Debate: Old Debate Guide - Primarily for Judges

1. Overview of debate
The basic premise of all debate is that you are the judge. Literally and figuratively, you are the deciding factor. Yes, there are criterion fur judging, but it really boils down to who convinced you and who communicated their ideas to you better.
If one of the debaters makes an argument and it sounds flaky to you, call them on it. Write it down on the ballot. Just remember, that no matter what, the judge is always correct. Even if the competitors all think the judge is wrong, the judge is still correct. It’s even better than being a real judge because there’s no appeals process for them to overturn you.

2. Lincoln-Douglas
Lincoln Douglass is a value and morality debate. The topic will change every couple of months (so usually each tournament we go to will use a different topic).
This category is truly about who can persuade you better. You will hear some terminology and I’ll cover that, but for the most part, it’s all about who has the best marketing. To decide this you can consider all sorts of things. First and foremost, their ideas should be clear to you. They can have best ideas and arguments, but if they can’t communicate them…oh well. The arguments should be constructed in such a way that you weigh the ethics of the situation and the given topic. The side has the greater moral justification for their claims wins.
They should have evidence, perhaps in the form of quotes from noted philosophers (you might hear names like John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Emmanuel Kant, Abraham Maslow, if you have no idea who these people are or what they stood for, that’s okay, most of the students don’t have much of a clue either). They may give you examples or hypothetical situations and say that, “well, under these conditions, the moral justification supports the affirmative.” They may throw statistics at you (although this is less common). They will do whatever they can to make their point, support their point and get you to understand their point. If, at the end of the debate, you don’t understand their point, don’t feel bad, just write “hey, you sounded good, but I have no idea why the Categorical Imperative says it’s immoral to impose an Orwellian state on students who only want to be involved in the Chess Club. I’m sorry, you didn’t make you’re point clear.” That’s all the justification you need. It is their responsibility to justify their moral ground. Not yours. While it is their responsibility to provide evidence, it is also your responsibility NOT to provide it for them. You aren’t allowed to connect the dots for them or add in your own ideas or ideology, just listen.
As for terminology, the first thing you will hear about, the most important thing you will hear about, is the VALUE. The VALUE is the kind of general concept, or moral idea that they will use to support their side. For example, you may hear one of the negative speakers say “my VALUE is Individual Privacy.” What that means is that the negative debater will try to prove that the affirmative side is not justified because we in America hold privacy to be one of our fundamental rights. There are all kinds of values. Some make sense, other don’t. Again, this is your call. If someone has the value of Bilingual Education, certainly, that’s a good value. It just has no place in a debate about Medical Privacy. The value and how well the debater supports it, is what determines the win/loss for the round.
The next big thing you’ll hear about is the VALUE CRITERION. I like to think of the VALUE CRITERION as the top of the Monopoly box. It’s essentially the set of rules that govern how we’ll play this little game called debate. Most of the novice debaters and some of the varsity debaters won’t know how to properly create, use and argue the VALUE CRITERION. Don’t let it disturb you. For example, the affirmative speaker may have a VALUE CRITERION of Educational Responsibility. That’s a pretty abstract concept. Most of us would stare blankly ahead and imitate Homer Simpson. What the speaker is attempting to tell you, is that each school, each education institution has a responsibility to its students. (“oh, okay”), We have to shape today’s debate in that context, (“losing me here….”). In order to have a fair debate, we need to look at the responsibility that a school has towards its students, and see which side best meets those responsibilities (“okay, you do your job, I do mine, whoever does the better job wins. Got it”) . The VALUE CRITERION (VC, or just CRITERION) is used to set the parameters in which the debate must take place. A good debater will know how to use this. A poor debater will rattle off something that sounds great, without really knowing what if means. It is up to you to decide, which set of rules is better to judge the debate by. Just as legal judges have to decide based upon the set of rules that is the law, LD debate judges must decided based upon the set of rules that is the VALUE CRITERION.
You will hear other terms, like CRYSTALIZATION (summary), FLOW (the notes they are constantly taking). The basic rules is, they have to make you understand, if they don’t, it’s their fault, not yours. Don’t let the terminology get the best of you.
Some things to look for in LD: The debate itself rests on the idea of a conflict. If there is no conflict in the debate, well, I can think of a number of things I would rather do on a Saturday. When you see this, note it on the ballot “I don’t see the conflict in this debate anymore, it seems you guys have gotten off track.”
One of the things we normally teach students is that the last speech they give should be a summary, a CRYSTALIZATION of the round. What were the key issues? Why, in a nutshell, should you vote for that particular side? Should you fall asleep during most of the round, listening to the crystallization at the end can be great. It is not required for competitors, but the more experienced ones will do it and it does make things a lot clearer.
Also judge them on delivery. Did they maintain eye contact with you? Could you hear them? Were they jumping around? Playing with pens? Doing anything unprofessional? You can rank them down for this to, or make note of it on the ballot.

3. Controversy / TTD / Public Forum
As the new category, I honestly can’t tell you much about this. If you are at all familiar with extemporaneous speaking, that’s what I personally expect from controversy teams. They shouldn’t necessarily have everything memorized, but they should be maintaining eye contact with you most of the time. The style isn’t much like debate at all. It’s centered more on who can form the better ideas. The topic will be given to them ahead of time, so they should be reasonably prepared. To be honest, this one is real simple. It comes down to who convinced you the best. This category was specifically devised with the intention of helping novice JUDGES get their feet wet in debate and though there are ground rules the category is still in infancy.

4. Policy Debate
There are different levels of Policy debate. This category, I warn you, is a sure cure for insomnia. Policy debate is based primarily on evidence. While the competitors can make some arguments based on logic, I’d be wary about anything they say is “common sense.” It’s been my experience that “common sense” isn’t all that common. There are different judging criteria based upon judges personal preference, but here in Hawaii, most of the judging is based upon stock issues (things like (SOLVENCY, INHERENCY, TOPICALITY, terms which will be explained below).
Since the policy debaters have the same topic over the course of the whole year, you may find yourself hearing the same case (or a pretty close copy) several times over. Over time, you should see cases improve and evidence get updated for information that becomes available. When deciding between conflicting pieces of evidence, I’ll usually opt for the most credible and most up to date source provided. You can ask to see a piece of evidence if you like.
There is a lot of terminology associated with policy debate. Rather than telling you how to judge, I’d like to go over some of the terms you’ll come across. I’m sure I’ll forget some of them, and I apologize. But this is a pretty decent list to start with.
HARMS: This is pretty straightforward. The HARMS of the case outline the problem in the status quo that we are debating today. For example, under this year’s resolution, HARMS may be things like overfishing, reef killing algae or Eskimos molesting salmon.
SOLVENCY: Is directly related to HARMS in that the affirmative team’s plan or the negative team’s counter-plan has to be proven to solve the HAMRS that they bring forth. If they cannot reasonably prove that they solved for those things then the plan should lose, because it’s not going to work. Solvency is simply the proof you present that you plan can and will do what you say it will. It’s what separates the marketing aspects of debate and the engineering aspects of debate.
WORKABILITY: Not to be confused with SOLVENCY. WORKABILITY deals with whether the plan can reasonably be put into action. For example if the plan calls for an increase in taxes for funding, how reasonable is it that the public would go along and approve an increase in taxes? Or if the plan required that Congress pass a Constitutional Amendment, is it proven that Congress would be willing to do so? WORKABILITY asks not about whether the plan would work, but whether the plan could be put into action at all. This is directly connected to INHERENCY.
INHERENCY: In policy debates, the teams create plans on the. First off, their plans should not be something already in place or on the planning table at the moment. Second is that usually this plan is one which faces difficulty being put into place. Both of these concepts are related to INHERENCY. What INHERNECY asks, is whether there is some barrier in place for getting he plan enacted. The barrier can take many different forms. The students will use terms like ‘attitudinal barrier’ (the people don’t want to change). All of these really boil down to the fact that there is something in the status quo that would require prodding to put the plan into action (sometimes you might have to beat a few people with a really big stick). Maybe people don’t want their taxes increased for funding the plan, or Congress would disagree and not pass the plan, or the President is strongly against it because it doesn’t bomb someone. For whatever reason, the debaters plan must account for some barrier to implementation.
TOPICALITY: In order to have a proper debate at each tournament, the teams should both adhere as closely to the resolution as possible. This is where topicality comes in. For example, the resolution may contain the term ‘establish’. If we define it as “to create something new,” than any plan presented must be new and cannot copy something already in place in the real world. Or you may find the term ‘significantly’. Well, what is ‘significant’? How much of a difference do you need to make? One fish? Two fish? Red fish? Blue fish? While the ultimate decision is up to you, the teams should present evidence and numbers to back up their competing claims about the significance of the plan.
Your job in determining topicality is to listen to the definitions provided by both sides, determine which (if there are opposing definitions) is the more appropriate, and then decide whether the plan abides by those definitions.
Hints and Tips
You’ll see a lot of differences between JV and Varsity policy. The varsity policy teams for example tend to speak quicker. If they go too fast for you, put your pen down and stare straight ahead. This is a sign to them to slow down.
You’ll also notice that they tend to follow the flow more. You should expect better organization from the more experienced debaters. If you ever get lost in the organization of the debaters, it’s their fault, not yours. Make note of it on the ballot.
You may come across topic specific terms in these debates. There are terms that are relevant to the topic but not to debate in general that you are not familiar with. You’re not supposed to be. The debaters are supposed to explain it. Any acronyms they use, they are supposed to define. All of this goes back to being able to communicate their ideas to you. The most important thing I can express to you is that the judges is never wrong, the debater is just unable to communicate the idea effectively.