Wow 321 pages of debate. Well I've been playing brawl for about 24 days now and I've played Melee at a competitively for 2 years prior. Here are my points as to why Melee>Brawl as a competitive fighting game.
1.Melee's Adv techs made the game incredibly deep. I mean the amount of data that was compiled by this community was just enormous. Don't forget the volumes of text accompanied by videos to demonstrate the applications of the techniques. It took MONTHS to learn everything and years to perfect. This seems to missing in Brawl. I don't see anything worth learning except Snake dashing and to dodge after being hit other than that, all you have to know is which moves are autocancellable, which have quick executions, and rolling, lots and lots of rolling.
2.Melee was dangerous. You could be gimped for making mistakes like missing an l cancel. The edgegame was incredibly tense. This gave birth to the video "Combo Breaker". In Brawl, edgeguarding is pretty much nonexistent. If you didnt die from an attack, you will make it back unless you lack the fundamentals of recovering or just screwed up. Where is the danger? Every time people just wait for the opponent to get back, except DeDeDe who probably has the best offstage game. You will never see a combo breaker vid for Brawl. Unfortunate, yes.
3.Combos. Compare a combo video of Melee to Brawls. I mean, I saw an IC Brawl 'combo' video and it was just chaingrabbing(or infinites), wtf? seriously? The problem lies with the very short hit stun which gives no opportunity for a combo. This is why Brawl is so campy and why it works is because of low hit stun. You just hit and run, if you stick around to do a Melee-type combo, you will get hit by your opponent 99.999% of the time. To avoid that, just hit and run then repeat. Compare that to a standard Melee match.
4. AutoLatching? Why? Grabbing the edge shouldn't be a right, it should be a privilege. Totally takes away from dangers posed in Melee. The ledgetech was a huge saver but it had to earned by timing it unlike Brawl where it is fed to you by a silver spoon.
But with all this said, Brawl is still pretty fun. But it was a step backward as a fighter. Almost everything that made Melee great, doesn't exist in Brawl or is in a different, but worse form.
Compare a match like Evo East 2007 PC Chris vs M2K finals to any Brawl match and you will have your answer.
A common slogan or rebuttal is that Brawl is new, and new Adv Techs will come about. No they wont. Even if they do, they will most likely not worth much. Adv techs that made Melee, are confirmed to be gone.
I just hope everyone finds happiness, wherever it may be.