaters can go for. But for more nuanced debates, debaters should try and stay away from the generic value and value criterions. Since this topic is more ground in real life events, the value and value criterion could be chances to be more specific. But the biggest question that the value and criterion on both sides of the debates need to be answering is how do we ensure public safety? Though some debates will come down to what is the most just thing to do, each debate will use the values to answer that fundamental question.
The biggest barrier for both sides of the debate will be the polarizing nature of the topic. Since police brutality is a large and highly discuss issue it makes it difficult for debaters to generate offense without others putting their own opinions into the mix. Debaters ought to be aware of both sides of the debate of police brutality and possible generate ideas on how to navigate them. For many debaters it maybe more accessible to not say that policing is always already bad, but rather to say that there could be some changes to address some cops. This type of language at least doesn’t turn away judges who are on either side of the spectrum, and at least gives both sides of the debate to be heard.