About MSDI & Missouri State U..For twenty years, the Missouri State Debate Institute has offered an excellent educational experience in the middle of the high school topic. MSDI is distinct from other camps in six ways. First, our skills focus assures that a typical 2-week debater gets nearly 80 speeches, including over 20 debates. Second, we emphasize the largest cases on topic, with students getting both aff and neg rounds on each. Third, our senior faculty are comparable with top lab leaders in any camp. Fourth, MSDI students can earn highly transferable college credit in public speaking for a minimal cost. Fifth, we respect variance in home debate circuits our goal is to improve line by line debating in ways that will help students no matter who judges in their home circuit. Finally, our price is below any comparable camp and far below most camps. Our 2016 information will be available shortly at: http://debate.missouristate.edu/camp.htm.Missouri State University is a large comprehensive university (enrollment over 24k), with nearly any major you might want. The university has excellent academic scholarship support most debaters combine academic entitlement scholarships (guaranteed based on GPA/test scores) with debate scholarships. The Spicer Debate Forum competes in two year-long policy debate formats: NDT and NFA-LD. Weve national semis or finals in both in the last decade. Our debaters have an average GPA over 3.5, a 97% graduation rate, and 70% complete law/grad school afterward. Our program is a high-impact academic experience with an exceptional alumni network. Please contact Dr. Eric Morris for more information (EricMorris@MissouriState.edu). http://debate.missouristate.edu/http://www.missouristate.edu/FinancialAid/scholarships/**FISA Court Reform Affirmative**

1AC InherencyThe USA Freedom Act recently passed and included a number of reforms to the FISA Court system, including a limited role for an amici and appellate review, but issues remain.Jodie Liu Wednesday, June 3, 2015, 5:29 PM So What Does the USA Freedom Act Do Anyway?http://www.lawfareblog.com/so-what-does-usa-freedom-act-do-anywayNow that the Senate has passedand the President has signedthe USA FREEDOM Act, we thought it might be a good idea to recap what exactly the new law does and does not do. Thanks to efforts by Senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, among others, to defeat proposed amendments to the bill, the version passed by the Senate is the same as that which passed the House a couple weeks back. See our summary of the bill from a couple weeks ago for a detailed account and a comparison to the previous Senate bill proposed by Senator Leahy nearly a year ago. But heres a quick overview of the key provisions of the bill that yesterday became law. Under Title I, the bill bans the current system of bulk collection under Section 215. Instead, it requires that the government base any applications for call detail records on a specific selection terma term that specifically identifies a person, account, address, or personal device in a way that limit[s], to the greatest extent reasonably practicable, the scope of tangible things sought consistent with the purpose for seeking the tangible things. The government can apply for records within the first hop of the specific selection term if it (1) states reasonable grounds to believe that the call detail records sought to be produced based on [a] specific selection term . . . are relevant to [an authorized] investigation, and (2) has a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the selection term is associated with a foreign power engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor, or an agent of a foreign power engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation therefor. To apply for records within the second hop, the government must state session-identifying information or a telephone calling card number identified by the specific selection term used to produce call detail records within the first hop. As a safeguard against overbroad collection, the Act requires the government to adopt minimization procedures calling for the prompt destruction of all call detail records determined not to be foreign intelligence information. FISA court judges may, moreover, impose additional, particularized minimization procedures with respect to any nonpublicly available information concerning unconsenting United States person. Title II of the act, concerning pen registers and trap and trace devices, is brief. In similar manner as Title I bans bulk business records collection except by way of application based on a specific selection term, Title II bans pen registers and trap and trace devices except by way of application based on a specific selection term. It adopts the same definition of specific selection term as in Title I. Similarly, Title V reforms the National Security Letter program by extending the ban on bulk collection, except by way of application based on a specific selection term, to various provisions in the U.S. Code that would otherwise permit the FBI to issue the bulk collection of national security letters. See this post by Tim Edgar from over the weekend for an explanation why these little-discussed provisions are actually very important. Titles III and VII of the Act deal with collection under Section 702. Title III prohibits the use, in court proceedings, of information obtained under Section 702 through procedures deemed by a FISA Court to be deficient concerning any United States person. Nor may the government use[] or disclose[] in any other manner such information. Title VII, conversely, attempts to correct for several concerns regarding the targeting of non-United States persons. First, it creates an emergency exception allowing the government to continue targeting roamerspeople lawfully targeted as non-United States persons located outside the United States, but who suddenly show up in the United Statesfor a brief period of time after they show up in the United States, so long as a lapse in the targeting of such non-United States person poses a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person. Second, it expands the definition of agent of a foreign power, as applied to non-United States persons, in order to include non-United States persons who are lawful targets under traditional FISA warrants but might otherwise become improper targets when they leave the country. Third, it also expands the definition of agent of a foreign power to include a non-United States person who engages in the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or activities in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power, or knowingly aids or abets or knowingly conspires with any person in activities related to the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction In these areas, the USA Freedom Act actually does modestly expand surveillance authorities. Title IV is concerned with reform of the FISA Court. Broadly speaking, the new law provides for the appointment of amici curiae to assist the FISA Court, but it creates a fairly limited role for those amici. For instance, amici may provide assistance with respect to legal arguments or information regarding any . . . area relevant to the issue presented to the court, but only if the FISA Court deems such information relevant and only in certain matters that, for instance, present[] a novel or significant interpretation of the law in the eyes of the FISA Court. Title IV also provides for limited appellate review of FISA Court decisions, as well as limited Supreme Court review of FISA Court of Review decisions. Finally, Title IV also requires the DNI to perform declassification review of FISA Court opinions that include[] a significant construction or interpretation of any provision of law and, following such declassification review, make certain parts of FISA Court opinion publicly available.

Status quo reform composition plans do not address primary concerns with appointment, expertise and specialization of judges.Douglas E. Lindner* N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION & PUBLIC POLICY QUORUM *J.D./M.P.A. (Public Policy Analysis) Candidate, New York University, 2015; REVISITING THE FISA COURT APPOINTMENT PROCESS http://www.nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Lindner-2015-nyujlpp-28.pdfTo assess existing composition reform plans, I conducted a survey of all bills referencing the FISA court statute introduced in Congress since President Obama took office.65 None have become law, and as of writing, none are pending before the new 114th Congress. Five bills, all of which died in committee, would have altered the composition of the FISA courts.66 Six bills would have substan- tially reformed their operation in ways beyond the scope of this discussion, primarily by providing for participation of special advocates or amici to ameliorate the problems of secret and ex parte proceedings.67 Each of these died in committee as well, save the USA FREEDOM Act, versions of which commanded majorities in both houses and the support of the intelligence community,68 though it failed to overcome a Senate filibuster.69 None of the proposals introduced in Congress would ameliorate the FISA courts issues with expertise and specialization. All would leave this a part-time court with non-specialist judges who serve on the FISC one week of every eleven. Four of the bills affecting composition concern only who gets to choose FISA judges from among existing judges, while the fifth merely extends their tenure.70

Despite reforms, FISA Courts rubber stamping of surveillance continues.Joe Wolverton, II, J.D July 2 2015 Secret Court Revives NSA Bulk Surveillance http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/21179-secret-court-revives-nsa-bulk-surveillanceThe hour is now late if this Republic is to remain a land under the rule of law. To that end, it is critical that Americans recognize that the FISA Courts rubber stamping of the exercise of such sweeping surveillance programs is in direct, open, and hostile violation of the Constitution. Much of what is being done by the FISA Court is very similar to the Star Chamber, an English court of the 14th to 17th centuries that met in secret, with no record of indictments, no identification of witnesses, and no transcript of the proceedings. Eventually this court was used as a political weapon a way for the king and the Parliament to persecute their enemies and keep the dirty details hidden from the public. The analogy of the FISA Courts absolute approval of requests by the government to monitor citizens electronic communication to the decisions of the Star Chamber is apt and accurate on many points. The policies that permit this data sharing and grant such secret authority to the NSA and the FISA Court are such a shameful disregard for our long history of individual-based human and civil rights (including the freedom from unwarranted searches and seizures) that it shocks the conscience even when the source is considered. The FISA Courts decision demonstrates that the government considers the protections of the Fourth Amendment to be nothing more than a "parchment barrier" that is easily torn through. The Obama administration and the Bush administration before it regards the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the Bill of Rights as advisory at best. Judge Mosman summed up this constitutional crisis perfectly in the first line of his order of June 29 reviving the surveillance: Plus a change, plus cest la mme chose. Which, roughly translated from the French, means: The more things change, the more they stay the same. 1AC Democratic Legitimacy Advantage

The FISA Court guts the 4th amendment and privacy protections it operates with no democratic accountability or legitimacyThe Daily Beast, 2013 The Secret FISA Court Must Go http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/24/the-secret-fisa-court-must-go.html U.S. NEWS07.24.134:45 AM ETWe published an op-ed on June 27 in The New York Times setting out why mass surveillance violates the law. Rather than respond substantively to these and similar allegations, the president and his intelligence officials have made reassuring noises, telling us not to fear, because the FISC serves as a check on the administrations surveillance power and can be trusted to faithfully balance the governments need to protect us from terror plots against our rights under the Constitution not to have our personal communications seized and searched. The message from President Obama and his intelligence underlings was clear: relax. But the FISC hasnt protected our rights at all. Instead, it has secretly gutted both the Fourth Amendment and the particular safeguards Congress put into the surveillance statutes. The FISCs paralysis in the face of government overreaching shouldnt surprise anyone. When you consider the courts history, composition, and lack of public accountability, the FISC could hardly do otherwise. The FISC was designed to secretly approve surveillance targets, not decide whether and when indiscriminate mass surveillance is consistent with our democratic principles. The secret intelligence court dates from 1978, when, in the wake of the Church Commission report documenting decades of law-enforcement misconduct against domestic civil-liberties groups, Congress reformed Americas foreign and domestic intelligence policy. As part of this effort, it passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, establishing the FISC and a process for classified judicial review of surveillance for foreign-intelligence purposes. The FISC was designed to ensure that administration requests to target foreign powers or agents of foreign powers for surveillance were within the bounds of the authority Congress had established in the law. The bread and butter of the FISC was deciding whether the government had probable cause to believe that a particular person or entity was an agent of a foreign power and was likely to use a particular communications facility such that it was acceptable to spy on that person or facility to get foreign intelligence information. That all changed following 9/11. The Bush administration, feeling enormous pressure to preempt any future terrorist attack, aggressively expanded its spying programs. When Congress eventually learned about some of these programs, it complained but then (mostly) acquiesced, passing laws to authorize mostalbeit not allof the novel surveillance activities it knew about. Of particular import is Congresss reaction in 2005 when the public learned for the first time that the Bush administrations spy agencies had been intercepting Americans phone calls and emails without any court order or demonstration of wrongdoing. Beginning in 2006, Congress took a series of steps to revise FISA; the most current of those changes, the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), was passed in 2008 and renewed in 2012. Section 702 of the FAA creates a new authority for targeting non-U.S. persons or groups reasonably believed to be located overseas. Under the FAA, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence jointly certify that the target is a non-U.S. person or entity reasonably believed to be overseas. The FISC reviews the certification, whether the procedures in place are reasonably designed to prevent targeting people in the U.S. or obtaining purely domestic communications, and whether the minimization procedures meet the statutory definition of minimization procedures. So long as the government reasonably believes that the target is not an American and is overseas, and it is not conducting the surveillance with the subjective intention of learning about an American (something no court could ever really review), the FISC must grant an order authorizing surveillance. The FISC does not approve the targets, which need not be suspected of wrongdoing or be agents of foreign powers. The FISC can review applicable targeting and minimization procedures, but the court is not required to look behind the assertions made in the certification. The FISC does not approve the directives or the individuals to be monitored via those directives. Once the FISC issues its order, the government can use it for up to a year, sending top-secret directives to Internet companies like Google and Facebook specifying whose calls, emails, video and voice chats, photos, voice-over-IP calls (Skype, for example), and social-networking information it wants. The FISC trusts the government to follow the targeting procedures allowing collection of Americans messages and calls with friends overseas while avoiding collection of purely domestic communications. In sum, the FISC issues a blanket surveillance order whenever the government mouths the correct wordsthat it is collecting foreign-intelligence information relevant to a non-U.S. target. The FISC provides very little independent oversight of the surveillance itself. The history of the FISC can be summarized very compactly. Initially the FISC was a secret court that assessed probable cause for targeted surveillance of foreign powers and their agents. After the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, the FISC mutated into a secret kangaroo court that legitimates mass surveillance of Americans communications with employers, friends, and family in other countries by lending it the appearance, but not the substance, of judicial oversight. In sum, the FISC is now playing a completely new and much wider role: authorizing mass surveillance programs rather than approving specific surveillance targets. Yet it is simply impossible for the FISC, or any secret court, to decide when and how our nation should conduct surveillance consistent with our democratic principles and constitutional norms. Theres no security need for those programmatic policy decisions to be kept secret, and the secrecy ensures that the FISC will make the wrong decisions.

The concentration of judge appointment power in the Chief Justice undermines the legitimacy of the FISA Court process.Harvard Journal on Legislation, 2014 THE POWER TO APPOINT FISA JUDGES: EVALUATING LEGISLATIVE PROPOSALS TO REFORM 50 U.S.C. 1803 AND IMPROVE THE SURVEILLANCE COURThttp://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/FISA_Notes_Cropped1.pdfThe concentration of power critique includes both a practical and a theoretical element. The practical concern, voiced previously by Dr. Christopher Pyle, argues that 1803 risks overburdening the Chief Justice, and that the Chief Justice is not particularly well positioned to identify and select a balanced slate of judges. A modern version of this argument asks with trepidation, whether we have given the chief justiceany chief justice, not just this onetoo much to do?88 Answering her own question, one scholar notes that, [t]he office of Chief Justice of the United States has grown enormously in recent decades in responsibility and complexity not because of power-grabbing chief justices but because Congress has piled into the office a large number of added responsibilities.89 Another writes, [g]iven the distrust of undue concentrations of power in one person and increased interest in including multiple perspectives in decisionmaking, the recently expanded (but now seen as customary) repertoire of powers of the Chief Justice becomes troubling.90 In my view, this practical concern, however valid, is secondary to the theoretical one: that 1803s concentration of power creates the perception of partiality and impropriety. This perception, even if never borne out in reality, undermines the FISCs legitimacy. As one recent article notes, the specter of a politicized appointment process will linger as long as the Chief makes the appointments himself.91 This point echoes Professor William Van Alstynes remarks, discussed in Part II, that such an expansive role for the Chief Justice is simply unseemly.

FISA judges lack the requisite specialization or expertise to be accountable and legitimate representatives in matters of domestic surveillance.Douglas E. Lindner* N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION & PUBLIC POLICY QUORUM *J.D./M.P.A. (Public Policy Analysis) Candidate, New York University, 2015; REVISITING THE FISA COURT APPOINTMENT PROCESS http://www.nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Lindner-2015-nyujlpp-28.pdfC. FISA Judges Lack Requisite Specialization or Expertise Beyond concerns about democratic legitimacy and constitutional structure, it is bad policy to fill these important specialist courts with part-time, generalist judges. The Federal Circuit and Court of International Trade are the only other active Article III courts with subject-specific jurisdiction. Their judges are appointed directly to those courts by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, serve for life on those courts, and deal with their specialized issues full time.60 Presidents appoint lawyers to specialized courts who already know the specialized law. The vast majority of Federal Circuit and Court of International Trade judges had substantive experience in their courts issue areas before appointment.61 FISA judges lack that expertise. Surveillance law is complex, idiosyncratic, scientifically technical, and subject to quick developments as technological capability rapidly evolves. But because the FISCs extensive body of case law is mostly classified, a newly designated FISA judge likely has less familiarity with FISC precedent than a new generalist judge has about virtually any other area of law. No other court is composed of judges who were totally ignorant of the underlying law until their appointment. Yet a hypothetical Court of International Trade judge who knew nothing of trade law would have a much easier time getting up to speed than FISA judges do. Secret law means no scholarship and no commentary by other courts, so new FISA judges are without secondary sources or persuasive authority to learn from. Appeals to the FISCR are extraordinarily rare, so there is a dearth of higher court precedent for guidance. The secrecy and lack of scholarship make for a steep learning curve, exacerbated by the fact that FISA judges are not actually specializing. They spend ten of every eleven weeks at their regular district courts.62 On top of all that, FISA judges are expected to anticipate hypothetical arguments that might be made by an absent advocate for privacy. Furthermore, because the only lawyers with experience in FISA court precedent are the rare few who have practiced before the FISC, it is less likely that any particular generalist judge would have experience with FISA court case law than with nearly any other significant body of law. Likewise, one-sided ex parte proceedings mean that all current and former FISA court practitionersall those who know the case lawhave worked exclusively on the governments side. This creates a risk of groupthink from which judges are not immune. That risk is compounded by the intimate working relationship between FISA court personnel and executive branch attorneys63 and the alleged pro-surveillance bias among Roberts appointees to the FISA courts.64 In the absence of an adversary or any advocate for the rights of the public, it is the judges responsibility to anticipate the arguments those absent parties might make. Judicial deference must not be a function of judicial ignorance.

Perception of a political or partial judiciary destroys its legitimacy Dickey (J.D. Univ of the pacific Mcgeorge school of law) 1997 [Joshua M., Judges as Legislators?: The Propriety of Judges Drafting Legislation McGeorge Law Review. 29 McGeorge L. Rev. 111, L/N]Where actions encroach upon the judicial function, a violation of separation of powers will be found. 118 Encroachment occurs where the judiciary's authority and independence are undermined. 119 The impartial appearance of the judiciary is critical to the integrity and legitimacy of the judicial branch 120 because the judiciary's legitimacy derives from the public perception that the judiciary is impartial and independent. 121 Public cynicism towards the judicial system jeopardizes the authority of the judicial branch and magnifies the need for the appearance of an impartial judiciary. 122 Separating the judiciary from politics preserves this appearance of impartiality. 123 By drafting legislation, a judge participates in a function typically considered legislative and thus political. 124 Therefore, by participating in drafting legislation, judges surrender their politically impartial appearance. Moreover, when judges draft legislation, they implicitly assert that the legislation is valid. 125 This apparent approval suggests that the judge has decided the legislation is valid and will not be impartial when he or she decides a challenge to the legislation. Drafting legislation is analogous to pretrial statements of a judge. If a judge, prior to a particular defendant's trial, announced to the press that she thinks that the defendant is guilty, common sense weighs against the conclusion that the judge could decide the case in a neutral manner. 126 When a judge drafts legislation, the appearance of partiality is arguably worse.Loss of judicial legitimacy destroys the environment Stein 2005Former Judge of the New South Wales Court of Appeal and the New South Wales Land and Environment Court [Justice Paul Stein (International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Specialist Group on the Judiciary), Why judges are essential to the rule of law and environmental protection, Judges and the Rule of Law: Creating the Links: Environment, Human Rights and Poverty, IUCN Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 60, Edited by Thomas Greiber, 2006]

The Johannesburg Principles state:We emphasize that the fragile state of the global environment requires the judiciary, as the guardian of the Rule of Law, to boldly and fearlessly implement and enforce applicable international and national laws, which in the field of environment and sustainable development will assist in alleviating poverty and sustaining an enduring civilization, and ensuring that the present generation will enjoy and improve the quality of life of all peoples, while also ensuring that the inherent rights and interests of succeeding generations are not compromised.There can be no argument that environmental law, and sustainable development law in particular, are vibrant and dynamic areas, both internationally and domestically. Judge Weeramantry (of the ICJ) has reminded us that we judges, as custodians of the law, have a major obligation to contribute to its development. Much of sustainable development law is presently making the journey from soft law into hard law. This is happening internationally but also it is occurring in many national legislatures and courts.Fundamental environmental laws relating to water, air, our soils and energy are critical to narrowing the widening gap between the rich and poor of the world. Development may be seen as the bridge to narrow that gap but it is one that is riddled with dangers and contradictions. We cannot bridge the gap with materials stolen from future generations. Truly sustainable development can only take place in harmony with the environment. Importantly we must not allow sustainable development to be duchessed and bastardized.A role for judges?It is in striking the balance between development and the environment that the courts have a role. Of course, this role imposes on judges a significant trust. The balancing of the rights and needs of citizens, present and future, with development, is a delicate one. It is a balance often between powerful interests (private and public) and the voiceless poor. In a way judges are the meat in the sandwich but, difficult as it is, we must not shirk our duty. Pg. 53-54

Global scale ecological collapse will cause extinctionBarry 13Political ecologist with expert proficiencies in old forest protection, climate change, and environmental sustainability policy [Dr. Glen Barry (Ph.D. in "Land Resources" and Masters of Science in "Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development from the University of Wisconsin-Madison), ECOLOGY SCIENCE: Terrestrial Ecosystem Loss and Biosphere Collapse, Forests.org, February 4, 2013, pg. http://forests.org/blog/2013/02/ecology-science-terrestrial-ec.asp

Blunt, Biocentric Discussion on Avoiding Global Ecosystem Collapse and Achieving Global Ecological SustainabilityScience needs to do a better job of considering worst-case scenarios regarding continental- and global-scale ecological collapse. The loss of biodiversity, ecosystems, and landscape connectivity reviewed here shows clearly that ecological collapse is occurring at spatially extensive scales. The collapse of the biosphere and complex life, or eventually even all life, is a possibility that needs to be better understood and mitigated against. A tentative case has been presented here that terrestrial ecosystem loss is at or near a planetary boundary. It is suggested that a 66% of Earth's land mass must be maintained in terrestrial ecosystems, to maintain critical connectivity necessary for ecosystem services across scales to continue, including the biosphere. Yet various indicators show that around 50% of Earth's terrestrial ecosystems have been lost and their services usurped by humans. Humanity may have already destroyed more terrestrial ecosystems than the biosphere can bear. There exists a major need for further research into how much land must be maintained in a natural and agroecological state to meet landscape and bioregional sustainable development goals while maintaining an operable biosphere.It is proposed that a critical element in determining the threshold where terrestrial ecosystem loss becomes problematic is where landscape connectivity of intact terrestrial ecosystems erodes to the point where habitat patches exist only in a human context. Based upon an understanding of how landscapes percolate across scale, it is recommended that 66% of Earth's surface be maintained as ecosystems; 44% as natural intact ecosystems (2/3 of 2/3) and 22% as agroecological buffer zones. Thus nearly half of Earth must remain as large, connected, intact, and naturally evolving ecosystems, including old-growth forests, to provide the context and top-down ecological regulation of both human agroecological, and reduced impact and appropriately scaled industrial activities.Given the stakes, it is proper for political ecologists and other Earth scientists to willingly speak bluntly if we are to have any chance of averting global ecosystem collapse. A case has been presented that Earth is already well beyond carrying capacity in terms of amount of natural ecosystem habitat that can be lost before the continued existence of healthy regional ecosystems and the global biosphere itself may not be possible. Cautious and justifiably conservative science must still be able to rise to the occasion of global ecological emergencies that may threaten our very survival as a species and planet.Those knowledgeable about planetary boundariesand abrupt climate change and terrestrial ecosystem loss in particularmust be more bold and insistent in conveying the range and possible severity of threats of global ecosystem collapse, while proposing sufficient solutions. It is not possible to do controlled experiments on the Earth system; all we have is observation based upon science and trained intuition to diagnose the state of Earth's biosphere and suggest sufficient ecological sciencebased remedies.If Gaia is alive, she can die. Given the strength of life-reducing trends across biological systems and scales, there is a need for a rigorous research agenda to understand at what point the biosphere may perish and Earth die, and to learn what configuration of ecosystems and other boundary conditions may prevent her from doing so. We see death of cells, organisms, plant communities, wildlife populations, and whole ecosystems all the time in natureextreme cases being desertification and ocean dead zones. There is no reason to dismiss out of hand that the Earth System could die if critical thresholds are crossed. We need as Earth scientists to better understand how this may occur and bring knowledge to bear to avoid global ecosystem and biosphere collapse or more extreme outcomes such as biological homogenization and the loss of most or even all life. To what extent can a homogenized Earth of dandelions, rats, and extremophiles be said to be alive, can it ever recover, and how long can it last?The risks of global ecosystem collapse and the need for strong response to achieve global ecological sustainability have been understated for decades. If indeed there is some possibility that our shared biosphere could be collapsing, there needs to be further investigation of what sorts of sociopolitical responses are valid in such a situation. Dry, unemotional scientific inquiry into such matters is necessaryyet more proactive and evocative political ecological language may be justified as well. We must remember we are speaking of the potential for a period of great dying in species, ecosystems, humans, and perhaps all being. It is not clear whether this global ecological emergency is avoidable or recoverable. It may not be. But we must follow and seek truth wherever it leads us.Planetary boundaries have been quite anthropocentric, focusing upon human safety and giving relatively little attention to other species and the biosphere's needs other than serving humans. Planetary boundaries need to be set that, while including human needs, go beyond them to meet the needs of ecosystems and all their constituent species and their aggregation into a living biosphere. Planetary boundary thinking needs to be more biocentric.I concur with Williams (2000) that what is needed is an Earth Systembased conservation ethicbased upon an "Earth narrative" of natural and human historywhich seeks as its objective the "complete preservation of the Earth's biotic inheritance." Humans are in no position to be indicating which species and ecosystems can be lost without harm to their own intrinsic right to exist, as well as the needs of the biosphere. For us to survive as a species, logic and reason must prevail (Williams 2000).Those who deny limits to growth are unaware of biological realities (Vitousek 1986). There are strong indications humanity may undergo societal collapse and pull down the biosphere with it. The longer dramatic reductions in fossil fuel emissions and a halt to old-growth logging are put off, the worse the risk of abrupt and irreversible climate change becomes, and the less likely we are to survive and thrive as a species. Human survivalentirely dependent upon the natural worlddepends critically upon both keeping carbon emissions below 350 ppm and maintaining at least 66% of the landscape as natural ecological core areas and agroecological transitions and buffers. Much of the world has already fallen below this proportion, and in sum the biosphere's terrestrial ecosystem loss almost certainly has been surpassed, yet it must be the goal for habitat transition in remaining relatively wild lands undergoing development such as the Amazon, and for habitat restoration and protection in severely fragmented natural habitat areas such as the Western Ghats.The human family faces an unprecedented global ecological emergency as reckless growth destroys the ecosystems and the biosphere on which all life depends. Where is the sense of urgency, and what are proper scientific responses if in fact Earth is dying? Not speaking of worst-case scenariosthe collapse of the biosphere and loss of a living Earth, and mass ecosystem collapse and death in places like Keralais intellectually dishonest. We must consider the real possibility that we are pulling the biosphere down with us, setting back or eliminating complex life.The 66% / 44% / 22% threshold of terrestrial ecosystems in total, natural core areas, and agroecological buffers gets at the critical need to maintain large and expansive ecosystems across at least 50% of the land so as to keep nature connected and fully functional. We need an approach to planetary boundaries that is more sensitive to deep ecology to ensure that habitable conditions for all life and natural evolutionary change continue. A terrestrial ecosystem boundary which protects primary forests and seeks to recover old-growth forests elsewhere is critical in this regard. In old forests and all their life lie both the history of Earth's life, and the hope for its future. The end of their industrial destruction is a global ecological imperative.Much-needed dialogue is beginning to focus on how humanity may face systematic social and ecological collapse and what sort of community resilience is possible. There have been ecologically mediated periods of societal collapse from human damage to ecosystems in the past (Kuecker and Hall 2011). What makes it different this time is that the human species may have the scale and prowess to pull down the biosphere with them. It is fitting at this juncture for political ecologists to concern themselves with both legal regulatory measures, as well as revolutionary processes of social change, which may bring about the social norms necessary to maintain the biosphere. Rockstrm and colleagues (2009b) refer to the need for "novel and adaptive governance" without using the word revolution. Scientists need to take greater latitude in proposing solutions that lie outside the current political paradigms and sovereign powers.Even the Blue Planet Laureates' remarkable analysis (Brundtland et al. 2012), which notes the potential for climate change, ecosystem loss, and inequitable development patterns neither directly states nor investigates in depth the potential for global ecosystem collapse, or discusses revolutionary responses. UNEP (2012) notes abrupt and irreversible ecological change, which they say may impact life-support systems, but are not more explicit regarding the profound human and ecological implications of biosphere collapse, or the full range of sociopolitical responses to such predictions. More scientific investigations are needed regarding alternative governing structures optimal for pursuit and achievement of bioregional, continental, and global sustainability if we are maintain a fully operable biosphere forever. An economic system based upon endless growth that views ecosystems necessary for planetary habitability primarily as resources to be consumed cannot exist for long. Planetary boundaries offer a profoundly difficult challenge for global governance, particularly as increased scientific salience does not appear to be sufficient to trigger international action to sustain ecosystems (Galaz et al. 2012). If indeed the safe operating space for humanity is closing, or the biosphere even collapsing and dying, might not discussion of revolutionary social change be acceptable? Particularly, if there is a lack of consensus by atomized actors, who are unable to legislate the required social change within the current socioeconomic system. By not even speaking of revolutionary action, we dismiss any means outside the dominant growth-based oligarchies.In the author's opinion, it is shockingly irresponsible for Earth System scientists to speak of geoengineering a climate without being willing to academically investigate revolutionary social and economic change as well. It is desirable that the current political and economic systems should reform themselves to be ecologically sustainable, establishing laws and institutions for doing so. Yet there is nothing sacrosanct about current political economy arrangements, particularly if they are collapsing the biosphere. Earth requires all enlightened and knowledgeable voices to consider the full range of possible responses now more than ever.One possible solution to the critical issues of terrestrial ecosystem loss and abrupt climate change is a massive and global, natural ecosystem protection and restoration programfunded by a carbon taxto further establish protected large and connected core ecological sustainability areas, buffers, and agro-ecological transition zones throughout all of Earth's bioregions. Fossil fuel emission reductions must also be a priority. It is critical that humanity both stop burning fossil fuels and destroying natural ecosystems, as fast as possible, to avoid surpassing nearly all the planetary boundaries.In summation, we are witnessing the collective dismantling of the biosphere and its constituent ecosystems which can be described as ecocidal. The loss of a species is tragic, of an ecosystem widely impactful, yet with the loss of the biosphere all life may be gone. Global ecosystems when connected for life's material flows provide the all-encompassing context within which life is possible. The miracle of life is that life begets life, and the tragedy is that across scales when enough life is lost beyond thresholds, living systems die.

Democracy key to avoid extinction. Larry Diamond, 1995, Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm) OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.

1AC Separation of Powers AdvantageThe current process of appointing FISA court judges violates every basic principle of the separation of powers.Douglas E. Lindner* N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION & PUBLIC POLICY QUORUM *J.D./M.P.A. (Public Policy Analysis) Candidate, New York University, 2015; REVISITING THE FISA COURT APPOINTMENT PROCESS http://www.nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Lindner-2015-nyujlpp-28.pdfThe FISA Courts Appointment Process Threatens Ideological Balance and Separation of Powers Choosing Article III judges is a constitutional power of the President, and a very significant one. The opportunity to shape the ideology of the federal judiciary is one of the most important spoils owed to the victor of a national election. When this is denied to a President, an executive branch prerogative is violated and public will is disregarded. But the issue is also one of ideological balance. Each President serves no more than eight years, and thus is unlikely to choose every judge of any life-tenure court. However, a Chief Justice serving for life is very likely to choose every judge of the FISA courts, as FISA judges serve no more than seven years.40 Every Chief Justice since the creation of the FISA courts has done so, and only one Chief Justice in the past two centuries has failed to serve that long.41 The traditional appointment process comes with a built-in ideological balancing function: turnover among Presidents and Senators ensures that various viewpoints are represented and no one faction can dominate the judiciary.42 When one person unilaterally appoints every member of a court, that balancing is lost. The loss is compounded by the fact that the party whose President appointed a Chief Justice is likely to appoint the next one, even if it does not consistently hold the White House. In fact, only six of the nations seventeen Chief Justices were appointed by Presidents who did not share the previous appointers party.43 Recent experience is illustrative. Between President Kennedys inauguration in 1961 and the anticipated end of President Obamas second term in 2017, each party has had five Presidents occupying the White House for exactly twentyeight years.44 During this period, three of the five Republican Presidents appointed Chief Justices. Zero of the five Democrats have.45 While some of this is coincidence, there is plenty of incentive and ample evidence to suggest that strategic judicial retirement is a real phenomenon.46 That is not to say Chief Justices would put FISA court appointments above all else, but this is one among many ideological issues that may drive a judge to seek a like-minded successor. Judicial ideology and viewpoint are of greater concern for the FISC than for other trial-level courts. The issues are novel, they evolve quickly, and they are immensely controversial. FISA court proceedings are ex parte with only the government represented. No matter how noble or non-ideological FISA judges may be, the circumstances systemically prejudice them in favor of surveillance, rather than privacy.47 That problem is exacerbated by the empirically evident selection of judges whose ideology and experience indicate predisposition for the governments side of Fourth Amendment issues.48 As with any other trial court, one judge typically presides over each case. But the last time Congress amended the FISA court statute, it permitted the FISC to hear issues en banc, so there really is potential for judges to get together and vote on tough questions the way divided appellate courts do.49 Moreover, FISC decisions are nearly always final in fact. The FISCR has only ever heard two cases, and the Supreme Court has never once reviewed a case originating in the FISC.50 These are costs to the political separation of powers as well. As an Associate White House Counsel in the Reagan Administration, the future Chief Justice Roberts once wrote a scathing critique of a proposal for a new tribunal below the Supreme Court to resolve circuit splits. Roberts found particularly offensive the proposal that the Chief Justice designate the members of the tribunal, believing that to be an unprecedented infringement on the Presidents appointment powers.51 Because the Chief Justices appointments would have required the approval of a majority of the Supreme Court (unlike FISA court selections), Roberts posited that the new court would be either bland or polarized, and [i]n either case the new court will assuredly not represent the Presidents judicial philosophy.52 These same criticisms apply to the FISA courts. The power to appoint judges is one of the core constitutional powers of the President. When that power is given to someone else, someone he may not even have appointed himself, it undermines his influence and that of the voters who elected him. Of course President Reagan would not want to sacrifice [his] Constitutionally-based appointment power by creating a court composed of judges chosen by someone else, to provide nationally-binding legal interpretations reviewable only by the Supreme Court.53 That is, however, precisely what the FISA courts are. Every judge in the history of the FISA courts been chosen unilaterally by either Chief Justice Burger, Chief Justice Rehnquist, or Chief Justice Roberts. All three were white, male, Midwestern, Republican appointees;54 no Democrat, woman, or person of color has ever had a voice in selecting a FISA judge. All three Chief Justices previously served as high-ranking Presidential appointees at the Department of Justice in Republican administrations.55 Each has influenced his successor; Chief Justice Roberts clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, who served as an Associate Justice on the Burger Court for over a decade.56 Because Chief Justice Roberts has been in office for over seven years, he has necessarily chosen every current FISA judge (as had Rehnquist and Burger before him). Nine of the eleven current FISC judges were appointed to their district courts by Republican Presidents, and half are former prosecutors.57 These patterns are especially notable because the FISC nearly always rules in favor of the Executive Branch. Thus, the FISA courts composition undermines all three branches: the executive branch (which has an appointment prerogative), the legislative branch (as the Senate confirms appointments), and the judicial branch (as the FISC is unrepresentative of the judiciarys ideological balance and accused of being a rubber stamp59).Chief Justice Roberts has exclusive power to shape the surveillance state and the FISA Court judicial structure which functions to rubber stamp government decisions this is counter to accepted rule of law.Ezra Klein July 5, 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/05/did-you-know-john-roberts-is-also-chief-justice-of-the-nsas-surveillance-state/Chief justice of the United States is a pretty big job. You lead the Supreme Court conferences where cases are discussed and voted on. You preside over oral arguments. When in the majority, you decide who writes the opinion. You get a cool robe that you can decorate with awesome gold stripes. Oh, and one more thing: You have exclusive, unaccountable, lifetime power to shape the surveillance state. To use its surveillance powers -- tapping phones or reading e-mails -- the federal government must ask permission of the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A FISA judge can deny the request or force the government to limit the scope of its investigation. Its the only plausible check in the system. Whether it actually checks government surveillance power or acts as a rubber stamp is up to whichever FISA judge presides that day. The 11 FISA judges, chosen from throughout the federal bench for seven-year terms, are all appointed by the chief justice. In fact, every FISA judge currently serving was appointed by Roberts, who will continue making such appointments until he retires or dies. FISA judges dont need confirmation -- by Congress or anyone else. No other part of U.S. law works this way. The chief justice cant choose the judges who rule on health law, or preside over labor cases, or decide software patents. But when it comes to surveillance, the composition of the bench is entirely in his hands, and, as a result, so is the extent to which the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation can spy on citizens. It really is up to these FISA judges to decide what the law means and what the NSA and FBI gets to do, said Julian Sanchez, a privacy scholar at the Cato Institute. So Roberts is single-handedly choosing the people who get to decide how much surveillance were subject to.

A strong rule of law serves as a framework to de-escalate conflict some of these could escalate to nuclear war. Charles S. Rhyne, May 1, 1958, Charles S. Rhyne has is J.D, and is a U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, President of the American Bar Association, Law Day Speech for Voice of America delivered on the first Law Day, http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/rhyne58.htmlLaw and courts exist to protect every citizen of the United States in his person and property and in his individual rights and privileges under the Constitution. The ultimate power to change or expand the law in our system remains with its source, the people. They can elect as lawmakers those who will vote for wise laws and vote out of office those who do not. They can also amend the Constitution as experience dictates the necessity of change. In these days of soul-searching and re-evaluation and inventorying of basic concepts and principles brought on by the expansion of mans vision to the new frontiers and horizons of outer space, we want the people of the world to know that we in America have an unshakable belief in the most essential ingredient of our way of lifethe rule of law. The law we honor is the basis and foundation of our nations freedom and the freedom for the individual, which exists here. And to Americans our freedom is more important than our very lives. The rule of law has been the bulwark of our democracy. It has afforded protection to the weak, the oppressed, the minorities, the unpopular; it has made it possible to achieve responsiveness of the government to the will of people. It stands as the very antithesis of Communism and dictatorship. When we talk about justice under our rule of law, the absence of such justice behind the Iron Curtain is apparent to all. When we talk about freedom for the individual, Hungary is recalled to the minds of all men. And when we talk about peace under lawpeace without the bloodbath of warwe are appealing to the foremost desire of all peoples everywhere. The tremendous yearning of all peoples for peace can only be answered by the use of law to replace weapons in resolving international disputes. We in our country sincerely believe that mankinds best hope for preventing the tragic consequences of nuclear-satellite-missile warfare is to persuade the nations of the entire world to submit all disputes to tribunals of justice for all adjudication under the rule of law. We lawyers of America would like to join lawyers from every nation in the world in fashioning an international code of law so appealing that sentiment will compel its general acceptance. Mans relation to man is the most neglected field of study, exploration and development in the world community. It is also the most critical. The most important basic fact of our generation is that the rapid advance of knowledge in science and technology has forced increased international relationships in a shrunken and indivisible world. Men must either live together in peace or in modern war we will surely die together. History teaches that the rule of law has enabled mankind to live together peacefully within nations and it is clear that this same rule of law offers our best hope as a mechanism to achieve and maintain peace between nations. The lawyer is the technician in mans relationship to man. There exists a worldwide challenge to our profession to develop law to replace weapons before the dreadful holocaust of nuclear war overtake our people. It is said that an idea can be more powerful than an atom because strength today resides in mans mindnot his muscle. We lawyers of the world must take the idea of peace under the rule of law and make it a force superior to weapons and thus outlaw wars of weapons. Law offers the best hope for order in a disordered world. The law of force or the force of law will rule the world. In the field of human conduct the law has never confessed failure. The struggle for a world ruled by law must go on with increased intensity. We must prove that the genius of man in the field of science and technology has not so far outstripped his inventiveness in the sphere of human relations as to make catastrophe inevitable. If man can conquer space he can also solve the need for legal machinery to insure universal and lasting peace. In our country ignorance of the value of law in international relations and what it could do for the people of the world is appalling. A major purpose of Law Day-U.S.A. is therefore to demonstrate to our people that the need for law in the world community is the greatest gap in the growing structure of civilization. And we lawyers of America are anxious to work with lawyers and men of good of all nations in filling this gap in that structure. We believe that no greater challenge exists for any profession and that no greater service to mankind can be performed.

Separation of powers key to hegIkenberry 01 (G John, Prof Georgetown U., The National Interest, Spring, Lexis) When other major states consider whether to work with the United States or resist it, the fact that it is an open, stable democracy matters. The outside world can see American policymaking at work and can even find opportunities to enter the process and help shape how the overall order operates. Paris, London, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo and even Beijing-in each of these capitals officials can readily find reasons to conclude that an engagement policy toward the United States will be more effective than balancing against U.S. power. America in large part stumbled into this open, institutionalized order in the 1940s, as it sought to rebuild the postwar world and to counter Soviet communism. In the late 1940s, in a pre-echo of today's situation, the United States was the world's dominant state--constituting 45 percent of world GNP, leading in military power, technology, finance and industry, and brimming with natural resources. But America nonetheless found itself building world order around stable and binding partnerships. Its calling card was its offer of Cold War security protection. But the intensity of political and economic cooperation between the United States and its partners went well beyond what was necessary to counter the Soviet threat. As the historian Geir Lundestad has observed, the expanding American political order in the half century after World War II was in important respects an "empire by invitation."(n5) The remarkable global reach of American postwar hegemony has been at least in part driven by the efforts of European and Asian governments to harness U.S. power, render that power more predictable, and use it to overcome their own regional insecurities. The result has been a vast system of America-centered economic and security partnerships. Even though the United States looks like a wayward power to many around the world today, it nonetheless has an unusual ability to co-opt and reassure. Three elements matter most in making U.S. power more stable, engaged and restrained. First, America's mature political institutions organized around the rule of law have made it a relatively predictable and cooperative hegemon. The pluralistic and regularized way in which U.S. foreign and security policy is made reduces surprises and allows other states to build long-term, mutually beneficial relations. The governmental separation of powers creates a shared decision-making system that opens up the process and reduces the ability of any one leader to make abrupt or aggressive moves toward other states. An active press and competitive party system also provide a service to outside states by generating information about U.S. policy and determining its seriousness of purpose. The messiness of a democracy can, indeed, frustrate American diplomats and confuse foreign observers. But over the long term, democratic institutions produce more consistent and credible policies--policies that do not reflect the capricious and idiosyncratic whims of an autocrat.

US benevolent hegemony is critical to global peacethe alternative causes massive warsKromah 9, Masters Student in IR [February 2009, Lamii Moivi Kromah at the Department of International RelationsUniversity of the Witwatersrand, The Institutional Nature of U.S. Hegemony: Post 9/11, http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7301/MARR%2009.pdf?sequence=1]A final major gain to the United States from the benevolent hegemony has perhaps been less widely appreciated. It nevertheless proved of great significance in the short as well as in the long term: the pervasive cultural influence of the United States.39 This dimension of power base is often neglected. After World War II the authoritarian political cultures of Europe and Japan were utterly discredited, and the liberal democratic elements of those cultures revivified. The revival was most extensive and deliberate in the occupied powers of the Axis, where it was nurtured by drafting democratic constitutions, building democratic institutions, curbing the power of industrial trusts by decartelization and the rebuilding of trade unions, and imprisoning or discrediting much of the wartime leadership. American liberal ideas largely filled the cultural void. The effect was not so dramatic in the "victor" states whose regimes were reaffirmed (Britain, the Low and Scandinavian countries), but even there the United States and its culture was widely admired. The upper classes may often have thought it too "commercial," but in many respects American mass consumption culture was the most pervasive part of America's impact. American styles, tastes, and middle-class consumption patterns were widely imitated, in a process that' has come to bear the label "coca-colonization."40 After WWII policy makers in the USA set about remaking a world to facilitate peace. The hegemonic project involves using political and economic advantages gained in world war to restructure the operation of the world market and interstate system in the hegemon's own image. The interests of the leader are projected on a universal plane: What is good for the hegemon is good for the world. The hegemonic state is successful to the degree that other states emulate it. Emulation is the basis of the consent that lies at the heart of the hegemonic project.41 Since wealth depended on peace the U.S set about creating institutions and regimes that promoted free trade, and peaceful conflict resolution. U.S. benevolent hegemony is what has kept the peace since the end of WWII. The upshot is that U.S. hegemony and liberalism have produced the most stable and durable political order that the world has seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is not as formally or highly integrated as the European Union, but it is just as profound and robust as a political order, Kants Perpetual Peace requires that the system be diverse and not monolithic because then tyranny will be the outcome. As long as the system allows for democratic states to press claims and resolve conflicts, the system will perpetuate itself peacefully. A state such as the United States that has achieved international primacy has every reason to attempt to maintain that primacy through peaceful means so as to preclude the need of having to fight a war to maintain it.42 This view of the post-hegemonic Western world does not put a great deal of emphasis on U.S. leadership in the traditional sense. U.S. leadership takes the form of providing the venues and mechanisms for articulating demands and resolving disputes not unlike the character of politics within domestic pluralistic systems.43 America as a big and powerful state has an incentive to organize and manage a political order that is considered legitimate by the other states. It is not in a hegemonic leader's interest to preside over a global order that requires constant use of material capabilities to get other states to go along. Legitimacy exists when political order is based on reciprocal consent. It emerges when secondary states buy into rules and norms of the political order as a matter of principle, and not simply because they are forced into it. But if a hegemonic power wants to encourage the emergence of a legitimate political order, it must articulate principles and norms, and engage in negotiations and compromises that have very little to do with the exercise of power.44 So should this hegemonic power be called leadership, or domination? Well, it would tend toward the latter. Hierarchy has not gone away from this system. Core states have peripheral areas: colonial empires and neo-colonial backyards. Hegemony, in other words, involves a structure in which there is a hegemonic core power. The problem with calling this hegemonic power "leadership" is that leadership is a wonderful thing-everyone needs leadership. But sometimes I have notice that leadership is also an ideology that legitimates domination and exploitation. In fact, this is often the case. But this is a different kind of domination than in earlier systems. Its difference can be seen in a related question: is it progressive? Is it evolutionary in the sense of being better for most people in the system? I think it actually is a little bit better. The trickle down effect is bigger-it is not very big, but it is bigger.45 It is to this theory, Hegemonic Stability that the glass slipper properly belongs, because both U.S. security and economic strategies fit the expectations of hegemonic stability theory more comfortably than they do other realist theories. We must first discuss the three pillars that U.S. hegemony rests on structural, institutional, and situational. (1) Structural leadership refers to the underlying distribution of material capabilities that gives some states the ability to direct the overall shape of world political order. Natural resources, capital, technology, military force, and economic size are the characteristics that shape state power, which in turn determine the capacities for leadership and hegemony. If leadership is rooted in the distribution of power, there is reason to worry about the present and future. The relative decline of the United States has not been matched by the rise of another hegemonic leader. At its hegemonic zenith after World War II, the United States commanded roughly forty five percent of world production. It had a remarkable array of natural resource, financial, agricultural, industrial, and technological assets. America in 1945 or 1950 was not just hegemonic because it had a big economy or a huge military; it had an unusually wide range of resources and capabilities. This situation may never occur again. As far as one looks into the next century, it is impossible to see the emergence of a country with a similarly commanding power position. (2) Institutional leadership refers to the rules and practices that states agree to that set in place principles and procedures that guide their relations. It is not power capabilities as such or the interventions of specific states that facilitate concerted action, but the rules and mutual expectations that are established as institutions. Institutions are, in a sense, self-imposed constraints that states create to assure continuity in their relations and to facilitate the realization of mutual interests. A common theme of recent discussions of the management of the world economy is that institutions will need to play a greater role in the future in providing leadership in the absence of American hegemony. Bergsten argues, for example, that "institutions themselves will need to play a much more important role.46 Institutional management is important and can generate results that are internationally greater than the sum of their national parts. The argument is not that international institutions impose outcomes on states, but that institutions shape and constrain how states conceive and pursue their interests and policy goals. They provide channels and mechanisms to reach agreements. They set standards and mutual expectations concerning how states should act. They "bias" politics in internationalist directions just as, presumably, American hegemonic leadership does. (3) Situational leadership refers to the actions and initiatives of states that induce cooperation quite apart from the distribution of power or the array of institutions. It is more cleverness or the ability to see specific opportunities to build or reorient international political order, rather than the power capacities of the state, that makes a difference. In this sense, leadership really is expressed in a specific individual-in a president or foreign minister-as he or she sees a new opening, a previously unidentified passage forward, a new way to define state interests, and thereby transforms existing relations. Hegemonic stability theorists argue that international politics is characterized by a succession of hegemonies in which a single powerful state dominates the system as a result of its victory in the last hegemonic war.47 Especially after the cold war America can be described as trying to keep its position at the top but also integrating others more thoroughly in the international system that it dominates. It is assumed that the differential growth of power in a state system would undermine the status quo and lead to hegemonic war between declining and rising powers48, but I see a different pattern: the U.S. hegemonic stability promoting liberal institutionalism, the events following 9/11 are a brief abnormality from this path, but the general trend will be toward institutional liberalism. Hegemonic states are the crucial components in military alliances that turn back the major threats to mutual sovereignties and hence political domination of the system. Instead of being territorially aggressive and eliminating other states, hegemons respect other's territory. They aspire to be leaders and hence are upholders of inter-stateness and inter-territoriality.49 The nature of the institutions themselves must, however, be examined. They were shaped in the years immediately after World War II by the United States. The American willingness to establish institutions, the World Bank to deal with finance and trade, United Nations to resolve global conflict, NATO to provide security for Western Europe, is explained in terms of the theory of collective goods. It is commonplace in the regimes literature that the United States, in so doing, was providing not only private goods for its own benefit but also (and perhaps especially) collective goods desired by, and for the benefit of, other capitalist states and members of the international system in general. (Particular care is needed here about equating state interest with "national" interest.) Not only was the United States protecting its own territory and commercial enterprises, it was providing military protection for some fifty allies and almost as many neutrals. Not only was it ensuring a liberal, open, near-global economy for its own prosperity, it was providing the basis for the prosperity of all capitalist states and even for some states organized on noncapitalist principles (those willing to abide by the basic rules established to govern international trade and finance). While such behaviour was not exactly selfless or altruistic, certainly the benefits-however distributed by class, state, or region-did accrue to many others, not just to Americans.50 For the truth about U.S. dominant role in the world is known to most clear-eyed international observers. And the truth is that the benevolent hegemony exercised by the United States is good for a vast portion of the world's population. It is certainly a better international arrangement than all realistic alternatives. To undermine it would cost many others around the world far more than it would cost Americans-and far sooner. As Samuel Huntington wrote five years ago, before he joined the plethora of scholars disturbed by the "arrogance" of American hegemony; "A world without U.S. primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder and less democracy and economic growth than a world where the United States continues to have more influence than any other country shaping global affairs. 51 I argue that the overall American-shaped system is still in place. It is this macro political system-a legacy of American power and its liberal polity that remains and serves to foster agreement and consensus. This is precisely what people want when they look for U.S. leadership and hegemony.52 If the U.S. retreats from its hegemonic role, who would supplant it, not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world and certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a New Dark Age. Moreover, the alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity a global vacuum of power.53 Since the end of WWII the United States has been the clear and dominant leader politically, economically and military. But its leadership as been unique; it has not been tyrannical, its leadership and hegemony has focused on relative gains and has forgone absolute gains. The difference lies in the exercise of power. The strength acquired by the United States in the aftermath of World War II was far greater than any single nation had ever possessed, at least since the Roman Empire. America's share of the world economy, the overwhelming superiority of its military capacity-augmented for a time by a monopoly of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them--gave it the choice of pursuing any number of global ambitions. That the American people "might have set the crown of world empire on their brows," as one British statesman put it in 1951, but chose not to, was a decision of singular importance in world history and recognized as such.54 Leadership is really an elegant word for power. To exercise leadership is to get others to do things that they would not otherwise do. It involves the ability to shape, directly or indirectly, the interests or actions of others. Leadership may involve the ability to not just "twist arms" but also to get other states to conceive of their interests and policy goals in new ways. This suggests a second element of leadership, which involves not just the marshalling of power capabilities and material resources. It also involves the ability to project a set of political ideas or principles about the proper or effective ordering of po1itics. It suggests the ability to produce concerted or collaborative actions by several states or other actors. Leadership is the use of power to orchestrate the actions of a group toward a collective end.55 By validating regimes and norms of international behaviour the U.S. has given incentives for actors, small and large, in the international arena to behave peacefully. The uni-polar U.S. dominated order has led to a stable international system. Woodrow Wilsons zoo of managed relations among states as supposed to his jungle method of constant conflict. The U.S. through various international treaties and organizations as become a quasi world government; It resolves the problem of provision by imposing itself as a centralized authority able to extract the equivalent of taxes. The focus of the theory thus shifts from the ability to provide a public good to the ability to coerce other states. A benign hegemon in this sense coercion should be understood as benign and not tyrannical. If significant continuity in the ability of the United States to get what it wants is accepted, then it must be explained. The explanation starts with our noting that the institutions for political and economic cooperation have themselves been maintained. Keohane rightly stresses the role of institutions as "arrangements permitting communication and therefore facilitating the exchange of information. By providing reliable information and reducing the costs of transactions, institutions can permit cooperation to continue even after a hegemon's influence has eroded. Institutions provide opportunities for commitment and for observing whether others keep their commitments. Such opportunities are virtually essential to cooperation in non-zero-sum situations, as gaming experiments demonstrate. Declining hegemony and stagnant (but not decaying) institutions may therefore be consistent with a stable provision of desired outcomes, although the ability to promote new levels of cooperation to deal with new problems (e.g., energy supplies, environmental protection) is more problematic. Institutions nevertheless provide a part of the necessary explanation.56 In restructuring the world after WWII it was America that was the prime motivator in creating and supporting the various international organizations in the economic and conflict resolution field. An example of this is NATOs making Western Europe secure for the unification of Europe. It was through NATO institutionalism that the countries in Europe where able to start the unification process. The U.S. working through NATO provided the security and impetus for a conflict prone region to unite and benefit from greater cooperation. Since the United States emerged as a great power, the identification of the interests of others with its own has been the most striking quality of American foreign and defence policy. Americans seem to have internalized and made second nature a conviction held only since World War II: Namely, that their own wellbeing depends fundamentally on the well-being of others; that American prosperity cannot occur in the absence of global prosperity; that American freedom depends on the survival and spread of freedom elsewhere; that aggression anywhere threatens the danger of aggression everywhere; and that American national security is impossible without a broad measure of international security. 57 I see a multi-polar world as one being filled with instability and higher chances of great power conflict. The Great Power jostling and British hegemonic decline that led to WWI is an example of how multi polar systems are prone to great power wars. I further posit that U.S. hegemony is significantly different from the past British hegemony because of its reliance on consent and its mutilaterist nature. The most significant would be the UN and its various branches financial, developmental, and conflict resolution. It is common for the international system to go through cataclysmic changes with the fall of a great power. I feel that American hegemony is so different especially with its reliance on liberal institutionalism and complex interdependence that U.S. hegemonic order and governance will be maintained by others, if states vary in size, then cooperation between the largest of the former free riders (and including the declining hegemonic power) may suffice to preserve the cooperative outcome. Thus we need to amend the assumption that collective action is impossible and incorporate it into a fuller specification of the circumstances under which international cooperation can be preserved even as a hegemonic power declines.58 If hegemony means the ability to foster cooperation and commonalty of social purpose among states, U.S. leadership and its institutional creations will long outlast the decline of its post war position of military and economic dominance; and it will outlast the foreign policy stumbling of particular administrations.59 U.S. hegemony will continue providing the public good that the world is associated with despite the rise of other powers in the system cooperation may persist after hegemonic decline because of the inertia of existing regimes. Institutional factors and different logics of regime creation and maintenance have been invoked to explain the failure of the current economic regime to disintegrate rapidly in response to the decline of American predominance in world affairs.60 Since the end of WWII the majority of the states that are represented in the core have come to depend on the security that U.S. hegemony has provided, so although they have their own national interest, they forgo short term gains to maintain U.S. hegemony. Why would other states forgo a leadership role to a foreign hegemon because it is in their interests; one particularly ambitious application is Gilpin's analysis of war and hegemonic stability. He argues that the presence of a hegemonic power is central to the preservation of stability and peace in the international system. Much of Gilpin's argument resembles his own and Krasner's earlier thesis that hegemonic states provide an international order that furthers their own self-interest. Gilpin now elaborates the thesis with the claim that international order is a public good, benefiting subordinate states. This is, of course, the essence of the theory of hegemonic stability. But Gilpin adds a novel twist: the dominant power not only provides the good, it is capable of extracting contributions toward the good from subordinate states. In effect, the hegemonic power constitutes a quasigovernment by providing public goods and taxing other states to pay for them. Subordinate states will be reluctant to be taxed but, because of the hegemonic state's preponderant power, will succumb. Indeed, if they receive net benefits (i.e., a surplus of public good benefits over the contribution extracted from them), they may recognize hegemonic leadership as legitimate and so reinforce its performance and position. During the 19th century several countries benefited from British hegemony particularly its rule of the seas, since WWII the U.S. has also provided a similar stability and security that as made smaller powers thrive in the international system. The model presumes that the (military) dominance of the hegemonic state, which gives it the capacity to enforce an international order, also gives it an interest in providing a generally beneficial order so as to lower the costs of maintaining that order and perhaps to facilitate its ability to extract contributions from other members of the system.

Even small violations of separation of powers must be avoided like nuclear war risksRedish and Cisar 1991, Professor of law at Northwestern and Law Clerk to Chief Judge William Bauer, United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, Martin H. and Elizabeth J., December 1991, IF ANGELS WERE TO GOVERN" *: the Need for Pragmatic Formalism in Separation of Powers Theory ,1992 Duke Law Journal, 41 Duke L.J. 449, p. 474

In summary, no defender of separation of powers can prove with certitude that, but for the existence of separation of powers, tyranny would be the inevitable outcome. But the question is whether we wish to take that risk, given the obvious severity of the harm that might result. Given both the relatively limited cost imposed by use of separation of powers and the great severity of the harm sought to be avoided, one should not demand a great showing of the likelihood that the feared harm would result. For just as in the case of the threat of nuclear war, no one wants to be forced into the position of saying, I told you so.

1AC Plan

The United States Federal Government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance by changing the composition of the FISA Courts to make them like other Article III Courts. Full time judges will be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate to permanent judgeships.

1AC SolvencyPlan solves FISA Courts should look like other Article 3 Courts allows democracy, separation of powers, ideological balance and expertise demonstrating legitimacy.Douglas E. Lindner* N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION & PUBLIC POLICY QUORUM *J.D./M.P.A. (Public Policy Analysis) Candidate, New York University, 2015; REVISITING THE FISA COURT APPOINTMENT PROCESS http://www.nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Lindner-2015-nyujlpp-28.pdfThe clearest proposal to change the composition of the FISA courts would be to make them look more like other Article III courts: full-time judges appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate to permanent judgeships on these courts. This would alleviate the losses to representative democracy, separation of powers, ideological balance, and expertise inherent in designation by the Chief Justice. Allowing judges to devote their full attention to specializing in one area is more important for FISA law than for other subjects because the law is secret, the proceedings are ex parte, and individual rulings directly touch upon millions of peoples constitutional rights. The Federal Circuit and Court of International Trade provide working examples of Article III courts of special subject matter whose judges are appointed directly, with life tenure on the specialist courts, and with careers of experience in the areas of law for which they are responsible. Their technical expertise and their democratic legitimacy are worth emulating. Of course, this approach is not without drawbacks. A full-time FISC would need fewer judges, increasing the influence of each judge.84 Unlike the district judges who currently compose the FISC, full-time FISC judges would grow accustomed to a system decidedly unlike traditional Anglo-American courts, in which the government is the only party, decisions are made in secret, courts engage in informal dialogue with government over policy minutiae, and the answer to the governments request is nearly always yes.85 Through no fault of their own, full-time FISC judges might become less skeptical of government requests and less vigilant about anticipating contrary arguments. But the opposite phenomena are just as likely. Perhaps full-time FISC judges would gain the expertise, experience, and confidence to assert a more vigorous role in questioning the governments assertions. One need not take any particular position on the proper extent of surveillance to realize the benefits of having full-time, permanent FISA judges appointed through the regular constitutional process. That said, if ones goal is to create a FISC more skeptical of executive power, there appears little room to regress. A full-time FISCR, however, would find three appellate judges with an empty docket for years on end. In that case, I would abolish the FISCR rather than have full-time judges with an empty docket. To replace it, I would suggest making greater use of the en banc FISC, with appellate jurisdiction transferred to either the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court. The FISCRs workload is so light that either of those courts could easily take it on, though getting involved in this might damage their reputations. In particular, the specter of secret, ex parte Supreme Court cases is an unpleasant possibility. Yet the Supreme Court already has the power and responsibility to review FISCR decisions.86 And to the degree that secret, ex parte proceedings sound unseemly, one should question their suitability for any constitutional courtincluding the FISC. Were Congress to adopt some version of the special advocate system that has been debated,87 my proposal would become even more palatable. Routine involvement of a privacy-protective counterparty could dramatically increase the frequency of appeals, leading to a fully utilized FISCR. The presence of special advocates would alleviate many of the concerns over full-time FISC judges, giving them a more traditional adversarial process to preside over. Regardless of any change in appointment or composition, special advocates would relieve FISA judges of the burden of imagining contrary arguments and raising privacy concerns on their own. No proposed legislation would effect a system of traditional presidential appointment. Likewise, none of the proposed bills would create full-time FISA courts or life tenure for their judges. Thus, the only FISA court composition problems that Congress is even proposing to address are those stemming from the Chief Justices unilateral selection power. Yet, as is so often the case, the simplest solution is the best one. The FISA courts should look as much like other Article III courts as possible.

Plan is a pre-requisite to any other true reform of surveillance. Democratic legitimacy, separation of powers and concerns with ideological balance require that FISA judges are appointed like other Article 3 Courts. Douglas E. Lindner* N.Y.U. JOURNAL OF LEGISLATION & PUBLIC POLICY QUORUM *J.D./M.P.A. (Public Policy Analysis) Candidate, New York University, 2015; REVISITING THE FISA COURT APPOINTMENT PROCESS http://www.nyujlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Lindner-2015-nyujlpp-28.pdfNo matter the wisdom of their jurisprudence, the FISA courts are institutionally broken. In order to meet the threshold of democratic legitimacy found in other courts, restore the separation of powers in judicial appointments, maintain the ideological balance of the judiciary, and staff them with judges who truly understand the law and the technology, FISA judges should be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to dedicated FISA judgeshipsjust like any other Article III court. There are other problems with the FISA courts that demand legislative action. Ex parte proceedings and the inability of individuals to fight for their rights are extremely problematic. A special advocate system is needed even if my proposal is adopted. But until Congress fixes the composition of the FISA courts, they will never be truly equipped to make the hard choices about privacy and surveillance that a twenty-first century democracy demands.

Democratic Legitimacy Ext -LThe rule of law r