Rumsfeld V. FAIR is a recent case dealing with gay rights. The court held that the Soloman Bill was legit. It banned federal funding to law schools that barred military recruiters due to discriminatory practices against the GLBT community.
 

I would like to see at least one wording option addressing plenary power--I think that LH's wording paper on the topic makes a strong case for its inclusion. It is also a way to placate those of us who voted for the EP/WOT topic ;)

Another area worth considering is sovereign immunity. I have never done any programmatic research on the subject, but have found it intersecting a number of interesting legal controversies (like the Feres Doctrine).

David Cram Helwich
Macalester College
 

Don't forget Third Amendment rights.
 

i think that the death penalty as an area or a case like gregg should be seriously considered. people my age (those who will be seniors next year) have never debated the death penalty, and it's an area that has both a good amount of interesting ground for the aff but very few important cases in the past several decades (so it could work either as an area or a case).
 

i think that the topic committee should strongly consider the death
penalty (or gregg) for an area (or a case). i know there might be
some concern about the fact that there was a death penalty aff on the
treaties topic, but i think that it would be different enough on a
domestic topic to warrant consideration. also, the vast majority of
people debating next year have never debated the death penalty. i
think that the death penalty/gregg would be a good area/case because
there is a large degree of diversity in possible advantage areas (from
rights to race to relations).

i also think that a presidential powers area/case (probably korematsu
or curtiss-wright, because they seem to go in the better direction for
the aff and because they seem to be very big decisions) should be
strongly considered. it would be a good area for teams that want to
be able to read huge affs, but could also be an area for more critical
teams to find an aff.

i like the idea of morrison and milliken (or equivalent areas) being
included - those areas would be good for teams who want to either go
critical or policy, and also also are just very interesting areas for
discussion of social issues.

i think that first amendment cases - religious freedom, pornography,
hate speech, etc - would be really hard to include in a topic with any
other cases, because these decisions seem generally to be the opposite
direction of the other proposed areas because they limit
constitutional rights. i also just think that we're not going to get
to the 'heart' of a first amendment debate no matter what happens
(short of the topic being an array of exclusively first amendment
cases), but all of the smaller cases (like just rumsfeld v fair) don't
have much diversity in impact areas.

obviously, "increasing constitutional protections" areas would work
well together - criminal rights and first amendment rights, including
religious freedom and pornography, seem like a logical group of areas
that work well together, but i don't know if i would like a topic that
has a "theme" for the areas/cases beyond just supreme court cases. a
topic in which every aff has to increase bill of rights protections
might get us all to learn a lot about the bill of rights, but i don't
think that it would be interesting enough to sustain a year of
debates.
i think instead the committee should try to include cases that
represent a variety of interesting and contemporary issues. i guess
interesting is in the eye of the beholder, but there has been some
discussion of areas that would allow for a wide range of advantages
(like morrison or casey).

thank you so much for your help,

caitlin ryan