GDI 15 Clapper Neg

Judicial Review Advantage

Alt Causes 1NC

Summers decision undermine environmental standing
Eric Biber 13, Eric Biber is a specialist in conservation biology, land-use planning and public lands law,
"Did the Supreme Court just shut the courthouse door on environmental plaintiffs?," 3-1-2013, No
Publication, http://legal-planet.org/2013/03/01/did-the-supreme-court-just-shut-the-courthouse-dooron-environmental-plaintiffs/, DOA: 7-5-2015, y2k
Clapper is in fact very similar to another recent Supreme Court case that concluded that environmental
plaintiffs did not have standing: Summers v. Earth Island Institute . And its that similarity that I think gives a clue
about how one can limit the scope of the language in Clapper. The plaintiffs in Summers sought to challenge Forest
Service regulations that they argued improperly restricted public notice and comment for certain forest
development activities. The Court concluded that the plaintiffs in Summers did not have standing
because they had not identified a specific development project that would cause them injury (e.g., by
diminishing their aesthetic enjoyment of the forest) and that had also gone through the process
established by the challenged regulations. The plaintiffs in Summers (and the dissent, per Justice Breyer) objected that
given the sheer number of projects that did proceed under the regulations, and the regular and continuous use of the National
Forests by the plaintiffs, it did not make sense to deny standing in the case, since it was inevitable (or at least highly likely) that at
some point one of the plaintiffs would suffer injury from the regulations.
The plaintiffs standing argument in Summers is, in fact, very similar to the plaintiffs argument in Clapper .
The plaintiffs argued that given their regular and consistent communications with individuals that have previously been subject to
US government surveillance, it was inevitable (or at least highly likely) that at some point their communications would be subject to
surveillance pursuant to Section 1881a of FISA. As with Summers, the Courts response (quoted above) is that until

and unless the plaintiffs can point to a specific piece of communications that they can show was subject to
government surveillance pursuant to 1881a, there is no standing to sue . (Of course, a major difference between
Summers and this case is that in Summers, plaintiffs likely would be able to meet that standard at some point in time by waiting for
the right project, while in Clapper because the surveillance is secret, it is going to be very difficult, perhaps impossible, for plaintiffs
to ever meet the Courts standing requirements.)

SQ Solves Standing 1NC

Squo solves and the passage of the plan has little effect - Foot note five of clapper implies
that the standard should be applied flexibly and that its application is a small shift
McDowell 2014
(Amanda McDowell, Lawyer, THE IMPACT OF CLAPPER V. AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA ON THE
DOCTRINE OF FEAR-BASED STANDING, GEORGIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 49:247 2014]
http://georgialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Download-PDF-V49-I1-5-McDowell.pdf)
BHS-CW
While the previously discussed interpretations of Clapper are certainly plausible, this Note contends that
Clapper is best read as only a slight shift to a stricter standing doctrine and should not be seen as a major
departure from current standing jurisprudence. In other words, the certainly impending standing test
discussed in Clapper can be flexibly applied. Footnote five in the opinion is the key moment where the
Court effectively softens the impact of the certainly impending test.155 The Courts statement that it
does not uniformly require plaintiffs to demonstrate that it is literally certain that the harms they identify
will come about,156 leaves courts with the ability to choose a more lenient standing inquiry than the
certainly impending test. The Clapper Court clarified that the inquiry for the more lenient standing test
looks to whether there is a substantial risk of future harm.157 Another interesting aspect of footnote five
is the use of the phrase clearly impending rather than certainly impending.158 Notably, the phrase
clearly impending is not used anywhere else in the opinion. While the Court may have felt that the
phrases clearly impending and certainly impending could be used interchangeably, the addition of this
phrase may have also been a tactical move to garner a majority. Some commentators suggest that clearly
seems to indicate a lower burden than certainly, and that footnote five was added to the opinion as a
concession in order to secure Justice Kennedys vote.159 Justice Kennedy was the only member of the
Clapper majority who was also in the majority in Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw Environmental
Services, Inc., and he may have been concerned with adhering to precedent.160 Thus, footnote fives
substantial risk test and its use of the phrase clearly impending may have been an attempt by the
majority to reconcile the certainly impending inquiry with previous cases.161 The practical effect of
footnote five is that it gives lower courts the option of using either the substantial risk test, or even the
clearly impending test, to establish standing when a fear of future harm would not meet the certainly
impending test. At the very least, footnote five undercuts the idea that Clapper requires a strict and
uniform adherence to the certainly impending test. While footnote five seems to water down the impact
of the certainly impending test, the Clapper decision still slightly tightens the standing inquiry in cases
involving fear of future harm. As discussed above, the Court rejected a standing test based on an
objectively reasonable likelihood of future harm.162 The rejection of this test narrows the scope of fearbased standing, because at the very least, the Court is clarifying that the substantial risk inquiryrather
than the objectively reasonable likelihood standardis now the lowest threshold that can be used to
establish standing.163

SQ Solves Standing 2NC

Clapper v Amnesty no impact on standing

Post and Howard, Data Managers at Freshfields Bruckhaus

Deringer US LLP, 2015

[Dana and Cheryl, February 24th, Privacy Advisor, Clapper v. Amnesty's Impact on the Harm Threshold,
https://privacyassociation.org/news/a/clapper-v-amnestys-impact-on-the-harm-threshold/, 7/5/15
DOA, DL]
Notwithstanding the above cases, Clapper has not completely sounded the death knell for data breach lawsuits
when allegations of future harm are alleged . Even when plaintiffs were able to establish Article III standing, however,
many of their claims were still dismissed based on their failure to plead actual damages. In re: Sony Gaming Networks and Customer
Data Security Breach Litigation (Jan. 2014), for example, a class-action arising out of a criminal intrusion into a computer network
system used to provide online gaming and Internet connectivity via an individuals gaming console or personal computer, only one
of the 11 named plaintiffs alleged that he experienced unauthorized charges as a result of the intrusion. Relying primarily on a preClapper Ninth Circuit case, Krottner v. Starbucks, which held that " the possibility of future injury may be sufficient to

confer standing" where the plaintiff is "immediately in danger of sustaining some direct injury as the
result of the challenged conduct," i.e., where there is a credible threat of real and immediate harm, the
Sony court found that the plaintiffs adequately alleged Article III standing for purposes of the motion to
dismiss. In reaching this conclusion, the Sony court rejected defendants argument that Clapper tightened the
injury-in-fact analysis set forth by the Ninth Circuit in Krottner. While the court did not dismiss the case for lack
of standing, it dismissed many of the claims, either for failure to state a claim or because such claims were barred by plaintiffs
failure to the economic loss doctrine (which requires plaintiffs to allege appreciable, non-speculative harm proximately caused by a
breach). Likewise, in re Adobe Sys., Inc., Privacy Litig., hackers accessed Adobes servers and spent several weeks undetected,
removing customer names, login IDs, passwords, credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and mailing and e-mailing
addresses. The court found that the harm threatened by the Adobe breach was sufficiently concrete and imminent to satisfy the
standard as stated in both Krottner and Clapper. The court emphasized that the hackers deliberately targeted Adobes servers and
spent several weeks collecting the plaintiffs personal information. As such, the danger that plaintiffs stolen data would

be subject to misuse was, according to the court, certainly impending. The court reasoned that requiring
plaintiffs to wait until they actually suffer identity theft or credit card fraud in order to have standing
would run counter to the well-established principle that harm does not need to have already occurred or
be literally certain to constitute injury.
Clapper has no impact on standing because of the uncertainty inherent with standing

McDowell, Senior Editor of the Georgia Law Review Association,

2014

[Amanda, Fall 2014, Georgia Law Review Association, THE IMPACT OF CLAPPER V. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL USA ON THE DOCTRINE OF FEAR-BASED STANDING,
http://georgialawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Download-PDF-V49-I1-5McDowell.pdf, 7/6/15 DOA, DL]
The impact that Clapper will have on standing jurisprudence is uncertain. Part of this uncertainty may
stem from the fact that standing is considered one of the most complex areas of the law, largely due to the
Courts varying formulations of the doctrines requirements. 113 More likely, Clappers impact is uncertain
because of the Courts reluctance to explicitly define the certainly impending test that is discussed
throughout the opinion. Additionally, the decision seems to fluctuate between endorsing a strict standing test on
the one hand, and affirming precedent that endorses a more flexible approach to standing on the other hand. For instance, at
several points in the decision the Court doggedly insists that a plaintiffs injury must be certainly
impending to satisfy Article III standing.114 Yet, at other instances the majority goes to great lengths to
reconcile its decision with established precedent, including prior cases that endorsed a more liberal standing inquiry.115
As a result, Clapper is subject to several plausible interpretations.

SQ Solves Enviro Litigations 1NC

Clapper doesnt preclude environmental litigations---the standing requirement doesnt
apply to most cases
Eric Biber 13, Eric Biber is a specialist in conservation biology, land-use planning and public lands law,
"Did the Supreme Court just shut the courthouse door on environmental plaintiffs?," 3-1-2013, No
Publication, http://legal-planet.org/2013/03/01/did-the-supreme-court-just-shut-the-courthouse-dooron-environmental-plaintiffs/, DOA: 7-5-2015, y2k
Note that read this way, Clappers main impact on environmental law cases will be to force plaintiffs to focus on challenging
individual projects, rather than agency regulations or policy statements (or at least, when making those challenges to regulations or
policy statements, plaintiffs will have to allege and show with specificity how an application of those regulations or policy statements
are affecting them without an intermediate government action or step taking place). As such, this standing rule may put

environmental groups with limited resources at a strategic disadvantage , but I dont think it will
absolutely foreclose many challenges.
And read this way, Clapper shouldnt foreclose challenges in the kinds of cases that I discussed above. In all of
those cases, plaintiffs are challenging a specific government action that they alleged had a particular
impact on them a government regulatory program that would allow more emissions of harmful
chemicals, or a permit that would result in a particular development project that would impact a
particular location. In other words, the uncertainty that both Summers and Clapper find troublesome is whether a general
government program will, in fact, actually result in an application that will affect the plaintiffs interests. But plaintiffs should
still be able to rely on claims about probabilistic injury once they can show that there is such a particular
application of the general program.

SQ Solves Enviro Litigations 2NC

Footnote 5 proves---theres no impact on environmental litigations
Eric Biber 13, Eric Biber is a specialist in conservation biology, land-use planning and public lands law,
"Did the Supreme Court just shut the courthouse door on environmental plaintiffs?," 3-1-2013, No
Publication, http://legal-planet.org/2013/03/01/did-the-supreme-court-just-shut-the-courthouse-dooron-environmental-plaintiffs/, DOA: 7-5-2015, y2k
Footnote 5 in the majority opinion seems to support this distinction:
Our cases do not uniformly require plaintiffs to demonstrate that it is literally certain that the harms they
identify will come about. In some instances, we have found standing based on a substantial risk that the
harm will occur , which may prompt plaintiffs to reasonably incur costs to mitigate or avoid that har m. But
to the extent that the substantial risk standard is relevant and is distinct from the clearly impending [sic the court appears to
have forgotten a find and replace here!] requirement, respondents fall short of even that standard, in light of the attenuated chain of
inferences to find harm here. In addition, plaintiffs bear the burden of pleading and proving concrete facts showing that the
defendants actual action has caused the substantial risk of harm. Plaintiffs cannot rely on speculation about the unfettered choices
made by independent actors not before the court. [fn. 5, p. 15-16; citations omitted; emphasis added]

Note that this interpretation is a way to reconcile the language in Clapper with broad language in a prior
Supreme Court case, Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw Environmental Services . In that case, the Court

concluded that environmental plaintiffs had standing to challenge a companys illegal discharge of pollution into a river the plaintiffs
used for recreation, even though plaintiffs had not shown that there would be any ecological or environmental harm from the
discharge. Their fear of harm from the discharge was enough. Again, if you read Clapper as focusing on the

kinds of government action challenged, Laidlaw is consistent with Clapper after all, in Laidlaw the plaintiffs
were challenging particular, specific actions by the company.

No Global Modeling 1NC

Cant solve environmental leadership past alt causes
Victor, law professor at Stanford's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development and adjunct senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 8
(David G., "The next U.S. President won't be green", 5-1-08 http://www.newsweek.com/id/135073/, d/a
10-18-12)
The U.S. record on international environmental issues is highly uneven for reasons that have little to do with George W. Bush's
leadership. His administration has been tarred across the planet for reckless leadership on international environmental issues. (Its actual record, while dreadful, is not a uniform

the signature of Bush's reckless

foreign policy in this area, his decision to withdraw from the Kyoto treaty barely three months after taking
office, actually has its roots in the Clinton administration. Clinton was highly committed to environmental issues and his vice president, Al Gore, was an even more
passionate leader. Their zealous diplomats negotiated a treaty that was larded with commitments that the U nited
States never could have honored. The promise to cut U.S. emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels is a good
example. Because actual emissions were rising steadily, it would have been impractical to turn them around in time to meet the 2012 Kyoto deadline. The U.S. Congress
failure. It has done useful things in a few areas, such as a thoughtful initiative to help conserve forests in the Congo Basin.) But

never could have passed the requisite legislation, and no leader in the White House could have changed that voting arithmetic. The U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol was

What does this mean for America's credibility in the world? When the American president promises, should anyone
listen? Increasingly, other countries are learning that the answer is no because American leaders have a
habit of promising a lot more than they can deliver. Environmental issues are particularly prone to
overpromising, and not just by the United States. Europe, too, is fresh with unrealistic claims by political leaders. The European Union, for example, has
inevitable.

launched negotiations for the post-Kyoto agreement by claiming that Europeans will cut greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent to 30 percent by 2020an outrageous goal
considering that most of Europe (with the exception mainly of Britain and Germany) will fail to meet their existing targets, and emissions are actually rising. Europe as a whole
would blow through its Kyoto targets if not for its generous use of a scheme that lets them take credit for overseas investment in low-carbon technologiesdespite mounting
evidence that many of those overseas credits don't actually deliver real reductions in emissions. Smart politicians know that the benefits lie mainly in the promising today and

the more enthusiastic the leader, the less credibility he or she has

not in the delivery long in the future. Ironically,

.
While the Clinton administration was busy negotiating the Kyoto treaty, the U.S. Senate was passing a resolution, 95 to 0, to signal that it would reject any treaty that didn't
contain specific commitments by developing countries to control their effluent of greenhouse gases. Since the developing countries had already rejected that outcome the Clinton
administration had little room to maneuver

. The great reversal in U.S. "leadership" on global warming over the last year
came from the people rather than

signaled by President Bush's speech three weeks ago embracing the need for limits on greenhouse gases

top leaders. Public concern about global warming is rising (though it will be checked by the even more acute worries on the economy and war). The Bush speech was
more a recognition that serious efforts to develop climate legislation are already well underway without his stamp. Many states are already planning to regulate greenhouse
gases. The Senate has a serious bill on this subject scheduled for floor debate starting June 2. Its sponsors are Joe Lieberman (the former running mate of Al Gore but now
alienated from the Democratic Party for his overly independent views) and John Warner (a Republican who has no former track record on global warming). These are ideal

he most interesting
signal that American presidents are losing the ability to lead is an effort to rewrite the rules that would
govern environmental treaties under American law. Committed environmentalists have rightly noted that
America's Constitution requires a two-thirds vote for treaties in the Senate . That standard is nearly
impossible to meet because one third of the Senate is usually opposed to anything
interesting. Serious efforts are now underway to reinterpret environmental "treaties" as agreements between Congress and the president, which would require only a
leaders for this issue because often it takes the fresh faces focused on building bipartisan majorities to get things done in America. Perhaps t

majority vote. Most trade agreements, for example, travel under this more lax standard and also have special voting rules that require Congress to approve the agreement as a
whole package rather than pick it apart piece by piece. Rebranding and changing voting rules makes it easier to approve agreements, boosting the credibility of the president to
negotiate agreements that serve the country's interest.

No Global Modeling 2NC

US signals are dismissed
Zenko 13 [Micah, Council on Foreign Relations Center for Preventive Action Douglas Dillon fellow, "The
Signal and the Noise," Foreign Policy, 2-2-13,
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/20/the_signal_and_the_noise
Later, Gen. Austin observed of cutting forces from the Middle East: "Once you reduce the presence in the region, you could very well signal the wrong things to our adversaries."
Sen. Kelly Ayotte echoed his observation, claiming that President Obama's plan to withdraw 34,000 thousand U.S. troops from Afghanistan within one year "leaves us
dangerously low on military personnel...it's going to send a clear signal that America's commitment to Afghanistan is going wobbly." Similarly, during a separate House Armed
Services Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter ominously warned of the possibility of sequestration: "Perhaps most important, the world is watching.
Our friends and allies are watching, potential foes -- all over the world." These routine and unchallenged assertions highlight what is perhaps the most widely agreed-upon
conventional wisdom in U.S. foreign and national security policymaking: the inherent power of signaling. This psychological capability rests on two core assumptions: All
relevant international audiences can or will accurately interpret the signals conveyed, and upon correctly comprehending this signal, these audiences will act as intended by U.S.
policymakers. Many policymakers and pundits fundamentally believe that the Pentagon is an omni-directional radar that uniformly transmits signals via presidential

A bit of digging, however, exposes cracks

in the premises underlying signaling theories. There is a half-century of social science research
demonstrating the cultural and cognitive biases that make communication difficult between two humans.
Why would this be any different between two states, or between a state and non-state actor? Unlike foreign policy signaling in the context of
disputes or escalating crises -- of which there is an extensive body of research into types and effectiveness -- policymakers' claims about signaling are merely made
in a peacetime vacuum. These signals are never articulated with a precision that could be tested or falsified, and thus policymakers cannot
be judged misleading or wrong. Paired with the faith in signaling is the assumption that policymakers can read the
minds of potential or actual friends and adversaries. During the cycle of congressional hearings this spring, you can rest assured that elected
declarations, defense spending levels, visits with defense ministers, or troop deployments to receptive antennas.

representatives and expert witnesses will claim to know what the Iranian supreme leader thinks, how "the Taliban" perceives White House pronouncements about Afghanistan,

people
overestimate others' ability to know them, and...also overestimate their ability to know others." Policymakers also conceive of signaling as a one-way
or how allies in East Asia will react to sequestration. This self-assuredness is referred to as the illusion of transparency by psychologists, or how "

transmission: something that the United States does and others absorb. You rarely read or hear critical thinking from U.S. policymakers about how to interpret the signals from

since U.S. officials correctly downplay the attention-seeking actions of adversaries -- such as Iran's
near-weekly pronouncement of inventing a new drone or missile -- wouldn't it be safer to assume that the
majority of U.S. signals are similarly dismissed ? During my encounters with foreign officials, few take U.S.
government pronouncements seriously, and instead assume they are made to appease domestic
audiences.
others states. Moreover,

Democracy 1NC
Democratic peace theory failsdemocratic nations are more likely to go to war
Larison, journalist, 12 (Daniel, Democratic Peace Theory Is False, The American Conservative,
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/democratic-peace-theory-is-false/, 4-17-12, DOA 0703-15, AX)
Fabio Rojas invokes democratic peace theory in his comment on Rachel Maddows new book, Drift: The Unmooring of
American Military Power (via Wilkinson): The idea is simple for whatever reason, democracies almost never
fight each other. Of course, democracies go to war against non-democracies. But for some reason,
democracies just dont fight each other. Whats the policy implication of all this? First, the sorts of rules that Maddow
proposes are useless. People will just ignore the rules when they want to when they want war. Second, you have to reduce the
population of non-democracies. Thus, if the Federal government wants to protect the United States by preventing war, the best, and
cheapest, way to do it is to provide support and assistance for indigenous movements for democracy and tolerance. Once people
have a genuine democracy at work, they just dont want to fight with each other. They just dont. Rojas claim depends
entirely on the meaning of genuine democracy. Even though there are numerous examples of wars between

states with universal male suffrage and elected governments (including that little dust-up known as
WWI), the states in question probably dont qualify as genuine democracies and so cant be used as counter-examples.
Regardless, democratic peace theory draws broad conclusions from a short period in modern history with
very few cases before the 20th century. The core of democratic peace theory as I understand it is that democratic
governments are more accountable to their populations, and because the people will bear the costs of the war they are going to be
less willing to support a war policy. This supposedly keeps democratic states from waging wars against one another because of the
built-in electoral and institutional checks on government power. One small problem with this is that it is rubbish. Democracies

in antiquity fought against one another. Political equality and voting do not abolish conflicts of interest
between competing states. Democratic peace theory doesnt account for the effects of nationalist and
imperialist ideologies on the way democratic nations think about war. Democratic nations that have
professional armies to do the fighting for them are often enthusiastic about overseas wars. The
Conservative-Unionist government that waged the South African War (against two states with elected
governments, I might add) enjoyed great popular support and won a huge majority in the Khaki election that followed. As long
as it goes well and doesnt have too many costs, war can be quite popular, and even if the war is costly it may still be popular if it is
fought for nationalist reasons that appeal to a majority of the public. If the public is whipped into thinking that there is

an intolerable foreign threat or if they believe that their country can gain something at relatively low cost
by going to war, the type of government they have really is irrelevant. Unless a democratic public believes
that a military conflict will go badly for their military, they may be ready to welcome the outbreak of a war
that they expect to win. Setting aside the flaws and failures of U.S.-led democracy promotion for a moment, the idea that
reducing the number of non-democracies makes war less likely is just fantasy. Clashing interests between states arent
going away, and the more democratic states there are in the world the more likely it is that two or more of
them will eventually fight one another.

Democracy 2NC
Democracy doesnt solve war allows nationalism to rule government choices
Rosato 3 Sebastian Rosato, PhD @ The University of Chicago, AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE
REVIEW, The Flawed Logic of Democratic Peace Theory, vol. 97, issue 4, pg. 11
Second, any public aversion to incurring the costs of war may be overwhelmed by the effects of nationalism. In
addition to the growth of democracy, one of the most striking features of the modern period is that people have come to identify
themselves, above all, with the nation state. This identification has been so powerful that ordinary citizens have repeatedly
demonstrated a willingness to fight and die for the continued existence of their state and the security of their
co-nationals. There are, then, good reasons to believe that if the national interest is thought to be at stake, as it is in most
interstate conflicts, calculations of costs will not figure prominently in the publics decision process . Third,
democratic leaders are as likely to lead as to follow public opinion. Since nationalism imbues people with a powerful
spirit of self-sacrifice, it is actively cultivated by political elites in the knowledge that only highly motivated armies and productive
societies will prevail in modern warfare (e.g., Posen 1993). Democratically elected leaders are likely to be well placed

to cultivate nationalism, especially because their governments are often perceived as more representative
and legitimate than authoritarian regimes. Any call to defend or spread our way of life, for example, is likely to have a
strong resonance in democratic polities, and indeed the historical record suggests that wars have often given democratic
leaders considerable freedom of action, allowing them to drum up nationalistic fervor , shape public
opinion, and suppress dissent despite the obligation to allow free and open discussion.
Not true- Britain, France, Germany, and U.S. prove
Wollstein 6 (Democracy Versus Freedom by Jarret B. Wollstein, Posted May 1, 2006 a director at
The International Society for Individual Liberty and co-founder of the original Society for Individual
Liberty in 1969. He is the author of 28 books and special reports, including Surviving Terrorism and
Shadow Over the Land: The Government's War On Your Liberty.
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0601e.asp
Democracy is no guarantee of peace Just as democracy is no guarantee of freedom, neither is it a guarantee of
peace. It is true that the relatively free democratic states are less likely to fight each other. But democratically elected
regimes frequently attack weak nondemocracies. As Ivan Eland explains in The Empire Has No Clothes, The three

greatest imperial powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries France, Great Britain, and the
United States were democracies. Indeed, in the 20th century, the United States attacked more countries
than any other nation. Since the end of World War II, the United States has engaged in more than 200 armed conflicts, killing
hundreds of thousands of civilians waging wars or military actions in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Serbia, and Bosnia. In nearly all of these conflicts, there was no threat to the United States. It is clear from the

history of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, that democracy is no guarantee of peace.
Democratic peace theory is a farce
Layne 7 Christopher, Professor @ TX A&M, American Empire: A Debate, pg. 94
Wilsonian ideology drives the American Empire because its proponents posit that the United States must use its military power to
extend democracy abroad. Here, the ideology of Empire rests on assumptions that are not supported by the facts. One reason the
architects of Empire champion democracy promotion is because they believe in the so-called democratic peace theory, which holds
that democratic states do not fight other democracies. Or as President George W. Bush put it with his customary eloquence,
"democracies don't war; democracies are peaceful."136 The democratic peace theory is the probably the most
overhyped and undersupported "theory" ever to be concocted by American academics . In fact, it is not a

theory at all. Rather it is a theology that suits the conceits of Wilsonian true believers-especially the
neoconservatives who have been advocating American Empire since the early 1990s. As serious scholars have shown, however,
the historical record does not support the democratic peace theory. 131 On the contrary, it shows that
democracies do not act differently toward other democracies than they do toward nondemocratic states.
When important national interests are at stake, democracies not only have threatened to use force against
other democracies, but, in fact, democracies have gone to war with other democracies.

Environment 1NC
No enviro impact

Brook 13
Barry Brook, Professor at the University of Adelaide, leading environmental scientist, holding the Sir
Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, and is also
Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaides Environment Institute, author of 3 books and
over 250 scholarly articles, Corey Bradshaw is an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide and a
joint appointee at the South Australian Research and Development Institute, Brave New Climate, March
4, 2013, "Worrying about global tipping points distracts from real planetary threats",
http://bravenewclimate.com/2013/03/04/ecological-tipping-points/
Barry Brook We argue that at the global-scale, ecological tipping points and threshold-like planetary boundaries
are improbable. Instead, shifts in the Earths biosphere follow a gradual, smooth pattern . This means that it
might be impossible to define scientifically specific, critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change. This has important consequences for both science and policy. Humans
are causing changes in ecosystems across Earth to such a degree that there is now broad agreement that we live in an epoch of our own making: the Anthropocene. But the
question of just how these changes will play out and especially whether we might be approaching a planetary tipping point with abrupt, global-scale consequences has
remained unsettled. A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem attribute, such as species abundance or carbon sequestration, responds abruptly and possibly irreversibly to a
human pressure, such as land-use or climate change. Many local- and regional-level ecosystems, such as lakes,forests and grasslands, behave this way. Recently however,

there have been several efforts to define ecological tipping points at the global scale . At a local scale, there
are definitely warning signs that an ecosystem is about to tip . For the terrestrial biosphere, tipping points might be expected if
ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to human pressures and these pressures are uniform, or if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid

These criteria are, however, unlikely to be met in the real world. First, ecosystems
on different continents are not strongly connected . Organisms are limited in their movement by oceans
and mountain ranges, as well as by climatic factors, and while ecosystem change in one region can affect the global circulation of, for example,
greenhouse gases, this signal is likely to be weak in comparison with inputs from fossil fuel combustion and
deforestation. Second, the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-use
change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between locations. From a planetary perspective, this
diversity in ecosystem responses creates an essentially gradual pattern of change, without any
diffusion of impacts across the planet.

identifiable tipping points. This puts into question attempts to define critical levels of land-use change or biodiversity loss scientifically. Why does this
an undue focus on planetary tipping points may distract from the vast ecological
transformations that have already occurred. After all, as much as four-fifths of the biosphere is today characterised by ecosystems that locally, over
matter? Well, one concern we have is that

the span of centuries and millennia, have undergone human-driven regime shifts of one or more kinds. Recognising this reality and seeking appropriate conservation efforts at
local and regional levels might be a more fruitful way forward for ecology and global change science. Corey Bradshaw (see also notes published here on ConservationBytes.com)
Lets not get too distracted by the title of the this article Does the terrestrial biosphere have planetary tipping points? or the potential for a false controversy. Its important to
be clear that the planet is indeed ill, and its largely due to us. Species are going extinct faster than they would have otherwise. The planets climate system is being severely
disrupted; so is the carbon cycle. Ecosystem services are on the decline. But and its a big but we have to be wary of claiming the end of the world as we know it, or people
will shut down and continue blindly with their growth and consumption obsession. We as scientists also have to be extremely careful not to pull concepts and numbers out of

the latest craze in environmental science writing the idea of

planetary tipping points and the related planetary boundaries. Its really the stuff of Hollywood
thin air without empirical support. Specifically, Im referring to

disaster blockbusters the world suddenly shifts into a new state where some major aspect of how the world functions does an immediate about-face. Dont

get me wrong: there are plenty of localised examples of such tipping points, often characterised by something we call hysteresis. Brook defines hysterisis as: a situation where
the current state of an ecosystem is dependent not only on its environment but also on its history, with the return path to the original state being very different from the original
development that led to the altered state. Also, at some range of the driver, there can exist two or more alternative states and tipping point as: the critical point at which strong
nonlinearities appear in the relationship between ecosystem attributes and drivers; once a tipping point threshold is crossed, the change to a new state is typically rapid and
might be irreversible or exhibit hysteresis. Some of these examples include state shifts that have happened (or mostly likely will) to the cryosphere, ocean thermohaline
circulation, atmospheric circulation, and marine ecosystems, and there are many other fine-scale examples of ecological systems shifting to new (apparently) stable states.

claiming that we are approaching a major planetary boundary for our ecosystems (including human society),
where we witness such transitions simultaneously across the globe, is simply not upheld by evidence. Regional tipping points are
unlikely to translate into planet-wide state shifts. The main reason is that our ecosystems arent that
However,

connected at global scales. The paper provides a framework against which one can test the existence or probability of a planetary tipping point for any

particular ecosystem function or state. To date, the application of the idea has floundered because of a lack of specified criteria that would allow the terrestrial biosphere to tip.
From a more sociological viewpoint, the claim of imminent shift to some worse state also risks alienating people from addressing the real problems (foxes), or as Brook and
colleagues summarise: framing global change in the dichotomous terms implied by the notion of a global tipping point could lead to complacency on the safe side of the point
and fatalism about catastrophic or irrevocable effects on the other. In other words, lets be empirical about these sorts of politically charged statements instead of crying Wolf!
while the hordes of foxes steal most of the flock.

Environment 2NC
Environment resilient
Kareiva et al 12 Chief Scientist and Vice President, The Nature Conservancy (Peter, Michelle Marvier
--professor and department chair of Environment Studies and Sciences at Santa Clara University, Robert
Lalasz -- director of science communications for The Nature Conservancy, Winter, Conservation in the
Anthropocene, http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-2/conservation-in-theanthropocene/)
2. As conservation became a global enterprise in the 1970s and 1980s, the movement's justification for
saving nature shifted from spiritual and aesthetic values to focus on biodiversity . Nature was described as
primeval, fragile, and at risk of collapse from too much human use and abuse . And indeed, there are
consequences when humans convert landscapes for mining, logging, intensive agriculture, and urban
development and when key species or ecosystems are lost. But ecologists and conservationists have
grossly overstated the fragility of nature, frequently arguing that once an ecosystem is altered, it is gone forever. Some
ecologists suggest that if a single species is lost, a whole ecosystem will be in danger of collapse, and that if
too much biodiversity is lost, spaceship Earth will start to come apart. Everything, from the expansion of
agriculture to rainforest destruction to changing waterways, has been painted as a threat to the delicate
inner-workings of our planetary ecosystem. The fragility trope dates back, at least, to Rachel Carson, who
wrote plaintively in Silent Spring of the delicate web of life and warned that perturbing the intricate
balance of nature could have disastrous consequences.22 Al Gore made a similar argument in his 1992 book, Earth in
the Balance.23 And the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment warned darkly that, while the expansion of agriculture and other
forms of development have been overwhelmingly positive for the world's poor, ecosystem degradation was simultaneously putting
systems in jeopardy of collapse.24 The trouble for conservation is that the data simply do not support the idea of a
fragile nature at risk of collapse. Ecologists now know that the disappearance of one species does not
necessarily lead to the extinction of any others, much less all others in the same ecosystem . In many
circumstances, the

demise of formerly abundant species can be inconsequential to ecosystem function. The

American chestnut, once a dominant tree in eastern North America, has been extinguished by a foreign
disease, yet the forest ecosystem is surprisingly unaffected. The passenger pigeon , once so abundant that its
flocks darkened the sky, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Steller's sea cow to the dodo ,
with no catastrophic or even measurable effects . These stories of resilience are not isolated examples -- a
thorough review of the scientific literature identified 240 studies of ecosystems following major
disturbances such as deforestation, mining, oil spills, and other types of pollution. The abundance of
plant and animal species as well as other measures of ecosystem function recovered, at least partially, in 173
(72 percent) of these studies .25 While global forest cover is continuing to decline, it is rising in the
Northern Hemisphere, where "nature" is returning to former agricultural lands.26 Something similar is likely to
occur in the Southern Hemisphere, after poor countries achieve a similar level of economic development. A 2010 report concluded

that rainforests that have grown back over abandoned agricultural land had 40 to 70 percent of the
species of the original forests.27 Even Indonesian orangutans, which were widely thought to be able to survive only in
pristine forests, have been found in surprising numbers in oil palm plantations and degraded lands.28 Nature is so resilient
that it can recover rapidly from even the most powerful human disturbances. Around the Chernobyl
nuclear facility, which melted down in 1986, wildlife is thriving, despite the high levels of radiation .29 In the
Bikini Atoll, the site of multiple nuclear bomb tests, including the 1954 hydrogen bomb test that boiled the water in the
area, the number of coral species has actually increased relative to before the explosions .30 More recently, the
massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was degraded and consumed by bacteria at a remarkably fast
rate.31 Today, coyotes roam downtown Chicago, and peregrine falcons astonish San Franciscans as they sweep
down skyscraper canyons to pick off pigeons for their next meal. As we destroy habitats, we create new
ones: in the southwestern United States a rare and federally listed salamander species seems specialized to
live in cattle tanks -- to date, it has been found in no other habitat.32 Books have been written about the collapse of
cod in the Georges Bank, yet recent trawl data show the biomass of cod has recovered to precollapse
levels.33 It's doubtful that books will be written about this cod recovery since it does not play well to an
audience somehow addicted to stories of collapse and environmental apocalypse. Even that classic
symbol of fragility -- the polar bear, seemingly stranded on a melting ice block -- may have a good chance of
surviving global warming if the changing environment continues to increase the populations and northern
ranges of harbor seals and harp seals. Polar bears evolved from brown bears 200,000 years ago during a

cooling period in Earth's history, developing a highly specialized carnivorous diet focused on seals. Thus, the fate of polar
bears depends on two opposing trends -- the decline of sea ice and the potential increase of energy-rich prey. The history of life
on Earth is of species evolving to take advantage of new environments only to be at risk when the
environment changes again. The wilderness ideal presupposes that there are parts of the world
untouched by humankind, but today it is impossible to find a place on Earth that is unmarked by human
activity. The truth is humans have been impacting their natural environment for centuries. The wilderness so
beloved by conservationists -- places "untrammeled by man"34 -- never existed, at least not in the last thousand years, and arguably
even longer.

Environment doesn't cause extinction

Science Daily 13 Science Daily, Citing research by Barry Brook, Professor at the University of Adelaide,
leading environmental scientist, holding the Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change at the School of
Earth and Environmental Sciences, and is also Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaides
Environment Institute, author of 3 books and over 250 scholarly articles, February 28, 2013, "Global
Tipping Point Not Backed by Science, Experts Argue",
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130228093412.htm
international ecological scientists led by the University of Adelaide have rejected a doomsday-like scenario of sudden ,
change to Earth's ecology. In a paper published Feb. 28 in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the scientists from Australia, the United States and the United
Kingdom argue that global-scale ecological tipping points are unlikely and that ecological change over large areas
seem to follow a more gradual, smooth pattern. This opposes recent efforts to define 'planetary tipping
points' critical levels of biodiversity loss or land-use change that would have global effect with important implications for science and policy-makers. " This is good news
because it says that we might avoid the doom-and-gloom scenario of abrupt, irreversible change," says
Professor Barry Brook, lead author of the paper and Director of Climate Science at the University of Adelaide. "A focus on planetary tipping points may both distract from the vast ecological
A group of

irreversible

transformations that have already occurred, and lead to unjustified fatalism about the catastrophic effects of tipping points. "An emphasis on a point of no return is not particularly helpful for bringing about the
conservation action we need. We must continue to seek to reduce our impacts on the global ecology without undue attention on trying to avoid arbitrary thresholds." A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem
attribute such as species abundance or carbon sequestration responds rapidly and possibly irreversibly to a human pressure like land-use change or climate change. Many local and regional-level ecosystems, such
as lakes and grasslands, are known to behave this way. A planetary tipping point, the authors suggest, could theoretically occur if ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to the same human pressures, or
if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet. "These criteria, however, are very unlikely to be met in the real world," says Professor Brook.

First, ecosystems on different continents are not strongly connected . Second, the responses of
ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-use change depend on local circumstances
and will therefore differ between localities." The scientists examined four principal drivers of terrestrial
ecosystem change climate change, land-use change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss and
found they were unlikely to induce global tipping points.
"

Environment improving across the board

Hayward, 11 [Steven P, 2011 Almanac of Environmental Trends by Steven F. Hayward April 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1-934276-17-4, http://www.pacificresearch.org/docLib/20110419_almanac2011.pdf]
Quick: Whats the largest public-policy success story in American society over the last generation? The dramatic reduction in the
crime rate, which has helped make major American cities livable again? Or welfare reform, which saw the nations welfare rolls fall by more than half
since the early 1990s? Both of these accomplishments have received wide media attention. Yet the right answer might well be the

environment. As Figure 1 displays, the reduction in air pollution is comparable in magnitude to the reduction in the welfare rolls, and greater
than the reduction in the crime rateboth celebrated as major public-policy success stories of the last two decades. Aggregate emissions of the
six criteria pollutants1 regulated under the Clean Air Act have fallen by 53 percent since 1970, while the proportion of the population
receiving welfare assistance is down 48 percent from 1970, and the crime rate is only 6.4 percent below its 1970 level. (And as we shall see, this
aggregate nationwide reduction in emissions greatly understates the actual improvement in ambient air quality in the areas with the worst levels of air
pollution.) Measures

for water quality, toxic-chemical exposure, soil erosion, forest growth, wetlands, and
several other areas of environmental concern show similar positive trends, as this Almanac reports. To paraphrase
Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the environment have been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, there is good reason to
believe that these kinds of improvements will be experienced in the rest of the world over the course of
this century. Well examine some of the early evidence that this is already starting to occur. The chief drivers of
environmental improvement are economic growth, constantly increasing resource efficiency, technological
innovation in pollution control, and the deepening of environmental values among the American public
that have translated to changed behavior and consumer preferences. Government regulation has played a vital role, to be

sure, but in the grand scheme of things regulation can be understood as a lagging indicator, often achieving results at needlessly high cost, and
sometimes failing completely. Were it not for rising affluence and technological innovation, regulation would have much the same effect as King Canute
commanding the tides. INTRODUCTION introduction 3 figure 1 a comparison of crime rate, Welfare, and air Pollution, 19702007 -60.0% -40.0%
-20.0% 0.0% 20.0% 40.0% 60.0% 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2007 % of Population on Welfare Crime Rate (per 100,000 population)
Aggregate Emissions Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, EPA 4 Almanac of Environmental Trends

The American public remains largely unaware of these trends. For most of the last 40 years, public opinion

about the environment has been pessimistic, with large majoritiessometimes as high as 70 percent
telling pollsters that they think environmental quality in the United States is getting worse instead of
better, and will continue to get worse in the future. One reason for this state of opinion is media coverage,
which emphasizes bad news and crisis; another reason is environmental advocacy groups, for whom good
news is bad news. As the cliche goes, you cant sell many newspapers with headlines about airplanes landing safely, or about an oil tanker
docking without a spill. Similarly, slow, long-term trends dont make for good headline copy .
INTRODUCTIONintroduction 5Improving Trends:Causes and ConsequencesMost environmental commentary dwells on the laws and regulations we
have adoptedto achieve our goals, but it is essential to understand the more important role of technologyand economic growth in bringing about
favorable environmental trends. Thebest way to see this is to look at some long-term trends in environmental quality thatpredate modern
environmental legislation.To be sure, the earliest phases of the Industrial Revolution led to severe environmentaldegradation. But the inexorable
process of technological innovation andthe drive for efficiency began to remedy much of this damage far earlier than iscommonly perceived. In
addition, new

technologies that we commonly regard as environmentally destructive often replaced older

modes of human activity that were far worse by comparison. A good example is the introduction of coal for heating andenergy
in Britain.

No Executive Overreach 1NC

Multiple checks prevent Executive overreach- their impact is a myth
John Yoo 9, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law @ UC-Berkeley Law, visiting scholar @ the American
Enterprise Institute, former Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law @ the University of Trento, served as a
deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Council at the U.S. Department of Justice between
2001 and 2003, received his J.D. from Yale and his undergraduate degree from Harvard, Crisis and
Command, E-Book
A second lesson of this book is that the

notion of an unchecked executive, wielding dictatorial powers to plunge the

nation into disaster, is a myth born of Vietnam and Watergate. Congresses have always possessed ample
ability to stalemate and check an executive run amok. Congress regularly ignores executive proposals for
legislation, rejects nominees, and overrides vetoes. It can use its power over legislation, funding, and
oversight to exercise significant control over the administrative state. There would be no agencies, no
delegated powers, and no rule-making without Congress's basic decisions to create the federal
bureaucracy. It can use these authorities even at the zenith of presidential power: foreign affairs.
Congress can cut off war funding, shrink the military, stop economic aid, and block treaties. It used its
sole control of the purse to limit the Mexican-American War and to end the Vietnam conflict, for example.

No Executive Overreach 2NC

Tyranny never materializes
John Yoo 9, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law @ UC-Berkeley Law, visiting scholar @ the American
Enterprise Institute, former Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law @ the University of Trento, served as a
deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Council at the U.S. Department of Justice between
2001 and 2003, received his J.D. from Yale and his undergraduate degree from Harvard, Crisis and
Command, Book, p. x-xi
This book is also written out of respect for Congress as well as the President. I have had the honor to serve as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee under the
chairmanship of Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a good and decent man as well as a strward of the Senate. I have the greatest respect for the awesome powers of Congress and
the ways in which Congress and the broader political system can check any Chief Executive. It was Congress that forced the resignation of Richard Nixon through hearings,

Todays critics of the Presidency underestimate the

power of politics to corral any branch of government that goes too far. They give too much credit to
appeals to abstract notions of constitutional balance to restrain a truly out-of-control President, or
misread active responses to unprecedented challenges as challenges to the Constitution. The hyperbole in
such rhetoric is manifest in overwrought yet commonplace invocations of treason or tramplings of the
Constitution. Has the Constitution indeed been trampled on? History provides us with a guide. Certainly, the fear that a President might abuse
power for personal gain or to maintain his or her position has haunted America from her birth. Executive power, as the Founding
Fathers well knew, always carries the possibility of dictatorship. In their own day, the great Presidents were all accused of wielding
power tyrannically. Yet, they were not dictators. They used their executive powers to the benefit of the nation. Once the emergency subsided,
presidential power receded and often went into remission under long periods of congressional leadership. When chief executives misused
their powers, the political system blocked or eventually ejected the President. No dictator has ever ruled
in the United States, yet critics of contemporary presidential power wish to work radical change in current practice out of fear of impending dictatorship.
political pressure, spending constraints, and ultimately, the threat of impeachment.

Multiple factors solve exec overreach

Posner and Vermeule 9, * University of Chicago Law School AND **Harvard University Harvard
Law School, Eric and Adrian, Tyrannophobia 9/15, SSRN
Demography and the Administrative State. The

best explanation for the lack of dictatorship in America at least in America

today, as opposed to the 19th century is neither psychological nor institutional, but demographic. Part III examined the strong comparative
evidence that wealth is the best safeguard for democracy . Equality, homogeneity, and education matter as well .
How does the United States, circa 2009, fare on these dimensions? Ethnic, religious and linguistic homogeneity have declined, but because of its high
performance on other margins, there is little cause for concern about American democracy. The

U nited S tates has an enormously rich,

relatively well-educated population and multiple overlapping cleavages of class, race, religion and
geography. Simply by virtue of its high per capita income, the likelihood of dictatorship in the U nited States
is almost nil , at least if the historical pattern reflects causation. The highwater mark of the modern presidencys approach
to domestic dictatorship Nixons third-rate burglary of the offices of his political opponents was pathetic stuff in
historical and comparative perspective , and immediately put Nixon on a slippery slope to disgrace. Likewise,
comparisons between Weimar Germany and the United States of the Bush administration87 were worse than
irresponsible; they were ignorant. We add a less obvious point. Legal scholars, especially those of a libertarian or civil-libertarian bent,
often express concern that the formal separation of powers has atrophied over the course of the 20th century. On this account, economic and security
crises, the rise of the administrative state, the death of the nondelegation doctrine, the imperial presidency, the ineffectual character of the War Powers
Resolution and the other framework statutes of the 1970s, all mean that in

many domains presidents operate without

substantial legal checks, although they have political incentives to cooperate with Congress and to seek
statutory authorization for their actions. Among the framers miscalculations was their failure to understand the presidential power of unilateral
action88 the presidents power to take action in the real world, with debatable legal authority or none at all, creating a new status quo that then
constrains the response of other institutions. In the most overheated version of this view, such developments are taken to pose a real risk of executive
tyranny in the United States.89 We suggest, however, that the

same large-scale economic and political developments that

have caused a relaxation of the legal checks on the executive have simultaneously strengthened the
nonlegal checks. Legal checks on the presidency have been relaxed largely because of the need for centralized, relatively efficient government
under the complex conditions of a modern dynamic economy and a highly interrelated international order. Yet those economic and
political conditions have themselves helped to create de facto constraints on presidential power that make
democracy in the United States extremely stable . The modern economy, whose complexity creates the demand for
administrative governance, also creates wealth, leisure, education and broad political information, all of which

strengthen democracy and make a collapse into authoritarian rule nearly impossible . Modern presidents
are substantially constrained, not by old statutes or even by Congress and the courts, but by the tyranny of public and
(especially) elite opinion. Every action is scrutinized, leaks from executive officials come in a torrent,
journalists are professionally hostile, and potential abuses are quickly brought to light . The modern
presidency is a fishbowl, in large part because the costs of acquiring political information have fallen steadily in the modern economy, and
because a wealthy, educated and leisured population has the time to monitor presidential action and takes
an interest in doing so. This picture implies that modern presidents are both more accountable than their predecessors and more responsive
to gusts of elite sentiment and mass opinion, but they are not dictators in any conventional sense. More tentatively, we also suggest that the
relaxation of legal checks may itself have contributed to the growth of the political checks , rather than both
factors simply being the common result of a complex modern economy. On this hypothesis, the administrative and presidential state of the New Deal
and later has, despite all its inefficiencies, plausibly supplied efficiency-enhancing regulation, political stability, and a measure of redistribution, and
these policies have both added to national economic and cultural capital and dampened political conflict. The administrative state has thus helped to
create a wealthy, educated population and a super-educated elite whose members have the leisure and affluence to care about matters such as civil
liberties, who are politically engaged to a fault, and who help to check executive abuses. While the direct effects of wealth, education and other factors
on the stability of democracy are clear in comparative perspective, there is more dispute about the overall economic effects of regulation and the
administrative state,90 so we offer this as a hypothesis for further research.