"It could mean a lot of things. Debates would have to resolve that question."
It's a reasonable expectation that the actions taken by the topic committee should have an intended effect on the experience of the debaters. There will, of course, always be a disconnect between what the topic committee intends and what actually happens, but that doesn't mean we should operate under the strategy of "we don't really know what were doing but let's find out!" I'm not looking for exact play by plays of every single speech that will happen on the topic, just a general idea of how you're thinking this will go down.
It will have an effect. Attempts to micromanage those effects, however, have met with general dissatisfaction. There's a good argument for letting the community decide what their resolution means, which I believe. This isn't just deliberate opacity on my part.
I hope my comments successfully steer between the Scylla of overly precise prediction and the Charybdis of your caricature. I just want to leave space for people who may alternate ideas of how these debates proceed, and insert a small caveat about the futility of overly detailed prediction.
Finally, it is just not really the committee's
first job to dictate the terms of debates. It's their job to provide the community with
meaningful choice, which is related to but clearly different from straightforward management of debates.
YOU made a claim that it's the best route to legal debates. Can you please explain why that is and what you're talking about?
I did, in an edit. I'll run through examples:
A. Citizens United was wrongly decided <- legal, debated in courtrooms
B. Citizens United should be overturned <- not legal, normative policy question
A. War powers should be restricted <- legal
B. The USFG should restrict war powers <- not legal
The relative desirability of a constitutional amendment is not a legal question. It would be irrelevant to the questions posed by A, but all-too-relevant to the questions posed by B.
"There was a resolution like this before, in 93-94. (Debate didn't explode.)"
a) Debate was very different in 93/94.
b) I think it's unlikely that anything will cause debate to explode, but if we're looking for a change in the resolution I'd just like the voters to understand what that change is trying to accomplish and how it accomplishes it.
I think I provided that, although it was in edits.
"I think that teams who prefer to discuss the topic without defending a course of action by the USFG could potentially find more space to do so under such a resolution."
That much is clear. How and why?
Certain versions of passive voice topics would not include the USFG as an actor?
"Of course, teams invested in discussing policy proposals could and would do so under such a resolution. Almost all CINC debates were traditional policy debates. There would be a negative T argument that "restriction" means "codified restriction" as well."
If that's true then I'm not sure what's changed. It seems like in policy vs policy debates people will act as if the resolution says USFG should. In non-policy vs non-policy debates the teams will not focus on what would happen if the USFG acted. In policy vs non-policy debates the neg can still say framework (especially if they can say restriction means codified restriction) What's different?
Maybe nothing, but if some people think it's meaningful, inclusion wins in a push, certainly?
The negative can certainly argue framework, and say that the negative should be forced into a non-resolutional constraint. Such arguments, though, help focus the debate on the normative question of what debate should be - as opposed to topicality, in which the negative can simply defer to the more straightforward question of relevance.
If a team wished to discuss the broader question of the legitimacy of presidential war powers, as opposed to a specific legislative roadmap for their rollback, I certainly think they'd have more space to do so under these resolutions. The negative would still have a framework argument, but they would have to make a more concerted effort to defend their impacts than they would in a topicality debate. Topicality (often) allows the negative to sidestep these impact questions entirely.
I hope that clarifies.