FIAT comes from the resolution, right? Right. This post is not about everything FIAT, just about the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is part of the Federal Government and the policy resolution says “Federal Government.” Here are three reasons you could argue that that still doesn’t allow you to have mandates like:
“The Supreme Court will use such and such precedent in these decisions”
“The Supreme Court will legalize X” or “strike down Y”
One minor background point for how the government actually works: there has to be a case with standing that the Supreme Court agrees to try to set new precedent. In other words, if you pass a law, only after that passage can the law be violated by someone (or hurt someone and receive a suit), that person be accused, and then it start its way on the appeal process to the SupCt. They don’t hand out decisions on items they have not reviewed that don’t have a “test case” (testing the principle) come before their docket. So it SOUNDS weird to say “the SupCt will do X” unless you have a specific case in mind that you know they are about to try (but even then I don’t see how you could make this argument of FAIT). On to the three arguments…
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1. You only get FIAT as that actor normally acts. See test case point above as an example. You DO get to affirm that the USFG should do something, but if you are affirming that it do something in a way it isn’t constituted to do, it’s not really the USFG anymore. The POINT of policy debate is to debate within the framework of government currently set out. Thus, all “FIATing of the SupCt” must be done in accordance with normal SupCt process. It’s normal for Congress to make laws. It’s normal for the President to sign them. It’s not normal for the SupCt to say something about them unless they have review over that legislation. They don’t preempt.
2. The word “policy” is in the resolution–Supreme Court isn’t part of that. You do get FIAT, but not over individual voters just as much as not over the SupCt. You are arguing for POLICY change and therefore legal opinions (which do issue from the USFG, but aren’t supposed to be policy) are not actually in your purview.
3. Can’t FIAT solvency…that’s like adding “Obama will resign”as plank 5 of your plan 😛 When you can FIAT that the SupCt will agree with your case, you are basically saying “my case would be found unconstitutional, neg is going to argue that, so I’m going to FIAT some solvency here so they can’t.”
So maybe these three arguments are three ways of saying the same thing: you need to use the part of the Federal Government that makes policy in the normal way that that body makes policy. The Supreme Court is not involved at the time of policy making and thus is an additional, separate actor you are using (usually in a non-sensical way since really that decision would be handed down years later in most cases). Are there arguments against my position stated here? Of course… but today Isaiah wanted to write about arguments against using the Supreme Court.
What are you best arguments on FIAT and the Supreme Court?