Policy Debate

This article is about policy speech competitions at the high school and college level. See Debate for other types of debate competition.

Policy debate is a form of Speech Competition in which teams of two debaters debate whether or not a specific policy action should be enacted. It is also referred to as '''cross-examination debate''' because of the 3-minute questioning period following each Constructive Speech . Most affirmative teams present a specific policy option, or ''plan'', as a Normative defence of the resolution. However, some teams partake in alternative forms of debate, including performance, personal advocacies, or otherwise "critical" approaches.

High school policy debate is sponsored by the National Forensic League , the National Catholic Forensic League , the National Christian Forensics And Communication Association , or one of the regional speech organizations. Collegiate debates are generally competed under the guidelines of the National Debate Tournament (NDT), the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA), and the National Educational Debate Association (NEDA).

HISTORY

The first college debate was held on November 24, 1898, between Wake Forest College and Trinity College. They debated the issue of territorial expansion.

"Resolved that the United States should not adopt a policy of territorial expansion."

Traditionally rebuttals were half the length of constructives, but when a style of faster delivery speed became more standard in the late 1980s this time structure became problematic--the round often turned on whether or not 1AR could cover, or address all relevant issues, because if he or she could, then the 2NR would in turn be overloaded, but if he or she couldn't, the 2NR simply needed to pick the argument most undercovered, and it would be game over. (For an explanation of speeches, please see Event Structure, below.)

Wake Forest University introduced reformed speech times in both its college (9-6 instead of 10-5) and high school (8-5 instead of 8-4) tournaments, which spread rapidly to become the new de facto standards.

STYLE AND DELIVERY

Speed

Policy Debaters' speed of delivery will vary from league to league and tournament to tournament. In many tournaments, debaters will "spread" or speak very quickly (and, in theory, clearly) in order to read as much evidence and make as many arguments as possible within the time-constrained speech. The fastest speaking debaters in the nation speak at around 6-8 words per second. This practice is commonly referred to as "spreading."

This rapid-fire delivery is a major source of controversy in the debate community. Rapid delivery is encouraged by those who believe that increased quantity and diversity of argumentation makes debates more educational. Others, citing scientific studies, claim that learning to speak faster also increases short and long term memory. A slower style is preferred by those who want debates to be understandable to lay people and those who claim that the pedagogical purpose of the activity is to train rhetorical skills. Most debaters will vary their rate of delivery depending upon the judge's preferences.

Some unskilled debaters slur words together making their speeches nearly unintelligible at times. Many critics are willing to prompt debaters by yelling "clear!" or variants when they can no longer understand. Most judges will deduct from the speaker points of a debater whom they consider unclear.

See the following for a discussion of the issues.

¹ available at {Link without Title}

² available at {Link without Title}

Flowing

See Also: Flow (policy debate)

Debaters utilize a specialized form of note taking, called ''flowing'', to keep track of the arguments presented during a debate. Conventionally, debater's notes are divided into separate ''flows'' for each different argument in the debate round(kritiks, disads, topicalities, etc.). There are multiple methods of flowing but the most common style incorporates columns of arguments made in a given speech which allows the debater to match the next speaker's responses up with the original arguments. Some refer to this as the "civil war reenactment" style of flowing. Certain shorthands for commonly used words are used to keep up with the rapid rate of delivery. For example, the abbreviation 'HR' may be used to denote 'Human Rights'. The abbreviations or stand-in symbols can and do vary between debaters.

THEORY

Burdens of the affirmative

Stock issues

See Also: Stock issues

Traditional Policy Debate theory states that the Affirmative Plan must fulfill certain issues, called the stock issues. The first four issues must be presented in the affirmative case. The last issue, topicality, need not be included in the affirmative case, but must be defended if the negative team raises arguments. They are:

or creating an advantage over the status quo.

harm.

Inherency : The status quo must not solve the case absent the plan. There are three types of inherency:

Structural inherency: Laws or other barriers to the implementation of the plan.

Attitudinal inherency: Beliefs or attitudes which prevent the implementation of the plan.

Existential inherency: The plan hasn't happened yet.

Inherency

Significance : The affirmative must be significant. This stock issue has also fallen out of use in part because of the difficulty of defining what is and what is not significant. Generally, any advantage over the status quo makes the plan significant.

An alternate way to list the stock issues, and a possible easier way, is "Solvency, Harms, Inherency, Topicality, Significance," with the Mnemonic S.H.I.T.S. or the classroom appropriate variant S.I.T.H.S.

Advantages

Other external benefits that are created in addition to solving the harms addressed by the affirmative are called advantages. While an affirmative team isn't required to present any advantages in their case in order to fulfill the affirmative burdens, they are often included for strategic reasons to increase the scope of the plan, and to prove that the plan ameliorate the status quo. The negative team will often present disadvantages which contend that the affirmative plan causes undesirable consequences, so the affirmative team often needs countervailing advantage to generate a net positive outcome. Like disadvantages, advantages often have exaggerated or unrealistic impacts, such as causing world peace and ending racism forever.

The affirmative team may also present a decision calculus for the judge to decide the case: for instance, they may insist that the judge examine the case in a Deontological rather than Consequentialist framework, looking at the intent of the case, rather than its actual effects.

Negation theory

See Also: Negation theory

''Negation Theory'' is a theory of how a debate round should be decided which dictates that the Negative need only negate the Affirmative instead of having to negate the Resolution . The acceptance of negation theory allows negative teams to run arguments such as Topical Counterplans, that may affirm the resolution, but they still negate the affirmative plan.

Negative strategy

After the affirmative presents its case, the negative can attack the case with many different arguments, which include:

Stock Issues: The negative can claim that the affirmative does not uphold any of the above burdens. Certain judges believe that the affirmative must uphold each of the issues, or they lose the round. Since the late 1980's, attacks on inherency and significance have fallen out of favor. In some cases, such as when a negative team wishes to win in a Disadvantages debate but has no good solvency turn (i.e. nothing that proves that the Affirmative plan actually causes or aggravates the harms the Affirmative team cites), the Negative will attack Significance or Advantages, especially when the Affirmative team cites a critical Advantage or colossally bad Harm. Most debates that are "on-case" (that is, directly responsive to the Affirmative plan), however, are Solvency debates.

Topicality: In particular, of the Stock Issues, Topicality arguably sees the most play in technical high school debate. The Negative will attempt to argue that the Affirmative team does not fall under the rubric of the resolution and should be rejected immediately regardless of the merits or disadvantages of the plan. This is a type of 'meta-debate' argument, as both sides then spend time defining various words or phrases in the resolution, laying down standards for why their definition(s) or interpretation(s) is superior (including arguments such as referring to the amount of argumentative "ground" either team would have under their or the opposing team's definition or interpretation of the resolution), and even spend time discussing what Topicality is and whether or not it is a relevant burden! Most yearly topics have at least one or two commonly run Affirmative cases (such as landmines during a weapons of mass destruction topic, holistic medicine during a mental health topic, racial profiling and reversing the Supreme Court policies that led to internment during a privacy topic, or similar) that are only arguably topical, so Topicality is often justified as a check or deterrent on and against such plans, which usually have quite strategic components (such as critical impacts or advantages normally beyond the scope of the topic). Topicality is also often considered a levelling factor in high school debate: A Negative team that is less well-funded, prepared or skillful or facing a case that they are not prepared for can use Topicality to win, or at least force the Affirmative to spend substantial amounts of time rebutting (in this case, Topicality is known as a "time-suck"). For this reason, many arguments have come into vogue arguing that topicality is theoretically or critically repugnant: Perhaps Topicality as a timesuck is unfair and should be punished, or perhaps language is so vague that the Negative team is simply imperially attacking an unconventional and creative Affirmative, or perhaps the Affirmative is discussing something so important that Topicality should be ignored. Most judges seem to reject these arguments, though they must still be rebutted.

Disadvantages : The negative can claim that there are disadvantages, or adverse effects of the plan, which outweigh any advantages claimed. The basic structure of a Disadvantage includes the Uniqueness, or the current situation which indicates that the disadvantage will not occur in the status quo; the links between the plan and the adverse reaction, generally this is a chain of links, with links after the initial link called ''internal links''; and the Impact, which is the terminal effect of the affirmative plan. In order to outweigh any positive effects of the affirmative case, impacts are often unrealistic and exaggerated, exceeding what would be expected as outcomes of a real world policy action.

Politics: This is a subset of the Disadvantage, but worth noting independently, because of many complex and controversial theory/critical arguments that reference Politics and its admissability. The general format has to do with other policies in the real world that the plan would ostensibly effect. For example: An Affirmative plan may be such a sharp change or shift from a generally conservative Senate that the Senate feels that it must rally its hardline conservative base with a policy that the Negative argues has titanically bad results (typically nuclear war, ecocidal extinction or similar levels of disadvantage). Politics Disadvantages are unique in a few ways: They typically require up-to-the-moment Uniqueness (as political climates are constantly changing), which generally favors larger or better funded squads as they are more likely to have the resources and time to acquire the newest Uniqueness. Unlike many other Disadvantages, they change substantially from year to year and even month to month, as new bills are considered and others defeated. Further, while most Disadvantages are accepted (at least theoretically if not critically), Politics face common theoretical and critical objections. Many argue that Politics Disadvantages are fiat confusions: They deal with HOW the plan passes, not whether it SHOULD pass. Other arguments allege that the focus or style of Politics Disadvantages lull debaters into an elitist mindset, or distort reality beyond recognition, and should be rejected on those debits.

, Racism , Centralized Government or Anthropocentric viewpoints. Critiques arose in the early 1990's, with the first critiques based in Deconstructionist philosophy about the intrinsic ambiguity of language. The affirmative team was forced to prove that language had meaning before their case could be considered.

Counterplans : The negative can reject the status quo in favor of a different policy action, which provides better advantages, or fewer disadvantages than the plan, also known as net benefits. The affirmative team may argue against the competition of the counterplan by ''permuting'' the CP, that is adopting some portion of the plan in addition to their plan. A successful permutation may be grounds to remove the CP from consideration, or grounds to narrow the scope of the debate to only the mutually exclusive part of the CP.

Theory: Sometimes the subject matter of the affirmative's case will create an uneven playing field from the beginning. In these cases, the negative can resort to making objections as to the procedure or content of the affirmative case. These objections often are "theoretical" in that they try to make objections based upon what bad can/has come to debate from the infraction, or what would make debate better if it were true. The Affirmative team may also make theoretical objections to negative arguments: For example, some Counterplans or ways of arguing Counterplans face common theoretical objections.

Narrative : Narratives are emotionally delivered speeches generally given at the opening of a speech. They are usually personal in nature, and call for the judge to approve of a specific policy option based on a situation. A case that would solve for world hunger might include a narrative about a starving African child.

Performance : A song, dance, or other method of expression other than rhetoric that is used in the round. For example, a dance about freedom may better represent freedom than actual discourse. This technique was introduced subsequent to 1998. However, in recent times performance arguments have been criticized for being abusive, irrelevant, or bigoted in some way or form.

Linear Attacks: These are offcase positions that are a combonation between Kritiks and Disadvantages. These argue that a certain problem is occurring and the affirmative plan reintrenches that problem. For example, U.S. foreign policy is dominating, thus the affirmative should be rejected because it is a US foreign policy. These are arguments that are typically critical in nature, are generated (have links) off the plan itself, and do not have uniqueness nor an alternative (the status quo).

EVIDENCE

See Also: Evidence (policy debate)

Evidence in debates is organized into units called ''cards''. Cards are designed to condense an author's argument so that debaters have an easy way to access the information. A card is composed of three parts: the tag, the cite, and the body. The ''tag'' is the debater's summary of the argument presented in the body. A tag is usually only one or two sentences. The ''cite'' contains all relevant citation information (that is, the author, date of publication, journal, title, etc.). Although every card should contain a complete citation, only the author's name and date of publication are typically spoken aloud in a speech. Some teams will also read the author's qualifications if they wish to emphasize this information. The ''body'' is a fragment of the author's original text. The length of a body can vary greatly—cards can be as short as a few sentences and as long as two or more pages. Most cards are between one and five paragraphs in length. The body of a card is often underlined or highlighted in order to eliminate unnecessary or redundant sentences when the card is read in a round. In a round, the tag is read first, followed by the cite and the body.

As pieces of evidence accumulate use, multiple colors of highlighting and different thicknesses of underlining often acrue, sometimes making it difficult to determine which portion of the evidence was read. If debaters stop before finishing the underlined or highlighted portion of a card, it is considered good form to "mark" the card to show where one stopped reading. To otherwise misrepresent how much of a card was read—either by stopping early or by skipping underlined or highlighted sections—is known as "cross-reading" or "clipping cards" which is generally considered cheating. Although many judges overtly condemn the practice on their paradigms, it is hard to enforce, especially if judges permit debaters to be excessively unclear. Opponents will generally stand behind a debater whom they believe to be "cross-reading" or "clipping", as if waiting to take a card (see below), and silently read along with them in an attempt to get their opponent to stop or the judge to notice.

As cards are read in round, it is common for an opponent to collect and examine even while a speech is still going on. This practice originated in part because cards are read at a rate faster than conversational speed but also because the un-underlined portions of cards are not read in round. Taking the cards during the speech allows the opponent to question the author's qualifications, the original context of the evidence, etc. in Cross-examination . It is generally accepted whichever team is using preparation time has priority to read evidence read previously during a round by both teams. As a result, large amounts of evidence may change hands after the use of preparation time but before a speech. Most judges will not deduct from a team's preparation time for time spent finding evidence which the other team has misplaced.

After a round, judges often "call for cards" to examine evidence whose merit was contested during the round or whose weight was emphasized during rebuttals so that they can read the evidence for themselves. Although widespread, this practice is explicitly banned at some tournaments, most notably National Catholic Forensic League nationals, and some judges refuse to call for cards because they believe the practice constitutes "doing work for debaters that should have been done during round". Judges may also call for evidence for the purpose of obtaining its citation information so that they can produce the evidence for their own school. Opponents and spectators are also generally allowed to collect citations in this manner, and some tournaments send scouts to rounds to facilitate the collection of cites for every team at the tournament, information which is sometimes published online.

Sample card

US hegemony is key to preventing proliferation and global nuclear war.

Khalilzad, 95 (Zalmay, of the Strategy and Doctrine Program @ RAND & current US Ambassador to Afghanistan "Losing the Moment? The United States and the World After the Cold War," Washington Quarterly, Spring, p. proquest)

Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.

JUDGING

See Also: Judge (policy debate)

Judging policy debate can be challenging. The total time available is short, the issues are complex and the judge may have personal beliefs that cloud impartiality.

Speaker points

The judge has the responsibility of not only voting for the side that they think won the round, but also giving each speaker "speaker points." This is a numerical evaluation of the debater's speaking skills ranging from 1–30. The standard variation, however, is 26–29, with 26 reserved for extremely poor speakers, and 30's reserved for "the best speaker you've ever seen." Most tournaments accept half point gradiation, for example 28.5. Generally, speaker points are seen as secondary in importance to wins and losses, yet must correlate with a team's win/loss rate. In other words, the judge usually awards the winning team cumulatively higher speaker points than the losing team. If the judge does not, the decision is considered a "Low-Point Win". Low-point wins are usually indicate that the debate was poor, as neither team spoke well; or that the team which lost was ahead overall, but lost on a technicality, or a single unanswered argument.

Judge qualifications

Some circuits see ''lay'' or inexperienced judges recruited from the community as an important "part of the game." Debaters in these circuits must be able to adapt from presentations to individuals with no debate experience at all, to judges who have themselves been debaters. This use of lay judges significantly impacts delivery and argumentation as the rapid-fire style and complex debate-theory arguments are frequently incomprehensible to lay judges. For this reason, other circuits restrict policy debate judging to qualified judges, generally ex-debaters. The use of lay judges, and its impact in speed, presentation and argumentation is a source of great controversy in the US high school debate community.

Paradigms

Experienced debate judges (who were generally debaters in High School and/or College) generally carry a mindset that favors certain arguments and styles over others. Throughout time, the criterion upon which judges decide debates has changed. Currently increasingly popular within college debate, and trickling down into high school debate, is examining debate from an "offense-defense" paradigm. Because of this, it is customary for debaters to ask a judge what their experience and paradigm is for judging.

Examples of paradigms include:

Stock Issues: In order for the affirmative team to win, their plan must retain all of the stock issues (S.H.I.T.S.). For the negative to win, they only need to win one stock issue. These judges are more likely to dislike newer arguments, like kritiks and theory.

Policymaker: At the end of the round, the judge compares the affirmative plan with either the negative counterplan or the status quo. Whichever one is a better policy option is the winner.

Tabula Rasa: Means "blank slate". The judge comes into the round with no predispositions, and wants the debaters to "debate it out", including what paradigm they should view the round in.

COMPETITION AND DEBATE LIFE

See Also: Policy debate competitions

Tournaments

Most high school debaters debate in local tournaments in their city, state or nearby states. Thousands of such tournaments are held at high schools throughout the US each weekend during the debate season.

A small subset of high school debaters, mostly from elite public and private schools, travel around the country to tournaments in what is called the 'national circuit.' The championship of the national circuit is usually considered to be the Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky, which requires formal qualification in the form of two or more bids to the tournament.

Championships

=High school

There is some dispute over what constitutes the "national championship" in the United States per se, but two tournaments generally compete for the title:
The Tournament of Champions held at the University of Kentucky. (Generally considered to be the most important tournament by teams that debate in a more technical style that employs speed and travel nationally)
The National Speech and Debate tournament sponsored by the National Forensics League.

Other prestigious, national tournaments include:

-The National Championship of the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association (NCFCA).

=College

There is no single unified national championship in college debate; the National Debate Tournament (NDT), the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) and the American Debate Association (ADA) all host national tournaments. However, recently most of these leagues have been combined into one, and the distinctions are minimal.

Institutes

While once attended by only highly competitive policy debaters, a majority of them now attend debate institutes, which are typically held at colleges in the summer. Most institutes range from about two to seven weeks.

RESOLUTIONS

See Also: Resolution (policy debate)

A resolution or '''topic''' is a Normative statement which the Affirmative Team affirms and the Negative Team negates. Resolutions are selected annually by affiliated schools.

All resolutions (since the 1920s) begin "Resolved: The United States federal government should".
For example, the resolution for the 2005-2006 college policy debate season is "Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially increase diplomatic and economic pressure on the People's Republic of China in one or more of the following areas: trade, human rights, weapons non-proliferation and Taiwan."

Additionally, at the college level, a number of topics are proposed and interested parties write 'topic papers' discussing the pros and cons of that individual topic. Each school then gets one vote on the topic. The single topic area voted on then has a number of proposed topic wordings, one is chosen, and it is debated by affiliated students nationally for the entire season (standard academic school year).

EVENT STRUCTURE

See Also: Structure of policy debate

In all forms of policy debate the order of speeches is as follows:

In addition to speeches, policy debates may allow for a certain amount of preparation time, or " Prep Time ," during a debate round. NFL rules call for 5 minutes of total prep time that can be used, although in practice high school debate tournaments usually give 8 minutes of prep time. College debates typically have 10 minutes of preparation time. The preparation time is used at each team's preference; they can use different amounts of preparation time before any of their speeches, or even none at all. Prep time can be allocated strategically to intimidate or inconvenience the other team: for instance, normally a 1AR requires substantial prep time, so a well-executed "stand up 1AR", delivered after no prep time intimidates the negative team and takes away from time that the 2NR may have used to prepare the parts of her speech which do not rely on what the 1AR says.

The format of NFA-LD varies from the format of team policy debate.

FAMOUS POLICY DEBATERS

Samuel Alito

Stephen Breyer

Michael Stipe

Lawrence Tribe

Karl Rove

Michael Moore

Johnny Cochran

Maxwell Taylor

Brad Pitt

Oprah Winfrey

John F. Kennedy

REFERENCES

Cheshier, David. (2002). Drills to Improve your Debate Speaking . ''Rostrum''. Retrieved December 30, 2005.

	CATEGORIES ABOUT POLICY DEBATE

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