Theory and practice in academic debate

Jon's introduction:

David Snowball was, until his relatively recent retirement from college debate, one of the smartest, funniest,
and most pleasant people to be around. David very generously agreed to allow me to make this public and his
only concern was that in its current form it may be somewhat dated. This is a text that was last revised in 1994,
and since debate texts go out of date faster than computer hardware (I remember how cool my 486 machine
seemed in 1994), David is probably right that some of the information here may seem a little archaic.
Nonetheless, I include this as a valued companion (if not superior) volume to the Debate Bible, since this book
does a much better job of dwelling on some of the basics that I raced right past. You may view this as a text
more appropriate for novices trying to get a firmer grasp on the basics of kritiks and such and the Debate Bible
as a text for students with some experience trying to make the jump to varsity levels. Or, alternatively, you may
view my work as that of a young punk and David's as that of a wizened veteran.

If you are reading this text because I referred you to it for an argument class, chapters 4 and 7 are the most
pertinent.

Thanks again to David for supporting debate at all places and all levels.

THEORY AND PRACTICE IN ACADEMIC DEBATE

A Reference Guide

Third Edition, 1994

David Snowball

Augustana College

Rock Island, Illinois

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

1. DEBATING THEORY

The Importance of Perception

Before the Round

During the Round

After the Round

2. JUDGING PARADIGMS

Definition

Importance

Stock Issues

Policy-making

Hypothesis-testing

Tabula Rasa

Argument Criticism

The Ugly Truth of the Matter

3. PROPOSITIONAL & LINGUISTIC ARGUMENTS

Debate Resolutions

Bi-directional Resolutions

Topicality

Extratopicality

Definitions

Strictness of Definitions

Functions of the Resolution

Counterwarrants

Fiat

Critiques/Kritiks

4. CORE ISSUES

Case Writing

Plan Writing

Presumption/Burden of Proof

Significance

Inherency

Solvency

Disadvantages

5. COUNTERPLANS

Types

Non-topicality

Competition

Added Advantages

Justification Arguments

6. DEBATE GAMES

Spreading

Two-constructive Arguments

Burying

Cross-applications

Generic Arguments

Conditional Arguments

7. DEBATE SKILLS

Research

Computerized Research

Cross-examination

Flowing

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT AUGUSTANA COLLEGE

PREFACE

I designed this third edition of Theory and Practice in Academic Debate (TPAD3) to provide debaters and coaches with a
brief and summary introduction to some of the theoretical and practical issues currently receiving attention in competitive
debate. In its sections on theoretical matters, I strive to inform you about the genesis and elements of controversies. I am
not, as a general matter, advocating one side and I certainly don't claim to present a resolution to these problems. I firmly
believe that debaters and coaches need to think clearly about these issues and to decide which side has the greater
merit, rather than relying on an outsider to give them a set of the "right" opinions. In this spirit, the TPAD3 was designed to
provoke thought and highlight issues, not to provide evidence for use in debate rounds. When the subjects are more
practical (for example, flow-sheeting or plan construction), I will offer some suggestions which have worked for my
debaters over the past fifteen years. This is not an attempt to defend "The One True Way," but merely to point out one
workable way to approach a problem.

Remember: that TPAD3 is a review of arguments offered by the proponents and opponents of various views. The quality
of the arguments used ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime; there are many arguments mentioned in this booklet
which are (in my opinion) pretty silly.

I recognize my great debt to the scholars of debate (from Aristotle to Zarefsky) who were responsible for the ideas which
he is attempting to present. Whether we ultimately judge their positions to have been right or wrong, we still have gained

from their willingness to share insights and to enter, forthrightly and thoughtfully, the marketplace of ideas. It is my hope
that, following their example rather than mimicking their words, you choose to do likewise.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to recognize the contributions made to TPAD3 by two sets of readers. First and foremost, I have learned a
great deal from the debaters and coaches at Augustana College and I appreciate both their support and their questions. In
addition, a number of wise and generous outsiders have read and commented upon the drafts of this work. Primus inter
pares is Nicholas Burnett, the Director of Debate at the California State University - Sacramento. Nick, a fine writer in his
own right, read and critiqued a number of drafts of this book. The arguments I am presenting are far clearer because of
his help. Other friends and colleagues who have contributed to TPAD3 include: Dr. Heather Aldridge, Director of Debate
at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD; Dr. Stephen Anderson of the University of Alabama; Dr. Arnie Madsen of the
University of Northern Iowa; Dr. Star Muir, Director of Debate at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA; Seth Northrop,
varsity debater at Millard-North High School in Omaha; and, Dr. George Ziegelmueller, Director of Debate at Wayne State
University in Detroit.

The support of Augustana College's administration was crucial in the creation of this text. I would like to thank Arne
Selbyg, Dean of the College, for the grant and the encouragement which made its production possible. TPAD3 has, in
addition, benefitted greatly from the skill and thoughtfulness of the professionals in Augustana's Office of Publications:
Barbara Bradac and Beth Roberts.

A Note on Abbreviations

I will try to illustrate as many concepts as I can by offering examples from real and hypothetical debates. These additions
to the text may be preceded by "i.e." (from the Latin phrase, "id est," which stands for "that is") or by "e.g." (from the Latin,
"exempli gratia," which stands for "for example").

CHAPTER ONE:

DEBATING ABOUT THEORY

Many judges (including most college debate judges) are willing to accept the premise that all issues in the round (with
exceptions such as the order of speeches, penalties for evidence fabrication, and so on) are debatable. This openness
gives debaters a great deal of leeway in formulating "the rules of the game". Since, moreover, theory arguments are one
of the last areas of debate where analysis is still more important than evidence, any debater who is interested in debate
theory and willing to reflect upon the implications of his or her arguments is capable of helping to shape the rules in the
rounds. We will start with the suggestions about the general practice of debating theory. In later sections of TPAD3, we
will look at the debates surrounding specific theories.

The Importance of Perception

Judges are not willing to consider theory arguments if they perceive the arguments as being cheap tricks presented by
desperate children. To be taken seriously, you need to create legitimacy and respect for yourself and for your arguments.
This requires, at a minimum, that:

1. You prove that you are capable of winning rounds on substantive issues (for example, after two years of conventional
success, a University of Massachusetts debater won thirty-five debates as a junior with the argument that specified

funding for a plan was extra-topical and should result in a negative ballot). If you're viewed as a loser when it comes to
non-theory debating, it's unlikely that judges will give great weight to your opinions on theoretical matters.

2. You prove that your arguments meet reasonable burdens (i.e., they're fair to both sides, they enhance the educational
content of the activity, they produce "good" debates).

3. You present your arguments seriously (as opposed to tossing them off as one of many bad arguments in a speech).

4. You have your arguments briefed (with implies foresight and planning), rather than advancing made-up standards
produced in the heat of a round.

While these suggestions won't guarantee you success with your theory argument, they will increase your chances of
being taken seriously.

Before the Round

1. Read other people's thoughts on debate theory. Professional journals (e.g., Argumentation and Advocacy which used
to be called JAFA or The Journal of the American Forensic Association, The Forensic, The Forensic Educator, Speaker
and Gavel, Debate Issues, National Forensic League Journal), textbooks (for example, Ziegelmueller's Argumentation:
Inquiry and Advocacy), some debate evidence handbooks (e.g., the Debater's Research Guide from Wake Forest) and
collections of papers (the many Summer Conferences on Argumentation and the book Advanced Debate are examples)
are all fruitful sources of information.

2. Maintain a file of particularly useful articles.

3. Consider and discuss both theoretical and meta- theoretical issues with other debaters and coaches. Theoretical issues
("Is topicality a voting issue?") ask questions about how the debate round should proceed, while meta-theoretical issues
("What is the best basis for evaluating a new theory?") try to help us understand how we should go about judging the
validity of competing theory issues. As with any other issue, you have little chance of winning if the other team has taken
the time to work out reasonable arguments for which you have not chosen to prepare.

4. Write theory blocks. The most effective use of any blocked argument is as a supplement, rather than a substitute, for
thought during the debate. If, during the course of pre-round discussions, you come up with five reasons for why debate
should focus on the resolution (rather than specific affirmative plans) then you should write them down to avoid forgetting
them. Each block should clearly state your argument, explain why the argument should be used as a judging criterion, and
what the implications of your argument are for the round. This will greatly improve your chances of constructing clear and
reasonable positions in any given round.

5. Rewrite theory blocks. Most active programs have a rich backfile of theory blocks (some dating back to the Dark Ages
of typewriter and ditto). These old arguments should not be blindly reread, year after year. Often the written arguments
were designed to be supplemented by extemporized analysis; students not involved in the construction or refinement of
the blocks are, generally, incapable of providing the supporting analysis which makes these claims persuasive. Only by
rewriting, rearguing and reinterpreting these arguments will you gain the insight and polish necessary to control them.

During the Round

1. Get the best possible "flow" of your opponents' theory argument. Whether or not you win this particular round, a good
outline of the argument will increase your ability to examine and criticize the argument after the tournament and will,
consequently, improve your chances of beating it the next time. One of the commonest failings of unsuccessful debaters
is a tendency to panic (or freeze) when confronted with new and unusual positions; they frequently have only a hazy idea
of what hit them, no notes to refer to and little chance to prepare a successful defense for the next round. Stay cool,
concentrate and think.

2. Use cross-ex to its greatest possible advantage. If it looks like a theory argument may be a major factor in the round,
devote time in cross-ex to setting up your response. You should have three basic goals in mind:

- be absolutely certain that you understand the premise or claim of the argument and do not be ashamed to admit that you
are unclear about its implications--this is a lot less embarrassing than trying to explain the loss to your coach;

- be sure you understand the effect your opponents claim the theory will have on the round (is it an independent voting
issue? does it allow them to drop arguments? does it de-legitimize "turn-arounds"?); and,

- explore the implications of the theory by constructing hypothetical examples and asking what implications the theory
would have for them (this helps in your constructive by giving you a set of examples to draw on when explaining why you
object to the theory). One example of this latter type of question would be: "using your theory, then, the negative would
have the option of running as many counterplans as they could fit into one speech and they could concede some, all, or
none of them without penalty?"

Remember to check the section on cross-examination for tips on how to ask good questions.

While this particular question is a bit long, it illustrates the type of concern that a thinking debater might focus on during
rounds.

3. Be as clear as possible. Many theory debates feature a proliferation of dozens of murky claims and "this will destroy
debate" conclusions; this makes these debates abysmally difficult to judge. A debater's best chance often comes in
exploiting the murkiness or novelty of a theory by grounding his or her refutation on a limited number of arguments which
are simply structured, clearly labeled, and directly addressed to the implications of an opponent's position.

4. Keep your strategic options open. It is entirely possible that your opponents will pull any number of bizarre implications
of their theory; this often occurs in the rebuttals. To protect yourself against the ugly possibility of losing in this fashion,
you should probably make a clear statement in your constructive that you reserve the right to make additional responses if
the other team substantially alters the focus of the theory argument in rebuttals. This claim is premised on the fact that, by
constructing many new implications in rebuttals which were not explicated in constructives, the other team has de facto
chosen to run new arguments of their own.

After the Round

1. Review the flows and ballots to determine what role theory arguments played in your wins and losses.

Remember: you should keep your flows from each tournament.

2. Discuss any new theory arguments which you might have encountered and draw up blocks of responses to them.

3. Update and revise your own blocks. It is foolish to assume that the theory blocks you write at one point in the year will
remain adequate throughout; inevitably, you will think of new arguments, some older arguments will prove to be unclear or
unpersuasive, and your opponents will become more adept at beating the arguments previously used against them. In
response to these developments, you must be always improving the quality and clarity of your own arguments.

In summary, then, debating about theory can be an interesting and stimulating undertaking open to all debaters; you need
neither evidence cards nor hundreds of rounds of experience to participate. You do need to listen closely to other people's
arguments, to take the time to explore their implications and to prepare your responses. If you do this, you will have added
a powerful tool to your repertoire.

CHAPTER TWO:

JUDGING PARADIGMS

"Paradigm" defined

A paradigm (pronounced "para - dime") is a set of assumptions governing the process of the debate, arising from a single,
coherent core assumption. These assumptions generally establish some analog (judge as scientist, as legislator, as policy
analyst, and so on) to help the debate judge understand how to resolve arguments in the round. Most debate scholars,
when writing about paradigms, refer to the works of Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn, a historian of science, was interested in the
process whereby a field of science substitutes one set of core assumptions with another, contradictory set (for example,
changing the assumptions of astronomy from the earth at the center of the solar system to the sun at the center). As such,
paradigms help to define the appropriate problems, standards and methods for research.

The (Limited) Importance of Paradigms

The key function of a judging paradigm is to help judges sort through the strategic intricacies of each round. A judge's
choice of paradigm helps resolve questions such as: can I vote for an affirmative who has no case significance but who
has "turned" a disadvantage? can I vote for a disadvantage which applies to the resolution in general but not to the
specific plan? can the negative disown a counterplan which has been shown to be disadvantageous?

The importance of paradigms has always been greater in the minds of debaters than in the minds of judges. This is an
understandable bias, since debaters are always looking for ways of increasing their chances of winning and
understanding a judge's paradigm seemed to offer one such way.

For debate scholars, the significance of judging paradigms is somewhat problematic. Some claim that "the choice of
paradigms is now the dominant theoretical issue in debate," while other (equally respected) teachers allege "that
paradigms are dead". These views (drawn, respectively, from Professors Rob Rowland of Kansas and Tom Goodnight of
Northwestern) are indicative of the ongoing uncertainty among debate critics of how they can make the best and fairest
decisions. Rowland's argument for the primacy of paradigms is that:

Not only do disputes over debate theory increasingly focus on the contest among debate paradigms, but specific debate
theories and tactics are often understandable only within the frame of reference provided by a paradigm. And in many
cases, the justification for a theory or tactic comes from a paradigm or model of debate.

For example, he explains, if an affirmative team is challenged to explain the motives behind the structures of their
inherency, the importance of the challenge is determined by the paradigm applied: stock issues judges would see an
interesting but non-crucial request for information, policy-making judges would see an irrelevant "press" which did not alter
the nature of the policies defended, but the hypothesis-testing judge would see a key question which the affirmative must
answer in order to claim inherency. Similarly, a justification argument (the negative challenge that the affirmative must
show why, for example, their plan must be adopted at the federal level) is largely irrelevant to a policy-making judge since
the question does not define a negative policy system, yet could well be a voting issue for a hypothesis tester who
requires the affirmative to justify acceptance of the entire resolution.

Judges on the other side of the dispute, however, claim that paradigm issues do not serve a true organizing function in
debate but rather are mere elements in a strategic game. These judges believe that a negative does not choose to defend
hypothesis testing because of the greater integrity and rigor of its method, but rather because it will allow them to run ten
hypothetical counterplans and to concede nine. Unwilling to commit themselves to the consistent application of a single
paradigm, these critics proclaim their willingness to evaluate all arguments in the round (including paradigmatic -

pronounced "para-dig-matic" - ones) on the basis of a number of argumentative presumptions: they seek arguments
which are clear, intelligent and well-defended, regardless of their particular labels.

Surveys conducted in 1974, 1976, 1983 and 1994 give some indication of the frequencies with which particular paradigms
occur. The percentages of coaches who could be classified by paradigm break down this way:

1974 1976 1983 1994

Policy-maker 43% 46 38 64

Hypothesis-tester 4 10 4 2

Stock Issues 32 14 8 3

Tabula Rasa 6 9 3 0

Argument Critic 15 10 31 19

Unclassifiable 16 11

While the results of one study may not be directly comparable to the others (since the authors may "code" responses
somewhat differently and since the 1974, 1983 and 1984 surveys were of the N.D.T. only while the 1976 survey focused
on four major tournaments), they do roughly reveal the continued dominance of the policy-making paradigm, the
comparatively small number of adherents to the next three paradigms and the prominence of those who espouse a "critic
of argument" perspective.

Which paradigm is the best? This question may never be answered since we may never reach unanimity on the corollary
query: the best at what? Little agreement exists as to the concrete goals of competitive debate beyond the hopelessly
vague claim of "training students". Some perspectives which might be useful to you will, however, be offered. A set of
functional standards for paradigm evaluation has been offered by Dr. Rowland. His claim is that a paradigm should meet
five standards:

1. the paradigm should be clear and consistent; 2. the paradigm should be fair to both sides; 3. the paradigm should help
the debaters focus more effectively on the substantive issues entailed by the resolution (as compared to the effectiveness
of competing paradigms); 4. the paradigm should promote high-quality arguments; and, 5. the paradigm should work well
within the constraints of academic debate.

A debate on the validity of each of these criteria occurred in the pages of JAFA, the citation for which is in the
bibliography. Fortunately, the differences in paradigms mask underlying agreement between most judges. In proposing
five hypothetical situations to judges representing various paradigms, Matlon and Cross found a high degree of
agreement as to the outcome of the round. Their conclusion:

the majority of judges in the academic debate community view debates with extraordinary consensus regardless of their
stated judging philosophies.

This, of course, highlights the importance of using high quality, intelligent arguments regardless of the announced
predispositions of the judge.

Finally, most judges view paradigms as debatable issues. In each survey, virtually all of the judges showed a willingness
to suspend their predispositions in favor of the paradigm which could be settled during the course of the round; at the
1983 N.D.T., for example, only one out of 110 judges announced his unwillingness to adapt his judging paradigm to the
arguments made in the round (and, by 1994, even he surrendered on this issue).

Stock Issues Paradigm

Nature of the Stock Issues Paradigm

Stock issues analysis represents the oldest and most venerable of the debate paradigms; its roots extend back to the
stasis (or status) doctrine in Roman law during Cicero's time. As a judicial matter, they were a series of questions to be
addressed to determine the innocence or guilt of a defendant. In the debate setting, the resolution serves as an indictment
against the status quo whose innocence is presumed. In contemporary practice, the four traditional stock issues (ill,
blame, cure, cost) are represented by significance/harm, inherency, solvency and disadvantages. The debate becomes a
quasi-mechanical application of this checklist; failure of the affirmative to meet every one leads to a loss.

While the four stock issues are present in each paradigm, their use in the stock issues paradigm is special. Under stock
issues, the affirmative needed first to provide "a compelling need". Because presumption is strongly in favor of the present
system, neither small harms nor minor comparative advantages suffice to demonstrate compelling need. In addition, the
stock issues judge does not normally consider "turn-arounds" on disadvantages to be a voting issue since the harm issue
still would not have been proven. The second responsibility is to establish the inherent responsibility of the system for the
harm. The stock issues judge requires both that the affirmative identify the structural cause of the ill and then prove that
the present system will remain incapable correcting it. To merely identify one of many causes of a problem is considered
argumentatively inadequate since ignorance of the prime cause of a problem implies ignorance of our ability to cope with
it. The solvency issue is generally addressed with reference to the influence of the plan on the structural source of ill; if
you can prove that "X" causes the ill and you eliminate "X", then the ill likewise will be eliminated. Disadvantages are the
negative analog to the harm argument and must meet the same burdens of causality that the affirmative meets. Under the
stock issues paradigm, precedence goes to case arguments since a well-defended minor repair is as likely to win as a
disadvantage.

Criticisms of the Stock Issues Paradigm

A number of criticisms seem to have led to the decline of stock issues judging. One problem lies in the ambiguity of key
terms, such as compelling need and structural barrier. For example, while a law is clearly a structural barrier, it is far
harder to say whether an administrative ruling and executive order is one. With increasingly sophisticated analysis,
debaters came to realize that inaction or inattentiveness (the so-called "structural gaps") within a system were the source
of as much ill as bad actions already undertaken; unfortunately, stock issues analysis had no place for these
observations. As judges sought to allow for these new insights, their paradigms were subtly altered to become
indistinguishable from the policy-makers.

Another problem is a bias against the affirmative, since the affirmatives are required to produce proof beyond a
reasonable doubt on each and every stock issue. In addition, the affirmatives must be prepared to defend their plans
against an array of minor administrative or funding changes.

Finally, stock issues does not allow debaters to address problems which lack a single, structural cause. In those instances
where many causes exist, where cause is indistinct but effect is clear or where only a probabilistic assessment of
solvency can occur, the stock issues paradigm is incapable of functioning.

Matlon and Cross found that, in practice, stock-issues judges functioned as policy-making judges with a conservative (or
negative) bias: they prefer the negative to defend a policy, allow presumption to shift, make on-balance judgments, often
accept effect-oriented solutions, listen to counterplans and even to conditional argumentation.

Policy-making Paradigm

Nature of the Policy-making Paradigm

The policy makers live in a world of constant change, a world in which problems are always being perceived and
responded to. From their perspective, the question to be addressed is never "should we respond to this situation?" but
instead is "how best can we respond to this situation?" The policy-maker believes that the best possible way to answer
that question is to let each team define and defend what they believe is the best possible answer to that question, then
allow the judge (or audience) to decide which team presented the better solution. These solutions are offered in the form
of policy systems, which Allan Lichtman and Daniel Rohrer (policy-making's original advocates) defined as:

complex, multi-faceted entities consisting of a set of ends or goals, means designed to achieve those ends, and checks
and balances designed to maintain optimal relationships between means and ends...all elements in a policy system
interact, so that the system forms an organized whole that is not merely the sum of its individual parts. A change in any
one aspect of a policy system may trigger changes in any or all other aspects of the system.

This paradigm is grounded on the assumption that we are able to predict, with a fair degree of confidence, the likely
repercussions of our actions; hence, it is sensible to believe that if debaters provide the best possible arguments for their
policies, then a debate judge should be able to assess which of them is likely to produce the greatest future gain. While
some policy-makers pretend to be administrators, legislators, judges or committee chairs, the dominant view is that of the
systems analyst. Through the application of sophisticated decision technologies (cost-benefit analysis, computer
modeling, econometric forecasting, etc.), systems analysts believes themselves capable of making predictive statements
about the probable consequences of competing systems.

A number of implications flow from this view. First, each team needs a policy. Since systems are presumed to be neither
good nor bad (rather, more or less effective in dealing with a problem), the judge must necessarily compare the available
alternatives. If a negative team fails to offer a policy for comparison (or offers many or contradictory policies), the judge
will almost always vote affirmative. This is so because, even if the affirmative policy is deeply flawed, it would be
impossible to determine whether a less-flawed alternative exists. For example, even if the affirmative plan increases the
risk of nuclear war, it is possible that all responses to a given problem also entail this risk; unless the negative defends a
policy which engenders less risk of war, the judge has no basis for comparison and will (in theory) ignore the
disadvantage.

Second, consistent advocacy is essential. For the policy-maker, conditional arguments are to be discouraged since they
create confusion about what system the negative will defend and reduce the time available to discuss core issues.

Third, inherency is future-oriented. The policy-maker requires affirmatives to describe the system which they are indicting
and then to prove that the system will be incapable in the future of dealing with the problems under discussion. The
negative may either accept this definition of the system and argue that it will adapt to meet evolving difficulties or they may
offer another, non-resolutional alternative to the system described; these strategies focus, respectively, on incrementalism
(the beloved "dynamic status quo") and on counterplans. Questions of underlying attitudes are largely irrelevant.

Finally, presumption is viewed in comparative perspective. Presumption represents a recognition that change entails risk
and that not all risks can be foreseen; as such, presumption tends to lie with the system in which change is small,
consistent, reversible and predictable. In comparing a plan with a counterplan, presumption would lie against whichever
system was responsible for large, drastic, permanent or unprecedented changes since these changes would represent
the greatest disruption in pre-existing interrelationships. As such, presumption does not always lie against the affirmative
and may change from one team to another during the course of a debate.

Criticisms of the Policy-making Paradigm

Critics of policy-making view it as being the rigid application of an unrealistic paradigm whose real-world analog has failed
miserably. First, critics claim that restricting the negative to a single alternative is an inferior process. Critics claim that
real-world policy analysts often examine multiple options for addressing the same problem, since it is possible that any
one of several alternatives might ultimately prove preferable. Critics are also somewhat upset by the inconsistency of
policy-making theory on this point, since policy theorists have shown a disconcerting tendency to switch from demanding
one to permitting several options and then back again.

Second, critics claim that policy-making tends to encourage unrealistic argumentation and an over-reliance on
quantification since both of these tactics improves a team's position in the cost-benefit calculus that a judge conducts at
the end of the round. For example, several years ago a team argued that better funding for symphony orchestras would
increase the risk of nuclear war; their reasoning was that (1) better symphonies improved the livability of the cities in
which they were located, which (2) encouraged people to move back to the cities, which (3) increased urban growth,
which (4) has been historically associated with the rise of broad-based, right-wing movements, which (5) tend to be
represented in national legislatures, which (6) decreases the likelihood of arms control and increases the risk of
confrontative policies, which (7) increase the risk of a general nuclear war which could kill 350,000,000 people. A policy-
maker, doing a risk-analysis, might say that there is one chance in ten that the first link is true, one in a hundred of the
second, one in ten of the third, one in a hundred of the fourth, one in a hundred of the fifth, one in ten of the sixth and one
in one thousand of the seventh. The net risk of the disadvantage leading to war might be one in tens of millions, but the
policy-maker will almost always assign some level of risk to each event. So, even if the risk is one in ten million, in any
given year the disadvantage would be assigned a weight of thirty-five lives (one-ten millionth of the possible impact). And,
it is entirely possible that a judge will not feel that the aesthetic gain from better symphonies (which cannot be assigned a
life-value) is worth thirty-five deaths. Hence, values-based arguments are downplayed while low-probability, high-impact
argumentation is encouraged. Critics claims that policy-making, thus, lacks any basis for evaluating good from bad
arguments and leads to unrealistic debates grounded in fantastic premises.

Finally, critics claim that systems analysis has been a miserable failure in the real world. Attempts to project program
outcomes, budgetary requirements and to simulate battle conditions have all failed when attempted. For example, a
RAND Corporation study of 325 federally-funded education innovation programs revealed a complete inability to predict
the outcomes of any program or programs or to replicate the success of one program in another setting. Despite the
availability of large amounts of money and sophisticated technology, RAND found themselves unable to define a policy
system well enough to make any rational predictions about its results.

The Cross and Matlon survey revealed this about policy-makers' judging practices: most required a negative policy
(although a significant minority did not have a firm requirement), they felt presumption rests with the status quo but could
shift, they made on-balance judgments and often voted for very small advantages, and they were unconcerned with
underlying motives; a small but growing number were willing to accept (albeit reluctantly) conditional argumentation.

Hypothesis-testing Paradigm

Nature of the Hypothesis-testing Paradigm

The hypothesis tester believes that the purpose of debate is to determine the probable truth or falsity of the debate
resolution, in much the same way that a critical philosopher or research scientist would apply the scientific method to any
other hypothesis. David Zarefsky, the original author of hypothesis-testing as a debate paradigm, writes that

To extend the analogy, the argumentative encounter is the counterpart of the scientific procedure or logical deduction.
The proposition being argued is the counterpart of the scientist's or philosopher's hypothesis and placing presumption
against the proposition is the means of providing for a rigorous test of the proposition. Finally, the judge of argument is the
counterpart of the scientist; his goal is to test the hypothesis to determine whether it is probably true.

The hypothesis tester believes that a resolution is judged correct only if it is a necessary and sufficient condition to solving
the problem stipulated; that is, if there is any other possible way of solving the problem or if the resolution contains
intrinsic flaws which necessarily overcome its proven advantages, then the resolution is negated. Since the hypothesis
tester does not assume that any action results from his or her decision (that is, they recognize debate as a contest of

words which does not really result in the adoption of a policy), the negative is given the latitude to select as many different
tests of the necessary truth of the resolution as they choose. For example, against a federal guaranteed income proposal,
a negative might offer a federal "in-kind" benefits program and/or a federal workfare program and/or a state guaranteed
income program. If any one of the three proved to be as efficacious as the affirmative plan, the judge would vote negative
since the plan was proven unnecessary to solving the problem. Although it is probably true that each of the three
alternatives involves different (and possibly contradictory) premises, the conflict is irrelevant since they are offered merely
to disprove the probable truth of the resolution rather than to exist as independent policies.

The hypothesis-testing paradigm carries a number of important implications. First, the role of the affirmative plan is de-
emphasized in favor of the words of the resolution. The only function of the affirmative plan in a hypothesis testing debate
is to serve as a means operationalizing key aspects of the resolution. There is no pretense made that the plan will come
into operation. For this reason, the notion of "fiat power" is virtually non-existent, as are the disadvantages associated with
the various schools of fiat. Moreover, the specific words of the plan are not very important since objections against
specific wording would not represent an objection intrinsic to the resolution (i.e., an unfair enforcement provision would not
be a negative voting issue unless the negative could prove that the inequity was a necessary concomitant of the
resolution).

Second, as previously mentioned, hypothesis-testing encourages conditional argumentation as a way of most thoroughly
testing the truth-claim inherent in the resolution. The hypo-tester may deny the affirmative's harm, defend the present
system, minor repair some aspects of the system and counterplan two or three times. So long as each of the arguments is
intelligently defended, the hypothesis-testing judge should be willing to listen to each.

Third, inherency becomes more clearly oriented toward the motives which underlie structures. Believing that it is
impossible to solve a problem without understanding why it exists, the hypothesis-testing judge asks, "why do the
presumably good people in the status quo allow this evil to exist?" The affirmative which is unable to answer this question
cannot then prove the sufficiency of the resolution in solving the specified problem, hence the negative wins.

Finally, presumption is strongly and permanently against the resolution; hypothesis testers do this to guard against the
possibility of mistakenly accepting an unproven hypothesis. Much like the rigor of scientists who goes to great lengths to
disprove they own hypotheses (since an, affirmed hypothesis could be used as an axiom in later experiments and false
affirmation would cripple those later applications), the hypo-tester does not accept a resolution as true unless proven
beyond a reasonable doubt. So long as reasonable doubt exists that the resolution is both necessary and sufficient to deal
with the problem, the resolution is rejected.

Criticism of the Hypothesis-testing Paradigm

Critics accuse hypothesis-testing of fostering irresponsible, shallow arguments based on a grievous distortion of the
scientific method. First, hypothesis testing is alleged to cause irresponsible argumentation by encouraging a negative to
adopt a number of inconsistent, contradictory positions and then to jettison any or all, as dictated by strategic concerns.
For example, a negative team might oppose a federal action because the act is tyrannical (and counterplan with less
drastic federal action) but might additionally oppose the same act because it is federal (and counterplan with the same
tyrannical action at the state level). While the premises of the counterplans contradict, the hypothesis-tester would see
each as a valid test of the resolution. Critics claim that one important function of debate training is to teach responsible
advocacy; that is, to analyze a problem, come up with a logically consistent position with relation to the problem and then
to defend one's position as well as it possible.

Second, critics charge that hypothesis testing encourages the proliferation of many, half-developed positions; a
substitution of breadth of argument for depth of analysis. By sanctioning multiple positions and not penalizing the
jettisoning of counterplans, hypothesis testing encourages debaters to multiply their chances of winning by a proliferation
of arguments. By doing so, the validity of any single test of the resolution is weakened since the time available to respond
to it is minimized by the need to cover many arguments.

Finally, hypothesis testing is said to distort violently the nature of the scientific method. Critics claim that even a cursory
reading of the actual, scientific requirements of hypothesis testing or an examination of the history of science reveals vast
flaws in the model. A representative selection includes the fact that scientists test a null hypothesis rather than a research
hypothesis (i.e., the resolution should have a counterpart which is negatively phrased and this negative analog is what
should be tested), that scientists now recognize an often unfair burden is placed on the null hypothesis, that (in the case
of Kuhn's revolutionary science) a hypothesis is tested against a single alternative, that the tests of a hypothesis occur

serially rather than simultaneously (that is, the hypothesis would be subjected to only one test per round or experiment),
that artificial limits in the contest debate setting bias the outcome of the experiment and that many theories become widely
accepted before they can be scientifically proven (e.g., atomic theory was accepted based on inference and deduction
long before it could be actually tested). In short, hypothesis testers are accused of forcing an unrealistic and idealized
view of the scientific method into a setting which is utterly inconsistent with the paradigm.

The Matlon and Cross survey reveals that much of the theory is translated into practice: hypo-testers do not require a
negative policy, rarely make on-balance judgements, support well-defined conditional arguments and do require proof of a
core motive; however, they neither accept contradictions nor vote on presumption more frequently than their colleagues
who accept other paradigms.

Tabula Rasa Paradigm

Nature of the Tabula Rasa Paradigm

Tabula rasa (Latin for "blank slate") means that a judge enters a round with no personal preferences or prejudgments;
supposedly he or she will vote for whatever paradigm the debaters establish in the round. (In at least one case, this
involved an assessment of which team was funniest in constructives.) This view is designed to avoid discouraging
debaters by rejecting perspectives based on the judges' biases; ideally, it is the least subject to distortions caused by the
judge's intervention.

Criticisms of the Tabula Rasa Paradigm

Unfortunately, the paradigm has nothing to say in rounds where the debaters do not attempt to establish a decision rule;
for example, the tabula rasa judge should have no idea how to handle contradictory counterplans if neither team
advances paradigm rules by which to resolve them. Since some judgment must, ultimately, be made (after all, a judge
must write something on the bottom of the ballot) the tabula rasa judge must frequently violate his or her own ethos in
order to impose some standard on the round.

Argument Criticism Paradigm

Nature of the Argument Criticism Paradigm

Like tabula rasa, this paradigm is difficult to define because argument critics profess a willingness to accept whatever
paradigm is defended in the round. Discouraged by or despairing of the validity of more structured paradigms, the
argument critic claims to listen to the arguments in a round and then to perform an intelligent criticism upon them. This
means that the critic attempts to go beyond labels and claims in order to examine the validity of the proof which underlies
them; this professed willingness to interject personal standards for what is "good" or "bad" argument distinguishes the
argument critic from the tabula rasa judge. Operationally, this implies a degree of intervention into the debate (e.g., if a
piece of evidence does not clearly support a claim, an argument critic would feel free to reject the claim even if the other
team did not raise the challenge). Ideally, the argument critic operates from a stock of fairly clear argumentative
requirements (is the evidence from an authoritative source? are there important implied qualifiers? is the claim consistent
with other things we believe to be true? does the claim correspond with the underlying support? is the causal chain
complete?) which are applied impartially to evaluate each significant issue in a debate. This paradigm grows from the
argumentative and rhetorical training of most college-level judges and its successful application presupposes a high
degree of judicial objectivity and openness. The claimed advantage of this paradigm is its ability to improve the quality of
argument through a refusal to sanction victory based solely on the inability of one team to "cover the spread" of another
team or to win through the deliberate creation of confusion.

Criticism of the Argument Criticism Paradigm

Critics of argument criticism claim that the paradigm is apt to become both subjective and punitive because of its approval
of considerable judicial intervention into the round. Rather than looking at how well the negative did against the
affirmative's strategy, the judge looks at the affirmative's strategy. If the judge believes the affirmative was unfair, tricky or
merely too unorthodox, the judge might be justified in voting negative. Critics of argument criticism fear that debaters will
soon need to cater to the prejudices and idiosyncracies of each judge and to answer arguments which might appear
nowhere but in the judge's head.

The Ugly Truth of the Matter

There are three factors which are, probably, more important than paradigms in determining a judge's actions in a round:

1. Most judges want to vote for high quality arguments;

2. Most judges reason holistically (a notion discussed at greater length in Chapter 7, in the section entitled "The
Psychology of Cross-Examination"); and,

3. Most judges flow no better than most debaters.

Unless debaters can accommodate themselves to these three factors, a thorough understanding of paradigms is unlikely
to help them.

CHAPTER THREE:

PROPOSITIONAL & LINGUISTIC ARGUMENT

In this section, we will discuss issues concerning the debate resolution and its role.

Debate Resolutions

Resolutions generally are declarative statements with policy implications (specifying either an effect to be achieved or a
policy to be undertaken), which are worded more-or-less broadly and which generally deal with actions that are unlikely to
be taken soon. A resolution is generally thought to limit discussion to a particular topic area and to provide "fair warning"
to all debaters concerning the issues on which they need to prepare. One traditional way of expressing the function of the
resolution is to discuss "affirmative land" and "negative land." Affirmative land is defined by all of the possibilities offered
by the resolution, the affirmative is called upon to define and defend a position which lies somewhere in affirmative land.
The negative gets access to all of the arguments which lay outside of affirmative land.

Topics are selected differently in debate's different leagues. The National Debate Tournament resolution is a policy-
oriented resolution selected by vote of all of the member debate programs. The Cross Examination Debate Association
(CEDA) resolution is, by tradition, a value-oriented statement (for example, "violence is a justified response to political
oppression") which often has policy implications. Unlike the NDT, CEDA debates different resolutions in the first and

second semesters. The second semester's resolution also serves as the resolution for Nationals. As with the NDT, the
CEDA resolution is selected by vote of the member schools. For the National Forensic League, one of three problem
areas is selected by national vote; each problem area contains three specific resolutions, of which one is chosen as the
topic for the national tournament.

Bi-directional Resolutions

These are resolutions which do not require that the affirmative "increase" or "decrease" something (for example,
assistance or commitments), but merely that they "change" them. In this case, affirmatives could either increase
commitments or do the exact opposite and still be topical. This innovation has greatly inconvenienced negatives since
there is no longer a clear "negative land" for them to defend. One negative response to this development has been
defense of topical counterplans. The negative will advocate a policy directly opposed to the affirmative's (for example,
under a resolution calling for a change in U.S. policy toward Russia, the affirmative might offer more aid to Russia while
the negative bans all aid to Russia). The negative would then argue that they are offering a clear contrast to the
affirmative, that the need to be competitive eliminates the risk that the negative will be abusive and that this strategy
restores fairness to the debate by recreating ground which the negative can defend.

Topicality

The requirement that the affirmative operationalize the terms of the resolution is called "topicality". An affirmative team is
non-topical when their plan does not take the action or achieve the effect specified in the topic; an example might be a
team called upon to regulate the power of labor unions which ends up regulating professional associations instead.
Professors Patterson and Zarefsky claim a case may be judged non-topical through any one of three means: 1) they may
commit an error of fact (e.g., attempting to regulate a power which the unions do not have); 2) they may incorrectly define
key terms (e.g., confusing the concepts "regulate" and "abolish"); or, 3) they may fail to advocate key terms in the
resolution (e.g., regulating the unions but not regulating their power). In any of these cases, the affirmative has failed to
justify the resolution and will lose the debate.

Extra-topicality

At times, an affirmative will gain its advantages from actions which exceed those authorized by the resolution; in this case,
they are judged to be extratopical. For example, an affirmative may have a topic calling for air pollution control but a plan
calling for both air and water pollution control; advantages from water pollution control are extra-topical in that gaining
them does not require us to support the resolution. Unlike the non-topical plan, there is no question that the extra-topical
one does affirm the resolution (i.e., the negative would grant that the affirmative did control air pollution). There is
disagreement about both the nature and the implications of extra-topical provisions. Some advocates claim that every
plan contains many extra-topical provisions (e.g., funding, enforcement and intent planks whose presence is not specified
by the resolution); they use this precedent to justify the inclusion of plan "spikes", which are additional planks designed to
preempt disadvantages and/or solvency arguments. The responding position is that the additional planks (funding...) must
represent minimal additions necessary to the administrative existence of the policy called for by the resolution and must
not themselves be the source of the affirmative advantage.

A second controversy concerns the implications of extra-topical provisions; specifically, what is the appropriate response
to an extra-topical provision? One side advocates severing the extra-topical elements and then voting on the basis of the
remaining, topical provisions. Their claim is that this eliminates any advantage gained from the extra-topical provision, yet
is not punitive in nature. Those who reject severability claim that the best response is to immediately vote negative. They
make two sorts of arguments. One sort of argument draws from a legislative analogy: they claim that a poorly worded bill
has to be "sent back to committee" for rewriting and clarification before a vote is taken on it. By analogy, they argue that a
judge votes for the whole plan or none of it; if part of this indivisible whole is flawed, the whole thing must be rejected and
rewritten. The other claim advanced by the opponents of severing is that the extra-topical provisions distort the debate (by
forcing the negative either to avoid running arguments to which "spikes" apply or by forcing them to devote considerable
attention to debating the extra-topicality of the "spikes") and that the fairest response is to vote against the affirmative now
in hopes of deterring them from the continued use of such provisions.

Definitions

A central concept in communications is that meaning is not self-evident; that is, to refer to "military intervention" does not
immediately call the same, concrete image to the minds of all hearers. In order to overcome the effects of this incongruity,
debaters resort to external definitions of key terms. Definitions may be classified as:

Common-person definitions. These represent the generally understood, non-technical meanings of words which would be
familiar to the lay person. The advantage of such definitions is that they ground discussion in everyday reality and they
give a high degree of fair warning. The drawbacks are that some terms have no readily-recognized definition, that some
common definitions are ill-informed (changes in the nature of a phenomenon may occur years before they are reflected in
common definitions, as with burgeoning conceptions of "discrimination") and that common definitions unnecessarily
constrict debates between un-commonly well-informed advocates.

Lexical definitions. These represent dictionary listings, which are themselves merely compendia of the ways in which
words have been used in the past. The advantages of dictionary definitions are their clarity and wide availability. The
limitations of dictionary definitions are that they do not consider the interplay of words (for example, merely combining the
first definitions of "military" and "intervention" does not capture the complete or specific meanings of "military
intervention"), that advocates free to choose among many definitions may construct bizarre interpretations of a topic (for
example, since one definition of "rape" is "to despoil", a case banning strip mining of coal might be within the ambit of a
felony crimes topic) and that dictionaries have a conservative bias toward merely reporting past uses of a word (which
might inadequately reflect current reality).

Contextual definitions. These specify the ways in which experts in a given field use a term; they are generally recorded
either in books on the subject at hand (for example, many books on labor relations will provide specific definitions of "labor
union") or in specialized reference works (e.g., The Dictionary of Labor Relations). The advantages of contextual
definitions are that they tend to be more focussed on the problem area under discussion and tend to give a better
understanding of the way experts who are being quoted mean to be understood. Their drawbacks are their occasionally
excessive specificity, the fact of frequent disagreement among experts (especially the field involves on-going changes and
highly emotional issues), and the difficulty of locating contextual definitions for some terms.

Operational definitions. An operational definition tells a person what is being discussed by stipulating functional features;
for example, one affirmative might define "living in poverty" as an income of less than $4800 for a family of four, while a
second might decide it means needing to spend more than half of one's income to obtain adequate housing and a third
might make reference to the ability to achieve certain dietary levels. While none of these teams provides the specific
meaning of the term "poverty" (e.g. "the state of being poor or indigent"), each identifies essential and concrete elements
by which poverty status may be determined. The advantage is the flexibility and specificity which such definitions grant to
the affirmative, while the disadvantage is the potential for abuse by an affirmative which might choose to stipulate some
strange manifestation (e.g., defining military marriages as a type of U.S. military commitment).

Generally, statements which derive from an authoritative source, which help limit discussion to the topic area, which
provide fair warning for all advocates and which represent a serious intent to define a term (as opposed to an off-hand,
passing or metaphorical reference) are the best sources of definition. You should guard against teams who merely find
the words of the resolution used in a sentence and who, then, claim that this is a contextual definition. The problem with
such statements is that they are not definitions: they do not "convey the fundamental character" of the idea, they merely
illustrate one person's use (or misuse) of the term.

Strictness of Definition

A controversy of some intensity revolves around whether an affirmative must provide just "a reasonable" definition of its
terms or whether it must provide "the most reasonable" definition in the round. Advocates of the "better definition" or "most
reasonable definition" standard claim that it is virtually impossible to prove that a definition is unreasonable since there are
no standards by which reasonability can be measured (e.g., many affirmatives claim that anything which is "not absurd" is
"reasonable"), that reasonability standards excessively broaden the resolution (by allowing inclusion of many marginal
phenomena) and that definitions should be subject to the same "better debating" standard as all other issues (e.g., a
judge does not award the harm issue to affirmatives merely because they have harm evidence, rather the judge compares
the affirmative with the negative argument in order to determine who has the more reasonable position). Advocates of
"reasonability" counter by arguing that there are no standards for determining what constitutes the "best" definition, that
standards for "reasonability" do exist, that the "better definition" standard is likely to narrow the topic too much and lead to

boredom and that topicality is a unique issue which ought not be compared with others (an argument which proceeds from
the premise that being "sort of" topical justifies debate as thoroughly as being "sort of" sick justifies treatment).

Functions of the Resolution

A final, major theoretical issue involving the proposition concerns the specific role played by the resolution. Hypothesis
testers and others view the resolution as a logical statement to which the judge is asked to give assent; as such, the judge
will either affirm or reject the whole resolution at the end of the debate. Policy-makers, on the other hand, view the
resolution as nothing more than a device for indicating the area to be discussed; at the end of policy debates, the judge
evaluates the merit of the affirmative plan rather than of the entire resolution.

The view that a critic accepts on this issue makes a vast difference in issue resolution. Resolutional argumentation forces
the affirmative to justify each major term in the resolution, de-emphasizes the role of specific provisions within the
affirmative plan and allows for counter-resolutional arguments (that is, arguments which may apply to the resolution as a
whole though not to a specific affirmative example). Advocates claim that resolutional debate heightens clash by forcing
teams to deal with the essence of a resolution rather than "squirrelly" examples and that it divorces debate from the
delusion that some action will really take place at the close of the round.

Opponents of resolutional debate claim that focus on the resolution destroys the affirmative's ability to set the grounds for
the debate (which is the traditional counter-weight to their burden of proof), that debate resolutions are too ambiguously
worded to merit complete assent (e.g., a team seeking to "strengthen U.S. foreign military commitments" might either
greatly increase armaments or greatly decrease them, since one action strengthens our NATO commitment while the
other strengthens our commitment to the U.N. Charter), that effects-oriented resolutions cannot be affirmed or rejected
except on the merits of specific, limited examples of how the effect might be achieved, that ability to focus on policies
serve as a safeguard against the possibility of a very poorly-worded topic and that resolutional argument leads to
overreliance on a few broad, generic arguments on each side. Proponents claim that virtually all of these problems can be
alleviated thorough careful wording of debate resolutions, which they view as a likely outcome of more resolutional focus.

Counter-warrants

Counter-warrants grow from the resolutional view of debate. Their claim is that the affirmative is trying to gain assent for
the resolution by providing a representative example to be tested; if the representative example is true, then the resolution
as a whole is probably true. Counter-warrants were designed for use against a team which chose to advance an
unrepresentative example of the resolution (for example, debating about space aliens on an immigration reform topic),
whose acceptance might lead us to incorrectly assume that the resolution as a whole ought to be accepted. To guard
against this "hasty generalization", the concept of counter-warrants was advanced. A counter-warrant is an objection
focussing on essential features of the resolution; the negative claim is that since the affirmative has failed to focus on
central issues in the resolution, that the negative should have the right to initiate the debate by defining and attacking
essential elements. This will supposedly decrease the value of "squirrel" or surprise cases and increase clash.

Opponents to counter-warrants claim that debate does not/ought not focus on the level of the resolution (which is
discussed above in the section on "Functions of the Resolution"), that the negative often prepares its disadvantage
against a particularly repugnant (though possible) interpretation of the resolution, that an almost infinite number of
warrants (cases) and counter-warrants (disadvantages) exist so that it is virtually meaningless to shift focus from the
affirmative example and that counter-warrant debates involve too many issues to clearly and intelligently decide on any of
them within the time limits required for debate.

Fiat

Fiat (from the Latin for "let it be done") is a debate convention designed to focus attention on the substance of a
resolution, rather than on questions of its political feasibility. Operating through the word "should" in the resolution, fiat

represents a willing suspension of disbelief which allows us to pretend that the plan advocated by the affirmative team is
already in operation. This requires a suspension of disbelief both because the affirmative has no "power" to actually bring
their proposal into operation and because the affirmative is required (by way of inherency) to prove that their plan cannot
or will not come into being within the present system. Without the concept of fiat, all debate would come to a screeching
halt as the negative team simply shrugged their shoulders, pointed to the inherency contention, and commented "well, it
just ain't gonna happen!"

Fiat becomes the source of abuse and sterile, frustrating arguments when debaters view it as a "power" of one team or
the other and make it the basis for their arguments. Negatives, upon hearing an affirmative team urge that their proposal
be adopted "by any and all Constitutional means", assume that this means that the affirmative claims for itself the power
to unilaterally amend the Constitution so as to include the affirmative plan; thereupon, the negatives often run a
disadvantage on destruction of the Constitution based on this unprecedented power. It should be clear from the preceding
analysis, however, that the affirmative claims no such power; rather, the claim is that if all the agents involved were to
hear the arguments, they would give their rational assent to act. A similar analysis helps to explain why "plan repeal"
arguments are illegitimate. Negatives frequently claim that even if the affirmative "fiated their plan past Congress",
Congress would repeal it tomorrow. Again, the actual claim is that a rational policy-maker (on hearing the argument)
would agree that the affirmative plan was desirable. While this view of fiat assumes a world of rational actors, abandoning
fiat would be tantamount to abandoning policy-oriented debate and viewing fiat as an active force (a "magic wand"), which
would strain the activity beyond any reasonable bounds.

A related controversy centers on the extent to which disbelief should be suspended; that is, to whom should we pretend
fiat applies. The most conservative view is that fiat applies only to the actor specified in the resolution (generally, the
federal government); the rationale is that to allow the negative to call upon other actors (e.g., state governments acting in
unison) will place the debaters on a "slippery slope". The argument is that if we now permit fiat against state-level actors,
there is no reason why we cannot also fiat at the level of the local government, private organization, family or individual.
Critics claim that the logical result will be an affirmative trying to deal with the child abuse problem through federal
education programs while a negative might claim the ability to counterplan with personal restraint at the individual level.
Rather than risk reductio ad absurdum, these advocates claim that the best course is to debate only the agent specified.
The most radical view totally rejects this concern and claims that a debate about the proper agent is often as important
and appropriate as a debate about the proper action. Consequently, their view of fiat is extremely broad. One middle
interpretation would limit fiat to constituted agents already possessing the authority to act. Thus, an organization would
require a pre-existing constitution which would serve as the source of its authority to act. This would eliminate both the
individual and the as-yet unconstituted agent (e.g., a world government) from the realm of debate, while preserving the
power to look at the appropriateness of action at various real-world levels.

Critique/Kritik Arguments

Kritiks (both spellings are pronounced "kri-teeks") are language based arguments which emerged in college debate in the
early 1990s. A kritik is an objection to the language used by a team and by the authors of its evidence, rather than an
objection to a specific policy. These arguments may object to sexist or racist language (either in the cards or in spoken
arguments) or to specific "loaded" concepts drawn from the individual topic area. Kritik debaters generally proceed from
two assumptions: first, academic debate is not the "real-world," it's an educational activity. No policies change as a result
of voting for one team or the other. The only real outcome of the round is that four students learn that certain arguments
(or words or ideas) were considered to be more powerful (or persuasive or legitimate) than others. As a result, the
question "what will my decision teach these debaters" should be central to the judge's decision. Second, language is an
active, rather than a passive, force. If language is passive, its only effect will be to hold a mirror up to reflect whatever is
"really" there. People who say that language is active believe that we react to the symbols (or words) used to describe a
thing more than we react to the thing itself. So, for example, you might not feel insulted by a statement until a friend tells
you that the statement was an insult. One scholar's phrase is that "a choice of words is a choice of worlds."

This situation would be disturbing enough if we actually understood what we are, at any given moment, saying. Kritik
debaters deny that this is true by adopting the perspective of scholars who are called "deconstructionists."
Deconstructionists claim that language carries hidden implications which are not, normally, understood by the people who
are using the language. This becomes a part of academic debate when kritik debaters argue that we need to identify,
analyze and critique the hidden meanings (or underlying assumptions) of the words used by their opponents. These
debaters argue that permitting the use of "bad" language miseducates debaters and must, as a result, be rejected. They
tend to point to examples of "bad" language used by their opponents and claim that the offending team needs to lose the
debate. They will argue, in particular, that the kritik is a priori; that is, the judge must resolve this issue before considering
anything else in the round. This can be argued as a parallel case to an ethics challenge: when there is a question about a
fundamental issue of fair and appropriate behavior, we resolve that issue first and we do it without considering the policy
questions debated in the round.

An example will make this argument clearer: let's suppose that an affirmative team wanted to decrease the rate of growth
in the global population by funding development assistance in the form of fertility control for less-developed nations. The
negative kritik might focus on the words "development" and "developed." The negative would argue that "development" is
a term borrowed from biology to describe a process in which immature juvenile organisms grow into mature ones. This
term is treacherous when used to describe the economic and social status of different societies because it immediately
labels their society as "immature and juvenile," it labels our society as "mature and whole," and it implies that the one
natural course to follow is movement from their condition to our condition (since baby squirrels don't get to pick what
species they want to belong to when they grow up). The negative would argue that such assumptions are ethnocentric,
racist and wrong. The affirmative should, as a result, lose.

Affirmatives pursue a number of options in responding to such arguments. First, they seek to exploit the fact that judges
dislike voting for kritiks. As an example, one judging philosophy from the 1994 N.D.T. referred to most critique positions as
"some kind of incoherent philo-psycho-babble." Second, they argue that the kritik is based on the false assumption that
language controls reality (a claim denied by cognitive scientists such as Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct, 1994).
Third, they argue that academic debates are the wrong forum for discussing these matters; time constraints and policy-
oriented training make in-round discussions of linguistic philosophy pointless. Fourth, they issue counter-kritiks by arguing
that the negative is just as abusive in some of their language choices. Fifth, they may seek to punish the negative for
internal inconsistencies. This occurs when the negative runs a kritik (for example, against "national security" and
militarism) and then also runs a disadvantage which claims war as an impact. The affirmative would argue that, to the
extent that the negative claims we need to avoid perceiving the world through a militarist mind-set, the negative should be
punished for contradicting their own philosophy. Sixth, affirmatives argue that kritiks are not "voting issues." In saying this,
they mean that they should not lose even if the kritik is upheld. The affirmative argument is that the act of discussing the
language in question had an educational value and that its not necessary to vote against them to teach them a lesson.
Finally, affirmatives argue it is unjust to punish them for the word choices of topic writers and debate authors.

CHAPTER FOUR:

CORE ISSUES

As with a defendant in a criminal trial, the present system in a policy debate is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The
indictment against the system is initiated in the first affirmative constructive with the presentation of a prima facie case. A
prima facie case (from the Latin for "at first sight") is a logically complete argument which, absent negative response,
would overcome presumption and convince a rational listener to affirm the resolution. Conventionally, such a logically
complete case must prove that a reason for action exists (significance/harm), that affirmation of the resolution is
necessary to solve the problem (inherency) and that affirmation of the resolution is sufficient to solve the problem (plan
and solvency) without incurring disproportionate costs (disadvantages).

Case Construction

While affirmative cases may be organized and labeled in many different fashions (need-plan, comparative advantage,
goals-criteria, etc.), these fundamental burdens do not change from format to format. Experienced debaters will normally
pick whichever format they feel will make for the most clear and compelling presentation. The choice of case structure
should therefore reflect the nature of the problem discussed (if, for example, you have found a problem growing entirely
from a single cause and you can eradicate that cause, then a need-plan format might be most appropriate; if you are
engaged in a largely philosophical discussion, then you might use a goals case; if you must treat the effects of some

problem with only probabilistic solvency, then you might choose a comparative advantage case), although there are
additional considerations in the building of a clear and effective first affirmative:

Avoid unnecessary structure. Many debaters become so involved in substructuring their cases that both fluency and
clarity are compromised; inject no more labeled structure than is necessary to allow for a logically complete outline of the
argument.

Avoid grand language. Too many debaters try to impress the world with their vocabularies (or thesauruses) by filling the
first affirmative with half-understood allusions to great philosophers, convoluted sentences, obscure words and overblown
claims. Very often these detract from the persuasive power of the speech and lower one's credibility with a judge. A plain
and explanatory style will probably work better.

Avoid over-qualifying evidence. Each source used should be named, qualified and dated but article titles and page
number are rarely necessary in the spoken address. Even organizations which require complete qualification stipulate that
the complete information is necessary only for the first card read from a particular source. In addition, these organizations
generally do not require page or volume numbers. Complete bibliographic information for each source must, of course, be
available upon request.

Do not fear change. Very few teams can win by changing their affirmative area after each tournament (or each round), but
this does not mean that a case written in August or September should not be improved. By reading ballots, listening to
other teams and keeping research current, a good affirmative finds ways to strengthen the case.

As you become more adept at case debating, you will be able to introduce innovations and refinements of your own; until
then, these suggestions may enable you to put together somewhat stronger cases.

Plan Construction

Traditionally, most plans have contained a number of provisions:

An enabling phrase. This short introductory sentence usually specifies what level of government will act, by what means
and what time (the phase-in).

The mandate, which is the detailed statement of resolutional action designed to bring about the advantage.

Administration, which specifies the name and powers of the administering agent, in the case that a plan is not self-
administering (e.g., a ban on capital punishment would be self-administering but a hazardous waste policy overseen by a
special board would not be).

Funding, which stipulates the availability of funds (generally from "normal means," occasionally from specified cuts in
other programs or increases in specific taxes).

Enforcement, which explains the agent responsible for enforcing plan provisions, the available legal remedies and the
nature of checks on administrative action.

Intent, which explains the role played by the various speeches in the debate with reference to how a court might use them
to better understand the plan in the case of court challenges.

There may be "spikes" grafted on to any of these planks; these are additional, often extratopical provisions which specify
means by which to avoid or ameliorate plan objections (for example, an immigration reform plan might contain a ban on
handguns to get around a crime disadvantage). The role and limits of these provisions are discussed earlier in the section
on extratopicality.

Some teams are adopting more streamlined plans: in place of the page-long, multi-plank plans of the past, they substitute
two sentences. The first sentence contains a statement of the mandate and the second sentence stipulates that funding,
enforcement and so on will be through "normal means." For example:

We urge adoption of the following plan: the U.S. Border Patrol will be increased by 50%. Funding, enforcement and
administration will be through normal means.

This simplified wording has two advantages: first, it decreases the number of targets an affirmative presents. Since the
negative might link disadvantages to any plank of the plan (for example, arguing that your funding mechanism will cause
economic chaos or that your administrative board will become tyrannical), the affirmative benefits from being specific only
about those actions which directly involve the resolution. Second, it increases the affirmative's flexibility in answering
counterplans since the phrase "normal means" subsumes a lot. Against a studies counterplan, an affirmative might argue
that studies are part of the "normal means" of implementation. Against a referendums counterplan, they would argue that
referenda are normal means.

Other, more controversial questions exist about plan operation. First, there is the question of whether it is legitimate to
sever planks from the plan. There are instances in which the negative premises disadvantages on specific words in the
plan; the affirmative may then seek to remove these words from the plan, so as to render the objection irrelevant.
Hypothesis-testers would support the affirmative if the dropped portions were non-resolutional, since objections to these
provisions would not be tests to the resolution. Other supporters could make reference to the judicial analogy, whereby
judges are permitted to strike out portions of a law so as to increase its benefits or to harmonize it with the Constitution.
Policy-makers would claim that an advocate is responsible for the specifics of a policy, so that the provisions would be
viewed as a legitimate source of argument. Others would object to the drop because it violates the advocacy function of
debate; their perspective is that debaters are being trained as public advocates and that, as such, they should be willing to
live or die with the consequences of the positions they choose to defend. Both sides, however, agree that the affirmatives
do not have the ability to re-write the plan (substitute one provision for another) or to sever the topical portions of it.

A second, related question involves the implication of plan wording flaws. At least one affirmative has lost the out-rounds
of a major national tournament based on a plan adoption date of February 30th. In addition, some people believe that a
poorly or vaguely worded proposal should be rejected out-of-hand, usually with references to "sending it back to
committee for re-wording"; others claim that precise word use should be an educational goal and that imprecise use
warrants a punitive ballot. Opponents claim that this sort of debate is irrelevant to the topic, that it does not test the
resolution, that many laws are poorly worded by legislatures then refined by courts, and that punitiveness is a poor
educational tool.

Presumption/Burden of Proof

The general notion of presumption lies in an opposition to unjustified change, since any change entails risk and no one
incurs risks without offsetting benefits. It is also a tenet of conservative thought that the unintended consequences of
change will generally outnumber the intended consequences by 10:1 and will probably be adverse (a fear supported by
geneticists' findings that almost all random mutations decrease an organism's chances for survival). Some types of
unanticipated consequences include a premature commitment to one solution (i.e., after we have found a "solution" to
some problem, we no longer search for better policies), disruptions in value systems (i.e., the inherency explains why the
current system acts as it does and violating these systemic judgments by acting on different values may call a whole value
hierarchy into question or provoke a backlash), the establishment of an unintended precedent (i.e., the affirmative logic
may energize an entire generation of new policy commitments) and the triggering of consequences through unrecognized
chains of causality (e.g., the construction of new fresh water reservoirs might change either the micro-climate or the global
climate through a series of events which we do not have adequate understanding to predict). Additionally, there is the
simple risk that we might just be wrong and will affirm the resolution in error. All of these considerations serve to undergird
the notion that the affirmative carries a burden of proof; they have the responsibility to prove the validity of their particular
change. Affirmatives may do this either by defending their product or their process. A "product defense" relies on a
preponderance of evidence suggesting that it is highly probable that a particular action will generate a particular, desirable
state of events. A "process defense" holds that, while the particular outcome cannot be guaranteed, the processes
institutionalized by the plan (or the resolution) carry a higher probability of minimizing risk and maximizing benefit than the
processes currently shaping policies.

Significance

The proof that a problem justifies change is provided in the significance contention. In order to prove significance, the
affirmative must establish that some important value is being infringed upon and must then indicate the magnitude of the
infringement. Some values are considered largely self-evident (the sanctity of life), others are weighed as parts of related

constellations of concerns (freedom of speech), while others may require very explicit defenses (economic efficiency).
Regardless of the type of value considered, the affirmative carries the best chance of succeeding when they are able to
relate the infringement to some human consequence since some ideals are so peripheral that they may not even justify
diverting a policymaker's limited time and energy for their consideration. If, for example, some phenomenon costs one life
every century, it is entirely possible that a policy maker would not find the issue sufficiently pressing to attend a debate on
the subject; similarly, isolated deviations from some abstract theory of government may not warrant attention.

In addition to locating a problem, the affirmative needs to consider the extent of the problem. This may occur through
quantitative estimates (in terms of lives lost, injuries caused, percentage changes in unemployment, etc.) or through some
qualitative judgment by an authoritative source ("a potentially catastrophic infringement" or "the most serious threat") or
both.

The "bottom line" on significance is determined by two factors: 1) is the problem serious enough to create a prima facie
case -- would a reasonable person even care enough to stay around for the debate? 2) is the problem serious enough to
warrant the risks entailed by the plan? Some teams try to "beef up" their significance through wildly exaggerated claims
and "end of the world" impact evidence; this temptation should be overcome since such arguments may destroy one's
credibility with a judge by making it appear that the debater is incapable of assessing reality and may serve to lend
credibility to "meatball" disadvantages (since larger changes normally entail greater numbers of repercussions and greater
risks).

Inherency

Inherency is the explanation for why (absent affirmative action) the problem isolated under "significance" will continue to
exist. While some debaters believe that the existence of a problem implies its continuance (so-called "existential
inherency"), there are many reasons which explain why a problem has not yet been resolved: the phenomenon is not
recognized as a problem, the phenomenon is recognized as a problem but not as one serious enough to warrant action,
the problem is recognized as serious but the costs of cure are believed to be too high, the problem is recognized as
serious but no cure is known, the problem is recognized and cures are being studied, cures have been undertaken but are
not yet effective, and/or some barrier prevents the cure from occurring. In analyzing inherency, the affirmative should try
to explain the core features of the relevant systems or institutions and should then prove a causal connection between the
core and the continuance of the problem. By doing so, they avoid selecting problems which are noninherent (e.g.,
solutions are or soon will be underway) or insoluble (i.e., where no solution exists).

In describing the core of an inherency, one of several terms may be used. We may refer to a structural inherency, by
which we mean the existence of laws or institutions which preclude effective action and which can be circumvented only
through resolutional action (for example, laws banning heroin would be an inherent reason that it could not be used to
treat cancer). A second type of inherency is known as a structural gap, in which no mechanism exists by which a problem
can be addressed. For example, a lack of federal jurisdiction in dealing with certain crimes would provide an inherent
reason why the F.B.I. cannot act with respect to those crimes; this inherency is structural in the sense that a structural
(legal/institutional) change is required to permit action to be taken. A third form of inherency is attitudinal inherency, which
functions to explain why a system will not be likely to respond to a problem in the near future. For example, conservative
support for free-market policies might serve as an inherent explanation for why wage and price controls are unlikely to be
imposed to control inflation. It is extremely important for affirmatives and negatives to have a clear sense of inherency,
since it is virtually impossible to prove that a problem can be solved by one system (the affirmative) if we do not know
what prevented its solution by another (the present system).

One must also guard against certain common misconceptions over inherency. First, the existence of a problem does not
necessarily imply its continuance. As the list of questions in the first paragraph (above) illustrates, there may be many
problems which either will soon be solved without resolutional action or which are (essentially) insoluble. Second,
inherency does not require an affirmative to prove what first caused a problem. Understanding the origins of racial
discrimination, for example, might require an analysis of five centuries of social and political philosophy; this undertaking
might be interesting, but is not best undertaken in the course of one debate. The most realistic burden is future-oriented;
that is, the affirmative need only prove that our most probable future scenario does not include a significant (or sufficient)
reduction in discrimination. Third, the affirmative does not need to explain why their plan has not yet been passed. This
essentially-sterile inquiry is probably impossible to complete for most programs and would not significantly further one's
understanding of why the problem continues.

Solvency

Once an affirmative has proven that it has located a problem that requires resolutional action, they must then prove that
the resolution is sufficient to eliminate the problem (or a fair portion of it). Affirmatives can do this in several ways:

Logical necessity. Some problems flow from a single, discrete cause and an affirmative may need only to prove that they
eliminate the cause. For example, one's problem may be that people are being shot by some nut on a rooftop; a plan
which sends a policeman in a bullet-proof outfit to arrest the person will necessarily solve the problem. In such (rare)
instances, the affirmative's greatest burden is to prove the workability of their solution (e.g., the availability of a protected
policeman) but the central logic is unchallenged.

Historical precedent. Some affirmatives may advocate policies which had been relied on at some point in the past (e.g.,
capital punishment, tax cuts, wage/price controls). The specific affirmative burdens under this type of argumentation are to
prove that the policies had succeeded in the past and that present conditions are similar enough to allow for a repetition of
that success. Negatives will generally focus on this second assumption, arguing that conditions have changed too
drastically to allow the repetition of past successes.

Successful experiments. Some plans have been tried either in laboratory settings (certain air pollution systems) or in
limited settings (for example, a pilot program or a law adopted in only one state) and teams may try to extrapolate from
success in these settings to a national outcome. These extrapolations are extremely problematic, since the success
reported in these experiments is often due to the maintenance of ideal conditions, the availability of unlimited funding, the
presence of highly trained experts to oversee the experiment, widespread news media coverage, an operations staff
which is thoroughly committed to the program and/or unique local conditions. All of these factors bias the program's
outcome toward success, but may not be replicable in other settings (as budgets become tight, the original staff is
replaced by bureaucrats, and so on).

Analogous operations. Affirmatives may try to argue from the success of actions which are related to the one which they
propose; for example, an affirmative advocating the ban of one chemical may make reference to the experience of
banning others (e.g., Red Dye #2, cyclamates, etc.). These comparisons are valid only if the situations are closely
analogous and are invalid when the circumstances surrounding the two products are substantially different (e.g., the
banning of cyclamates would produce comparatively little insight into the effects of banning meat or tobacco).

International examples. Affirmatives may try to argue that the experience of other nations in adopting analogs of the
affirmative plan can lead us to understand the implications of acting here. For example, heroin legalization and handgun
bans have both been adopted in other nations (Great Britain and Japan, respectively). Again, the conditions in these
countries may be so vastly different as to make comparisons impossible; this is true even when two countries are
generally similar, since comparatively few changes in the relevant portion of the society are necessary to invalidate the
comparison.

Negative responses should not be limited to straight refutation of these arguments, but may also draw upon types of proof
not utilized by the affirmative; for example, if the affirmative uses historical precedent to prove their plan will work then the
negative should deny the validity of the precedent and offer examples of failure in analogous operations.

Disadvantages

Disadvantages explain the repercussions of a policy and highlight the ways in which costs of change outweigh benefits. In
order to be legitimate, a disadvantage must be causally connected to the affirmative position, must prove the existence of
a particular undesirable outcome and must prove that the plan alone will cause or heighten the problem (the concept of
uniqueness). In short, the negative must prove that the affirmative action is a necessary and sufficient condition to
generate a great evil. In a policymaking debate, the causal link specifies some element of the affirmative plan which is
responsible for the wrong; in hypothesis-testing, the disadvantage must flow only from resolutional portions of the plan
since objections to any other part would not be intrinsic to the resolution being examined (for example, it would be
illegitimate to object to a funding mechanism, since that particular funding source is not an intrinsic element of the
resolution).

A key controversy in this area surrounds the question of degrees of causation. Since innumerable factors may play on the
strengthening or weakening of a phenomenon (e.g., inflation) and since we can never predict the outcomes of our actions
with 100% certainty, we can only make more-or-less certain predictions of probable results. We might, for example, be

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