Last Update - Tue Oct 29 2024
WUDC 2023 | Partial Double Octofinals (PDO) OG | PM Law Shaurya Chandravanshi Introduction Every day of your life the state holds a gun to your head telling you exactly what to do. Every single aspect of your existence: the thing you can do in terms of when you set up your businesses who you sell your products to whether or not to allowed to act in a certain way in public through say public displays of affection or who you're allowed to marry is controlled by a state but you did not choose to vote would like to go in him All aspects of your life is controlled by the state Why is the framing relevant ? Why is this important? Can’ t leave the state you can’t opt out of the state system as a whole. So even if you go from one democracy you're on a democracy you are still stuck in it Even if you leave, you’re likely still stuck in a democracy Third of all it's because a huge amount of your life is forcefully controlled through the use of force which is physical violence, as a result you don't have a choice to do anything. Police, imprisonment, military …..i.e physical force is used if you disobey Impact Note the reparative obligation this creates if I control every part of your life probably I owe you a little bit of a say in how it's controlled. -to correct this injustice it makes sense to give you say as compensation The problem is constitutions don't give you that say because surprise surprise before a democracy exists no one can vote on anything so the Constitution didn't come from a vote it came from Elites who decided that something is important from their own platform as a result morally opposition has to stand behind an arbitrary part of time where people got to -Can be susceptible to circulatory argumentation Fine it was probably good for people that they created a democracy. The impact of this is you have to live with it every day of your life with no choice on how it works. Claim The barrier on your side to change this is too high First it requires super majorities which are effectively irrelevant in democracies which requires so many people to agree on it that to the point where you just have a significant amount of opposition towards it it cannot exist. Note the majority matters more than the super majority because it is more people there's a lower barrier which means that you have a lower barrier of having any discussion at all -In nations where can change the constitution (through referendum), it requires a supermajority (50% or more) which is practically impossible in most instances. Opposition parties can always rally support against it through usual means. but Second of all most constitutional Court decisions can't be changed at all in which case the interpretation of what your own life is is not in your hands as a result, morally I would argue that the representatives of the people, even if they are not perfect, even if the system is flawed are more important than the accord. That is the principle of capacity Now Two more practical arguments (1)First of all note what Constitutions are practically bad and represent conservative means why democracy is likely to change this and (2)Second of all while skips huge bioinformatical discussion first of all notified Constitutions are bad Four reasons First of all they're treated in a context where it's very difficult for you to gain political power. Often caused by the history of colonialism in places like Indonesia in places like India where it's difficult to even push for political changes in the first place as a result the people who lead the writing of the Constitution were educated, rich and protected enough to write those constitutions. At that time often they don't represent people on the ground as a result things like say the American Constitution focusing on property rights and gun rights but not having anything about women to the point where it literally says you know all men specifically Second of all it's about the beliefs in the past who are obviously not relevant to the beliefs today often they were socially conservative so even the court is fairly like applying these constitutional rules in India to 2018 women were classified as “chattel” in like there is literally property as a result of right often the courts are required to follow the Constitution that is bad in the first place Thirdly, people themselves are not solicited when making this Constitution and hence you have no intention or capacity to even know what they wanted in other words even if Ambedkar (Former minister of law and justice of India) are like literal gods and wanted a really good constitution in India they couldn't talk to the people in India because they didn't have the time to solicit their opinions. Democratic individuals do, as a result the Constitutional interpretations are made but by a court that decides like oh the government is excused because the Constitution says so, often is one that did not take the people's views into account and now the government has decided oh this voted party cannot do something because people in the past said it. Often you are doing something that is like socially conservative POI “um if it is that important that the people can do what they want would you allow doctors to refuse to give abortion so would you allow bakers because refuse to sell immigrant kids” Response no so the thing is right the state decides how that doctor lives the state decides what kind of education they get the state decides how much money you get and so you have a reciprocal obligation towards everyone else in your Society like I'm the reason why democracy is alive and so far as I've worked hard and give the money that keeps the economy flowing so it owes an obligation to me. So we have a collective arbitration within the state to decide what people can do we don't mean to switch to just fuck off and everyone do everything Also if you want the fiat to make everyone have perfect individual rights like good luck Okay Fourth reason as to why Constitutions are bad? like say in Malaysia and so on. As a result of that these constitutions don't represent people. States have the incentive to stay in power and so all forms of dissent i.e attempts to change the system were punished Why does the court do this very badly ? Why the government do it much better? First of all note that if the court is politicized in a way that doesn't actually interpret the Constitution we win, because the judges are interpreted for like 10 to 15 years right they're set for a huge amount of time so even if you want politicized judges they represent people in the past. Democratic governments represent people right now as a result it's more representative and thus is good. So if OPP there's going to be some kind of change in terms of representing the people from judges they're already losing because they're conceding our metric. Preemptive Weighing : If Opp’s counterfactual is that judges will be democratically elected (instead of the status quo) they ae admitting that Gov’s mech is better if the judges are perfectly independent here's why they like to be extremely bad Sub-Claim (1)first of all they're unlikely to change anything in terms of their interpretation Analysis They're probably going to stick to the most socially conservative interpretation possible because first of all they're highly biased towards following the Constitution that's how they've been educated for their whole life. They've been told this the most important document in their history so they're emotionally unlikely to disagree with the like perceptions of it Intuition-pump so that means if you like legalize gay marriage or try to push for something that makes civil unions legal between men i.e men can marry other men if the constitution has something about how homosexuality is wrong they will always spur on the side of socially conservative interpretations (2)but second of all the education is very like detached from the people on the ground so often that means are not very Democratic as a result we don't understand the issues that people face so even Roe Vs Wade was not perfectly good as an interpretation of the Constitution all right that's a different one sorry um even if some like abortion law that kind of goes against the idea of the Constitution which isn't exactly the perfect thing in the world the judges will now strike it down increases which are not America because for them it's important that they follow their own personal preferences or at least consider importantly they don't have people on the ground themselves face they don't have that empathy to work on (3)Third of all they're also elitists but it's really expensive to become a judgment it costs a lot of money to go to law school and so the decisions are bad Why would it be done well ? First of all because it's really really likely that people will have a huge amount of chance to vote and as a result of the fact that people who vote for you are good for you as a party so what they do not often increases because people want to like if you are the party like yes someone who works for the first time you're likely to the party they vote for because you're the only person they know as a first place so they likely have huge incentives to make sure people can vote in the first place increasing tournament Second of all, Minorities are a really important voting bloc it's really cheap to offer like poor people a certain amount of money so become very important in swinging elections especially since they're very easily campaign towards in the first place Claim but third of all the voting system itself is often very transparent people Analysis Can see what's going on the policies are on camera like on TV everyone can debate each other and so on but what is the impact on like political discussion this has which also feeds into all the events we talk about. Sub-Claim First of all, judicial decisions that might have happened in the past in a court which are perceived as something you cannot vote on it's not something that's a political discussion so now it changes Further-Analysis the discussion of abortion from where the Constitutional court is supported to a political one that forces you to make a decision on in the permanent context Impact life and death Secondly, if the court can actually be overturned and people disagree with it that means every decision the court makes including on transparency institutions is publicly discussed so if the court makes a bad decision or if the code is corrupt or politicized, people cannot see it and overturn it becomes a big part of campaign to the first place creating a checking mechanism on the court in the first place. Conclusion Know that courts having immense amount of power in deciding how every single person in the world lives on that I think they should have some kind of democratic checks and balances on that OG
Framing
First of all you cannot opt out of the state as a result of that often it's because of the high barriers like immigration literally the state can just deny you visa to exit and even keep you in the borders
Second of all even if you go out of the state
have power and got to create a state.
-The people never had the chance to contribute to the creation of constitution since democracy was enacted after the elites already wrote the constitution.
Analysis
-Could have been the main point of contention as “supermajority” is the status quo or counterfactual
Meta-debate: constitutions were perfect at the point of creation
is that the state had to survive so often it had a huge amount of authority and rules put in . So the Constitution doesn't have that much Freedom you can see to make sure people don't rebel forming a state at a point like say colonialism ending which is why often sedition laws are extremely strong. Things like say free speech is often significantly restricted in countries
Secondly,
Claim
Why are governments good
which means people feel like they can actually change it and not just depend on the Constitutional court so they get more involved because their decisions of
The people act as a check and balance mechanism to hold the courts accountable