“Resolved: That judicial activism is unjust in a democracy.”
Or, does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
When last seen, sort of, this was, “Resolved: Judicial activism is necessary to protect the rights of American citizens.” So what’s different? What have the secret cabals of the Vatican done to a topic still reverberating through the hallways since its last very recent incarnation? Well, there’s one big thing. It’s no longer set in America.
Uh-oh.
The best way to understand political activism is to realize that it is what judges do when you disagree with them. I go back to all my readings preparing for this topic last year, and the first thing that came up was the lack of a neutral definition of JA. It just doesn’t exist. In the common parlance, JA is a pejorative term, as compared to “judicial restraint,” which sounds oh so civilized by comparison. So, on face, the resolution implies that, resolved, some indeterminable thing that is normatively perceived as bad, is—wait for it—bad. Rule number one in Texas for Memorial Day could arguably be simply to draw aff.
Absent that (and it’s hard to dismiss, but we’ll try), if we merely wish to uphold the original intentions, then whose original intentions? The framers? The ratifiers? I mean, even before the Constitution is ratified, there’s already a practical question of whose intent it allegedly summarizes. I enjoy Scalia’s writings on originalism, but Nino is also by many definitions the epitome of the activist judge, attempting to overturn virtually everything that comes his way (look up the numbers on this, oh ye of little faith).
What the original topic wanted to do, and of course didn’t do, was examine the role of SCOTUS. SCOTUS itself has trouble framing the debate for examining the role of SCOTUS, so for once, it’s hard to simply blame Rippin’ Ripon for a stinker topic. And I do admit for voting for the old NFL topic, if for no other reason than to explore all the aspects of the subject, which was new to me, and which is probably why all the other coaches voted for it at the time. It was educational, if not necessarily competitively sound.
But apparently CatNats exists in a magic bubble where the NFL topic never happened, and they intend not simply to repeat history but to make it worse. Hard as it was to argue the NFL’s JA—if I remember correctly, of the 1,238,273 rounds conducted on that topic around the country during its two months of life, exactly 3.8 were resolutional—at least that was guided by the US Constitution. But what, pray tell, is CatNats guided by? Democracy.
OMG, as they say in the secret cabals at the Vatican. We couldn’t find a way to argue this rez when it was about one very clearly defined polity, with a mature constitution and 200 years of stare decisis and SCOTUS history to guide us, and now we’re going to argue about it for all polities, provided they’re “democratic.’ Who will be the first to wonder how this works with British law? The hair on my head (that’s hair, singular), is standing on end, milord. Italy. Iraq. India? The common threads are… ineffable. And those are just some of the “I” countries.
In other words, we’ve got to tip our hats to the Cats. They’ve done it again. They’ve taken a bad topic and made it worse. Not only that, it’s a topic so recent that there’s absolutely no excuse; they can’t claim that they didn’t know. No doubt the same motley crew who threw out the Pfffft coin toss is behind this madness. Someone, somewhere, thinks this is a good idea.
Thank God El Cranko Grabo is going and not me. My brain hurts already. On the bright side, there’s not much need to brainstorm. Robbie’s already been down this road, and Noah is as enlightened as anyone on the subject. You, if you are heading to Houston, just won’t want to be around El Cranko as he bloviates on this. Endlessly. My advice is to do what I’m doing. Stay home. Play golf. Barbecue some ribs. The alternative—a weekend in Texas with Noah Cranko and the worst topic of the year—is too dreadful for all but the bravest among us to contemplate.
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