Case: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

Hansen
NPTE 16

Synopsis: Ad I is treaty cred low now, will cause collapse of IR. Ad 2 is Econ mobility, plan
solves by increasing education and labor rights.

Plan: The United States federal government should consent to be bound by, and
implement, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Advantage I: Treaty Cred

Uniqueness
1 US treaty credibility low now
a. The US is perceived as having a bad human rights record. Current legal structures
position the Supreme Court to rule domestically -- human rights don’t influence the
courts. For example, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld established that American legalism is
precedent over human rights according to Gruber, law prof at Uni Col in, “An Unintended
Casualty of the War on Terror”
b. “progressive Justices actually became complicit in the legal isolationist ideology so
prevalent during the Bush era, which led the courts of the world to abandon the Supreme
Court.”
c. Indefinite detention has caused the perception the US will fail to uphold treaties in the
future. “the U.S. government's adoption of legal frameworks and philosophies that place
unbounded executive discretion over international law set the stage for the human rights
abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (Fisher, 2006).
d.

2 Has led to decreases in rights modeling

a. “Through declining citation, the courts of the world are telling the Supreme Court that if it
does not respect international and foreign law, international and foreign courts will not
respect it.” (Gruber)
b. This has caused legal exceptionalism. Gruber argues that this exceptionalism makes
bad rulings ad rights violations more likely and caused things like Medellin v. Texas that
made treaties incredibly difficult to enforce
c. Perceived internationally as the cause for the Bush admin’s “cowboy adventure into
totalitarianism.” This causes domestic contempt in international legal systems.
d. Current legal practices establish treaties as a civil liberties versus national security
debate.

3 Collapse of IR inevitable
a. Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG), is a global pro bono law firm that
provides legal assistance to foreign governments and international organizations on the
negotiation and implementation of peace agreements, the drafting and implementation of
 post-conflict constitutions, and the creation and operation of war crimes tribunals. PILPG
also assists states with the training of judges and the drafting of legislation, “brief of the
public international law & policy group as amicus curiae in support of petitioners”
b. PILPG says that, “foreign governments will take note of the decision in the present case
and use the precedent set by this Court to guide their actions in times of conflict”
c. Eg, Uganda’s highest court used Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to determine enforceability of
their domestic war crimes bill.
d. South Sudan relied heavily on US legislation to determine its security legislation for the
region.
e. Collapses of treaty credibility creates a system that prefers small scale international
agreements.
f. Also creates a system where US doesn’t recognize other states as soverign, increasing
the propensity for war.

Impacts
1 Makes small conflict inevitable
a. Ends cooperation on combatting terror. Beard, a law prof at UCLA and former General
Counsel to the DOD writes that, “To be successful, finding, tracking, fighting, capturing,
detaining, interrogating, transferring, extraditing, and trying terrorists often require an
extraordinary level of international cooperation. At one time, many U.S.-sponsored
activities in this area enjoyed considerable international support and could be discreetly
undertaken on foreign soil with little scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically[...]”
b. Totalitarianism leads to more war

2 SCS escalation risks nuclear extinction

a. Collapse of treaty cred makes Phil, Japan, SK, question US security agreements and
enforcement of guarantees to various islands in SCS, makes many possible conflicts
possible
b. Chinese regional commanders nuclear access
c. xtncn

Solvency
1 Plan solves
a. Plan sets precedent that human rights and security aren’t opportunity costs to each
other. The passage of the plan doesn’t result in the US becoming one world government,
just more rights for disabled folks.
b. Plan provides legislative framework to rule for human rights. The

2 ICESCR k2 treaty cred

a. ICESCR is an expansion of the UNDHR, which is considered an essential step for I-law
b. assumes certain rights are human rights, creates mentallity that humanity transcends
barriers
c.
3 Plan breaks US treaty gridlock
a. Plan breaks the current conceptions of sovereignty, preferencing rights and inat’l law
over all else.

4 Treaty cred solves IR

a. Prevents the US and other GPW’s from engaging in expansionist policies
b. Allows creating of coalitions

Advantage II: Income Inequality

Uniqueness
1 Income Inequality Increasing Now
-A CBO report shows that during recovery from the 2009 recession, wages for the top 1% grew
around 20%/year while wages for the bottom 99% increased by about 1%/year.

-Inflation adjusted income actually fell for the bottom 90% of Americans between 2009 and
2013.

2 Inequality will continue to rise due to changing labor markets

-Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (2011) Winner-Take-All Politics suggest that the largest
cause for increased inequality are adjusting labor markets. Low-skill manufacturing jobs have all
been off-shored or automated, so the middle-class now has to do semi-skilled labor. These jobs
often require some formal training, but not bachelors degrees or higher.

-Timothy Noah, author of “Income Immobility in the US” suggests the largest cause of income
inequality is the failure of core education that has left Americans under-trained for technological
developments.

3 Inequality makes economic stagnation inevitable

- Alan B. Krueger, President Obama's Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors stated that
income inequality causes wealth consolidation. The wealthy then spend marginally less and use
their wealth to influence politics so as to decrease spending and inflation. Since the wealthy
tend to save nearly 50% of their marginal income while the remainder of the population saves
roughly 10%, other things equal this would reduce annual consumption (the largest component
of GDP) by as much as 5%.

-Nobel Prize winning Yale economist, Robert Shiller identified income inequality as the largest
threat to the economy, "The most important problem that we are facing now today, I think, is
rising inequality in the United States.”

Impacts
1 Poverty
-Civic rights activist, Abu Jamal wrote, “As many people die because of relative poverty as
would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to
three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi
genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing,
unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year
of every decade, throughout the world [...] much of that violence became internalized, turned
back on the Self, because, in a society based on the priority of wealth, those who own nothing
are taught to loathe themselves, as if something is inherently wrong with themselves, instead of
the social order that promotes this self-loathing.”

2 Economic stagnation makes war inevitable

-Yale Professor Walter Mead argues that economic “crisis can also strengthen the hand of
religious extremists, populist radicals, or authoritarian traditionalists [...] The wars of the League
of Augsburg and the Spanish Succession; the Seven Years War; the American Revolution; the
Napoleonic Wars; the two World Wars; the cold war: The list of wars is almost as long as the list
of financial crises. Bad economic times can breed wars. Europe was a pretty peaceful place in
1928, but the poisoned German public opinion and helped bring Adolf Hitler to power. If the
current crisis turns into a depression, what rough beasts might start slouching toward Moscow,
Karachi, Beijing, or New Delhi to be born.”

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/only-makes-you-stronger-0

Solvency
1 Plan solves
a. The treaty recognizes right to self determination to pursue economic goals and manage
own resources.
b. Requires the US to adopt policies that increase technical and vocational training in
article 6. Article 6 also defnes that work must be decent work with equal pay for equal
work
c. Comparing protections in states parties that ratified the ICESCR before and after they
adopted their constitutions, Human rights quarterly found that equal pay for equal work is
more likely to be protected in constitutions that were adopted post-ICESCR ratification
(39 percent versus 23 percent pre-ratification).
d. constitutional guarantees are more common in constitutions adopted after countries
ratified the ICESCR. The right to work is guaranteed universally, to specific groups, or
aspirationally in 77 percent of countries that adopted their constitution after ratifying the
ICESCR, compared to 63 percent of countries who adopted their constitution before.
Forty-four percent of countries that adopted their constitution post-ICESCR protect
against discrimination in work, compared to 15 percent of countries whose constitutions
pre-date ICESCR ratification
e. Article 8 recognizes the right to unions and strikes, which are k2 wage negotiations

2 Plan increases education

a. Article 13 mandates an progressive introduction of free higher education, increasing
worker mobility. this also allows students to get specialized education that allows the
labor force to adapt to the market
b. Increased education increases potential markets, causes a positive feedback loop for
wage and upward mobility.
c.