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My partner and I negate [the topic, Resolved: In the United States, organized political lobbying does more harm than
good.]

To clarify, we define:

Organized political lobbying as, “[groups that] to conduct activities aimed at influencing public officials and esp. members of
1
a legislative body on legislation” from Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law .

Our thesis is that political lobbying is vitally necessary for the policy-making process. We offer three contentions:

1. Organized political lobbying has been key to transforming social movements into law.
2. Lobbyists are experts that provide vital information to politicians for better policy making.
3. Lobbying has been an establishment in helping our court system of hundreds of years.

First, political lobbying was vital for the civil rights movement to turn social change into legal change. Peter Levy2,
the author of the book, The Civil Rights Movement, describes how the NAACP helped:
By the mid-1950s African Americans also had established both national and local institutions and organizations explicitly committed to the cause of civil rights. These groups paved the way for the blossoming of the civil
rights movement in the latter part of the 1950s and the early 1960s. Most important among these was the NAACP, founded in 1909. By the end of World War II, the NAACP had about a half million dues-paying members

Even though
with chapters all across the nation, a growing treasury, a small army of lawyers trained in the intricacies of civil rights law, and a circle of allies prepared to join the crusade against Jim Crow.

the NAACP played a somewhat diminished role during the direct-action protest days of the 1960s, it did
much of the spade work and provided legal counsel to many imprisoned and abused civil rights
workers. As Charles M. Payne's detailed examination of the freedom struggle in Mississippi shows, SNCC, which forged a mass movement in the Delta during the 1960s, built on efforts by numerous local
people, from Amzie Moore and Medgar Evers to Aaron Henry and C. C. Bryant, all NAACP members. And even though the NAACP feuded with several civil rights organizations during the early 1960s, this feud
produced what Nancy Weiss has termed "creative tensions," with the NAACP's expertise and its emphasis on federal legislation complementing SNCC's, CORE's, and the SCLC's focus on direct action. In some places,
such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, strong leadership in the local NAACP chapter actually prodded other civil rights groups to action by pointing out targets for protest and organizing demonstrations.

In addition, lobbying by groups such as the NAACP was absolutely necessary to pass meaningful legislation
affirming the rights of minorities. William Riches3, author of The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance,
writes:

, Congress never would have passed these paws and the president would not have pursued or signed
Certainly

them if not for the rise of a massive civil rights movement. Protests from Birmingham and Selma, Alabama to Jackson and Greenwood, Mississippi, put
unprecedented pressure on the executive and legislative branches to act. Martin Luther King Jr., the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, and independent activists all deserve credit for the crucial role they played in awakening the

the full story of the

nation from its torpor over the denial of equal rights and the need for strong federal legislation to enforce and implement the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. Yet

fight for legal equality also must take into account the role played by those who struggled behind the
scenes, in the corridors of Congress, lobbying politicians to enact meaningful rather than watered-down
legislation. Without their efforts, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in particular, would have been
eviscerated by crafty congressmen, if passed at all.

Only because of lobbying has the civil rights movement been able to establish meaningful legislation for America’s
minorities.

1
"lobbying." Def. 1a. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. 7th ed. 2003.
2
Levy, Peter B. The Civil Rights Movement. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 1998. Print.
3
Riches, William T. M. The Civil Rights Movement: Struggle and Resistance. Chicago: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997. Print.

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Second, economic modeling of lobbyists and lawmaker’s decisions shows that lobbyists provide information
necessary for informed policy making. John Wright4, published in the journal of Social Choice and Welfare, writes in
1992:

We have modelled lobbying as an exercise in strategic information transmission. Whether this is information about district support
of information about policy consequences, it turns out that legislators are better informed in the presence of lobbying than in

its absence. In fact, we propose that any lobbying at all induces legislators to vote correctly more often than in the
absence of lobbying. Lobbying, therefore, performs an important function in representative systems
where public opinion is often too inchoate, and the political parties too heterogeneous, for legislators to
be fully informed through these mechanisms alone. Given the informational value of lobbying to incumbent representatives, it is understandable that Congress has
demonstrated little interest in regulating lobbying activity over the years. Despite the negative publicity often associated with interest group lobbying, representatives clearly prefer to have more, and relatively unrestricted,
lobbying than less.

Lobbyists have been key in providing useful information to politicians who may not be experts in medicine or other
advanced and specialized issues. This study found that legislators were better informed with lobbying and that any
lobbying at all causes legislators to vote more correctly than without.

Third and finally, lobbying groups have had a long history in defending civil rights in court cases through the filing of
amicus curae briefs, or “friends or the court” briefs. The Americans for Effective Law Enforcement Legal Institute5
elaborates:

A number of organizations have used the judicial branch as a vehicle for reform. As long ago as 1941,
the N.A.A.C.P. began an attack on racial segregation through amicus briefs. {N. 2} In 1954, the Supreme Court reversed itself and
ordered public schools to desegregate. {N. 3} The court relied on the brief of Thurgood Marshall, the then director and counsel

for the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Education Fund. {N. 4} In his “Brandeis Brief,” Marshall attached a 24-page appendix entitled, “The effects of segregation and the consequences of
desegregation: a social science statement.” This remarkable document was signed by 32 of the nation’s “foremost authorities

in sociology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry who have worked in the area of American work
relations.”

Marshall’s stunning success has been attributed to the non-legal social data he assembled in support of
court-ordered desegregation – and not to his discussion of legal precedent.

In the amicus brief filed by the ACLU and their state affiliate, they
The American Civil Liberties Union took a broader view.

requested the Court to reexamine their earlier views and overturn the 1949 holding. The Court accepted this request
and dramatically changed the philosophy of criminal jurisprudence. It did so, not at the request of the
accused nor on the basis of the defense brief, but on the urging of a third party. The ACLU brief forever proved the
importance and influence of “friends of the court.” {N. 7}

Without lobbying, meaningful legislation in the civil rights movement would not have been passed, current
lawmakers would not be able to provide better legislation for the American public, and lobbying is and has been a key
political influence in the court system for civil rights cases. Since lobbying is vital for policy making, you negate.

4
Austen-Smith, David, and John R. Wright. "Competitive lobbying for a legislator's vote."Social Choice and Welfare (1992): 229-57. Springer-Verlag. Web. 31 Jan. 2010.
5
"History, Purpose and Philosopy of Amicus Advocacy:." AELE. AELE. Web. 12 Feb. 2010.

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