Debate News:
2010 National Debate Topic:
Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase social services for persons living in poverty in the United States..
Theory
Burdens of the affirmative
Stock issues
One traditional policy debate theory states that the affirmative team must win certain issues, called the stock issues. The first four issues must be presented in the affirmative case. The last issue, topicality, need not be included in the affirmative case, but must be defended if the negative team raises arguments. They are:
* Solvency: The plan should succeed in solving for a harm in the status quo or creating an advantage over the status quo.
* Harms: The affirmative should demonstrate a harm in the status quo. This stock issue is often labelled as an advantage instead. An advantage may either be an actual harm or merely an opportunity cost harm.
* Inherency: The status quo must not solve the case absent the plan. There are three types of inherency:
* Structural inherency: Laws or other barriers to the implementation of the plan.
* Attitudinal inherency: Beliefs or attitudes which prevent the implementation of the plan.
* Existential inherency: The plan hasn't happened yet.
The affirmative team has the power of Fiat (Latin for "let it be so") to overcome such inherent barriers. Thus, the debate centers on whether the plan should happen rather than whether it will happen. The negative team is not allowed to argue that existing political elements will block the plan or not fund it, they must instead prove why the plan is a bad idea that should not pass. .
* Significance: The affirmative must be significant. This stock issue has also fallen out of use in part because of the difficulty of defining what is and what is not significant. Generally, any advantage over the status quo makes the plan significant.
* Topicality: The affirmative case must affirm the resolution, as opposed to a subject outside the topic area.
Advantages
Other external benefits that are created in addition to solving the harms addressed by the affirmative are called advantages. While an affirmative team isn't required to present any advantages in their case in order to fulfill the affirmative burdens, they are often included for strategic reasons to prove the affirmative case is preferable over the status quo. It is difficult to win on the affirmative side without advantages. The negative team will often present disadvantages which contend that the affirmative plan causes undesirable consequences, so the affirmative team often needs countervailing advantage to generate a net positive outcome. It is helpful to mitigate the disadvantages run by the neg. Like disadvantages, advantages often have exaggerated or unrealistic impacts, such as bringing about world peace.
The teams may also present a decision calculus for the judge to decide the case: for instance, they may insist that the judge examine the case in a deontological rather than consequentialist framework. A deontological framework implies that the judge should examine individual rights and the intent of the case. Consequentialism is a framework in which the "ends justify the means". In other words, as long as something good comes of an action, anything bad done on the way doesn't matter.
Negative strategy
After the affirmative presents its case, the negative can attack the case with many different arguments, which include:
* Stock Issues: The negative can claim that the affirmative does not uphold any of the above burdens. Certain judges believe that the affirmative must uphold each of the issues, or they lose the round. Since the late 1980's, attacks on inherency and significance have fallen out of favor. In some cases, such as when a negative team wishes to win in a Disadvantages debate but has no good solvency turn (i.e. nothing that proves that the Affirmative plan actually causes or aggravates the harms the Affirmative team cites), the Negative will attack Significance or Advantages, especially when the Affirmative team cites a critical Advantage or colossally bad Harm. Most debates that are "on-case" (that is, directly responsive to the Affirmative plan), however, are Solvency debates.
* Topicality: In particular, of the Stock Issues, Topicality arguably sees the most play in technical high school debate. The Negative will attempt to argue that the Affirmative team does not fall under the rubric of the resolution and should be rejected immediately regardless of the merits or advantages of the plan. This is a type of 'meta-debate' argument, as both sides then spend time defining various words or phrases in the resolution, laying down standards for why their definition(s) or interpretation(s) is superior (including arguments such as referring to the amount of argumentative "ground" either team would have under their or the opposing team's definition or interpretation of the resolution), and even spend time discussing what Topicality is and whether or not it is a relevant burden! Most yearly topics have at least one or two commonly run Affirmative cases (such as landmines during a weapons of mass destruction topic, holistic medicine during a mental health topic, racial profiling and reversing the Supreme Court policies that led to internment during a privacy topic, or similar) that are only arguably topical, so Topicality is often justified as a check or deterrent on and against such plans, which usually have quite strategic components (such as critical impacts or advantages normally beyond the scope of the topic). Topicality is also often considered a levelling factor in high school debate: A Negative team that is less well-funded, prepared or skillful or facing a case that they are not prepared for can use Topicality to win, or at least force the Affirmative to spend substantial amounts of time rebutting (in this case, Topicality is known as a "time-suck"). For this reason, many arguments have come into vogue arguing that topicality is theoretically or critically repugnant: Perhaps Topicality as a timesuck is unfair and should be punished, or perhaps language is so vague that the Negative team is simply imperially attacking an unconventional and creative Affirmative, or perhaps the Affirmative is discussing something so important that Topicality should be ignored. Most judges seem to reject these arguments, though they must still be rebutted.
* Disadvantages: The negative can claim that there are disadvantages, or adverse effects of the plan, which outweigh any advantages claimed. The basic structure of a Disadvantage includes the Uniqueness, or the current situation which indicates that the disadvantage will not occur in the status quo; the link, which states that passing the affirmative's plan would reverse the uniqueness; and the Impact, which is the final effect of the affirmative plan. In order to outweigh any positive effects of the affirmative case, impacts are often unrealistic and exaggerated, exceeding what would be expected as outcomes of a real world policy action. Both sides are usually guilty of using exaggerated impacts, but in general they are acceptable.
* Politics: This is a subset of the Disadvantage, but worth noting independently, because of many complex and controversial theory/critical arguments that reference Politics and its admissibility. The general format has to do with other policies in the real world that the plan would ostensibly effect. For example: An Affirmative plan may be such a sharp change or shift from a generally conservative Senate that the Senate feels that it must rally its hardline conservative base with a policy that the Negative argues has titanically bad results (typically nuclear war, ecocidal extinction or similar levels of disadvantage). Politics Disadvantages are unique in a few ways: They typically require up-to-the-moment Uniqueness (as political climates are constantly changing), which generally favors larger or better funded squads as they are more likely to have the resources and time to acquire the newest Uniqueness. Unlike many other Disadvantages, they change substantially from year to year and even month to month, as new bills are considered and others defeated. Further, while most Disadvantages are accepted (at least theoretically if not critically), Politics face common theoretical and critical objections. Many argue that Politics Disadvantages are fiat confusions: They deal with HOW the plan passes, not whether it SHOULD pass. Other arguments allege that the focus or style of Politics Disadvantages lull debaters into an elitist mindset, or distort reality beyond recognition, and should be rejected on those debits.
* Kritiks (i.e., Critique): The negative can claim that the affirmative is guilty of a certain mindset or assumption that should be grounds for rejection. Kritiks are sometimes a reason to reject the entire affirmative advocacy without evaluating its policy; other times, kritiks can be evaluated within the same framework for evaluation as the affirmative case. Examples of some kritiks include ones against biopower, racism, centralized government or anthropocentric viewpoints. Critiques arose in the early 1990's, with the first critiques based in deconstructionist philosophy about the intrinsic ambiguity of language. The affirmative team was forced to prove that language had meaning before their case could be considered.
* Counterplans: The negative can reject the status quo in favor of a different policy action, which provides better advantages, or fewer disadvantages than the plan, also known as net benefits. The affirmative team may argue against the competition of the counterplan by permuting the CP, that is adopting some portion of the plan in addition to their plan. A successful permutation may be grounds to remove the CP from consideration, or grounds to narrow the scope of the debate to only the mutually exclusive part of the CP.
* Theory: Sometimes the subject matter of the affirmative's case will create an uneven playing field from the beginning. In these cases, the negative can resort to making objections as to the procedure or content of the affirmative case. These objections often are "theoretical" in that they try to make objections based upon what bad can/has come to debate from the infraction, or what would make debate better if it were true. The Affirmative team may also make theoretical objections to negative arguments: For example, some Counterplans or ways of arguing Counterplans face common theoretical objections.
* Narrative: Narratives are emotionally delivered speeches generally given at the opening of a speech. They are usually personal in nature, and call for the judge to approve of a specific policy option based on a situation. A case that would solve for world hunger might include a narrative about a starving African child.
* Performance: A song, dance, poem, or other method of expression other than rhetoric that is used in the round. For example, a dance about freedom may better represent freedom than actual discourse. This technique was introduced subsequent to 1998. However, in recent times performance arguments have been criticized for being abusive, irrelevant, or bigoted in some way or form.
Evidence
Evidence in debates is organized into units called cards (because such evidence was originally printed on note cards, though the practice has long been out of favor). Cards are designed to condense an author's argument so that debaters have an easy way to access the information. A card is composed of three parts: the tag, the cite, and the body. The tag is the debater's summary of the argument presented in the body. A tag is usually only one or two sentences. The cite contains all relevant citation information (that is, the author, date of publication, journal, title, etc.). Although every card should contain a complete citation, only the author's name and date of publication are typically spoken aloud in a speech. Some teams will also read the author's qualifications if they wish to emphasize this information. The body is a fragment of the author's original text. The length of a body can vary greatly—cards can be as short as a few sentences and as long as two or more pages. Most cards are between one and five paragraphs in length. The body of a card is often underlined or highlighted in order to eliminate unnecessary or redundant sentences when the card is read in a round. In a round, the tag is read first, followed by the cite and the body.
As pieces of evidence accumulate use, multiple colors of highlighting and different thicknesses of underlining often acure, sometimes making it difficult to determine which portion of the evidence was read. If debaters stop before finishing the underlined or highlighted portion of a card, it is considered good form to "mark" the card to show where one stopped reading. To otherwise misrepresent how much of a card was read—either by stopping early or by skipping underlined or highlighted sections—is known as "cross-reading" or "clipping cards" which is generally considered cheating. Although many judges overtly condemn the practice on their paradigms, it is hard to enforce, especially if judges permit debaters to be excessively unclear. Opponents will generally stand behind a debater whom they believe to be "cross-reading" or "clipping", as if waiting to take a card (see below), and silently read along with them in an attempt to get their opponent to stop or the judge to notice.
As cards are read in round, it is common for an opponent to collect and examine even while a speech is still going on. This practice originated in part because cards are read at a rate faster than conversational speed but also because the un-underlined portions of cards are not read in round. Taking the cards during the speech allows the opponent to question the author's qualifications, the original context of the evidence, etc. in cross-examination. It is generally accepted whichever team is using preparation time has priority to read evidence read previously during a round by both teams. As a result, large amounts of evidence may change hands after the use of preparation time but before a speech. Most judges will not deduct from a team's preparation time for time spent finding evidence which the other team has misplaced.
After a round, judges often "call for cards" to examine evidence whose merit was contested during the round or whose weight was emphasized during rebuttals so that they can read the evidence for themselves. Although widespread, this practice is explicitly banned at some tournaments, most notably National Catholic Forensic League nationals, and some judges refuse to call for cards because they believe the practice constitutes "doing work for debaters that should have been done during round". Judges may also call for evidence for the purpose of obtaining its citation information so that they can produce the evidence for their own school. Opponents and spectators are also generally allowed to collect citations in this manner, and some tournaments send scouts to rounds to facilitate the collection of cites for every team at the tournament, information which is sometimes published online.
Sample card
US hegemony is key to preventing proliferation and global nuclear war.
Khalilzad, 1995 (Zalmay, Director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program @ RAND and current US Ambassador to Iraq, "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War," The Washington Quarterly, Spring, p. Lexis)
Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
Judging Policy Debates
Judging policy debate can be challenging. The total time available is short, the issues are complex and the judge may have personal beliefs that cloud impartiality.
Speaker points
The judge is charged not only with selecting a victor, but also must allot points to each competitior. Known as "speaker points," their goal is to provide a numerical evaluation of the debaters' speaking skills. Speaker point schemes vary throughout local state and regional organizations particularly at the high school level. However, the method accepted by most national organizations such as the National Forensic League, Tournament of Champions, National Catholic Forensic League, Cross-Examination Debate Association, and National Debate Tournament, use values ranging from 1–30. In practice, within these organizations the standard variation is 26–29, where 26s are given to extremely poor speakers, where a perfect score is considered incredibly rare and warranted only by an outstanding performance. Most tournaments accept halfpoint gradiations, for example 28.5s. Generally, speaker points are seen as secondary in importance to wins and losses, yet often correlate with a team's win/loss rate. In other words, the judge usually awards the winning team cumulatively higher speaker points than the losing team. If the judge does not, the decision is considered a "Low-Point Win". Low-point wins usually indicate that the debate was poor, as neither team spoke well; or that the team which lost was ahead overall, but lost on a technicality or minor issue, or by a very slim margin.
In some smaller jurisdictions, the judge ranks the speakers 1-4 instead of awarding them speaker points. Either speaker-point calculation may be used to break ties among teams with like records. Some areas also use speaker rankings in addition to speaker points in order to differentiate between speakers awarded the same number of points.
At a majority of tournaments, debaters also receive "speaker awards," which are awarded to the debaters who received the greatest number of speaker points. Many tournaments also drop the highest and lowest score received by each debater, in order to ensure that the speaker award calculations are fair and consistent, despite the preferences of different judges. The amount of speaker awards given out varies based on the number of debaters competing at any given tournament. For instance, a small local tournament might only award trophies or plaques to the top three debaters, whereas a widely attended "national circuit" tournament might give out awards to the top ten or fifteen speakers.
Judge qualifications
The use of community judges, also known as "lay" judges, is a source of great controversy in policy debate.
Some people see judges recruited from the community as an important part of the debate educational experience. They believe that debaters will benefit more from the type of debating they need to do in order to convince an individual with no debate experience to vote for them. Lay judges often value speaking skills, presentation, and logic, whereas more experienced judges might get caught up in the technical aspects of a debate round, such as speed and the ability to refute each and every point made by the opposing team.
Others see lay judges as an important part of the "game" aspect of debate. They argue that the ability to adapt to different audiences is an important skill for debaters to have. They may see a team that is unable to change the way they argue in order to account for judges' biases and limitations as a less competent team than another that is able to do such things.
Other circuits see lay judges as hampering the debaters' ability to tackle complex ideas that the general public isn't familiar with. For instance, because lay judges are not trained to deal with speed, debaters are unable to make as many arugments with a lay judge as they would be able to make in a round where their judge was able to follow speed. Judges who have been involved in debate for several years are also more likely to be knowledgeable about obscure theories and philosophical authors, which allows debaters to reference scholarly material that wouldn't make sense to someone who wasn't familiar with popular debate authors.
It is occasionally argued that community judges are more likely to have biases than judges who have experience in debate. For instance, a community judge might think that capitalism is the best economic system available, and they might automatically dismiss a Marxist criticism. In this view, an experienced judge is thought to have had more practice looking at both sides of an issue, and they are more likely to have been exposed to similar arguments in the past.
