Topicality Supplement - Michigan 2024 HHIRS

T Supplement - HHRS
Notes
Resolution—2024-2025
Resolved: The United States federal government should significantly strengthen its protection of domestic intellectual property rights in copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks.
Notes
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Resolved
Resolved---Debate
“Resolved” followed by a colon indicates a resolution for high school policy debates from which affirmatives can be constructed around
Litan 20 [Robert Litan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he has previously been a senior fellow on staff, and vice president and director of Economic Studies, Brookings Institution Press, 2020, “Resolved: Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save Our Democracy”, pg. 24, //zrubin]
The national high school policy debate topic for the academic year 2018–2019 could not have been timelier, given the sharp disputes about and lack of a national consensus on what course to take with respect to immigration: “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce its restrictions on legal immigration to the United States.” A variety of affirmative “cases” can be constructed around this resolution, ranging from a broad-based case in favor of loosening overall national immigration quotas to narrower cases focusing on specific types of immigrants, such as college or graduate students (especially those earning degrees in STEM subjects) or entrepreneurs (my personal favorite), or refugees.
Resolved---Certain
Resolved is certain
Tatel 20 [David Stephen Tatel, American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, “GOVERNMENT OF GUAM, Appellee v. UNITED STATES of America”, Appellant. No. 19-5131, United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, Argued November 12, 2019, Decided February 14, 2020, //zrubin]
The word "resolve" usually means "to deal with successfully," "reach a firm decision about," or "work out the resolution" of something. Resolve, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 997 (10th ed. 1997). Our sister circuits have likewise concluded that in the context of section 113(f)(3)(B), "resolved" means "decided, determined, or settled—finished, with no need to revisit," Bernstein, 733 F.3d at 211, that is, a "firm decision" that is no longer "susceptible to further dispute or negotiation," Asarco, 866 F.3d at 1122 (internal quotation marks omitted).
Colon
Colon---Adds info
The colon adds information
Krahn 14 [Albert Edward Krahn, doctorate in linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, May 1, 2014, “A New Paradigm for Punctuation”, //zrubin]
The semicolon and colon almost always appear near the end of a sentence because they are usually used to add some information to the basic sentence in a qualified way. The special symbol “permits” them to make a semantic modification to the sentence or partial.
Colon---No singular use
The colon has no singular use
Krahn 14 [Albert Edward Krahn, doctorate in linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, May 1, 2014, “A New Paradigm for Punctuation”, //zrubin]
To find a coherent assessment of the use of the colon is difficult, suggesting that, although it has several “technical” uses (such as introducing lists of items or preparing the reader to focus on something), a sole or best use of the colon otherwise seems nonexistent. Some uses fall into general categories like problem/solution, question/answer, statement/explanation, generalization/details, and similar dualities. On the other hand, perhaps this is the second role of the colon after all: to visibly reveal arguments that have two parts, one on each side of the symbol. But there is no easy linguistic description for these two roles, the technical uses and the more meaningful pairing; that may have to wait for more research.
Colon---Restrictive
The colon introduces an enumeration for the previous words and excludes all but what follows
Siddoway 13 [A.C.J. Siddoway, Judge for the US Court of Appeals for Washington, 2013, “STATE OF WASHINGTON, DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND INDUSTRIES, Respondent, v. DONALD M. SLAUGH, Appellant, LOCKHEED MARTIN HANFORD CORPORATION, Respondent.”, No. 31081-7-III., Court of Appeals of Washington, Division Three, //zrubin]
"A colon may introduce a summing up, an illustration, quotation, or enumeration, for which the previous words in the sentence have prepared the reader." HUTCHINSON, supra, at 241. In Stuart v. East Valley Consolidated School District No. 361, 61 Wn.2d 571, 575, 379 P.2d 369 (1963), the court differentiated the use of a colon, which one could contend introduced matter that was explanatory of the phrase that preceded it and therefore restrictive, from the use of a semicolon, indicating that matter that follows is not restrictive, but supplementary.
Colon---List
A colon indicates a list
Ransom 22 [Robin Ransom, American lawyer who serves as a judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri, “STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Shawn W. YOUNT, Appellant.”, No. SC 99317., Supreme Court of Missouri, en banc, Opinion issued April 5, 2022, //zrubin]
Yet the legislature's use and placement of the colon are critical to assessing the statute's plain meaning and informs the meaning attributed to "and" in this statute. The grammatical structure of the statute using a colon after "one who" indicates a list from which the legislature intended to identify two categories of defendants who may qualify as dangerous offenders: (1) offenders whose present offense is a dangerous offense, and (2) offenders whose prior offense was a dangerous offense. Hence, the state has two options from which to choose when pleading and proving dangerous offenders under the statute.
Colon---Meaningless
The colon is meaningless---everything after it is what’s important
Webster’s 2k – Webster’s Guide to Grammar and Writing, http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm
Use of a colon before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand by itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on… If the introductory phrase preceding the colon is very brief and the clause following the colon represents the real business of the sentence, begin the clause after the colon with a capital letter.
The
The---Definiteness
‘The’ signals definiteness and uniqueness
Tian, Li, & Zhang 24 [Lina Qian, Jianghan University, China, Jin Li, University of International Business and Economics, China, Bingyu Zhang, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, January 18, 2024, International Journal of TESOL Studies (2024), Vol. 6 (1) 1-14, https://doi.org/10.58304/ijts.20240101, “The Acquisition of English Articles by Chinese EFL College Students”, //zrubin]
The definite article the in English is generally used to encode definiteness, so it can be used to refer back to an antecedent or denote shared experience/knowledge in the given discourse (Lyons, 1999). To illustrate, consider sentence (1). (1) The girl is very slim. In (1), the definite article the conveys the message that both the speaker and the hearer presuppose the existence of a unique individual in the set denoted by the nominal phrase the girl (Ionin et al., 2004). In contrast, the indefinite article (i.e., a and an) usually encodes genericity, and it typically introduces a new entity in the domain of discourse under consideration. The syntactic distribution of the indefinite article a differs from that of an. Specifically, the former often precedes a NP, whose pronunciation begins with a consonant, whereas the latter precedes a NP, whose pronunciation initiates with a vowel.
USfg
USfg---National gov, 3 branches, states, DC, & territories
The USfg includes the three branches, the 50 states, and territories
Abdulghani 21 [Eman KB Abdulghani, Asmarya University, April 6, 2021, International Journal of Law, Justice and Jurisprudence, 2021; 1(2): 81-84, “The spirit of federalism in the US constitution”, E-ISSN: 2790-0681, //zrubin]
In a federal structure, there is a division of the power between Union and state. In the USA every state has its own government and the president is the head of the country for healthy federalism the separation of power must exist in the federal country because it provides the check and balance system in the organs of the government. “The United States federal government (US federal government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic in North America made up of 50 states, a federal district, five main selfgoverning territories, and a number of island possessions. The legislative, executive and judicial departments of the federal government are separated by the United States Constitution, which vests legislative, executive, and judicial authority in Congress, the president, and the federal courts, respectively. Acts of Congress further define the powers and responsibilities of these branches, including the creation of executive departments and inferior courts to the Supreme Court.”
USfg---Constitutional powers
The USfg is only the powers derived from the constitution
Abdulghani 21 [Eman KB Abdulghani, Asmarya University, April 6, 2021, International Journal of Law, Justice and Jurisprudence, 2021; 1(2): 81-84, “The spirit of federalism in the US constitution”, E-ISSN: 2790-0681, //zrubin]
A federal structure derives its existence from the constitution, just as a company does from the grant that establishes it. “As a result, the constitution subordinates and controls all executive, legislative, and judicial powers, whether they belong to the national government or to individual states.” The constitution is the supreme law of the land in a federal state. Prof. Where says “that those two institutions – The supreme constitution and written constitution are then, essential institutions to a federal government. The supreme constitution is essential if the government is to be federal; the written constitution is essential if federal Government is to work well [20].”
USfg---Includes reservations
The USfg has sole power over Indigenous affairs and reservations
Stevenson 23 [Dylan Michael Stevenson, Visiting Lecturer, Cornel AAP, bachelor's degree in linguistics from the University of California–Davis with a minor in Native American studies, a master's degree in planning from the University of Southern California with a concentration in preservation and design of the built environment, and has obtained AICP candidate status from the American Planning Association, Prairie Band Potawatomi descent, August 2023, Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in City & Regional Planning, “WATER RITES AND WATER RIGHTS: CHARACTERIZING CULTURAL VALUES IN WATER PLANNING ACTIVITIES ON THE CHEROKEE RESERVATION, BY THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA AND BY THE UNITED STATES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”, //zrubin] **language modified**
Chief Justice Marshall explained in his opinion that the right to negotiate and regulate [Indigenous] Indian affairs lay exclusively with the United States Federal government. Through independence from the British Crown, America had inherited this right at the federal level, and this authority did not extend to the individual state governments. Consequently, Georgia has no right or jurisdiction to regulate Indian affairs within Cherokee Nation territory (Worcester v. Georgia, 1832). The Worcester v. Georgia decision develops two significant concepts within Federal Indian Law in the United States. First, it reinforces the Supreme Court’s precedent established in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) that the United States has sole authority to manage and regulate Indian Affairs as part of the guardian-ward relationship of this time.2 Second, it establishes the notion of Tribal Sovereignty as a federally protected right among Tribes within the fledgling Federal Indian Law system at this time.
USfg---Includes Agencies
The USfg includes agencies
The White House [it’s where the president lives, no date, whitehouse.gov, “Our Government”, //zrubin]
The Federal Government is composed of three distinct branches: legislative, executive, and judicial, whose powers are vested by the U.S. Constitution in the Congress, the President, and the Federal courts, respectively. There are hundreds of Federal agencies and commissions charged with handling responsibilities as varied as managing America’s space program, protecting its forests, gathering intelligence, and advancing the general welfare of the American people.
USfg---One Person
Legally, the United States is a singular person
Herz 91 [Michael Herz, Assistant Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. B.A., Swarthmore College, 1979; J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 1982, April 1991, William & Mary Law Review, “United States v United States: When Can the Federal Government Sue Itself?”, //zrubin]
Consider, then, merely the United States government as one person. The idea of a unitary federal government, its parts joined by "one indissoluble bond of unity and amity,"'r5 is an attractive one. The Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Providence Journal Co. 52 recently illustrated just how attractive it is. In that case, the Court refused to allow the Solicitor General to relinquish his role as lawyer for the United States even though the governmental interest concerned the judicial rather than the executive branch. Operating from a conception of a unified government, the Court rejected as "startling" the suggestion that "there is more than one 'United States' that may appear before this Court."' ' As a matter of statutory interpretation, the holding in Providence Journal is unobjectionable.
USfg---Hologram
The United States is a giant hologram
Baudrillard 86 [Jean Baudrillard, Dead and French, 1986, “America”, //zrubin]
America is neither dream nor reality. It is a hyperreality It is a hyperreality because it is a Utopia which has behaved from the very beginning as though it were already achieved. Everything here is real and pragmatic, and yet it is all the stuff of dreams too. It may be that the truth of America can only be seen by a European, since he alone will discover here the perfect simulacrum - that of the immanence and material transcription of all values. The Americans, for their part, have no sense of simulation. They are themselves simulation in its most developed state, but they have no language in which to describe it, since they themselves are the model. As a result, they are the ideal material for an analysis of all the possible variants of the modern world. No more and no less in fact than were primitive societies in their day. The same mythical and analytic excitement that made us look towards those earlier societies today impels us to look in the direction of America. With the same passion and the same prejudices. In reality, you do not, as I had hoped, get any distance on Europe from here. You do not acquire a fresh angle on it. When you turn around, it has quite simply disappeared. The point is that there is really no need to adopt a critical stance on Europe from here. That is something you can do in Europe. And what is there to criticize which has not been criticized a thousand times before? What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world. Even if every detail of America were insignificant, America is something that is beyond us all. . .America is a giant hologram, in the sense that information concerning the whole is contained in each of its elements. Take the tiniest little place in the desert, any old street in a Mid-West town, a parking lot, a Californian house, a BurgerKing [sic!] or a Studebaker, and you have the whole of the US - South, North, East, or West. Holographic also in that it has the coherent light of the laser, the homogeneity of the single elements scanned by the same beams. From the visual and plastic viewpoints too: things seem to be made of a more unreal substance; they seem to turn and move in a void as if by a special lighting effect, a fine membrane you pass through without noticing it. This is obviously true of the desert. It is also the case with Las Vegas and advertising, and even the activities of the people, public relations, and everyday electronics all stand out with the plasticity and simplicity of a beam of light. The hologram is akin to the world of phantasy. It is a three-dimensional dream and you can enter it as you would a dream. Everything depends on the existence of the ray of light bearing the objects. If it is interrupted, all the effects are dispersed, and reality along with it. You do indeed get the impression that America is made up of fantastic switching between similar elements, and that everything is only held together by a thread of light, a laser beam, scanning out American reality before our eyes. In America the spectral does not refer to phantoms or to dancing ghosts, but to the spectrum into which light disperses.
Should
Should---Allows exceptions
Should allows for exceptions
COR 15 — County of Riverside, February 2015, Draft General Plan Amendment No. 960, http://planning.rctlma.org/Portals/0/genplan/general_plan_2015/GPA%20960/General%20Plan%20Elements/Ch01_Intro.pdf
For a policy to be useful, it must be clear. However, not all policies are the same; they differ in terms of expected results, commitment of resources, and indication of importance or urgency. Therefore, it is important to simplify the language used in the General Plan and understand the distinctions between the different levels of policy. The following definitions of terms provide guidance in interpreting the policy language of the General Plan:
Ÿ Shall: Policies containing the word “shall” indicate that an action must be taken in all cases. This represents absolute commitment to the policy, and the expectation is that the policy will always be carried out.
Ÿ Should: Policies containing the word “should” indicate that an action will be taken in most cases, but exceptions are acceptable for good reason.
Significantly
Significant---10%
Significant means at least 10%
US Code 95, 10 USC 2505: National technology and industrial base: periodic defense capability assessments, From Title 10-ARMED FORCES, Subtitle A-General Military Law, PART IV-SERVICE, SUPPLY, AND PROCUREMENT, CHAPTER 148-NATIONAL DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIAL BASE, DEFENSE REINVESTMENT, AND DEFENSE CONVERSION, SUBCHAPTER II-POLICIES AND PLANNING, http://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=code+of+federal+regulations&f=treesort&fq=true&num=316
“(8) The term ‘significant reduction’, with respect to expenditures for a program for a fiscal year, means that the amount provided for that program for that fiscal year in the budget, Acts authorizing appropriations, appropriations Acts, or the future years defense program for that fiscal year is less than the amount provided for that program for the preceding fiscal year in the budget, Acts authorizing appropriations, appropriations Acts, or the future years defense program, respectively, for that preceding fiscal year by at least-¶ “(A) the greater of-¶ “(i) the amount equal to 10 percent of the amount provided for that preceding fiscal year; or¶ “(ii) $5,000,000; or¶ “(B) a lesser amount determined significant by the Secretary of Defense or the National Defense Technology and Industrial Base Council.
Significant---Entirety
In the context of IP Law, significant refers to close to or all of the relevant assets
Dyk 09 [Timothy Belcher Dyk, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, “In re SPIRITS INTERNATIONAL, N.V.”, No. 2008-1369, United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, April 29, 2009, //zrubin]
Though varying linguistic formulations have been used, the wide consensus

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