The Constitutional Amendment Counterplan
Quick note on terms, in case you need it: a counterplan is a different policy the negative advocates instead of your plan. It isn’t enough for them to show it’s a good idea — they have to show it’s better than yours, which is why every counterplan comes attached to a reason your plan is worse.
This is the counterplan in the Michigan Courts file. The three disadvantages in that file — Court Politics, Political Question Doctrine, and Court Clog — get their own posts, and this counterplan is designed to pair with them.
VOCABULARY. A list is at the bottom.
1. How a Counterplan Works
Five parts, and three have no analogue in a disadvantage.
Text — the policy the negative advocates, read word for word. Every word is attackable, and section 8 explains why that matters unusually much here.
Solvency — whether it captures the affirmative’s advantages.
Competition — whether it’s a reason to reject the plan rather than merely a good idea.
Net benefit — why the counterplan world beats the plan world. Without one, a counterplan isn’t an argument. If both are good ideas and doing both is fine, the judge votes affirmative.
Status — conditional, dispositional, or unconditional. Ask in cross-x.
This is an agent-and-process counterplan: it pursues the same substantive goal — a national commitment to health care — through constitutional amendment rather than through legislation.
2. The Big Picture: Article V and Constitutional Health Rights
Article V sets out two paths to amending the Constitution. The common one: Congress proposes an amendment by two-thirds vote of both houses, and three-quarters of the states ratify it. The other: two-thirds of state legislatures call a convention. Twenty-seven amendments have been ratified; thousands have been proposed.
Hold onto the two-step structure, because the counterplan’s text does not respect it.
Constitutional health rights are the global norm, not the exception. A study of all 193 UN member state constitutions found that 74% take some approach to a right to health — and among constitutions adopted since 2000, the figure is 100%, against just 29% of those adopted before 1970. Globally, 57% explicitly protect a right to medical care.
And they exist in the United States, at the state level. Nearly one-third of U.S. state constitutions contain a health commitment, and they’re more common in red states. Wyoming’s declares that “as the health and morality of the people are essential to their well-being... it shall be the duty of the legislature to protect and promote these vital interests.” Alaska’s provides that “the legislature shall provide for the promotion and protection of public health.”
There’s outcome evidence. A 2015 study found that including a duty to provide health care in a state constitution is associated with a 7.8% reduction in infant mortality, and provisions expressly covering low-income residents with a 6.5% drop. A 2013 study of 157 national constitutions found that introducing a justiciable constitutional right to health care reduced deaths of young children by 5% overall and 8.7% in functioning democracies. In South Africa, activists used the constitutional right to health to expand access to antiretrovirals for pregnant women with HIV — a decision estimated to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
3. The Counterplan in One Paragraph
Rather than passing a statute, amend the Constitution to recognize a right to health. Three-quarters of the world’s recent constitutions do it, nearly a third of American state constitutions do it, and the outcome evidence is real — measurable reductions in infant and child mortality, and landmark expansions of treatment access where courts have enforced the right. An amendment achieves the affirmative’s substantive goal
