E-Waste+Neg+-+Courts+CP

The Text: The United States Supreme Court should rule that the federal government must provide financial and technical assistance to clean up electronic waste in Africa south of the Sahara and must finance the program through a Pigouvian tax on United States corporations that ship electronic waste to Africa south of the Sahara on customary international law grounds.

Observation 1: Theoretical Concerns – The CP is mutually exclusive – it uses an alternative agent in preference to the one used in the 1AC – this cannot functionally occur at the same time the plan does and is crucial to researching important topic-specific literature to gain education. It is also uniquely predictable—agent counterplans are debated often—making it reasonable and fair.

Observation 2: Solvency –

Customary international law can force the United States to abide by the Basel Convention and restrict its e-waste exports. Joel Boon, J.D., University of Iowa College of Law, Spring 2006, “Stemming the Tide of Patchwork Policies: The Case of E-Waste,” Lexis

Perhaps the most prominent treaty directed at waste is the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, adopted in 1989, n121 and a subsequent 1995 Basel Ban Amendment that "prohibits all transboundary movements of [hazardous] wastes which are destined for final disposal from OECD [developed states] to non-OECD States [less developed states.]" n122 However, the United States, the single largest producer of hazardous e-waste, has not ratified the Convention and is not technically restricted by the treaty, n123 allowing for what is effectively "cradle to border" regulation. n124 The Basel Convention prohibits parties to the Convention from trading in hazardous waste with non-party states, but the onus still rests with the bound party and not the non-party, such as the United States. n125

A case can be made that the Basel Convention, to which 166 countries are party, is considered customary international law or a "general [principle] of law recognized by civilized nations" in accordance with Article 38(1)(b) and (c) [*751] of the Statute of the International Court of Justice. n126 In other words, the principle that rich countries should not exploit poor countries by sending toxic waste to them is so widespread and strongly supported within the international community that non-party states such as the United States are legally bound to the principle, whether or not they have ratified the Basel Convention. However, it is unlikely that transboundary shipment of hazardous waste rises to the level of a jus cogens norm. n127

Nonetheless, "[a] norm that does not quite reach the status of jus cogens may still constitute a law of nations [i.e., customary international law] if it is universal." n128 The existence of several other regional and multilateral treaties that ban the import of hazardous waste into the region or that further commit to not exporting hazardous waste to developing countries supports the claim for customary international law. n129