Definition
Policy debate is a rigorous
form of argumentation in which two teams (each comprised of two students)
defend the benefits and drawbacks of a specific solution to a national policy
problem. This policy problem is stated as a resolution. For the 2007-08 school year, the national
high school debate topic is: Resolved: The United States federal government should
substantially increase its public health assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa. High schools, including all UDL schools, who compete in policy debate use
this same topic all year long.
Overview
Participants usually take
part in three to five 90-minute debates, called rounds, during the tournament.
They may also take part in additional elimination rounds, called out rounds, to
determine the tournament champions, in a playoff structure. Debate teams must
be prepared to debate either the affirmative or the negative side of the
resolution. Generally teams alternate between debating the affirmative or the
negative from round to round.
A round of CX /team policy debate consists of eight
speeches. The first four speeches are called constructive speeches,
because the teams are perceived as laying out their most important arguments
during these speeches. The last four speeches are called rebuttals,
because the teams are expected to extend and apply arguments that have already
been made, rather than make new arguments
|
Speech |
Time |
|
8 minutes |
|
|
Cross-examination of First Affirmative by
Second Negative |
3 minutes |
|
8 minutes |
|
|
Cross-examination of First Negative by First
Affirmative |
3 minutes |
|
8 minutes |
|
|
Cross-examination of Second Affirmative by
First Negative |
3 minutes |
|
8 minutes |
|
|
Cross-examination of Second Negative by
Second Affirmative |
3 minutes |
|
First Negative Rebuttal
(1NR) |
5 minutes |
|
5 minutes |
|
|
Second Negative Rebuttal
(2NR) |
5 minutes |
|
5 minutes |
In addition to speeches,
policy debates may allow for a certain amount of preparation time, or "prep time,"
during a debate round. NFL rules call for 5 minutes of total prep time that can
be used, although in practice high school debate tournaments usually give 8
minutes of prep time.
The preparation time is
used at each team's preference; they can use different amounts of preparation
time before any of their speeches, or even none at all. Prep time can be
allocated strategically to intimidate or inconvenience the other team: for
instance, normally a 1AR requires substantial prep time, so a well-executed
"stand up 1AR", delivered after no prep time intimidates the negative
team and takes away from time that the 2NR may have used to prepare the parts
of her speech which do not rely on what the 1AR says.
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 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. Inherency is sometimes not labelled in the 1AC but rather
incorporated into advantages such that it becomes clear why the plan is an
advantage over the status quo. However, this practice is generally frowned
upon. The popularization of offense/defense in policy debate effectively
squelched debate over inherency because the affirmative will usually win Inherency
as a stock issue as long as there is a chance, however small, that the status
quo will not solve the case.
·
Topicality:
The affirmative case must affirm the resolution,
as opposed to a subject outside the topic area.
·
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.
An alternate way to list the stock issues, and a possible
easier way, is "Solvency, Harms, Inherency, Topicality,
Significance," with the mnemonic S.H.I.T.S. or
the classroom-appropriate variant S.I.T.H.S.
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 causing world peace and ending
racism forever.
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.
Negation Theory is a theory of how a debate round should be
decided which dictates that the negative
need only negate the affirmative
instead of having to negate the resolution.
The acceptance of negation theory allows negative teams to run arguments such
as Topical Counterplans, that may affirm the resolution, but they still negate the
affirmative plan.
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 1980s,
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 leveling 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 1990s, 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 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 occur, 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.
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.
Experienced debate judges (who were generally debaters in
High School and/or College) generally carry a mindset that favors certain
arguments and styles over others. Depending on what mindset, or paradigm, the
judge uses, the debate can be drastically different. Because there is no one view
of debate agreed upon by everyone, many debaters question a judge about their
paradigm and/or their feelings on specific arguments before the round.
Not every judge fits perfectly into one paradigm or
another. A judge may say that they are "Tabula Rasa," or willing to
listen to anything, but draw the line at arguments they consider to be
offensive (such as arguments in favor of racism). Or, a judge might be a
"policy maker," but still look at the debate in an offense/defence
framework like a games playing judge.
Examples of paradigms include:
Stock Issues: In order for the affirmative team to win, their
plan must retain all of the stock issues,
which are Harms, Inherency, Solvency, Topicality, and Significance. For the
negative to win, they only need to prove that the affirmative fails to meet one
of the stock issues. These judges are more likely to dislike newer arguments
such as kritiks and some theoretical points.
Policymaker: At the end of the round, the judge compares the
affirmative plan with either the negative counterplan or the status quo.
Whichever one is a better policy option is the winner.
Tabula Rasa: From the Latin for "blank slate", the
judge attempts to come into the round with no predispositions. These judges
typically expect debaters to "debate it out", which includes telling
the judge what paradigm they should view the round in.
Games Player: Views debate as a game. Judges who use this
paradigm tend to be concerned with whether or not each team has a fair chance
at winning the debate. They usually view the debate flow as a gameboard, and
look at arguments according to an offence/defense structure.
Speaking Skills/Communications: This type of judge is concerned
with good presentation and persuasion skills. They tend to vote for teams that
are more articulate, and present arguments in the most appealing way. These
judges usually disapprove of speed.
Following each constructive speech, there is a three
minute cross examination period in which the opposing team questions the team
which just spoke. In theory, the cross-examination is conducted by the opponent
who will not speak next of the speaker who just spoke, but in practice most
cross-examinations are open, that is: either partner may ask or answer
questions.
Some tournaments have neither cross-examination time nor
preparation time. Rather, each team is given 16 minutes of alternative use
time. Alternative use time can always be used as prep time but after a
constructive speech it also doubles as cross-examination time. Thus, if the 2AC
needs 6 minutes to get ready after the 1NC, the first affirmative speaker would
get to cross-examine the first negative speaker for those 6 minutes while the
second affirmative speaker is preparing. Alternative use time may not be used
for cross-examination after rebuttal speeches.
Information compiled and adapted from Wikipedia
·
Cheshier, David. (2002). Drills to Improve your Debate Speaking. Rostrum.
Retrieved December 30, 2005.
·
Gary Alan Fine (2001). Gifted Tongues: High
School Debate and Adolescent Culture. Princeton
University Press. ISBN 0-691-07450-X.
·
Dana Hensley and Diana Carlin (2005). Mastering Competitive
Debate 7th Ed.. Perfection Learning. ISBN 0-931054-70-2.
·
Leslie Phillips, William S. Hicks,
Douglas R. Springer, and Maridell Fryar (2001). Basic Debate 4th Ed..
Glenco/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-8442-5981-0.
·
Glass, David. Former President of NDCA. "The Policy Debate Topic
Selection Meeting." National Forensic League. 22 June 2006 [8]
·
Glass, David. Former President of NDCA. "Post-Modern Critiques as
Strategems in the Policy Debate Discourse." National Forensic League. 2005
[9]