I'd say "statute and/or ordinance" to access the majority of the interesting 1st amendment cases. Most of the key cases aren't necessarily statutes (depending if you define statutes as including ordinances).
 

or "law" - so as to limit out injunctions that violated the first amendment, but include all else.
 

another proposal -- that the resolution specify "The USSC should increase/decrease the protection of free speech by overruling one or more of its decisions...." -- specifying in that way prevents the Aff from ruling on jurisdictional or some other grounds when it overrules the precedent.
 

you can also specify "the First Amendment protection of non-commercial speech" to limit out the commercial speech cases
 

Anjali,

I am aware that many, though not all (see Smelko's paper), legal professionals express concern about this phrase. The comment that I would repeat is that the concern about the scope of an overrule is reasonable and has to be weighed againt the desire to write in specific directional phrases for each area.

There has been a lot of concern that we as a committee tend to overscript the topic and I think the concern about adding directional phrases for each case is the exact problem we are worried about.

I would note that the concerns about overrule from those legal professionals do not reject overrule, but they want a directional or content-based modifier. The general reluctance to take that modified step is a lot based in concerns about how to balance ground. There has been a lot of concern about recent committee's reluctance to allow any meaningful affirmative selection of cases.

We need your input and I suspect that as we approach the limiting caselists we will be considering this approach. I hope if we make this jump, we are judicious in the way we approach these phrases.
 

The question of which is a more limiting topic, list or area, is only addressed by the resolutional wording of action - ie, either option will result in the caes being overturned on many different basis unless the action step is restricted and defined in the resolution.

In my opinion the list or area are equally broad unless the action step is limited.

JDK
 

JDK is right. Affirmatives on this topic are not going to be about the case that is being overruled -- they are going to be about the new rule the Aff puts into effect. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 500 cases the Aff can overrule - what matters is if there are limits on the rule the Aff can put into effect.
 

JDK is right. Affirmatives on this topic are not going to be about the case that is being overruled -- they are going to be about the new rule the Aff puts into effect. It doesn't matter if there are 5 or 500 cases the Aff can overrule - what matters is if there are limits on the rule the Aff can put into effect.