This House Believes That Western Liberal Democracies Should Impelement A Competency-based System of Legal Rights (Positive)

Definition

Western Liberal Democracies are defined as countries in the Europe.

Competency based system is a system where citizens must pass a mental capacity test to obtain legal rights instead of allocating certain rights on the basis of reaching a specific age.

Legal rights: rights which exist under the rules of legal system.

The urgency to implement this motion

1. The Misuse of rights which result in disruption of the public.

With the current system where citizens will obtain their rights, no matter what, when they reach a certain age, we believe that legal rights are too easily obtained by the citizens. (for example, the right to buy and drink alcohol by 21, the right to vote by 17.

The harm when rights are easily obtained

Because these rights are certainly given to the citizens (it must be given to them), it eliminates the sense of responsibility and sense of duty.

We believe the same goes for legal rights, the more effort and the harder it is to obtain these rights.

The Citizens are making use of their rights in a careless manner while only taking in consideration their own personal interest and no longer considering not the interest of the public. Case: the rise of traffic accident each year because drivers are driving their vehicles under the influence (DUI) of alcohol, which in many cases result in the death of those drivers and even the innocent. In this example we can see the danger that when legal right (in this case the right to drink alchohol) is obtained too easily, it will result in the lack of responsibilty when exercising the right and ends with harming the public interest (death of people, damage of infrastructure due to traffic accident).

2. Lack of capability to utilize legal rights.

We believe that maturity does not come with age, but it is related to the experiences and moral beliefs of the said person. Case: a 30 year old driver with minimum education is most likely to do a catcall than a 16 years old well educated teenager. And because of this, we also believe that age does not automatically guarantee your mental capability to utilize the rights that are given to you (for the betterment of yourself and others).

The harm

With the status quo where rights are given in relation to the age, it means that the government is only focusing the physical compentency of the citizens, while only assuming their mental competency (because mental compecompetency does not come with age, but physical competency comes with age).

We believe that it is the wrong thing to highlight because in fact, to make sure that legal rights are utilizes correctly, mental capabilty is required – the rational ability to decide what is right and what is wrong. When these legal rights are given to someone who is not mentally ready yet, it become a burden, for themselves, the people around him, and even the government to make sure that the legal rights are not being exploited.

We think to obtain any legal rights, a person must pass a competency-based test that are designed to examine the skill and mental capacity corresponding to a certain right.

A  person must retake the test every 10 years to prolong the span of their right. In case of failure in prolonging the span of their right, their right shall be revoked and those who fail will have unlimited opportunities to be re-tested.

So we think, it is justify do this system.

The Goal

To restore the sense of responsibility of every citizen when exercising their right and make sure that those who receive their right are capable to utilize it