Why I Won’t Buy an iPad and Think You Shouldn’t, Either: A Critical Analysis

Example Thesis

Introduction Paragraph:

Title of the article, publication date and name of the author

• A succinct summary of the article
• A thesis statement comprising of the main argument in the article, whether it is convincing or not and the rhetoric appealsthat the author has used to convince or persuade the reader. Remember to mention the sub idea for that rhetorical appeal, for example: (1) first-person narrative to evoke empathy, (2) building her credibility with personal facts and reputable sources, (3) citing convincing facts and statistics.

Example Thesis:

In “Why I Won’t Buy an iPad (and Think You Shouldn’t, Either)” published on Boing Boing in April of 2010, Cory Doctorow successfully uses his experience with technology, facts about the company Apple, and appeals to consumer needs to convince potential iPad buyers that Apple and its products, specifically the iPad, limit the digital rights of those who use them by controlling and mainstreaming the content that can be used and created on the device.

Body Paragraph #1:

• 2 examples of – first-person narrative evoking empathy in the audience
• Describe appeal to emotions (pathos)
• Analyze each example and explain how it is successful or not

Body Paragraph #2:

• 2 examples of – first-person narrative evoking empathy in the audience
• Describe appeal to emotions (pathos)
• Analyze each example and explain how it is successful or not

Body Paragraph #3:

• 2 examples of – first-person narrative evoking empathy in the audience
• Describe appeal to emotions (pathos)
• Analyze each example and explain how it is successful or not

Conclusion:

• Restate thesis / summarize essay
• Assess the overall effectiveness of the argument.
• How successful is the argument overall?
• Which appeal is most important in making it effective or ineffective
• High school sports are routinely segregated based on the sex of the participants.1 But forty years ago, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled in Attorney General v. Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association that the state constitution's newly-added equal rights amendment prohibited the blanket exclusion of boys from girls' athletic teams.2 In this way, state constitutional law in Massachusetts departs from Title IX, as well as that of other states, in providing a legal foundation for a wider selection of gender-integrated high school sports. Yet, while some mixed participation does occur on the margins, athletic opportunities in Massachusetts do not significantly differ from those in other states, in that most remain segregated by sex.
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• Sport organizers in Massachusetts have thus arguably missed an opportunity presented by its unique constitutional law to provide students in the Commonwealth a more balanced menu of athletic opportunities that incorporate both sex-segregated and gender-free sports for the advantages each uniquely provides. As described more fully in Part III, gender-free sport can address logistical challenges posed by segregating boys' and girls' opportunities within the same sport, mitigate the stereotypes of inferior girls' sports, and maximize inclusion of transgender athletes. While segregated sport serves an important role as well—that of protecting and preserving opportunities for female athletes whose interests and abilities have historically and continuously been suppressed—it is time to start thinking not about replacing girls' sports altogether but adding more gender-free sports to the mix. Given its permissive constitutional law on gender integration in sport, Massachusetts would be the perfect state to experiment with a more diverse menu of athletic offerings. At the very least, Massachusetts should identify those sports in which separation does more harm than good, and test whether degendering3 sport provides net advantages.
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• Such experimentation would serve not only students in Massachusetts, but in other states as well. Indeed, Massachusetts is unique in the degree to which it resists gender segregation in sport as a matter of constitutional law, but all states are permitted to favor integration more so than they are. Thus, the example that Massachusetts would set by embracing its unique constitutional law is capable of inspiring change throughout the country.

• Rare is the activity and associated body of law that ultimately falls under the jurisdiction of one and only one body the world over. However, most international sporting competitions and the associations and athletes that participate in them fit this singular description: legally, they are under the ultimate jurisdiction of theCourt of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), seated in Lausanne, Switzerland. All Olympic International Federations, as well as many non-Olympic international sporting bodies (for example, FIFA), fall under the jurisdiction of CAS.

• There are a few notable exceptions—such as many North American professional sports leagues, like baseball—who do not subject themselves to CAS. Those bodies that do recognize CAS as the ultimate authority in the law of their sport thereby exclude their events from the jurisdictions of other national, regional, and international courts.1 In the case of many countries, including the United States andCanada, this is done by statute. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires that federations be subject to CAS if they wish to field teams at the Olympics.

• Though CAS executes a number of functions, it is most important as the primary appellate body for the decisions of international sporting federations. There are no appeals from CAS’s final decisions, effectively rendering CAS the supreme court of that sport. As its name implies, CAS is not a purely adjudicative body, but a quasiarbitral tribunal. Hence, there is some debate as to whether a common law style doctrine of stare decisis exists for CAS rather than a civil law style doctrine of jurisprudence constante, and therefore, whether existing precedent is binding or highly persuasive.2 In common law jurisdictions, under stare decisis, existing precedent must be followed by lower courts and higher courts are unlikely to overturn established precedent except in extraordinary circumstances. Under jurisprudence constante, civil law courts follow past lines of decision “unless clear error is shown and injustice will arise from continuation of a particular rule of law.”3 Regardless, CAS decisions routinely cite previous CAS decisions, and they are thus at least highly persuasive to subsequent decisions.

• All eligibility disputes in sport fundamentally concern when discrimination against a particular athlete is justified—whether on the basis of gender or some other physical characteristic. As in most areas of life, some forms of discrimina tion are permissible—as Rawls’s famous example of the would-be surgeon with the shaky hands—and some are not, as, for example, discrimination on the basis of race in nearly every context.4 Thus the question of trans inclusion in sport is a question of if and when discrimination on the basis of an athlete’s status as trans gender is justified. That is, it is a question of when and if trans athletes should be deemed eligible.

  The case of Dutee Chand involved a similar question of when an intersex athlete with naturally high endogenous testosterone who identified as female should be considered eligible to compete in track events, including those that ultimately determined eligibility for Olympic competition. CAS looked to the International Olympic Charter (hereinafter, “Charter”) as well as the applicable regulations promulgated by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), which was the international governing body of the sport recognized by the IOC as the primary governing body as the applicable body of substantive law to decide the case.

  They also considered the constitution and laws of Monaco. We assume for this paper that any decision made by CAS on the eligibility of atrans athlete would similarly look to the Charter and the regulations promulgated by the IOC-recognized international governing body of the sport in question. Because of the scope of this paper, we will ignore such picky legalistic questions like how the IAAF’s being seated in Monaco rather than Switzerland could affect such decisions.

  Another central legal issue to such CAS cases is the concept of burden of proof. The legal concept of the burden of proof and its accompanying standards are often misunderstood and misapplied in popular parlance. Often, one hears that a particular individual who stands accused of a crime but who is not on trial has not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, such statements misunderstand the term “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” which belongs only in courtroom settings, primarily those involving criminal sanctions.