Tournament: Wake | Round: 6 | Opponent: MSU RT | Judge: Brossman
ERROR

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

Legal restraints motivated by conflict narratives cause endless intervention and WMD warfare

John Morrissey, Lecturer in Political and Cultural Geography, National University of Ireland, Galway; has held visiting research fellowships at University College Cork, City University of New York, Virginia Tech and the University of Cambridge. 2011, "Liberal Lawfare and Biopolitics: US Juridical Warfare in the War on Terror," Geopolitics, Volume 16, Issue 2, 2011

In the ’biopolitical nomos’ of camps and prisons in the Middle East and elsewhere
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legally sanctioned military violence and to maximize its ’operational capacities of securitization’.
A bigger question, of course, is what the US military practices of lawfare
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who "participate~s~ in discussions of strategy and tactics".118
The US military’s liberal lawfare reveals how the rule of law is simply another securitization
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necessitated by the perennial political economic ’need’ to securitize volatility and threat.
Conclusion: enabling biopolitical power in the age of securitization  
"Law and force flow into one another. We make war in the shadow of law, and law in the shadow of force" – David Kennedy, Of War and Law 124  
Can a focus on lawfare and biopolitics help us to critique our contemporary moment’s proliferation
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even sometimes embracing it – as a tactic of statecraft and war".128
Since the inception of the war on terror, the US military has waged incessant
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’make live’ and the anticipating and management of life’s uncertain ’future’.
Some of the most key contributions across the social sciences and humanities in recent years
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toxic combination’ of US geopolitics and biopolitics defining the current age of securitization. 

Legal restraints guarantee increasing public resistance and executive secrecy

Michael J. Glennon 14, I-law prof at Tufts, National Security and Double Government, http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf

If Bagehot’s theory is correct, the United States now confronts a precarious situation.
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stories, Holmes said, if people do not believe in ghosts.511
It might be supposed at this point that the phenomenon of double government is nothing
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administrative state-cum-technocracy?515 Why is national security different?
There is validity to this intuition and no dearth of examples of the frustration confronted
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are in no position to assess. Why is national security any different?
It is different for a reason that I described in 1981: the organizations in
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its name can permit that power to escape the control of the people.
It might also be supposed that existing, non-Madisonian, external restraints pose
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when one flies off the telephone wire, they all fly off.524
More importantly, the premise—that a vigilant electorate fueled by a skeptical press
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Madisonian checks, and the internal Madisonian checks only minimally constrain the Trumanites.
Some suggest that the answer is to admit the failure of the Madisonian institutions,
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again provide the popular check" that they were intended to provide.532
That, however, is exactly what many thought they were doing in electing Barack
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bul its enduring ambilion is lo become, in reality, less Madisonian.
It is not clear what precisely might occur should Bagehot’s cone of government "fall
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forms and familiar symbols, takes on the substance of a silent directorate.
Another possibility, however, is that the fall to earth could entail consequences that
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to act against perceived authoritarian tendencies by leaving open the vault of secrecy.
A smaller, less reliable pool of potential recruits would hardly be the worst of
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governmental officials’ assertions on national security threats are inclined to extend their skepticism.
Governmental assurances concerning everything from vaccine and food safety to the fairness of stock-
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those assumed to be undertaken merely through bureaucratic inertia or lack of imagination.
The government itself, meanwhile, could not be counted upon to remain passive in
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that might be taken to prevent the entire structure from falling to earth.

Vote neg to debase the aff’s reliance securitized law in favor of democratic restraints on the President

Stephanie A. Levin 92, law prof at Hampshire College, Grassroots Voices: Local Action and National Military Policy, 40 Buff. L. Rev. 372

In this sense, what is important about federalism is not that it locates power
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Only in this dynamic tension does the best protection for the citizenry lie.

2NC

Circumvention

Glennon—-plan is circumvented—the military bureaucracy is too complex, controls information, and resists checks on accountability

This is logical—the CIA SHREDED torture memos and then almost a decade later STOLE DOCUMENTS from a secure committee in Congress—nobody can oversee them

Especially on TK

Alston, professor – NYU Law, ’11
(Philip, 2 Harv. Nat’l Sec. J. 283)

Despite the existence of a multiplicity of techniques by which the CIA might be held
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turn now to examine the feasibility and desirability of pursuing such an option.

True of a drone court

Greenwald 13 (Glenn, The Gaurdian, 3 May 2013, "The bad joke called ’the FISA court’ shows how a ’drone court’ would work", http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/03/fisa-court-rubber-stamp-drones, ZBurdette)

From the start, the Fisa court was a radical perversion of the judicial process
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lack of real independence, the court itself was housed in the DOJ.
And, and was totally predictable, the court barely ever rejected a government request for eavesdropping. From its inception, it was the ultimate rubber-stamp court, having rejected a total of zero government applications - zero - in its first 24 years of existence, while approving many thousands. In its total 34 year history - from 1978 through 2012 - the Fisa court has rejected a grand total of 11 government applications, while approving more than 20,000.
Despite how obedient and compliant this court always was, the Bush administration decided in
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in essence, simply legalized the warrantless eavesdropping scheme of the Bush administration.
That new Fisa law vested vast new surveillance powers in the US government to spy
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no reforms, and Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, complied.
One of the provisions of the new Fisa law requires the DOJ annually to disclose to Congress the number of eavesdropping applications it files and the number approved and rejected by the Fisa court. Earlier this week, that disclosure was provided to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the year 2012, and this is what it reported:
Let’s repeat that: "of 1,789 applications, the FISA court did
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, "did not deny any applications in whole, or in part".
What makes all of this worse is just how extreme the US government is "
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rubber-stamping virtually anything and everything the government wants to do.
There are many reasons that explain this judicial obeisance. Part of it is fear
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unimpeded. These shockingly lopsided statistics attest to the success of this design.
This is significant not only because it means there is no real check on the
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. The New York Times Editorial Page has been advocating this for years.
The rationale offered is the same as what was used to justify the Fisa court
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secret to a court before the suspect is placed on a kill list."
But does anyone believe that a "drone court" would be any less of
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counsel Jeh Johnson put it in a speech last month discussing this proposal:
"Its proceedings would necessarily be ex parte and in secret, and, like
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it almost never rejects an application. How long before a ’drone court’ operating

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

NSA reform is in a narrow Congressional sweet spot

David Hawkings, Roll Call, 3/25/14, Hill’s Bipartisan Deadlock on Phone Records May Be Easing, blogs.rollcall.com/hawkings/obama-nsa-reform-plan-could-ease-congressional-deadlock-on-spying/2/

Eight months ago, in one of its most important and fascinatingly nonpartisan votes of
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improbability of bipartisan agreement on hot-button issues in an election season.
"I recognize that people were concerned about what might happen in the future with
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a deal based on the ideas from the House and the White House.

The plan’s fight over authority crowds it out

John Grant, Minority Counsel for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 8/13/2010, Will There Be Cybersecurity Legislation?, jnslp.com/2010/08/13/will-there-be-cybersecurity-legislation/

In the course of just a few decades, information technology has become an essential
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taking on yet another major piece of complex and costly homeland security legislation.

That’s key to NSA authority—Congress would easily reject all NSA surveillance

Brendan Sasso, National Journal, 3/25/14, Why Obama and His NSA Defenders Changed Their Minds, www.nationaljournal.com/tech/why-obama-and-his-nsa-defenders-changed-their-minds-20140325

It was only months ago that President Obama, with bipartisan backing from the heads
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think that more than anything else, that is galvanizing us into action."
Obama and the House Intelligence Committee leaders believe their proposals are now the NSA’s best
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Freedom Act, and outside groups will continue their policy push as well. 

European backlash over NSA devastates the alliance

Tuccille, 13 
(Managing Editor-Reason, 11/1, "NSA Spying Torpedoes American Business Dealings in Europe", http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/01/nsa-spying-torpedoes-american-business-d)

From the beginning of the NSA mass-surveillance scandal, revelations that the U
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a justification for other countries to torpedo those companies and favor their own.

Stops Eurasian nuclear war

Brzezinski, 3 
(PhD-Poli Sci 26 Former National Security Advisor to President Carter, "Hegemonic quicksand," Winter, http://nationalinterest.org/article/hegemonic-quicksand-563)

FOR THE next several decades, the most volatile and dangerous region of the world
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as a returning colonialist bent on consolidating or regaining its special economic interests.

2NC

overview

Relations solve Eurasian conflict – oil and gas make it the biggest geopolitical risk

Solves aggression and turns the UN

O’Sullivan, 4 
(IR Fellow-Nixon Center, "Europe and the Establishment," 7/31, nationalinterest.org/article/europe-and-the-establishment-2608)

The report’s starting point — that U.S.-European relations are extremely important
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the maneuvering between a half-dozen great powers that led to 1914.

Absent NSA phone collection authority, terrorists can easily evade the US—ensures major attacks

Stewart Baker, Foreign Policy, June 2013, Why the NSA Needs Your Phone Calls..., www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/06/why_the_nsa_needs_your_phone_calls

But why, you ask, would the government collect all these records, even subject to minimization, especially when Wyden was kicking up such a fuss about it? And, really, what’s the justification for turning the data over to the government, no matter how strong the post-collection rules are?
To understand why that might seem necessary, consider this entirely hypothetical example. Imagine
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and call him back on the second number at 2 p.m."
Now, this is pretty good improvised tradecraft, and it would leave the government
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could only identify the suspect by his calling patterns, not by name.
So how would the NSA go about finding the one person in the United States
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throwaway phone from one carrier and his second phone from a different carrier.
The only way to make the system work, and the only way to identify and monitor the one American who was plotting with al Qaeda’s operatives in Yemen, would be to pool all the carriers’ data on U.S. calls to and from Yemen and to search it all together — and for the costs to be borne by all of us, not by the carriers.
In short, the government would have to do it.
To repeat, this really is hypothetical; while I’ve had clearances both as the
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may only monitors those whom it legitimately suspects of being terrorists or spies.
The technique that squares that circle is minimization. As long as the minimization rules
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has enough evidence to identify terror suspects based on their patterns of behavior.
That’s a real difference. Plenty of people will say that they don’t trust the government with such a large amount of data — that there’s too much risk that it will break the rules — even rules enforced by a two-party, three-branch system of checks and balances. When I first read the order, even I had a moment of chagrin and disbelief at its sweep.
But for those who don’t like the alternative model, the real question is "
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should do so even if it means more acts of terrorism at home.

NSA program rollback means no adv solvency

John Yoo, 8/16/13, Ending NSA Surveillance is not the answer, www.nationalreview.com/corner/356027/ending-nsa-surveillance-not-answer-john-yoo

We should be careful not to put the NSA in an impossible position. Of
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government program, foreign or domestic, military or civilian, could survive.

EU coop key

Somaiya 13
RAVI SOMAIYA, staff writer, NY Times, January 30, 2013, "Drone Strike Prompts Suit, Raising Fears for U.S. Allies", http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/world/drone-strike-lawsuit-raises-concerns-on-intelligence-sharing.html?_r=026pagewanted=all

The drone strike, which killed Mr. Khan and dozens of others at a tribal council meeting in North Waziristan in 2011, spawned a lawsuit that accuses British officials of becoming "secondary parties to murder" by passing intelligence to American officials that was later used in drone strikes.
The case has put a spotlight on international intelligence-sharing agreements that have long been praised by officials as vital links in the global fight against terrorist groups, but that rights advocates criticize as a way for Britain and other European countries to reap the benefits of the contentious drone program without its political costs.
Judges in Britain have yet to decide whether to hear the case, brought forward
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seen as publicly unpalatable, or simply illegal, in their home countries.
In interviews, current and former British government and intelligence officials, some of whom worked closely with the United States after the drone campaign’s inception in 2004, said Britain does provide intelligence to the United States that is almost certainly used to target strikes. Many in Britain’s intelligence community, said one person with detailed knowledge of internal discussions, are now distinctly worried they may face prosecution.
"The policy on drones and torture is clear: We don’t do any of
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on the condition of anonymity because of the legal delicacy of the case.
The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment. But Bruce O. Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of "Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad," said, "The British are our most important partner in the war against Al Qaeda in all respects."
The British government, according to the response it filed in Mr. Khan’s case, now refuses to discuss the matter and "neither confirms nor denies" what it carefully characterizes as "any such alleged activities."
"The inference that can be drawn," said Rehman Chishti, a lawmaker with the governing Conservatives who has campaigned for more information on Britain’s role in American drone strikes, "is that intelligence sharing is taking place, because if it wasn’t then it could easily say so."
The issue is more complex than drone-strike foes suggest, the current and former officials said, and is based on decades of cooperation rather than a shadowy pact for the United States to do the world’s dirty work.
The arrangements for intensive intelligence sharing by Western allies go back to World War II, said Richard Aldrich, professor of international security at the University of Warwick, when the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand agreed to continue to collaborate.
"There’s a very high volume of intelligence shared, some of which is collected automatically, so it’s impossible to track what every piece is potentially used for," said Mr. Aldrich, who is also the author of a history of the Government Communications Headquarters, the British signal-intelligence agency.
Britain’s history and expertise in South Asia means that the intelligence it gathers in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the tribal areas in between is in high demand, Mr. Aldrich said. The arrangement has been focused recently by a chill in relations between the United States and Pakistan, and by the shared war in Afghanistan.
Other nations, too, intercept communications in the region that are shared broadly with the United States, he said. In Afghanistan, for example, German and Dutch forces run aggressive electronic interception operations, he said, because their rules on collaborating with local interpreters are less stringent than those of the United States.

link

Jakes says there was an outcry last February over the DoJ memo about TK, but not that anyone agree on what to do about it – the card concludes that Brennan’s speech about DoD shift solved pressure for reform

Jakes 13
(Laura Jakes, writer for the Associate Press. "Congress Considers Putting Limits on Drone Strikes" 2-6-13 http://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/02/06/congress-considers-putting-limits-on-drone-strikes.html)

Without those documents, it’s impossible for Congress and the public to decide "whether this authority has been properly defined, and whether the president’s power to deliberately kill Americans is subject to appropriate limitations and safeguards," the senators wrote.
Their ev ends
It was a repeated request after receiving last June an unclassified Justice Department memo, which fell short of giving the senators all the information they requested.
First detailed publicly by NBC News late Monday, the memo for the first time outlines the Obama administration’s decision to kill al-Qaida terror suspects without any evidence that specific and imminent plots are being planned against the United States.
"The threat posed by al-Qaida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat," concluded the document.
The memo was immediately decried by civil liberties groups as "flawed" and "
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suspected al-Qaida den. Khan was an al-Qaida propagandist.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, echoing comments Brennan made in a speech last April, called the strikes legal, ethical and wise and said they are covered by a law that Congress approved allowing the use of military force against al-Qaida.
"And certainly, under that authority, the president acts in the United States’ interest to protect the United States and its citizens from al-Qaida," Carney said Tuesday.
"It is a matter of fact that Congress authorized the use of military force against al-Qaida," Carney said. "It is a matter of fact that al-Qaida is in a state of war against us and that senior leaders, operational leaders of al-Qaida are continually plotting to attack the United States, plotting to kill American citizens as they did most horrifically on September 11th of 2001."
Three days after 9/11, Congress approved a law authorizing the military to
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North Africa who have limited or no ability to strike the United States.
Currently, both the CIA and the U.S. military are authorized to remotely pilot unmanned, missile-carrying drones against terror suspects. It’s unknown exactly how many strikes have been carried out, but experts say that drone attacks in Pakistan are conducted by the CIA, while those in Yemen and Somalia, for example, are by military forces.
The drones have strained diplomacy between the U.S. and the nations where the strikes are carried out, as civilians have been killed alongside the targeted terrorists, even though most nations have given Washington at least tacit agreement to carry out the attacks.
A Middle Eastern diplomat said that in Yemen, for example, an uptick of U.S. drone strikes last month have killed dozens of people and upset the local public, leading some leaders in Sanaa to reconsider how often they should be used. The diplomat spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity to avoid political retribution from the Obama administration.
The Pentagon is also considering basing surveillance drones in Niger to monitor on burgeoning extremist
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number of special forces units that remain there keep the Taliban from regrouping.
Brennan, who currently serves as the White House counterterrorism czar, has signaled he is prepared to turn the CIA from carrying out lethal drone strikes and hand over those missions to the U.S. military. Sen. Ron Wyden, a senior Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence panel, declared himself unsatisfied Tuesday with the Justice memo and said he will press Brennan at the confirmation hearing about the administration’s current policy.
The drone debate puts Obama — himself a former civil rights lawyer — in the
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to have no political cost to Obama in his re-election campaign.

Squo is a test case for the link turn from last February – no restrictions now because of disagreement

Auner, Trend Lines writer @ WPR, former Policy Analyst – Nuclear Security @ American Security Project, 1/21/’14
(Eric, "Congress Resists Pentagon Drone Oversight as U.S. and Partners Continue Targeted Killings," World Politics Review)

Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations, who has argued that lead authority for drone strikes should be consolidated under the Defense Department, explains that placing the program under Pentagon control "would allow the program to be defended publicly," which is not the case for the covert drone program controlled by the CIA. He adds that the move would not necessarily have operational implications for how the program is carried out.
But in general, he suggests, there is little appetite among lawmakers on either side of the aisle to enact major reforms to U.S. targeted killing programs or to significantly increase oversight.
Although the Senate Intelligence Committee approved a plan to improve government oversight of U.S. drone strikes in November, the current partisan configuration may make it less likely that Congress will oppose drone strikes and other methods of targeted killing. Democrats hesitate to oppose their own party’s president, and many conservatives cheer a vigorous prosecution of the fight against terrorism.  

Obama will fight

Epps 13 (Garrett, law prof at the University of Baltimore, The Atlantic, "Why a Secret Court Won’t Solve the Drone-Strike Problem", Feb 16, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/why-a-secret-court-wont-solve-the-drone-strike-problem/273246/, ZBurdette)

The real problem with Vladeck’s court might be political. I expect that any president would resist such a statute as a dilution of his commander in chief power, and enactment seems unlikely. Without such a statute, then, systematic review of secret drone killings must come inside the executive branch.
That doesn’t mean it will be a lawless whitewash. Congress can prescribe rules for
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experts from outside the executive branch, who serve independently for fixed terms.
That is the kind of body we need. Bringing in the courts themselves would be at best tricky, and at worst as dangerous, in its way, as allowing the drone war to continue without supervision. 

Pc theory

Hirsch – we’ll concede political capital theory is wrong, that means they can’t increase Obama’s leverage

We’ll also concede the theory of winners win

Doesn’t answer crowdout thesis, but momentum is now a neg uq arg

Ukraine aid solves

Stacy Kaper, National Journal, 3/27/14, Congress Approves Ukraine Aid, Expects Obama Signature This Week, www.nationaljournal.com/defense/congress-approves-ukraine-aid-expects-obama-signature-this-week-20140327

The House and Senate almost simultaneously passed different but spiritually similar Ukraine bills Thursday that
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said final legislation could be sent to President Obama as soon as Thursday.

This week proves logrolling is a thing, but only for uncontroversial stuff

Michael Catalini, 3/13/14, Bipartisan Bills in the Senate? Sure. But Partisanship Lingers, Too., www.nationaljournal.com/daily/bipartisan-bills-in-the-senate-sure-but-partisanship-lingers-too-20140313

A common truism about the upper chamber is that senators can pass legislation as quickly
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the bill to come to the floor again during the next work period.

Targeted killing restrictions cause crowdout

Steve Vladeck, professor of law and the associate dean for scholarship at American University Washington College of Law, 3/14/13, Drones, Domestic Detention, and the Costs of Libertarian Hijacking, http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/03/drones-domestic-detention-and-the-costs-of-libertarian-hijacking/

The same thing appears to be happening with targeted killings. Whether or not Attorney
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cogently explained in this post on Senator Paul and the DPGA from November).

Directly undermines the agenda
Brian Hughes, The Washington Examiner White House Correspondent, 2/6/13, Obama’s base increasingly wary of drone program, http://washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-base-increasingly-wary-of-drone-program/article/2520787

The heightened focus on President Obama’s targeted killings of American terror suspects overseas has rattled
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lawmakers~ think the president should be able to do whatever he wants."

bill key

They are right that there a lot of bills, 3 to be exact, but our brink arg is about working out the differences between them

Now key—window narrow

Nothing gets passed post-midterms

Norm Ornstein, 3/26/14, The Mixed Bag of GOP Control, www.nationaljournal.com/washington-inside-out/the-mixed-bag-of-gop-control-20140326

First, the real downside. Start by imagining what the GOP zeitgeist will be
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the other chamber. If you are Barack Obama, not so much.

Reforms solves surveillance credibility

David Weigel, Slate, 3/25/14, Turning Off the Vacuum Cleaner, www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/nsa_bulk_metadata_collection_rand_paul_ron_wyden_support_obama_s_plan_to.html

If it was a "turning point," as Snowden suggested, it was one
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with the reform, because they know how quickly the conversation can shift.

at: mccain

Their McCain arg says he’ll bring it up during defense authorizations, not that there will be a bill

It’s not an authority fight so it doesn’t trigger grant ev

Bennett concedes it won’t happen before the midterm

Many analysts say that other than possibly taking up a new immigration reform measure, Congress likely is finished with major legislation this year. The mid-term election cycle is in full swing, and both parties seem content to battle it out back home after five years of bitter partisan fights here.

DoD-CIA shift is over – the bill left Obama significant flexibility to avoid controversy

By Eric Schmitt 1-16, Congress Restricts Drones Program Shift, New York Times, JAN. 16, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/us/politics/congress-restricts-drones-program-shift.html

WASHINGTON — In an unusual move, Congress is placing restrictions on the Obama administration’s plan to shift responsibility for armed drones more toward the military and away from the C.I.A., congressional and administration officials said Thursday.
Lawmakers inserted wording into a classified annex to the 241.1 trillion federal budget approved by Congress this week that would make it more difficult to transfer control over the drone campaign or the authority to carry out strikes.
The scope of the restrictions remained unclear because of their classification. But the provision does not appear to entirely block a shift described last May by administration officials as a ramification of President Obama’s intention to move the country off a decade-long war footing.
Lawmakers allowed the president to waive the constraints under certain circumstances or to permit the transfer if the administration certifies that the military meets certain standards in drone operations, congressional aides said Thursday.
Senator John McCain supports the Obama administration’s plans to shift responsibility for drone strikes to the military. Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Even before the new provision in the budget bill, administration and congressional officials said the schedule for shifting control to the military was being revised — if not shelved.
"D.O.D. has some work to do," a senior House Intelligence Committee staff aide said Thursday, referring to the Department of Defense. "It’s a lot more challenging than they thought."
But the measure, first reported on The Washington Post’s website on Wednesday night, is a rare move by Congress to dictate how covert operations like the drone program are carried out. It also reflects the simmering suspicion among many lawmakers on the Intelligence Committees that the military’s Joint Special Operations Command is not up to the task of killing terrorism suspects with Predator or Reaper drones, a notion the Pentagon rejects.
That skepticism was underscored on Dec. 12, when a strike by the United States military, launched from a base in Djibouti, killed at least a half-dozen innocent people in Yemen, according to a number of tribal leaders and witnesses, and provoked a storm of outrage in the country.
The murky details surrounding the strike have raised questions about how rigorously American officials are applying the standards for lethal strikes that Mr. Obama outlined in a speech on May 23 at the National Defense University — and whether such standards are even possible in such a remote and opaque environment.
At the time, administration officials said that authority over most of the drone strikes would gradually shift to the Pentagon from the C.I.A., a move officials said was intended partly to lift the shroud of secrecy from the targeted killing program.
But nearly eight months later, the C.I.A. still carries out a majority of drone strikes in Yemen, with the remotely piloted aircraft taking off from a base in the southern desert of Saudi Arabia.
Spokesmen for the White House, the C.I.A. and the congressional committees responsible for the language declined to comment on Thursday.
"The president when he spoke at N.D.U. was very clear about his desire to be as transparent as possible with respect to those operations," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Defense Department press secretary, told reporters on Thursday, declining to discuss the specific congressional provision. "That’s a message that we got loud and clear here in the Pentagon."
That is a sentiment shared by many on Capitol Hill. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told MSNBC on Thursday, "There should be far better control of what we do with our drones."

at: un defense

Doesn’t assume collapse of the alliance

Not qualed

We access everything in their laundry list cards

Stokes, international columnist – National Journal, 3/17/’10
(Bruce, "Greek Tragedy Haunts Global Markets, Policies," http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2010/03/137_62527.html)

To paraphrase the noted economist Woody Allen, Europe is at a crossroads as it
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to the United States, such as climate change and global financial regulation. 

link uniqueness ov

Issue specific uniqueness prices in

Not about Obama’s political capital—plan upsets Congressional bandwidth to get it done

Top of docket

Plan specific links

Obama introduced his bill yesterday—Congress has shifted—prices in link uniqueness but time is limited

Ellen Nakashima, WaPo, 3/27/14, White House pushes Congress to quickly pass changes to NSA surveillance program, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-pushes-congress-to-quickly-pass-changes-to-nsa-surveillance-program/2014/03/27/1a2c4052-b5b9-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html?wprss=rss_politics

The Obama administration has called on Congress to move quickly to pass legislation that would
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White House’s. But Obama’s proposal has become the baseline, analysts said.

at cia fight

Their ev says CIA and FAA flight restrictions, but it doesn’t impact FAA in controversy

Not war powers, not legislation, not a restriction. CIA fight is over whether to release a CIA torture report on the Bush admin—that’s not about whether to restrict Obama’s war power authority, and whether to declassify a report is irrelevant to legislative battle spill-over.

But it does prove the link21 That a speech by Feinstein over a CIA report is getting this much coverage proves inserting the plan’s fight into the legislative arena would knock-off NSA’s Congressional sweet-spot

No Congressional backlash to Obama

Eli Lake, Daily Beast, 3/14/14, Republicans ’Not Involved’ in Investigation of CIA’s Black Sites, www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/12/republicans-not-involved-in-investigation-of-cia-s-alleged-spying.html

Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on a warpath against
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on the committee have at times suggested that Brennan himself should be investigated.

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

Operations DA

Drone court wrecks operations – turns the case

James Oliphant, deputy editor for National Journal, 13 ~"Vetting the Kill List," April 4, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/vetting-the-kill-list-20130404~~

To many following President Obama’s targeted-killing program, the idea of some formal
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Or as Ronald Reagan once put it: "Trust, but verify."

1NR

ops

turns case

Savage 13 (Charlie, The New York Times, MA from Yale, national security expert, "In Syrian crisis, US President Barack Obama tests limits of power", September 09, 2013, http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/in-syrian-crisis-us-president-barack-obama-tests-limits-of-power-416490)

In asking Congress to authorize an attack on Syria over claims it used chemical weapons, President Barack Obama has chosen to involve lawmakers in deciding whether to undertake a military intervention that in some respects resembles the limited types that many presidents - Ronald Reagan in Grenada, Bill Clinton in Kosovo and even Obama in Libya - have launched on their own.
But on another level, the proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before - an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the UN Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that is already over rather than preventing an imminent disaster.
The contrasting moves, ceding more of a political role to Congress domestically while expanding national war powers on the international stage, underscore the complexity of Obama’s approach to the Syrian crisis. His administration pressed its case Sunday, saying it had won Saudi backing for a strike, even as the Syrian president warned he would retaliate.
Obama’s strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent in the often murky legal question of when presidents or nations may lawfully use military force.
Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, said the president believed a strike would be lawful, both in international law and domestic law, even if neither the Security Council nor Congress approves it. But the novel circumstances, she said, led Obama to seek congressional concurrence to bolster its legitimacy.
The move is right, said Walter Dellinger, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration, because the proposed attack is not "covered by any of the previous precedents for the unilateral use of executive power."
"That doesn’t mean it couldn’t become another precedent," Dellinger added. "But when the president is going beyond where any previous president has gone, it seems appropriate to determine whether Congress concurs."
Disputes about whether and when a president or nation may launch an act of war can be hazy because courts generally do not issue definitive answers about such matters. Instead presidents, and countries, create precedents that over time can become generally accepted as a gloss on what written domestic laws and international treaties permit.
Against that backdrop, many legal scholars say Obama is proposing to violate international law. But others contend that the question is ambiguous, without any clear answer, and some suggest that the United States could establish a precedent creating new international law if it strikes.
The United States has intervened without a self-defense rationale or Security Council approval before, most notably in Kosovo. But in that case, it did so as part of NATO and in response to a time-urgent problem: stopping a massacre of civilians. In 1983, Reagan invaded Grenada without congressional approval, citing the "formal request" of five neighboring Caribbean states and the need to protect Americans on the island.
By contrast, the United States would carry out strikes on Syria largely alone, and to punish an offense that has already occurred. That crime, moreover, is defined by two treaties banning chemical weapons, only one of which Syria signed, that contain no enforcement provisions. Such a strike has never happened before.
Attempts to deal with the novelty of the crisis in international law have become entangled in the separate domestic law question of whether the president could order strikes on Syria without congressional permission.
Seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Obama embraced a limited view of a president’s power to initiate war without Congress, telling The Boston Globe that "the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."
But by the 2011 conflict in Libya he abandoned his campaign view of presidential war
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and in supporting the "credibility and effectiveness" of the Security Council.
In recent weeks, administration lawyers decided that it was within Obama’s constitutional authority to carry out a strike on Syria as well, even without permission from Congress or the Security Council, because of the "important national interests" of limiting regional instability and of enforcing the norm against using chemical weapons, Ruemmler said.
But even if he could act alone, that left the question of whether he should. The lack of a historical analogue and traditional factors that have justified such operations, she said, contributed to his decision to go to Congress.
"The president believed that it was important to enhance the legitimacy of any action that would be taken by the executive," Ruemmler said, "to seek congressional approval of that action and have it be seen, again as a matter of legitimacy both domestically and internationally, that there was a unified American response to the horrendous violation of the international norm against chemical weapons use."
At a news conference last week, Obama argued that the United States should "get out of the habit" of having the president "stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can" while lawmakers "snipe" from the sidelines. But he also explained his decision in terms of very special circumstances: humanitarian interventions where there is no immediate pressure to act and the United Nations is blocked.
Jack Goldsmith, a head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said the limited criteria cited by Obama mean his move might not apply to more traditional future interventions similar to Grenada or even Libya. The more important precedent, he said, may concern international law and what he portrayed as Obama’s dismissive attitude toward whether not having permission from the Security Council should stop humanitarian interventions.
Obama has in recent days repeatedly portrayed the Security Council system as incapable of performing its function of "enforcing international norms and international law," and as so paralyzed by the veto power wielded by Russia that it is instead acting as a "barrier" to that goal.

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

UN adv

An oversight court is a rubber stamp, their cards are about liability – in absentia fails

Bloomberg 13 ~Editors, "Why a ’Drone Court’ Won’t Work," Feb 18, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-18/why-a-drone-court-won-t-work.html~~

Such a system would ostensibly have two benefits: increasing the legitimacy of the drone
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however, such trials would provide a bit of much-needed legitimacy.

IHRL norms are ignored

Posner 10
Eric Posner is a professor of Law at the University of Chicago, JOHN M. OLIN LAW 26 ECONOMICS WORKING PAPER NO. 537, September 2010, "Human Rights, the Laws of War, and Reciprocity", http://www.ericposner.com/Human20Rights,20the20Laws20of20War,20and20Reciprocity.pdf

Neither approach quite captures the way that the idea of human rights plays out in
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debates often touch on profound disagreements about the content of human rights norms.
The starting point for understanding international human rights law is the recognition that the norms
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We need a different approach to understanding how human rights law might work.
Assume that states have preferences over a range of outcomes, which can include altruistic
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rights might be less belligerent and more stable places for trade and investment.
States’ other-regarding interests, as I will call them, can differ considerably
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willing to back them with substantial resources; other states have weaker preferences.
If, as seems likely, other-regarding preferences overlap, states’ efforts to
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preferences (for which they are willing to pay) has been supplied.

NSE declarations key—they make it impossible for the US to back norms

Friedman, 5
(JD-University of Florida Law, "The Uneasy US Relationship with Human Rights Treaties: The Constitutional Treaty System and Non-Self-Execution Declarations," 17 Fla. J. Int’l L. 187, March, Lexis)

E. Policy Arguments Against Nonself-Execution Declarations: The International Implications
Regardless of whether the constitutional arguments against nonself-execution declarations pass muster, the
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, especially the desire to serve as an example to other nations. n445 

Law doesn’t check use of force - underlying interests outweigh

Posner 14
Eric Posner is a professor of Law at the University of Chicago, March 3, 2014, "UKRAINE AND THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW", http://ericposner.com/ukraine-and-the-limits-of-international-law/

Peter Spiro (and/or someone else operating the Opinio Juris twitter account) accuses me of "gloating" about the military intervention in Ukraine, being a "realist," committing something called the "perfect compliance fallacy," and believing that "international law is a chimera." These accusations are false.
Julian Ku and Erik Voeten have already provided partial rebuttals. For the record, here are my views:

1. I am not a "realist" in the political science sense.
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   security competition among countries; it has little value for understanding international law.
   2. Spiro is right that you can’t infer anything from a single data point if that’s what he means by the "perfect compliance fallacy." However, I never said that because Russia violated international law in Ukraine, international law is a "chimera." Nor did I say anything that could be construed in such a way.
   My writings about international law have been devoted to explaining it, not denying that
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   science (for example, James Morrow’s examination of the laws of war).
   3. The evidence for the weakness of the use of force rules has been
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   Canada? Countries have reasons other than law not to attack each other.

Legal restrictions on force are meaningless - Ukraine proves

Ku 14
Julian Ku is a professor at Hofstra University School of Law, Opinio Juris, March 2, 2014, "Russia Reminds the World (and International Lawyers) of the Limits of International Law", http://opiniojuris.org/2014/03/02/ukraine-russia-international-law-governing-use-force/

I agree with Peter that the mere breach of the international law governing the use
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legal theorists would not call it "law" in any meaningful sense.
Which brings me to the Ukraine crisis.  I agree with Erik Voeten that international
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is a body blow to a foundational piece of the international legal system.
In academic terms, the failure of the Charter  is evidence for both realists (
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law for the sake of complying with international law is naive and unrealistic.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis also impacts real-world policymaking. If international law, or at least the Charter’s rule on the use of force, is very weak or non-existent as a tool for restraining state action, then policymakers should not rely on the Charter rule as meaningful protection against aggression.
A strong military or a network of alliances would probably have been a better idea.  States must not overestimate the impact or force of this species of international law (as Ukraine’s new government seemed to do) when making decisions.  And states like the United States should be careful incorporating this rule into its domestic legal processes, or over-privileging its role in its own domestic public debate.
I may be biased as an American, but the U.S. has
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here, and the Charter violation seems to be doing almost now work.
The fact that the Charter is plainly being violated will not necessarily mean that Charter
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"all sides to comply with international law" without naming any country.

UN fails

Anderson 12 (Kenneth Anderson is a professor of international law at Washington College of
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hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/123451)

What exactly is the United Nations and, for that matter, why is there
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to be reckoned a non-falsifiable faith, not a reasoned judgment.

2NC

link

Due process doesn’t apply to targeting—plan undermines broader due process precedent
Jeff Powell, Duke Law School Professor, 6/21/13, Jeff Powell on Targeted Killing and Due Process, www.lawfareblog.com/2013/06/jeff-powell-on-targeted-killing-and-due-process/

There is much to admire in the speech President Barack Obama gave on May 23rd
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and second, in his belief that the administration’s procedures satisfy due process.
The President’s blanket assertion that our government must always provide due process before killing a
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the Executive in its exchanges …with enemy organizations in times of conflict."
If there is no constitutional due process requirement at all, why does it matter that Mr. Obama assumes that there is? Is there any real harm in putting forth a standard for meeting a burden that doesn’t exist? There is, because the President’s reasoning may undercut the meaning of due process in other circumstances where the constitutional requirement does apply.

Envt

Apocalyptic environmental predictions are empirically wrong

Ronald Bailey, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, May 2k,http://reason.com/0005/fe.rb.earth.shtml

Earth Day 1970 provoked a torrent of apocalyptic predictions. "We have about five
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that passionate concern, however sincere, is no substitute for rational analysis.

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

The executive branch of the United States federal government should issue and enforce an executive order to establish ex ante transparency of targeted killing standards and procedures.

The executive branch should clarify that those standards mean the administration will not carry out drone strikes that violate the right to life.

The United States Executive Branch should create a neutral executive decisionmaking body that provides due process to potential targets of targeted killing.

The CP is binding and solves the whole aff

Graham Dodds, Ph.D., Concordia professor of political science, 2013, Take Up Your Pen: Unilateral Presidential Directives in American Politics, p. 10

If executive orders, proclamations, memoranda, and other unilateral presidential directives merely expressed
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with by Congress, courts, or by a future unilateral presidential directive. 

Executive order establishing transparency of targeting decisions resolves drone legitimacy and resentment

Jennifer Daskal, Fellow and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law, Georgetown University Law Center, April 2013, ARTICLE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD: A FRAMEWORK FOR DETENTION AND TARGETING OUTSIDE THE "HOT" CONFLICT ZONE, 161 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1165

4. Procedural Requirements
Currently, officials in the executive branch carry out all such ex ante review of
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there is no equivalent effort in areas outside the active conflict zone. n164
Meanwhile, the degree of ex post review of detention decisions depends on the location of detention as opposed to the location of capture. Thus,  ~*1219~  Guantanamo detainees are entitled to habeas review, but detainees held in Afghanistan are not, even if they were captured far away and brought to Afghanistan to be detained. n165
Enhanced ex ante and ex post procedural protections for both detention and targeting, coupled with transparency as to the standards and processes employed, serve several important functions: they can minimize error and abuse by creating time for advance reflection, correct erroneous deprivations of liberty, create endogenous incentives to avoid mistake or abuse, and increase the legitimacy of state action.
a. Ex Ante Procedures
Three key considerations should guide the development of ex ante procedures. First, any
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employed must be transparent and sufficiently credible to achieve the desired legitimacy gains.
These considerations suggest the value of an independent, formalized, ex ante review system. Possible models include the Foreign Intelligence  ~*1220~  Surveillance Court (FISC), n168 or a FISC-like entity composed of military and intelligence officials and military lawyers, in the mode of an executive branch review board. n169
Created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978, n170 the
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an unauthorized disclosure of an application to or order from the FISC court.
An ex parte review system for targeting and detention outside zones of active hostility could
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would leave target identification and time-sensitive decisionmaking to the operators. n174
Moreover, there should be a mechanism for emergency authorizations at the behest of the
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place) as soon as practicable but at most within seven days. n176
Finally, and critically, given the stakes in any application namely, the deprivation of life someone should be appointed to represent the potential target’s interests and put together the most compelling case that the individual is not who he is assumed to be or does not meet the targeting criteria.
The objections to such a proposal are many. In the context of proposed courts
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to avoid ad hoc decisionmaking and will ensure consistency across administrations and time.
Some also condemn the ex parte nature of such reviews. n179 But again,
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which an official is obligated to act as advocate for the potential target.
That said, there is a reasonable fear that any such court or review board
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those features in and of themselves can lead to increased reflection and restraint.
Additional accountability mechanisms, such as civil or criminal sanctions in the event of material misrepresentations or omissions, the granting of far-reaching authority to the relevant Inspectors General, and meaningful ex post review by Article III courts, n182 are also needed to help further minimize abuse.
Conversely, some object to the use of courts or court-like review as
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Article III-FISC model, further addresses some of the constitutional concerns.
Some also have warned that there may be no "case or controversy" for
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would be issuing a warrant for the most extreme type of seizure. n189
It is also important to emphasize that a reviewing court or review board would not
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available to deal with exceptional cases where ex ante approval is not possible.
Additional details will need to be addressed, including the temporal limits of the court’s
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the threat, consistent with what courts regularly do when they issue warrants.
In the absence of such a system, the President ought to, at a
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Given the stakes, a clear and convincing evidentiary standard is warranted. n195
While this proposal is obviously geared toward the United States, the same principles should apply for all states engaged in targeting operations. n196 States would ideally subject such determinations to independent review or, alternatively, clearly articulate the standards and procedures for their decisionmaking, thus enhancing accountability.
b. Ex Post Review
For targeted-killing operations, ex post reviews serve only limited purposes. They
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against rash ex ante decisionmaking, thereby providing a self-correcting mechanism.
Ex post review should also be accompanied by the establishment of a solatia and condolence payment system for activities that occur outside the active zone of hostilities. Extension of such a system beyond Afghanistan and Iraq would help mitigate resentment caused by civilian deaths or injuries and would promote better accounting of the civilian costs of targeting operations. n198

2NC

overview

CP is a major, clear reversal of administration policy – their evidence is describing executive efforts to maintain existing policy through minor reforms like white papers – fundamentally not the CP—that’s Dodds

CP is sufficient—key links to the aff involve restraining drone strikes and ensuring accountability for both strikes. Drone court does that by having judicial oversight, the CP does that by ensuring that EVERYONE can review means procedures and results—Daskal says that ensures continuous review, minimizes error, and legitimates the program

Due process

Solves due process signal while avoiding the net benefits

Mike Dreyfuss, Ph.D. in Jurisprudence, Jan 2012, NOTE: My Fellow Americans, We Are Going to Kill You: The Legality of Targeting and Killing U.S. Citizens Abroad, 65 Vand. L. Rev. 249

The crux of the matter is what process is due to a U.S
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admirably by the JAG Corps or a similar organization within the executive branch.
The first determination this neutral body will have to make in all instances is the
AND
of its decisionmaking. Otherwise, the target would not be lawful. n241
Once the decisionmaker determines that the target is lawful, U.S. citizen
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not been sufficient notice, then the government must provide additional notice. n243
Having determined that the U.S. citizen is a lawful target with sufficient notice, the decisionmaker then will evaluate the citizen’s ability to choose to exercise his rights to avail himself of the court system. If the decisionmaker finds that the target has the ability to choose what he will do and has decided not to exercise his rights, then the process can continue.
Next, it falls on the decisionmaker to evaluate whether or not it is possible
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, just that military leaders reasonably decided that capture was not feasible. n246
Finally, the decisionmaker must review the military objective that targeting and killing this U.S. citizen will serve. Only true military targets are subject to military action. If all of the above conditions are satisfied, then the targeted killing can proceed.
VI. Conclusion: The Balance of Life and Death
The practice of targeted killing can be used in a manner that is consistent with
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decision comes out against him, then the military may launch a strike.

Executive review processes solve the aff

Afsheen John Radsan, William Mitchell College of Law, and Richard W. Murphy, Texas Tech University School of Law, 2009, Due Process and Targeted Killing of Terrorists, , papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1349357

Yet as a practical matter, the judicial role just identified is vanishingly small.
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and that this review should be as public as national security permits.34

Transparency

Transparency is just as effective as the aff

SCR 13 (Security Council Report (SCR) is an independent not-for-profit organisation. It was founded on the belief that consistent, balanced, high-quality information about the activities of the UN Security Council and its subordinate bodies is essential to the effective performance of the Council and that this information should also be available to a wider group of stakeholders and the general public., 11/27/2013, "December 2013 Mothly Forecast", www.securitycouncilreport.org/monthly-forecast/2013-12/counter-terrorism_3.php)

On 25 October, the Third Committee of the General Assembly heard presentations about two
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out an investigation on the use of drones in counter-terrorism operations.

at: links to politics

Only Congressional moves to reclaim war power authority triggers the war power and politics disad

William Howell, Sydney Stein professor in American politics at the University of Chicago, 9/3/13, All Syria Policy Is Local, www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/09/03/all_syria_policy_is_local_obama_congress?page=full

From a political standpoint, seeking congressional approval for a limited military strike against the Syrian regime, as President Barack Obama on Saturday announced he would do, made lots of sense. And let’s be clear, this call has everything to do with political considerations, and close to nothing to do with a newfound commitment to constitutional fidelity.
The first reason is eminently local. Obama has proved perfectly willing to exercise military
AND
of the war powers described in the first two articles of the constitution.
Obama isn’t new in this regard. Not since World War II has Congress declared a formal war. And since at least the Korean War, which President Harry Truman conveniently called a "police action," commanders-in-chief have waged all sorts of wars -small and large -without Congress’s prior approval.
Contemporary debates about Congress’s constitutional obligations on matters involving war have lost a good deal
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as footnotes rather than banner headlines in the larger case against military action.
Obama’s recent decision to seek congressional approval is not going to upend a half-century of practice that has shifted the grounds of military decision-making decisively in the president’s favor, any more than it is going to imbue the ample war powers outlined in Article I with newfound relevance and meaning. For that to happen, Congress itself must claim for itself its constitutional powers regarding war.
Obama did not seek Congress’s approval because on that Friday stroll on the White House lawn he suddenly remembered his Con Law teaching notes from his University of Chicago days. He did so for political reasons. Or more exactly, he did so to force members of Congress to go on the record today in order to mute their criticisms tomorrow.
And let’s be clear, Congress -for all its dysfunction and gridlock -still
AND
of war, which can have political repercussions both at home and abroad.
Think, then, about the stated reasons for some kind of military action in
AND
protests in the region will likely flare even hotter than they currently are.
The core argument for a military strike, however, centers on the importance of strengthening international norms and laws on chemical and biological weapons, with the hope of deterring their future deployment. The Assad regime must be punished for having used chemical weapons, the argument goes, lest the next autocrat in power considering a similar course of action think he can do so with impunity.
But herein lies the quandary. The most significant reasons for military action are abstract, largely hidden, and temporally distant. The potential downsides, though, are tangible, visible, and immediate. And in a domestic political world driven by visual imagery and the shortest of time horizons, it is reckless to pursue this sort of military action without some kind of political cover.
Were Obama to proceed without congressional authorization, he would invite House Republicans to make
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Congress will have an awfully difficult time criticizing the president for the fallout.
Will the decision on Saturday hamstring the president in the final few years of his
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it is virtually impossible to discern any clear principle that justifies their choices.
The particulars of every specific crisis -its urgency, perceived threat to national interests
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but their objections are likely to be drowned out in rush to war.
Obama’s decision does not usher in a new era of presidential power, nor does
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makers. But don’t count on it to remain open for especially long.

at: ji addon

You’re not that type of court

Fidell 13
Eugene R. Fidell, Visiting Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He is a co-founder and former president of the National Institute of Military Justice and of counsel at Feldesman Tucker Leifer Fidell LLP, Washington, D.C. He is a Life Member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Defense Legal Policy Board of the Department of Defense and the board of directors of the International Society for Military Law and the Law of War. He has also taught at Harvard Law School and the American University Washington College of Law, NY Times, February 27, 2013, "A Drone Panel Within the Executive Branch?", http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/28/opinion/a-drone-panel-within-the-executive-branch.html

"Who Will Mind the Drones?," by Neal K. Katyal (Op-
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he thought appropriate, but would have to explain himself afterward to Congress."
This is not a good idea. The new entity would be merely a board within the executive branch. To call it a court would incorrectly imply that its members are independent and have protected terms of office. Nor would its decisions have the finality that our legal system associates with exercises of judicial power. The decisions of this internal drone court could be thwarted simply because the president, owing it no deference, disagreed with them.
This is not to say that such a panel might not serve a useful purpose. It would probably help develop some overall principles as particular proposed drone operations came before it. But that is a far cry from pretending to be a court of law.
Finally, there is a serious ethical issue in the proposal. The lawyers who
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. The same is true of the in-house drone court idea.

No one models American courts – Canada is the model

Law, Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, and Versteeg, Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Law, June 2012
(David S. and Mila, "THE DECLINING INFLUENCE OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION," 87 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 762, Lexis)
In 1987, to mark the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution,
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more foreign constitutions have been characterized as this country’s "constitutional offspring." n6
It is widely assumed among scholars and the general public alike that the United States
AND
an American peculiarity is now a basic feature of almost every state. n11
There are growing suspicions, however, that America’s days as a constitutional hegemon are
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of constitutions in other countries remains a matter of speculation and anecdotal impression.
With the help of an extensive data set of our own creation that spans all
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do little to assuage American fears of diminished influence in the constitutional sphere.
Part I introduces the data and methods used in this Article to quantify constitutional content
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provisions of the U.S. Constitution depart from this generic model.
Part III documents the growing divergence of the U.S. Constitution from the
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and its inclusion of certain rights that are increasingly rare by global standards.
Parts IV and V tackle the question of whether a prominent constitution from some other
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of rights constitutionalism, but not necessarily of global constitutionalism as a whole.
Part V considers whether the widely celebrated constitutions of Germany, South Africa, or India might instead be leading the way for global constitutionalism. Although all three are currently more mainstream than the U.S. Constitution, we find little evidence that global constitution-writing practices have been strongly shaped by any of the three.
Part VI explores the possibility that transnational human rights instruments have begun to shape the
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, they do not appear to define those trends in the first place.
Finally, the Conclusion discusses possible explanations for the declining influence of American constitutionalism. These include a broad decline in American hegemony across a range of spheres, a judicial aversion to constitutional comparativism, a historical and normative commitment to American exceptionalism, and sheer constitutional obsolescence.

at: legitimacy

The aff doesn’t provide added credibility – drone court gets scrutinized for secrecy

Jeh Charles Johnson was a partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton 26 Garrison, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank), and was a governor for the Roosevelt Institute (recently nominated as Secretary of Homeland Security), 13 ~"A "Drone Court": Some Pros and Cons," Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, March 13~

But, we must be realistic about the degree of added credibility such a
court can provide. Its proceedings would necessarily be ex parte and in secret,
and, like a FISA court, I suspect almost all of the government’s applications
would be granted, because, like a FISA application, the government would be
sure to present a compelling case. So, at the same time The New York Times
editorial page promotes a FISA-like court for targeted lethal force, it derides the
FISA court as a "rubber stamp" because it almost never rejects an application.9
How long before a "drone court" operating in secret is criticized in the same
way?
Meanwhile, what about the views of the judiciary itself? I know a
number of federal judges who would accept this unpleasant job, if asked, out of a
sense of duty. But many, I suspect, want the judiciary to have nothing to do with
this. Former Judges Mukasey and Robertson have publicly articulated this view
in emphatic terms.10 I can hear many in the judicial branch saying that courts
exist to resolve cases and controversies between parties, not to issue death
warrants based on classified, ex parte submissions. Judges don’t like armslength
ex parte submissions, because they know they are not getting two sides of
the story. I’m sure they would like them even less if the decision they must make
is final and irreversible. Put in a more cynical way, I can imagine many federal judges thinking "we don’t exist to provide top cover to the executive branch for
difficult decisions; foist this responsibility on us and you diminish both our
branches of government."

CMR 2NC

The military ignores the aff—collapses CMR

Mackubin Thomas Owens, professor of national security affairs in the National Security Affairs Department of the Naval War College, Spring 2012, WHAT MILITARY OFFICERS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS, http://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/1ef74daf-ebff-4aa4-866e-e1dd201d780e/What-Military-Officers-Need-to-Know-about-Civil-Mi.aspx

CIVILIAN CONTROL INVOLVES NOT ONLY THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH
It involves Congress as well. As the constitutional scholar Edward Corwin once famously observed, the Constitution is an "invitation to struggle for the privilege of directing American foreign policy" between Congress and the president.13 But there is a similar tension at work with regard to civil-military relations. Those who neglect the congressional role in American civil-military relations are missing an important element.14
The military has two civilian masters, and this has implications for civil-military relations that officers must understand. For instance, while the president and secretary of defense control the military when it comes to the use of force, including strategy and rules of engagement, Congress controls the military directly with regard to force size, equipment, and organization, and indirectly regarding doctrine and personnel. Indeed, Congress is the "force planner" of last resort.
The U.S. military accepts civilian control by both Congress and the president but offers advice intended to maintain its own institutional and professional autonomy. On use of force, the military is usually granted a good deal of leeway regarding the terms and conditions for such use.
By not dissenting from executive-branch policy, American military officers implicitly agree to
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called "structural," or domestic, imperatives as opposed to strategic ones.
When the president and Congress are in agreement, the military complies. When the two branches are in disagreement, the military tends to side with the branch that most favors its own views, but never to the point of direct disobedience to orders of the commander in chief. Military officers are obligated to share their views with Congress. Doing so should not be treated as an "end run" undermining civilian control of the military.15
THE ABSENCE OF A COUP
The absence of a coup does not indicate that civil-military relations are healthy
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civil-military relations have nonetheless deteriorated over the past two decades.16
Their concern is that the American military "has grown in influence to the point
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that "could alter the character of American government and undermine national defense."

The Mid East models US CMR

William Perry, Former Secretary of State, 5/23/1996, Fulfilling the Role of Preventive Defense, http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=974

America has long understood that the spread of democracy to more nations is good for
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is also necessary to embed democratic values in the key institutions of nations.
The Defense Department has a key role to play in this effort. It is
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, it is an institution that can help support democracy or subvert it.
We must recognize that each society moving from totalitarianism to democracy will be tested at
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— or even using the crisis as a pretext for a military coup.
In these new democracies, we can choose to ignore this important institution or we can try to exert a positive influence. We do have the ability to influence; indeed, every military in the world looks to the U.S. armed forces as the model to be emulated. That is a valuable bit of leverage that we can put to use creatively in our preventive defense strategy.

Key to stability

Alan Richards, California University Santa Cruz Economics and Environmental Studies Professor, 2004, The Future Security Environment in the Middle East, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1640/MR1640.pdf

Military establishments are among the most—if not the most— important domestic constituencies
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of the key U.S. adversaries and allies in the region.
Assessing civil-military relations is also significant for regional relations and broader U.
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by the pervasive ineffectiveness of their armed forces in the region’s many wars. 

Nuclear war

James A. Russell, Senior Lecturer, National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School, ’9 (Spring) "Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in the Middle East" IFRI, Proliferation Papers, ~2326, http://www.ifri.org/downloads/PP26_Russell_2009.pdf 

Strategic stability in the region is thus undermined by various factors: (1)
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the peoples of the region, with substantial risk for the entire world.

Tournament: NDT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Wyoming MP | Judge: Brovero, Stables, Weiner

1NC

Groupthink is wrong

Anthony Hempell 4 ~User Experience Consulting Senior Information Architect, "Groupthink:  An introduction to Janis’ theory of concurrence-seeking tendencies in group work., http://www.anthonyhempell.com/papers/groupthink/, March 3~

In the thirty years since Janis first proposed the groupthink model, there is still
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a testable variable (Hogg 26 Hains, 1998; Park, 2000).
Some researchers have criticized Janis for categorically denouncing groupthink as a negative phenomenon (Longley
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Thompson 26 McGrath, 1990, cited in Choi 26 Kim, 1999).

AQ dead—affiliates are hype and not a threat

Zachary Keck, associate editor of The Diplomat, 3/17/14, Al Qaeda’s Brand is Dead, nationalinterest.org/print/commentary/al-qaedas-brand-dead-10059

As Al Qaeda’s operational capability has withered, ~3~some observers have sought ~3~ to reframe the terrorism threat to the U.S. and the West in terms of Al Qaeda’s ideological appeal. According to this perspective, Al Qaeda continues to be a potent threat to the United States and the Western world because its ideology is spreading across the Arab world, and inspiring new groups that will attack the West.
Framing the threat in this way has the advantage of ensuring the Global War on Terror’s longevity. Indeed, by this measurement the U.S. is still embroiled in WWII given that neo-Nazi groups continue to exist, and sometimes carry out terrorist attacks in the West.
But the larger problem with the argument that Al Qaeda’s ideology is spreading is that it is completely inaccurate. The "Al Qaeda brand" was never as popular in the Arab world as it was portrayed in the West, and far from growing, its popularity has been rapidly declining in recent years. In fact, there are signs that Al Qaeda itself no longer believes in it.
Much of the confusion about Al Qaeda’s popularity is rooted in the Western tendency to
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Al Qaeda such a threat to the United States and its Western allies.
Islamic-inspired terrorism long predated the formation of Al Qaeda. It was, for instance, a constant reality in the Arab world during the Cold War thanks to the many groups that were inspired by the writings of Sayyid Qutb. These groups sought to be vanguard movements that used terrorism and leadership assassinations to overthrow Arab regimes ~the "near enemy"~ that they viewed as insufficiently Islamic.
Al Qaeda was an entirely different story, as a few astute individuals in the U.S. national security establishment realized during the 1990s. Al Qaeda had a very precise ideology, which was seen as a competitor to the ideology espoused by the domestic jihadists.
Like the domestic jihadists, Al Qaeda’s ultimate goal was to topple local regimes and
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S. to stop supporting these local regimes could the latter be overthrown.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current leader of Al Qaeda, explained this ideological argument nicely in his ~4~famous 2005 letter to ~4~Al Qaeda ~5~ in Iraq’s leader ~4~, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In the letter, al-Zawahiri wrote:
"It is my humble opinion that the Jihad in Iraq requires several incremental goals:
The first stage: Expel the Americans from Iraq.
The second stage: Establish an Islamic authority or emirate ~in Iraq~….
The third stage: Extend the jihad wave to the secular countries neighboring Iraq."
Al Qaeda’s ideology was also evident in the way it operated before 9/11
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, where the government at least supports its allies, the Afghan Taliban.
None of the so-called Al Qaeda franchises have replicated this model. Only Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen has shown any real commitment to attacking the U.S. or other Western homelands. Even so, this commitment has been extremely limited, particularly when compared with AQAP’s commitment to fighting the Yemeni government.
For the most part, the attacks in the U.S. that are
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, which urged Muslims living in Western countries to orchestrate their own attacks.
One of the exceptions to this model is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who
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attack came from Abdulmutallab, who contacted the group on his own initiative.
Another exception to AQAP’s usual model came in 2010, when the group attempted to ship two cargo bombs to Chicago. Tipped off by Saudi intelligence, the packages were discovered before the bombs exploded. Unlike the previous attacks, the initial impetus to launch this attack didn’t come from outside the group. Still, the amount of resources AQAP devoted to the attack were minimal, a fact that the group publicly bragged about.
While these events demonstrate that AQAP does pose some threat to the U.S
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near enemy, and only casually interested in attacks on the far enemy.
All the other Al Qaeda affiliates have focused exclusively on trying to overthrow local regimes
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attacks there given the ease with which they could gain entry into America.
Yet there is no evidence al-Shabaab has decided to use a single one
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-Shabaab will prevail in its effort to seize control of the country.
The actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) are also telling. The
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where it once again is battling a near enemy rather than the West.
More recently, even Al Qaeda Central has seemingly abandoned its own ideology, as
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enemy or different far enemies suggest that even it is amending its ideology.
Symbolic of the ~7~ lack of support for Al Qaeda’s mission is the fact that newer Islamist groups with supposed Al Qaeda links haven’t adopted the Al Qaeda name. Even groups that formerly took the Al Qaeda name, such as AQAP and AQI (long before being disavowed by Al Qaeda Central), have dropped Al Qaeda from their names.
Instead of Al Qaeda’s ideology spreading, then, what we are seeing is Islamist groups revert back to the domestic-jihad model that was prevalent in the Cold War but had lost steam in the 1990s. Al Qaeda had always considered itself an ideological competitor to these domestic jihadists. Increasingly, it is becoming one of them.
None of this should be surprising for at least two reasons. First, the
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to attack the U.S. homeland since the Arab Spring began.
The other reason it is not surprising that Al Qaeda has increasingly adopted the domestic
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on what was always his true ambition in life, overthrowing local regimes.

No backlash and no impact

Watts 12 (Clinton Watts is a Senior Analyst with the Navanti Group and a Senior Fellow at The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI). He is also a former U.S. Army Officer and former Special Agent with the FBI. Frank J. Cilluffo is the Director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at The George Washington University., 6/21/2012, "Drones in Yemen: Is the U.S. on Target?", www.gwumc.edu/hspi/policy/drones.pdf)

AQAP’s persistence arises not only from internal instability in Yemen but even more from exogenous
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our adversaries (AQAP) dictate our tactics should never be an option.

No risk of nuclear terror

Mueller 10 (John, professor of political science at Ohio State, Calming Our Nuclear Jitters, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, http://www.issues.org/26.2/mueller.html)

Politicians of all stripes preach to an anxious, appreciative, and very numerous choir
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above: one in a million or one in three billion per attempt.

Terrorists won’t use WMD

Forest 12 (James, PhD and Director of Terrorism Studies and an associate professor at the United States Military Academy, "Framework for Analyzing the Future Threat of WMD Terrorism," Journal of Strategic Security, Volume 5, Number 4, Article 9, Winter 2012, http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=119326context=jss) NOTE—-CBRN weapon = chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon

The terrorist group would additionally need to consider whether a WMD attack would be counterproductive
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, or the Chechen’s deliberations about attacking Russia, with such a weapon.

Public won’t demand retaliation

Smith and Herron 5, *Professor, University of Oklahoma, * University of Oklahoma Norman Campus, (Hank C. Jenkins-Smith, Ph.D., and Kerry G., "United States Public Response to Terrorism: Fault Lines or Bedrock?" Review of Policy Research 22.5 (2005): 599-623, http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=100026context=hjsmith)

Our final contrasting set of expectations relates to the degree to which the public will
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, we find the weight of evidence supporting revisionist expectations of public opinion.
Overall, these results are inconsistent with the contention that highly charged events will result
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initial willingness to engage in military retaliation moderated significantly over the following year.
Perhaps most interesting is that the greatest propensity to change beliefs between 2001 and 2002
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lines in times of crises, it remains securely anchored in bedrock beliefs.

2NC

groupthink

Quals——Chehab’s a JD candidate—they just say he’s ’Georgetown Law’—-our ev is professors

Military avoids groupthink

Sulmasy 6 - Professor of Law U.S. Coast Guard Academy(2006, Glenn, "Challenges to Civilian Control of the Military: A Rational Choice Approach to the War on Terror," http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=218826context=facpubs)JCP

In principal-agent models of business activity, the interest of the agent is
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principal that influences the latter’s decision, shirking may not have occurred. 9
In the civilian-military context, the actors may well have different ideal points
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other agencies, would prefer to have independence in setting and implementing policy.
This is not to say that civilians and the military disagree on the ultimate goal
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uses of military force so as to achieve other diplomatic or political goals.
Putting differences over substantive policy to one side, military leaders could also present principal
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build broad public support for a war before committing the military to hostilities.
Military resistance to civilian policies with which military leaders disagree could take several forms short
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performance of the military may allow the military to pursue its own preferences.

Obama avoids it

Pillar, 13 — Brookings Foreign Policy Senior Fellow
~Paul, "The Danger of Groupthink," The National Interest, 2-26-13, webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6rnyjYlVKY0J:www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/02/26-danger-groupthink-pillar+26cd=326hl=en26ct=clnk26gl=us, accessed9-21-13, mss~

David Ignatius has an interesting take on national security decision-making in the Obama
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voice those opinions freely that led to the fevered opposition to his nomination.

2nc: no public pressure

No demand for lashout – Smith and Herron did a study of public reactions to 9/11 and played out more severe scenarios – the public didn’t demand military response. 

Multiple options besides nuclear retal—they’re more likely

Neely 13 (Meghan, research intern for the Project on Nuclear Issues, 21 March 2013, "Doubting Deterrence of Nuclear Terrorism," CSIS, http://csis.org/blog/doubting-deterrence-nuclear-terrorism)

Yet, let’s think about the series of events that would play out if a
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called for by deterrence models, even more so by the American public.

2nc blowback

Their author thinks blowback is inevitable—thinks the drone campaign is imperialist

Hudson et al 13
Dr. Leila Hudson, Colin Owens, and Matt Callen, is associate director of the School of Middle Eastern 26 North African Studies at the University of Arizona and director of SISMEC, graduate of the School of Middle Eastern 26 North African Studies and the School of Government and Public Policy, and PhD candidate at the School of Middle Eastern 26 North African Studies. "Drone Warfare in Yemen: Fostering Emirates through Counterterrorism?," Middle East Policy Council, 2013. http://mepc.org/journal/middle-east-policy-archives/drone-warfare-yemen-fostering-emirates-through-counterterrorism
In the case of drone use in FATA, we identified five distinct forms of
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All told, these distinct forms of blowback combine to heighten Yemen’s ungovernability.
~WYOMING’S CARD ENDS~
Yemen provides the opportunity to discern new patterns of blowback from a drone campaign based
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to lead to alternative forms, such as the grandiosely named Islamic emirates.

at: backlash – aqap

Most qualified evidence

David Axe 12, military correspondent citing research by Chris Swift, a fellow at the University of Virginia’s Center for National Sec urity Law, "Expert: No Drone Backlash in Yemen", July 18, http://www.offiziere.ch/?p=8742

Lethal strikes by armed drones are America’s best and less obtrusive method of killing Islamic
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to join the terrorists’ ranks. At least, that’s what Swift believes.