I don't think areas is that scary if we pick the right ones. The potential solvency advocate literature will limit out a ton of cases automatically (if you're going for an "overrule in the area of" type thing), and if there's a direction other than just overrule, that could limit it significantly.

I've been intrigued by the possibility of a topic that intersects issues of plenary power, executive authority, the war on terror and immigration. It's still a bit broad, but a topic like "The SCOTUS should substantially curtail /limit executive authority in one or more of the following areas: immigration, the war on terror" seems to be a reasonable start. You could even limit the scope of the ruling by specifying the direction (e.g. "ruling that foreign nationals have X right" or something or other).

As long as the areas relate a little bit, and go in the same direction (liberal or conservative, most likely liberal for immigration), then there's tons of generic neg ground that will apply no matter what, and case hits will catch up if the topic is big.

-Chris Crowe
 

I’m also rather concerned by the idea of areas.
The Supreme Court could limit executive powers in the area of the war on terror in any number of ways: it could overrule legislation, executive orders, or administrative decisions that establish executive authority on constitutional or procedural grounds. It could rule that a particular practice of the executive branch or any of its elements is unconstitutional or prohibited by legislation. The constitutional grounds that it could rule on also vary widely: it could rule on fourth amendment grounds, on separation of powers grounds, on habeas corpus grounds to name a few possibilities. I think that this problem is probably not isolated to the example that Chris cites, but is likely an issue for any “area” topic.
There are many possibilities for affirmatives even within the limits of overturning a single case. For instance, the Supreme Court could overturn Gonzalez v. Oregon by upholding one of several defenses for Ashcroft’s interpretation of the CSA (http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-623.ZS.html).
I also think that the only sort of topic likely to encourage debates about the LEGAL merits of particular court decisions (which is presumably a meaningful goal of a courts topic) is a topic that lists specific cases, since it is only by debating specific decisions that debates can occur about the legal reasoning behind the decisions. (Was the Supreme Court legally justified in its holding in Gonzalez v. Oregon, for instance?) Areas are much vaguer than specific cases, and an areas topic cannot attach specific reasoning to the decisions that the court might be asked to make by affirmatives unless the topic approaches the length of a typical Supreme Court opinion, an areas topic is unlikely to provoke debate about the interpretive questions that are at the heart of most of the Supreme Court’s decisions.

Jonathan Gingerich
 

I'd like to point people in the direction of my plenary power paper for examples of how to write an areas topic:

The United States Supreme Court should substantially limit the plenary power of the Executive or Congress (by overruling one of its decisions) in one or more of the following areas of the law: immigration, foreign affairs, public lands, U.S. territories.

This would provide plenty of Aff flexibility (lots of variation within each of these categories, especially immigration and foreign affairs, including race and other individual rights cases) but also plenty of Neg ground with links from overruling a decision, links from limiting plenary power, etc.

It's just a template, but I do think a good one -- it would force clash because of the unavailability of the agent CP, and it would still provide plenty of good, case-based Neg ground....

I hope it gets some discussion tomorrow.... (and thanks to Galloway for the shout out, which I read about in Slusher's fine committee notes).