Instructional

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Instructional Materials
Index
Introduction.................................................................................................1
Argument.....................................................................................................2
How to deal with a Bad Government Case................................................4
British Parliamentary..................................................................................5
Case Construction in Impromptu Debates................................................10
Coming to Grips with the Resolution.......................................................11
How to Construct a Case and win on Government...................................13
Cross Examination....................................................................................17
Delivery.....................................................................................................23
Disputing Defnitions................................................................................24
Framing.....................................................................................................26
Heckling...................................................................................................27
Logic and Argumentation.........................................................................27
Logical Fallacies.......................................................................................30
Note Taking..............................................................................................36
Opening Lines..........................................................................................40
Organisation..............................................................................................40
Outline of a PM Speech............................................................................42
Parliamentary Points.................................................................................43
Parliamentary Debate................................................................................40
Points of Information................................................................................48
Persuasion.................................................................................................50
Proof.........................................................................................................51
Rebuttal.....................................................................................................51
Recognizing Generic Topics.....................................................................54
Recognizing Generic Analysis.................................................................55
Tones and Countertones............................................................................57
Universal and Stock Arguments...............................................................59
Transition to Worlds’ Style.......................................................................61
Weighing Costs and Benefts....................................................................63
Worlds - Defning Motions and Constructing Cases................................64
You Don’t have to Know Everything.......................................................76
What to do in the Prep Room...................................................................78
2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 1
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ll of the following materials were written by Brian Casey, except where otherwise indicated. Many of
the materials were written in the 1980’s, and the references to the rules are to older versions of the CSDF
materials.
All of the materials may be reproduced, provided the copyright holder is identifed.
In addition to these materials, there are now a wealth of detailed instructional materials on Canadian high school
debating.
While some reading is valuable, you don’t become a better debater simply by reading about it. Most of getting
better is practice. Almost all debaters improve a little bit with each tournament they enter; the secret is to practice
a lot.
However, here are three sources:
1. Beginners to Advanced
The Sacred Heart website (https://sites.google.com/site/debateresourcesns/home) contains a number of
instructional materials. They have the advantage of being short and to the point, and walk the novice debater from
organizing a debating speech through more sophisticated topics. Many are less than a page.
2. Advanced
The printed materials which follow cover a number of important topics in more detail.
3. Other sources
There are some excellent Australian materials available. One website worth reviewing is http://www.
monashdebaters.com/articles-of-interest.php another is www.learndebating.com (an excellent Australian source
of materials) .
The Nova Scotia Debating Society’s site, www.debatingsociety.ca/ns/ has the offcial Nova Scotia materials.
Lauren Bialystok’s A Debater’s Manual is available for a small fee from University of Toronto Schools. You can
contact Martha Drake - [email protected] or 416-946-0097.
Don’t feel you should read these materials cover to cover like a novel -- instead, see if there is some specifc skill
which would beneft from further reading and focus on that.
INTRODUCTION
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 2
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debate is a formal attempt to persuade a
judge or audience of your side of a case.
The attempt to persuade someone requires
more than just an assertion. Typically, we make
an assertion, and then we come up with a reason
to justify it. That process of reasoning is what
moves a discussion from a series of assertions to a
debate. The reasons in support of the assertion can
be challenged or refuted. We sometimes talk about
debate as a structured “argument”.
Argument also has a technical meaning. The British
comedy group Monty Python put it succinctly:
An argument is a connected series of statements
intended to establish a proposition. If we prove
the premises are true, and the conclusion logically
follows from the premises, we prove our case. You
might think of it as the debater’s equivalent of a
mathematical proof.
Debaters are fundamentally interested in rhetoric,
not logic. Arguments which are not logically sound
may still succeed in persuading your audience.
(And logically sound arguments may fail to
persuade). Your goal is a rhetorically effective
debate, not (necessarily) a logically sound one. Glen
Whitman’s piece later in these materials identifes
some logical errors which are permissible in debate
(and in some cases desirable). Debates can be won
with an appeal to authority, to emotion and simply
by better delivery or crisper rebuttal. Argument is
only a part.
As Sam Greene famously points out in the quotation,
the strategy for persuasion is not normally to
convince the audience that what they believed was
wrong. To convince the audience that your position
is what they agreed with from the start, you may use
argument - take something your audience agrees
with and persuade them that the issue you are
discussing follows logically from that. First, some
distinctions:
A reason is not normally an argument.
Novice debaters make the mistake of trying to
produce a reason for their side of the resolution,
without explicitly making the argument that goes
with it. For example, in the resolution “We should
elect our judges” one reason is that it is “more
democratic” to do so. However, that is not an
argument for electing judges. (It is essentially a
restatement of the resolution).
It is an argument to show that democratic decisions
are more likely to have broad public support, and
that it is important that judicial decisions have
broad public support. One way of increasing
public support for judicial decisions is to elect our
judges. But merely giving the reason – without the
supporting argument – is unsatisfactory in debate.
It looks like a mere re-statement of the resolution.
Explicitly stating the argument forces you to move
from reasons to argument. It also helps judges
follow your reasoning.
If you have clearly set out the argument, it will be
possible to agree with your reason (electing judges
is democratic) but disagree with your conclusion
(we should elect our judges). For example, your
opponent may argue that it is not important that
judicial decisions have broad public support, or that
electing judges would not achieve that, or that there
are better ways of achieving broad public support,
or that the costs of achieving it are not worth the
benefts. The debater agrees with your reason, but
not your conclusion. Put another way, he disagrees
with your argument. This makes for good debate.
This is different from what we do in ordinary life.
If you phone a friend and say, “Let’s hang out” you
don’t set out the argument for doing so. You take
it for granted your friend can fll in the missing
reasoning. In a debate, the expectation is that you
will set out the argument, unless it is blindingly
obvious.
Aristotle believed that when the argument was
widely known by your audience, you did not need
to state it. That is still true. “We should impose
democracy in Myannmar” could require you to
show democracy was desirable and the benefts that
come from it, and then show that the benefts justify
imposing it. In Canada, you don’t need to make the
frst part of that argument.
Debaters are far more likely to skip a necessary
argument, than they are to make one unnecessarily.
When in doubt, make the argument. If you think
the argument, or a part of the argument, is obvious,
spend less time on it – don’t skip it altogether.
“Two part” arguments
Essentially, all arguments have at least two parts.
The idea is that you secure your audience’s
agreement on one point, and then show that because
of the relationship of that point to your conclusion,
the audience should accept your conclusion too.
This has been the essence of proof in debate since
Aristotle. Almost your entire debating case will
consist of two part arguments. We use the term to
make the point that there are two parts and both
need to be stated.
ARGUMENT
“When you’re trying to persuade someone of
something, you’re not trying so much to change their
mind. What you actually have to do is convince them
that what you are proposing was what they agreed
with from the start.”
— Sam Greene
Canadian Debater
2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 3
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There are several variations:
1) Principle – establish a principle and then show
that the reason fts into that principle or is required
by it. “In a democracy, all important decisions
should be made democratically. Judges make
important decisions. Therefore, judges should be
elected.” A related example would be to show that
this is a policy that we normally follow, that we
should be consistent, and that the reason falls into
that pattern.
2) Goal – Result – Identify a desirable goal as the
frst part and then show that the second part leads
to that goal. “We need to increase participation
in the political process. Paying politicians more
would increase participation in the political process.
Therefore we should pay politicians more.”
3) Syllogisms – Use any type of syllogisms. In the
next column, I set out different syllogisms which
can be relied on to prove different arguments. The
two premises are your two parts.
Of course, any other reasoning, using at least two
steps, can be a two part argument.
Two caveats. The two part argument is a powerful
tool. However, it can be quite lame; the fact that
an argument is logically well constructed does
not mean it is persuasive. “We should reduce the
budget defcit. Eliminating hospitals would reduce
the defcit. We should eliminate hospitals” is a
logically sound two part argument, but not very
convincing.
Second, be careful about splitting the two parts
of the argument between different speeches. The
Australians call this a hung case. In Canada (and
in logic) there is no prohibition against dividing
your arguments this way but there is a practical
problem: if the frst opposition speaker successfully
answers the 1
st
part of the argument in his speech,
your second speech is an orphan. In general, ensure
that both parts of the argument are made in the
same speech.
How would you construct a two part argument for
each of the following topics:
We should censor the internet
Canada should live up to its Kyoto Accord
commitments
We should increase our use of nuclear power
We should work harder
School uniforms should be abolished
This House believes that Holocaust denial should
be a crime
We would rather be a follower than a leader
We should abolish the death penalty
We should impose a carbon tax
Bullies win
It is better to die on your feet than live on your
knees
We should be vegetarians
Canada should reduce taxes
We should abolish affrmative action
Syllogisms
For each of the following, come up with a two-part
reason in favour of or against the resolution using
the syllogisms listed. Assume a straightforward
defnition.
CATEGORICAL SYLLOGISM
(P is true for R) + (Q is type of R) = (P is true for Q)
The school year should be longer
President Bush should be impeached
Cowards win
There is too much violence in hockey
This House believes that free trade harms the
developing world
HYPOTHETICAL SYLLOGISM
(if P, then Q) + (if Q, then R) = (if P, then R)
We should increase taxes
We should abolish university tuition
Religion has no place in state schools
Political parties should receive state funding
We should decide with our hearts and not our
heads
DISJUNCTIVE SYLLOGISM
(Either R or S) + not R = S
There should be an amnesty for dictators who step
down voluntarily
We should have two tiered medical care
We should spend more on the Canadian military
We should legalize marijuana
We should allow performance enhancing drugs in
sports
MODUS PONENS
P + (if P, then Q) = Q
The drinking age should be raised
The police should have more power
We should slow down
We should ban tobacco advertising
We should treat young offenders as adults for major
crimes
MODUS TOLLENS
(if P, then Q) + not Q = not P
Tobacco should be illegal
Canada should withdraw from Afghanistan
Turkey should join the European Union
SUV’s should be banned
This house prefers style to substance
John Robinson
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 4
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T
he key to a good debate is clash. That means
the government and the opposition stake
out clear positions that directly contradict
each other, and then directly respond to each
other’s case.
When you are the government team, you can
construct a case which is clear, well laid out, and
allows for ample debate. In some respects, a
bigger challenge arises when you are opposition
and have been presented with a bad case by the
government. How should you respond?
It is perhaps counter intuitive, but you need
to fx the government case: to help make the
government case clearly about something. And
then you need to respond to it.
This poses several challenges. On the one hand,
you are making the case against you better
than it was. So instead of clobbering your
opponents, you are now going to have to work
for your victory. Give your judge the beneft of
the doubt and assume he or she will recognize
what you are doing. Even if the judge doesn’t,
the result should still be a much better debate,
and consequently, higher speaker points.
1. Make the government case better. Your job
is to work with the case the government gave
you, and make it better – not to come up with a
different, better government case. Be careful to
tie what the government said into the case you
make for them. You don’t want the government
denying that the case you built for them is their
case. The judge and the government must
recognize that what you have given them is an
improved version of their own case.
2. Organize the government case intelligibly.
So by all means make the government case
clearer than the government did, and clearly
sketch the reasons that (although muddled) they
produced to justify their position. And answer
those reasons. But make sure that what emerges
is the best form of the case the government
presented, not something completely new.
3. Make the case more concrete. One recurring
problem is when the government case is too
general. This sometimes occur when the
Government is given a very general resolution
(which it is anticipated they will squirrel) and
they leave it very general. “To everything there
is a season” is not a satisfactory debate, taken
at face value.
Here your challenge is to make the resolution
concrete. If you can, supply your own narrower
or more concrete terms and if possible use the
government’s examples as if they were a case
statement instead of simply examples.
4. Talk about the most important issues in
the room. Sometimes, your task is to focus the
debate where it should be. I watched a debate
“that this House would impose democracy” and
saw a government team that focused the debate
on whether democracy was a good thing. The
focus of the debate should have been on the
second part of the resolution, whether it could
or should be imposed. As an opposition, even if
the government has missed the boat, you must
move the debate to where it belongs. You need
to address the government case, but you must
also take the debate to where it should be. It
is tempting to simply respond to what you are
given. That’s not enough.
5. Undo the tight government case. Sometimes
a government case is bad because it is tight or
a tautology. In that case, point out the burden
the government has assumed, or the unfairness
in the defnition, and move the debate to a more
reasonable place so that an actual debate can take
place. Sometimes that will mean broadening
the debate you have been given. Sometimes
it will mean changing an absolute term in the
resolution to something less.
6. Respond to the best case, not just what
the government presented. Fundamentally,
your task as opposition is to answer the case
presented to you. However, when dealing with
a weak government case, it is expected that you
do more than that: that you respond to the best
case, whether or not it was presented.
One of your objectives is to win the round,
of course, but it is difficult to demonstrate
your ability if you are presented with a weak
government case. Your objective in improving
the government case is to demonstrate your
skill.
HOW TO DEAL WITH A BAD GOVERNMENT CASE
2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 5
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T T H E OX F O R D CU P A N D MC GI L L
I N 2 0 1 0 , we d e b a t e i n B r i t i s h
Parliamentary Style. The same skills which
make you outstanding debaters in our (Canadian)
format will make you outstanding debaters in the
British style. However, the format is a little different,
so I thought I would set out what the different
expectations are. When in doubt, do what you
normally do.
We also have an excellent video tape which I will
bring to club for you to watch.
Short Description of the format
There are four teams of two debating in the room.
Two teams debate as government, two teams debate
as opposition. The teams do not work together: you
each prepare independently. But the government
cases cannot be inconsistent. You have the usual
speaking order, just as if you were debating four-
a-side. The debate has world’s style points of
information. Debaters all have 7 minute speeches
(including the prime minister, who only has a
constructive speech); the frst and last minutes of
each speech are protected time.
For discussion’s sake, let us assume that the two
government teams are Halifax Grammar and Sacred
Heart, and the two opposition teams are Halifax West
and St Patrick’s.
The Prime Minister speaks (Grammar), an Opposition
debater from West speaks, the second Grammar
debater speaks, the 2nd Opposition debater from
West speaks, the government member from Sacred
Heart speaks, a St Pat’s debater speaks in Opposition,
then the final Sacred Heart debater speaks, and
fnally the last word goes to the 2nd St Pat’s debater
in Opposition.
Although Grammar and Sacred Heart both put
forward government cases, they are two halves of
one debate, not two debates. The two second teams
— Sacred Heart and St Pat’s in this case — should
try to broaden the debate. Often this will involve
taking a new angle on the subject. The second teams
should avoid repeating arguments already made.
Expanding the case cannot contradict or go outside
the boundaries of the case already put.
The fnal speaker for each team has a very specifc
responsibility: he or she may only summarize and
rebut. Because these are long debates, the final
speaker simply ties it all together and concludes.
Generally, the Prime Minister has no fnal word.
The teams are scored 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the
room — individual speaker points do not count in the
team standings, and the teams with the best record
advance to the fnals.
The common point values used are as follows:
First Place = 3 points
Second Place = 2 points
Third Place = 1 point
Fourth Place = 0 points
There are no Points of Order, or Points of Personal
Privilege.
Specifc Expectations for each speaking
position
The following, excerpted and slightly edited is from
the English Speaking Union guide called, “Oxford
Union Rough Guide to Debating” by Andy Kidd
and is available at http://www.britishdebate.com/
universities/resources/ox_roughguide.asp#o52 ©
2005 The online home of the ESU Centre for Speech
and Debate.
Fulflling the correct role:
Each speaker in a debate has a different role and
these are summarised below. A good way to think
about it is that you give your own individual spin
on the same consistent team line.
The First Prop Team:
The frst speaker must defne the motion and justify
it if need be. Then he must outline the case his team
will put forward and explain which speaker will deal
with which arguments. He should then develop his
own arguments and fnish by summarising his main
points. The second speaker should re-cap the team
line and then rebut the response made by the frst
opp speaker to his partner’s speech. He should
then develop his own arguments and fnish with a
summary of the whole prop case.
The First Opp Team:
The frst speaker must respond to the defnition
mentioning whether it is fair and makes a reasonable
link to the motion. If it does not or is unfair he can
re-defne. This can be risky and should only be done
when the defnition is not debatable. Usually it is
better to complain a little and hope the adjudicator
gives you credit. Then the speaker must rebut the
frst prop speech. He can do this and nothing else,
or he can do this and then develop a counter case
(ie an alternative proposal) or he can structure his
rebuttal into a counter case. What to do depends
on the debate.
For example, consider these cases:
1. “The UK and the US alone should start a program
of air strikes against Iraqi military targets right now.
This is true for four reasons: Firstly, morally - Iraq
must not be allowed to stockpile weapons of mass
BRITISH PARLIAMENTARY DEBATING
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 6
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destruction which they are now doing. Secondly,
internationally - the UN and its constant threats
to use force if diplomacy is not successful will be
undermined permanently if no one ever carries these
threats through. Thirdly, regionally - it is important
to maintain stability in the Middle East which is a
very volatile region and this is threatened if no one
stands up to Saddam Hussein. Finally, nationally -
these strikes will weaken Saddam’s grip on power
and hasten the path for a more benign successor.”
In response to the frst case it might be best to rebut
and then develop a counter case (this protects you
from the “what would you do instead” argument
which would arise if you did nothing but rebut).
2. “The force in question here is the force of the
law and we would use it to make voting in General
Elections in the UK compulsory. This would be a
good thing for three reasons: Firstly, morally - we
all have a duty to uphold democracy and not voting
impairs and undermines the democratic process, it
should therefore be a punishable offence. Secondly,
socially - groups which are currently isolated and
on the margins of society would now be included
in the democratic process which will beneft them
and society as a whole. Thirdly, politically - political
parties would be forced to modernise their political
agendas to lure the disenfranchised and apathetic
who currently don’t vote to support them, this would
greatly improve the ideologically stagnant world of
present day politics.
In response to the second case it would almost
certainly be better to simply rebut the case and do
nothing else (on the grounds that doing nothing
would be better).
3. “The media exert more infuence over what
people think than the government do. This is true
for three reasons. Firstly, most people base their
opinions on what they see and hear in the media and
the media have great freedom to put forward biased
and one-sided views. Secondly, the media can set the
political agenda by deciding what issues to report
and in how much detail. Thirdly, the media have
successfully demonised politicians over the last ten
years so that now people are more likely to believe
journalists than politicians who are seen as power-
hungry and hypocritical.
In response to the third case it would be easy to
develop a “mirror image” counter case which rebuts
the points made and constructively argues the
opposite point of view.
The second opp speaker should very much follow
this lead and continue with the same strategy as his
partner. If a counter case has been developed he
should summarise this at the end of his speech.
The Second Prop Team:
The frst speaker must stake his team’s claim in the
debate. He may extend the debate into a new area,
introduce a couple of new arguments which make
the case on his side more persuasive, or simply tidy
up what has gone before into a more organised case
and show how that rebuts what the opp side have
said. Again, it depends on the scenario. This is
quite a complex part of debating to master, but it is
very important to add something constructive to the
debate or you will be penalised. The second speaker
may briefy add to what his partner has said, but
should fairly quickly get round to summing up the
debate for his side. This involves going through the
whole debate to show why the prop side has won.
Either you can go through the debate chronologically
(this is not very advanced and usually not very
persuasive either), go through one side’s case and
then the other (if the clash between the two has not
been intensive) or go through the debate according
to the main points of contention (this is the most
persuasive way, but it is vital you have understood
the debate and prioritise the issues accordingly). It is
often a good idea to fnish by summarising the main
reason why your side has won.
The Second Opp Team:
This is very similar to the second prop team’s role,
except that what the frst speaker does depends on
whether the opp have a counter case. The last opp
speaker must devote their whole speech to a summing
up and should not introduce new material.
Rebuttal v Case:
The amount of time you spend on case development
versus rebuttal changes as the debate progresses.
The second frst prop speaker should aim for about 4
minutes case and 3 minutes rebuttal, the frst second
prop speaker for 3-4 minutes case (depending on
what they are aiming to do) and the rest rebuttal.
Opp speakers should do roughly the same, though
probably with more emphasis on rebuttal (depending
on the scale of their counter case). This is not to imply
that the two must be separate, it is quite possible to
combine the two and often works very well. If you
decide to address rebuttal and case separately you
must deal with the rebuttal frst. The idea is to “clear
the decks” so you can get on with your case, and also
to ensure your rebuttal follows on directly from the
previous speech from the opposite side.
Participation in the whole debate:
A key part of strategy is to maintain your involvement
in the debate all the way through. This obviously
precludes leaving the room or falling asleep, but
usually it means offering points of information
regularly throughout all of the opposition speeches.
I haven’t said very much about points of information
so far because they really encompass all of the
elements of debating. How they are made is a part of
style, what you say during them is a part of content
and when and how often you make them is a part
of strategy. Rather than split this rather specialised
subject up I will deal with it all at once, now.
Points of information can usually be offered between
the frst and second time signals (ie between the
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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Matter and Manner
In BP there are two categories that you are judged
on as a speaker. Matter is the content of your speech,
and manner is how you present that content. Matter
and manner are weighted equally. The lists include
some of the more common elements of matter and
manner, but are not exhaustive.
Matter Includes:
• Substantive arguments for your side
• Rebuttal arguments
• Case Studies / Facts
• POIs
Manner Includes:
• Humour
• Appropriate language
• Engaging the audience
Roles of the Speakers (Overview)
Prime Minister (Opening Government):
• Defnes the resolution
• Introduces the Government case
Leader of the Opposition (Opening Opposition):
• Rebuts what PM said
• Introduces Opening Opposition case
• If there’s going to be a defnitional challenge, the
LO must mention it in their speech, otherwise all the
other teams in the round must accept the original
defnition (See: Challenging the Defnition)
Deputy Prime Minister (Opening Government):
Rebuts what LO said
Continues Opening Government case
Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Opening
Opposition):
• Rebuts what DPM said
• Continues Opening Opposition case
Member of the Government (Closing Government):
• Extends the Government case
• Rebuts what DLO said
Member of the Opposition (Closing Opposition):
• Extends the Opposition case
• Rebuts what MG said
Government Whip (Closing Government):
• May introduce new contentions, but it’s not
generally recommended
• Rebuts what the MO said
• Summarizes the debate
Opposition Whip (Closing Government):
• Absolutely no new contentions may be introduced,
but new evidence in support of existing contentions
may be introduced
• Rebuts what the GW said
• Summarizes the debate
Role of the Opening Government
The frst goal of an OG team is to present a clear,
coherent, and above all, contentious case. Remember
that the OG case must be contentious enough to last
for eight speeches, and 56 minutes of debate. One of
the most important things OG teams should keep in
mind is that bold cases are generally better to run
than squirrelled cases that run out of steam within the
frst few speeches. It is debate, after all. This doesn’t
mean that you should propose that humans eat their
young. But it does mean that you shouldn’t be afraid
of proposing controversial models or cases. The major
point: Propose bold, but not suicidal cases.
The next thing that you must remember as OG is that
your case must be within the spirit of the resolution.
At most BP tournaments the resolutions are directed.
This means that the resolution will hint at the topic
that should be discussed. However, the wording will
usually be such that the OG will have a degree of
end of the frst minute and the start of the last) by
members of the opposite side only. You offer a point
of information by standing and indicating this,
usually by saying “point of information” or similar.
You can offer as many as you like, but if you offer
more than one in a thirty second spell it may look as
if you are trying to unsettle or harass the speaker and
you may be penalised. The speaker may accept or
decline the point in any manner they like, but most
speakers will take two points during a fve minute
speech and either two or three during a seven minute
speech. It is usually not wise to take a point very early
in a speech as it may disrupt your structure before
you have started. Taking more than two or three
points usually leaves too little time to fnish your
material (unless you are running short of things to
say) and fewer implies you are reluctant to engage the
other side (it may be acceptable to take only one point
if not many are offered). If your point is accepted
you should address a short question, contradictory
example or other such gem designed to challenge
what the speaker is saying. It must be short (about
10 seconds) and to the point. Many inexperienced
debaters are afraid of taking points of information.
Usually this is because they vastly over-estimate the
intelligence of the people they are debating and are
paranoid that they themselves are talking nonsense.
There are a number of ways to deal with points of
information. You can dismiss them briefy and then
get on with your speech (if it was a bad or a stupid
point). You can answer them more fully and dovetail
your answer into what you were going to say next,
or answer them and dovetail the answer into a later
part of your speech which you can then omit (or
refer back to briefy) when you come to it again.
Finally you can simply say that you are planning
to deal with that point later on in your speech and
carry on where you were. If you do the latter, you
absolutely MUST make it utterly explicit when you
refute the point later on. You must not use this as a
ducking tactic since adjudicators will notice. Points of
information have decided more than one Intervarsity
fnal I have been in. You must make them regularly
(and you must accept a couple) or you will lose vital
strategy marks.
The following comments on judging and the role of
each speaker are from the CSDF website, www.csdf-
fcde.ca/english/resources
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 8
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fexibility in how they frame their case. However, a
degree of fexibility does not mean that the OG can
ignore the resolution (like we do at most CUSID
tournaments).
An example of an acceptable and unacceptable
interpretation of a resolution:
Resolution: THW Sell its Children
Acceptable: THW Legalize Surrogacy for Proft
Unaccept abl e: THBT Devel opi ng Nat i ons
Should Prioritize Economic Development Over
Environmental Protection
The reason why the second interpretation is abusive
is because the original resolution clearly hints at a
topic involving the exchange of children for some
benefit. This could be a myriad of things, from
surrogacy for proft, to foreign adoption limits. So
the OG has a degree of fexibility in choosing a topic
relating to the selling of children. With this in mind,
the second interpretation clearly goes against the
spirit of the resolution.
The Role of the Opening Opposition
The Opening Opposition role is probably the one
that debaters new to BP will have the least amount
of trouble with. It’s fairly similar to the standard CP
Opposition, but with different timings. However,
there are some extremely important differences
between the two.
As the OO team, your role is twofold. You must refute
what the OG team has said, but it is not enough to
simply poke holes in the OG case.You must also
bring in constructive arguments of your own. It is not
enough to go into a BP round as an OO team and do
a rebuttal-only opposition. A good OO case would
make sense if the wording of the resolution were
reversed, and OO became the OG. You have to bring
your own constructive analysis to the round.
Good OO teams will often tie in some of their rebuttal
with their constructive points as well. This allows
the judges to see that you’re engaging with the other
team’s arguments as well as using them to build up
your own. Using this style will also help you stay
under the time limit, which is often a diffcult thing
to do if you’re faced with a lot of rebutting and
summarizing.
So remember: It’s not enough to say why their
ideas are stupid, you have to say why your ideas
are smart.
The Role of the Closing Teams
The closing positions of the debate are where we see
the most signifcant difference between BP and CP
debating. Both closing teams are expected to offer an
extension for their opening team’s case. What is an
extension? An extension can take many forms:
• Switching the focus of the debate from practical to
philosophical arguments, or vice versa
• Bringing in new practical/philosophical
arguments
• Focusing on a specifc case study
• Focusing on an already mentioned argument and
expanding on it signifcantly
This is an incredibly short list of acceptable
extensions. The main goal for a closing team is to
differentiate yourself from the opening team, but
still support them. It is very important that you
support the opening team. But at the same time it’s
still important for your arguments to be better than
theirs. So you have to make sure that your case has
an over-arching theme that the judges can easily
identify, that makes your team distinct from the
opening team, and still supports the opening team.
This doesn’t have to be diffcult. Many teams stress
themselves out about the closing positions because
of the extension, but being on the closing half of the
debate has distinct advantages. The closing teams
have the ability not only to introduce their own
constructive matter and rebut what the other team
has said, but also to summarize the debate in their
own words.
The summary is to be done by the second speaker
on each closing team. This is an integral part of the
role of each closing team. There are many ways
to summarize the debate. Some speakers like to
identify the main themes that were analyzed during
the round. Some speakers like to label each team
with a name describing their arguments. One of the
easiest ways for debaters new to BP to go through
their summary speech is to identify three questions
that need to be answered at the end of the round,
and say why your side, and particularly your team,
bring the best resolution to those questions. Any style
you choose is fne so long as it gives a substantive
summary of the arguments in the round, and why
you won those arguments. As a reminder: The
Opposition Whip is not allowed any new arguments
in their speech, and it is highly recommended that
the Government Whip focus entirely on summary,
as well.
Basic Tactics and Pitfalls:
POIs:
• Give two POIs, and take two POIs
• POIs shouldn’t be given for the sole purpose of
destroying the other team’s case. POIs should build
your case up as well.
• If you’re in the opening half of the debate your
priority in the second half should be to remain
involved. Make sure your arguments aren’t lost
among the second half of the debate. POIs are the
best way to accomplish this.
• If you’re in the second half of the debate then you
should be extremely careful about the POIs that you
give to frst half teams. Sometimes your opening
team may try and steal your extension if you give
too much away in your POIs.
• Try to remain involved in the debate by standing
on POIs, but do not harass the speaker by continually
standing on POIs and saying things like “On
Liberty”, “On the Geneva Convention”, etc.

2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 9
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• It is always better to get in one or two excellent
POIs than four or fve mediocre ones. One of the best
ways to accomplish this is for you and your partner to
put a sheet a paper between you with your best POI
written down. Then, when the speaker takes either
of you you’re certain to have an excellent POI.
• Just because everyone else is standing up on a POI
doesn’t mean you have to, Sometimes when a speaker
says something monumentally stupid everyone on
opposite benches will stand up. Usually the speaker
won’t take a POI at that time, but if there’s someone
who stood up late, they just might let them ask a
question. Often, the debater giving the POI will be
caught off-guard by this. So don’t stand up on a POI
just because everyone else is. But if you do, make sure
you have a question.
• Let people fnish their question before you wave
them down, but if they start to make a speech,
or refuse to sit down, start waving them down
immediately. If they still won’t sit down then the
speaker will deal with them.
• Finish your thought before you accept a question.
It is very easy to forget where you were if you allow
someone to interrupt you.
• If you want to get your question taken it is often
better to stand at the end of the speaker’s point.
They’ll be more likely to take you.
• If you are in a round with teams of very disparate
skills, it may at frst seem like a good idea to take
POIs from the weakest team. And that can work.
But the judges will be more impressed if you give
a good answer to a diffcult POI than if you smack
down a weak POI. So you might want to choose to
take POIs from the better team. This will show the
judges that you’re willing to engage the better team
in the round.
Organization:
• At the beginning of your speech tell the judges what
you’re going to be speaking about.
• More advanced debaters may feel comfortable
speaking without numbering their points or
signposting where they’re going with their speech.
But the majority of beginning BP debaters will
probably fnd it helpful to number their points and to
make very clear to the judges what they’re speaking
about. This helps the judges keep track of your most
important points, and it helps you cover everything
you need to.
• Pay attention to your timing. If you say that you’re
going to introduce three constructive points and then
you run out of time, that will refect poorly on you.
• Always fll your time.
Speaking Style:
• The most important thing is to keep the audience
engaged. You don’t want them drifting off and
thinking you’re boring.
• There are many ways to keep the audience and
judges engaged. These include humour, intelligent
analysis, and delivery.
• Not everyone can be a funny speaker, and that’s
okay. Most people aren’t. But it will help if you can
use a few funny quips, or open with a joke.
• Avoid being monotonous. Vary your tone and pace
of delivery.
Analysis:
• Try to introduce facts, case studies, and
philosophical analysis instead of statistics.
• Statistics are boring, they can be easily
dismissed by the opposition, they generally fall
into “specifc knowledge”, and they’re easily
falsifed.
• Focus on examples. Appropriate examples
and case studies will make a case better for the
beginning BP debater than any pretty rhetoric
can.
• Stay focused. Remember what you are trying
to communicate to the audience, and then
communicate it. Don’t go off on tangents.
Defnitional Challenges:
• Defnitional challenges are exceedingly rare.
• Do not object to a defnition of a resolution if
it is merely stupid or generally bad.
• The only time you should object to the
defnition is if it is a truism or tautology.
• The only speaker who can object to the OG
defnition is the LO. If the LO doesn’t object, no
one else can.
• If the LO objects to the defnition then they
must substitute their own.
• The remaining debaters then have to decide
which defnition to use.
• If the remaining debaters use the LOs defnition
then the debate can continue on like normal.
• If there is still disagreement about the
defnition then the closing teams must decide
which definition to support, or whether to
substitute their own.
• This is why it is usually an exceptionally bad
idea to challenge a defnition that isn’t a truism
or tautology. It’s very messy.
Knifng:
Knifng is when a closing team, or even a partner
on the same team, blatantly disagrees with a
fundamental part of the substantive case that
they’re supposed to be supporting. (Effectively
knifng someone in the back).
• In the vast majority of situations you should
not knife your opening team. It will be a negative
factor for you in the adjudication as supporting
your opening team is a fundamental part of
your role.
• However, occasionally your opening team will
be so shrill and off the mark that you’ll have
to basically ignore what they said in order to
salvage your side of the round. You may have
to twist what they said in order to make sense
of their case. Be careful with this strategy. You
probably won’t take a frst, but you may be able
to salvage a point or two out of the round.
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 10

STEP 1. Ask the important questions.
A. What is this debate/motion about?
B. Why are we debating this today; why is this
signifcant now?
Is there a particular trend, event, or popular idea that
gives relevance? Then you can add applicable theories
and tangible real world grounding
C. What would the average person understand
this as?
This makes you stand out from regular debaters and
boring debaters.
D. Avoid group think; listen and consider all ideas
as well as accept criticism yourself to come up with
the best ideas.
Example:
TH would make the incitement of religious
hatred illegal
Important ideas brainstormed:
- rights and minimizing confict
- radicalized religious confict and hatred, Koran
burning, huge conficts that have emerged in places
around the world from desecration like Nigeria.
- desecrating religious texts, hate speech, etc
publicly.
- individuals/ groups to blame as opposed to other
bodies.
- the international level and the West’s involvement
in problems
- protections/limits entailed
- culprit? effects?

CASE CONSTRUCTION IN IMPROMPTU DEBATES
D
ebaters approach case construction differently
when they have time to prepare and research
the topic, and when they are getting ready for
an impromptu debate. The advice which follows
is intended for when you are assigned a topic in
impromptu debates (whereas the article on page 13 is
about choosing what cases to run when you are given
that choice). The advice in this article is useful for
both prepared and impromptu debates which have
an assigned topic, of course.
STEP 2. How do you pick which stance, priority,
or crux you use?
i. organize and sift through ideas
ii. check compatibility of you ideas
iii. give your opposition the hardest time possible
when picking your case
(i.e. what can you concede or what stance can you take
boldly to make the OPP case harder. An example of this
is NOT conceding that drugs are “bad” in a case where
you want to legalize all drugs.)
iv. burden/ role fulfllment
v. determine groups, actors, effects, etc...
HINT: What words in the motion are clues to what
is key?

Back to the example: TH would make the
incitement of religious hatred illegal

What is incitement really? A clear call to action,
expressed out with any media on behalf of
religions. It can occur in two ways: calling your
own religion to incite hatred against another
religion or angering another religion.

religious - Just this? Why or why not? Are there
conficting laws (religious and civil)?
illegal - Incitement laws in liberal democracies.
hatred – What does this entail/cause? Is this a
harm from which your justifcation will stem?

WARNINGS:
Dont be too vague in your explanations or
defnitions.
Don’t be offensive; is this a sensitive topic? E.g.
religious head coverings
Find the correct level or abstraction; balance
principled and practical arguments
Debi Ogunrinde
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2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 11
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M
any debaters have trouble coming to grips
with a resolution, particularly if it contains a
general philosophical statement, or a values
statement. Let me suggest 3 strategies to solve that
problem.
1. Yardstick cases
In any debate, of course, there will be reasons for and
against the resolution. The diffculty occurs when
the debate just becomes a list of reasons or a list of
examples.
That is not very effective analysis, because the judge
doesn’t know how to weigh the case: do the three
affrmative examples outweigh the two negative
examples? Even if the examples or reasons chosen
are good ones, it is diffcult for a judge to assess their
relative importance. All reasons are not equal. A
debate is not won simply because your side has more
reasons than my side; the judge also has to assess
the importance of the different values. Elections are
expensive, but the judge might still prefer them to no
elections at all. So one reason — democracy — may
outweigh another reason — cost.
I call these “yardstick” cases, because the affrmative,
to advance the debate, needs to offer the judge a
yardstick by which to measure whether the value is
desirable or the change should be made. You know
if the affrmative team failed to do this, because the
debate simply becomes a list of reasons.
Consider the resolution that we should lower the
voting age. The affrmative can simply produce a list
of reasons in favour and the negative a list of reasons
opposing. A better strategy is for the affrmative to
identify a principle or a standard which the judge and
audience can use in deciding whether to lower the
voting age. It may be, “Are 16 year olds responsible
enough to choose their political leaders?”
While this could be a good debate, it really just re-
states the resolution. It doesn’t give us a yardstick
for the judge. What do we mean by “responsible
enough?” Unless the affrmative team comes out
and answers that question, the debate can be pretty
muddy. A major mistake made by high school
debaters is not to defne explicitly the yardstick which
the judge should use in deciding the case.
When the resolution or your case statement requires
the judge to assess something, you need to come right
out and tell the judge how to do that.
You might say, “16 year olds are responsible enough,
because they are as well educated as older voters, they
are as concerned about politics as older voters and
they are subject to taxes and legal penalties which are
equivalent to those faced by older voters.” What you
are saying is that “responsible enough” = educated,
concerned, and subject to taxes and penalties.
This is not simply a question of substituting a
dictionary defnition. The words, “responsible
enough” are an idea, and they do not appear
anywhere in the resolution. What you are trying
to do is to give the judge a tool to decide when
voting age should be lowered (or raised): that the
age should be set based on education, concern and
liability for taxes and penalties.
Two more points. This is something the negative
or opposition can use as well as the affrmative.
Either side can suggest what measurement the
judge should use in assessing the competiting
arguments. While it is useful to introduce the
idea at the beginning of the debate, sometimes it
emerges only in the fnal rebuttals. Whenever it
comes forward, if the measurement is reasonable,
then it can often determine the debate.
Second, this is different than just listing the
reasons your team will present (although in this
particular example, this is the list). What you are
doing is naming the characteristics that determine
“responsibility”.
This distinction is important. A negative team can
agree (for example) that sixteen year olds are as
well educated as older voters, but disagree that
education is an appropriate standard to decide
responsibility. A debate which focuses on the
measure used to decide the resolution is a very
good debate indeed.

2. The fundamental question
Another technique for analysing a resolution is
to identify a fundamental question, the answer
to which requires the resolution to be decided in
your favour.
For example, the resolution, “Marijuana be
legalized.” There are a variety of questions, the
answer to which might lead to a yes or a no to the
resolution. Consider:
• Should alcohol, tobacco and marijuana be
treated the same way?
• Has the prohibition against marijuana been
effective?
• Would the legalization of marijuana cripple
organized crime?
• Would marijuana offer the government an
important source of revenue?
You will quickly see that these are quite different
issues to consider, in deciding whether or not to
legalize marijuana. In each case, what you are
doing is giving the judge a yardstick to use in
COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE RESOLUTION
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 12
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deciding how to award the debate.
Two important observations: naming a
fundamental question does not end the debate.
There is still lots of room for argument and
disagreement over whether the legalization of
marijuana would cripple organized crime, for
example. And the choice of one question does not
preclude the other team from settling on a different
question. The negative will agree that legalizing
marijuana would provide the government with
revenue, but still argue against it. However, by
using the device of a fundamental question, you
focus the debate on one specifc issue which the
judge can consider in depth.
Instead of weighing three or four reasons on each
side (Is marijuana a gate-way drug? Is a criminal
record too serious a punishment for this activity?)
the judge focuses on one issue only. That can be
to your disadvantage, of course. If you choose
an issue (like revenue) which the judge thinks is
less important than the issue chosen on the other
side, you may make it easier for the judge to rule
against you.
Because the same resolution may admit of a
variety of different fundamental questions, the
choice of question can determine the outcome of
the debate.
Your task as a debater is to make the judges’ task
easier. For that reason, it is always effective if
you can reduce the disagreement between the
government and the opposition to essentially one
issue. The government case could boil down to
whether marijuana should be treated the same as
alcohol and tobacco and the opposition case could
boil down to whether there are good reasons
historically, medically, or otherwise for treating
the three substances differently. That kind of
analysis makes it easier for the judge to group
and consider the different reasons for and against,
than if the judge just gets a list on each side.
3. Philosophical topics
At Deerfeld (and in some university tournaments)
we encounter philosophical topics: quite general
statements or very open-ended ideas. “Can’t buy
me love”, “Blood is thicker than water”, “It is
better to die on your feet than live on your knees”
are three easy examples.
These all offer the same challenge identifed: you
need to come to grips with the topic in a way
that makes it manageable for the judge and the
opposition, and offers the judge a yardstick to
determine whether you are right or not. A clear,
focused debate is a good debate. The concrete is
always better than the vague.
The frst step is to identify the idea behind the
resolution. There is no one “right” answer to
this: what you are identifying is a debateable
proposition that is suggested by the wording.
“Can’t buy me love” might become a debate about
dividing property on divorce. It might become
a debate about internet music sharing. It might
become a debate about the Liberal sponsorship
scandal. It might become a debate about tax cuts
for the rich.
But it can’t be a debate about whether the platonic
ideal of love set out by Greek philosophers
transcends commercial value. That is an interesting
idea, but your audience does not have the easy
familiarity with the different classical works
necessary for you to make that argument. And
you have 5, 6 or 8 minutes to make your case.
Leave that debate for the Ph D student in her
thesis.
Even if you feel tempted to give it a try, remember
that a good debate requires something substantial
for both the government and the opposition to talk
about. You have to frame the debate in a way that
the opposition can mount a well-argued case in
response to your points. Something that leaves
them stammering will not produce a good debate.
So what you present must be concrete, and there
must be good arguments on both sides. If the
arguments on the opposition side are not obvious,
then you as government team must sketch for
them possible arguments.
You cannot debate a general statement of
philosophy in a 10 minute speech. You must
fnd a way to put the issue into a concrete form.
The concrete form you choose must also be easily
debateable by the other side, and, whatever angle
you choose to debate, remember the yardstick.
If you are arguing against dividing property on
divorce, give us a measurement for the judge. If
you are arguing that the commercialization of
the music industry has destroyed the previously
high quality exemplifed by the music of the 60’s,
you need to give the judge a means of assessing
“the high quality exemplifed by the music of
the 60’s”. How does the judge know when the
evidence establishes your point?
All three of these issues — yardstick cases,
fundamental questions and philosophical topics
have this in common: if you can offer the judge
a means of evaluating the debate, and frame the
debate in a concrete way, you will win. And you
can use all three techniques, whether you are
government or opposition.

2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 13
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Debating as Government
A
s you progress in debating, you will hear
many people talk about “Opp Advantage”.
This refers to the fact that the Opposition team
will win as much as 70% of their rounds at any given
tournament. Many will attribute this to it being easier
to oppose a case than to construct a good idea. There
is no natural Opposition advantage; there are only
teams who don’t take the time and effort to properly
construct a well-organized case.
A lot of people think that if they come up with an
issue and a few arguments and can talk about them
for a while, that‘s enough for a good case–and based
on this assumption, they ignore senior debaters who
try to tell them how to construct cases. This ignores
one key rule of debating: Opposition teams aren’t
required to play fair!
There is no implied good faith clause requiring an
Opposition team to engage with your principles
and have a good debate. It is just as easy, if not
easier for an Opposition team to simply beat you by
hammering your model, nit picking the construction
of your case, or stating that your case is not mutually
exclusive from a less controversial alternative. The
ONLY way to force an Opposition team to engage
in the debate you want to have is to construct your
case properly so as to remove these technical and
structural arguments from the round. When you hear
senior debaters talk about “debate mechanics” this
is precisely what they’re talking about; focusing on
technical faws in case construction as opposed to
the substantive issues in the debate. We quite often
make fun of certain American debate styles for their
reliance on this method of argument, but we use it
too. The only difference is that they have developed
a whole language around that sort of argument,
while we prefer to hide and deny our reliance on it.
Either way, the only way to avoid having those sorts
of arguments used against your cases is to construct
cases free from technical faws.
How to Construct a Proper Case
PICK A TOPIC YOU KNOW
This seems simple enough as an idea but you would
be astounded at the number of frst year political
science students that will run stem cell cloning cases
and Supreme Court references and get beaten down
by medical students and law students. This is not
High School debating; the knowledge base for these
rounds is by no means level. Rather than complaining
about this, learn to use it as an advantage. We accept a
minimum standard of knowledge for any round, but
you will win far more rounds in your specialty area
than in all other areas combined. The fip side of this is
deliberately picking cases that your opponents know
nothing about. A lot of people will tell you that doing
that is “dirty” or “unethical”. While I personally think
that such comments are complete nonsense, I won’t
get into the “strategic case” debate. Suffce it to say,
that picking a topic you know a lot about is just a
good idea regardless of how much knowledge your
opponents have about it (of course bearing in mind
the prohibition on specifc knowledge).
ONCE YOU HAVE PICKED A TOPIC, PICK AN ISSUE
The Israel/Palestine confict is NOT a debate case. It
is 500+ debating cases. Large issues lead to confusing
debates that lack clear and direct arguments which in
turn lead to landslide Opposition wins. Pick a clear
and easily defned issue to argue and pick a clear line
of argumentation to defend it. If you fnd the need to
defne each word of your case statement, the area you
have chosen to debate is too broad. Try again. If you
can’t state your case clearly in one or two sentences
your case is terrible, and you will lose.
Example
Subject Matter –Criminal Law and Punishment
Sub-Topic – Treatment of the mentally handicapped
in the justice system.
Case Statement – This house believes that persons
with mental handicaps should be punished the same
as other people in the criminal justice system.
This is decent case statement, but I’m going to
spend the majority of my time getting bogged down
in debates about intent and the levels of mental
handicap that we are talking about. This debate
could go the way I want it to, but a good Opposition
team will move this to Opposition strong ground
very quickly. Revised Case Statement “This house
would execute mentally handicapped persons who
are found guilty of capital offenses.
This new statement removes the idea of forming
intent from the debate since it only applies to those
who have been found guilty of capital offenses, so
the requisite criminal intent is already established.
The only issue is the issue of understanding the
consequences of the action and understanding of
the penalty. This debate is still hotly contested, but
is suffciently narrow that as a Government team,
I can at least ensure that I know where the debate
will go.
ONCE YOU HAVE PICKED AN ISSUE, PICK YOUR BATTLES
Every issue that makes for a good debate can be
argued from a number of sides. Bad government
teams try to cover all this ground. Good government
teams realize that 2 or 3 of these sides are signifcantly
stronger than the others. They will then focus the
debate on these issues. This puts the Opposition team
to a choice; they either argue a case on Government
HOW TO CONSTRUCT A CASE AND
WIN ON GOVERNMENT
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strong territory or they bring in the other sides of the
issue which are inherently weak and can be smacked
around by the MC. Either way the Opposition is
already on the run.
Know that your case has 2 or 3 main issues that you
are focusing on and keep them relevant throughout
the round. Make sure the PMR can still focus on these
issues. This brings me to my next point.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A POINT/PURPOSE/REASON/
NEED ETC.
A great number of cases fall simply on the fact that
they attempt to solve a problem that either isn’t real,
or that no one cares about. The following 6 questions
are ones that you ABSOLUTELY MUST go through
before knowing if your case can win.
1 What is the Problem?
2 What is your Solution?
3 Does your solution solve the problem, and is there
a better way to solve it?
4 What are the benefts of your plan?
5 What are the costs of your plan?
6 Is the Juice worth the Squeeze?
WRITE YOUR PMR BEFORE THE ROUND BEGINS
If you can’t tell before the round begins what 2 or 3
main arguments will be important and relevant by
the end of the round, then you have already given the
debate to the Opposition and are hoping they give it
back. This is not a strategy conducive to winning. I
am not suggesting that you run tight cases or that you
play dirty; I am merely suggesting it is necessary to
control the round. Know what your Opposition will
say, know the grounds of the debate and know the
central questions and how to answer them. All of this
should be in your head long before you start thinking
about your 4 or 5 constructive arguments.
There is no such thing as a tight case; there are only
bad Opposition teams. Some people will tell you
that there are cases out there that are too tight. This
is nonsense. I will bet a large amount of money that
people who tell you there is such a thing as a tight
case either lose a lot of Government rounds or spend
a lot of time dropping in semis or quarters to teams
they really should beat. If a case has enough merit
to be opposed in any meaningful sense it is fair
game. If it cannot be opposed it is not because it is
tight– it is because somewhere in it there is a truism
or a tautology. There are such things as truisms and
tautologies and they do guarantee a very quick loss if
you run them. Look closely at your cases: tautologies
are everywhere and are hard to spot. Running “balls
up” cases (cases that are very open and contentious)
is as a general rule, a good idea. It makes debating
more fun, and will earn you a great deal of respect
with the judge. That being said, the bubble round is
not the place to earn respect.
TREAT THE TWO GOVERNMENT SPEAKERS AS YOU WOULD
TREAT 1ST PROP AND 2ND PROP IN A BP ROUND
Give the MC an extension to the case to bring in some
new and interesting perspective. Be very careful not
to case shift. The fundamental idea of the case must
be the same and the arguments must mesh perfectly,
but the MC cannot just restate the PM’s points in new
words. There must be something real and something
different that brings the MC into the round and that
gives the LO something big to deal with. This puts
the LO to a choice as to what they deal with and
gives the PMR the opportunity to point out what
the LO missed.
HOW TO WIN AS GOVERNMENT
THINK ABOUT CASES BEFORE A TOURNAMENT
This sounds simple, but you would be surprised
at how often I see case preparation happening on a
plane or in a car on the way to a tournament. If you are
preparing cases in the car on the way to a tournament
or even worse in the bar on Saturday night after you
found out you’re in quarters, you have already lost.
Before every tournament I brainstorm 15-20 cases.
I construct all of them going through the steps I
outlined above. (There are Internet databases if you
get really stumped). I then start the case building, and
fguring out the Opposition to each case. Eventually I
will have fgured out that most of them are losers, but
I will usually have 8 good ones left. I will set 3 of them
aside for Sunday where I will need good cases, and I
will build them into open round cases (we’ll discuss
open round case construction some other time). The
remaining good cases get refned and ranked. I will
usually put my more open and contentious cases near
the beginning of any tournament (These are usually
enjoyable debates that lend themselves to high
speaker points which is good for bracket position in
the early rounds. Also, if you happen to hit a team
that you are not very evenly matched with, open cases
will generally result in a more enjoyable round for
all). The higher in the bracket I go and the closer to
the bubble I get, the narrower and more focused the
case that I will run. No one has ever said “sure he
dropped in the bubble, but it was a really interesting
and open case.” (People OFTEN say this about teams
in Semis, so keep those cases around).
WIN THE ROUND IN THE PMC
It sounds crazy, but it isn’t. The old rule of thumb
is that you can’t win the round in the PMC but you
sure can lose it. That is silly; if you can lose it, then
of course you can win it. Most PMC’s are dry and
formulaic. They introduce a case and set the grounds
for a debate. All of this is necessary, but it isn’t even
close to doing enough. You must also convince the
judge. This should be the most impressive speech
in the round. You have been given infinite time
to compose this speech. You got to pick the topic.
There is no reason that the LO should have a more
impressive speech than you. Don’t buy that the PMC
should be formulaic. If the judge isn’t at least leaning
your way after the PMC you will most surely lose.
Here are three things to remember:
The PMC should be the most compelling speech of
the round You should use the PMC to set traps for
the Opposition
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Use the PMC to force the other team to accept false
premises, argue on Government strong territory and
keep the debate where you want it the whole time. If
you do this right, the MO should never surprise you.
Remember, the MO only has 7 minutes to respond,
creativity is not all that easy. If you give them the
path, they will always fall for it; then you hit them
with the responses.
SET UP THE PMR
What I said earlier about writing the PMR before
you start the case comes into play here. If you have
already selected 2 or 3 main issues for the round,
use the PMC to set up those issues. You are the
quarterback of the round; you call the plays. If you
get to pick the themes of the round you can pick the
ones that fall on your side and you will have won
before you are even out of the gate; this is effective
case construction.
THE MC SPEECH
How do teams expect to win when they treat the MC
as the idiot cousin to the PM? Most teams treat the
MC as the place for the debater not good enough to
PM; this is very poor strategy. The MC usually gets
the worst constructive argument that the LO gets
to smack around for a few minutes and other than
that they usually just restate the PM’s points in new
words. I used to love being MC because if I did three
things right, we almost always won the round.
TAKE THE MO OUT OF THE ROUND
If at the end of the MC speech, you aren’t winning the
round, you have lost the round. Simple as that. If the
Opposition is ahead after the MC and the Opposition
still has the LO to go, it’s over. Sometimes as MC you
will be called upon to refocus the case– this does not
mean case shifting, but rather it means pointing out
why the MO’s speech didn’t address YOUR case.
Other rounds require you to just beat the crap out
of him or her head on. Either way, the MC must be
better than the MO, if you can’t do this, you deserve
to lose the round.
SET UP THE LO
There are a lot of ways to do this. Some rounds, I used
to make a few throw-away red herring arguments
that I was sure the LO would go after. Having the
LO spend 3-4 minutes on points that were of no
consequence to the round suddenly turned a 10
minute speech into a 6 or 7 minute speech. You can
also frame the LO’s speech for him or her by saying
things like “Mr. Speaker, the LO has to do a, b and
c to win this round of debate”. You will be amazed
at how many top debaters will follow this lead and
debate what you tell them to debate rather than what
they think should be debated. Needless to say when
you do this you are either steering them to the wrong
fghts or you are setting them up to make arguments
that the PM already has answers for.
SET UP THE PMR, PART II
This all fows from my previous comments. If you
have run the case well, this is just icing on the cake.
THE PMR
I can’t teach anyone how to give great PMR’s.
Everybody has their own style and different things
work for different people in different rounds. If
you’ve given a great PMC and a great MC, then this
is just a formality and the round is already over. If you
have screwed up, then you may need to do something
bigger. Here are two suggestions in that case.
1. Every second of the PMR is valuable. Don’t thank
people in the round or engage in needless formalities.
Don’t make cute but unfunny jokes that waste time
(funny ones are okay). Don’t refute throw away
points made by the LO or force yourself to answer
questions the LO asked. You know what the 3 main
issues are in this debate, you knew them before the
round started. Get right to them.
2. If you fnd yourself repeating the same 4 points
you made in your PMC, using the exact same words
you did the frst time, you have probably already
lost the round.
If you apply these rules diligently, you may still not
win every round, but you will win more Government
rounds than before. But if you win the coin toss, it is
still a good idea to pick Opposition, unless the other
team got a hold of this manual.
Case Building: The Seminar
THE POINT OF DEBATING
Before getting down to the nitty-gritty of how to build
a case to win a particular round, it is worth noting
that there is a reason why we all got involved with
debating in the frst place. We enjoy actively engaging
with one another’s arguments and options. The point
of debating is, I take it, to engage in a sort of dialogue
over an issue, the government and opposition teams
bounce off and directly clash with one-another. It
follows then that constructing a government case
also has a ‘point’ as it were; you are trying to present
an issue in such a way so as to foster that clash and
contention in the round.
Most people get very shy around this particular
role. It seems so much easier to run something well
within your area of expertise, with a narrow focus,
and one or two very solid and obvious arguments. It
seems like running open, interesting cases will lead
to Government losses. The reality of the situation
is quite the opposite; by making bold arguments
about tough subjects, you automatically force your
Opposition to follow suit, and by virtue of being the
Government team, you will have had much more
time to think about these tough issues. Building cases
this way is more challenging and more rewarding,
and it leads to better rounds, higher scores, and a
better likelihood of a good and winning case.
Perhaps more importantly, building cases this way
leads to more interesting and more satisfying rounds.
You’ll learn more from the round and get more out of
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debating if you try to win rounds by making better
arguments, not by running obscure cases which you
found in a back issue of the Far East Economic Review
from the mid-’80s. Don’t be afraid of ordinary topics.
Don’t be afraid of your Opposition’s knowledge.
Don’t be afraid of debating outside of your comfort
zone. There are three factors which lead to a good
debating case:
Interesting
By this I do not mean that talk about this subject
would make you the life of any party, win friends
and woo lovers, but rather that the average person
has some sort of baseline understanding of the topic,
and that it is the type of thing which the average
person might listen to for forty minutes. This is
desirable for two reasons. First, if your opponents
have some understanding of the issue they are able
to actively engage with your arguments. This leads
to better rounds, higher speaker scores, and you
look very clever for running that particular topic.
Second, if your judges understand and are interested
in the topic, they will be able to discount stupid and
irrelevant objections offered by the opposition. For
instance the topic “The IAEA should alter its nuclear
transport regulations” may be an intensely interesting
subject on which to write a term paper, but likely
neither the judges nor your opponents will have
any idea what you’re talking about. The debate will
likely get muddy and confusing, and the Government
team will lose.
Internally Decidable
This is the criterion which most people new to case
selection miss. In order to win a round, the judges
must be able to make a decision at the end of the
round. Nine times out of ten in a very muddled debate
in which neither side is able to prove their case, the
Opposition team will be declared winners. Think
about it this way: can you present the information
necessary to decide this case in just a few minutes?
If no, you should not run the case.
For instance, consider the case “be it resolved that
Canada double its military budget”. In order to
reasonably decide what Canada should do fnancially,
a judge will need to be able to see the federal budget,
see where the money for such a venture would come
from, etc. These are not resources which an average
university debating judge possesses. Almost all topics
involving cost fail to fulfll this criterion. People frst
starting out looking for cases see possible topics
everywhere: the Canadian government should do x,
we should recycle ‘more’, the UN should give more
aid to Africa, etc. Almost all of the cases that new
debaters dream up are not the type of thing which
is internally decidable. Imagine you were having a
conversation with your best friend, do you think that
the two of you would (theoretically) be able to fgure
the solution to the problem? Or would you have to
look it up in a book? if the latter, don’t run the case.
Broad
This is the most important feature of winning
debating topics. There is more than one way to argue
your side of the topic. Most debating cases end up as
one central Government contention, and a lot of fuff.
Ideally, you should be able to prove your case in three
or four separate and independent ways. When you
can manage to do this, you force your Opposition to
disprove each and every thing which you’ve brought
up. If they fail to adequately deal with any one line
of argumentation, then you can prove your case that
way. The important thing is that you don’t have just
the one important argument or idea; everything you
say, every argument you bring to the table should
demand a response. To do that, your topics need
breadth. A good way of thinking about this, is to
imagine you were to just present each argument,
or way of approaching the issue individually. If all
you had was that one tactic would you still be able
to win? If you can think of three or four such tactics
or approaches to a case then the topic is a good
one. The difference between great cases and crappy
cases is more often than not that the former has four
important arguments, while the latter has one.
An excerpt from the Cusid Central Debate Guide,
edited by Jessica Prince and Paul-Erik Veel (Dash).
The editors credit a post to CUSID.net by Rob Silver
for much of their advice. The complete guide is
available at http://www.cusid.ca/documents/
guides/central_debating_guide.pdf
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CROSS EXAMINATION
Rules
1. No formal interruptions such as points of order are permitted during the course of the debate, although at
the end of the debate, debaters can complain of rule violations.
2. At the end of each debater’s initial remarks, he or she will be questioned by an opponent, usually for two
or three minutes.
3. While being questioned, a “witness” may only answer questions; the only questions permitted are to have
a confusing query answered. Witnesses must answer the questions themselves - neither the witness nor the
“examiner” may seek help from a colleague, although both may rely on source materials and books during the
examination. The witness must answer all questions directly and honestly.
4. While asking questions, an examiner may not make statements or argue with the witness; he or she may
only ask questions of the witness. Judges are instructed to disregard information introduced by an examiner
while questioning, and to penalize examiners for breaking the rules.
5. There are no formal rules of evidence which govern the sort of question which may be asked, though common
sense dictates that the examination should be limited to fair questions on relevant subjects; these need not arise
out of the preceding speech. Moreover, there must be no brow-beating or attempts to belittle an opponent, and
debaters must treat one another with courtesy.
Many of the conventions of Parliamentary debate are also absent - there is no proscription which prohibits
calling another debater by name, and it is common practice to address opponents by their frst names, especially
during the course of cross-examination. They may also be addressed as “witness” and “examiner”, as the case
may be, but pejorative references should be avoided. Except when questioning or answering questions, one’s
opponents should always be referred to in the third person rather than directly. (For example, “he told you
that ...”, “the witness said ...” or “my friend thinks ...”, but not “you told us ...” or “you said.”)
The moderator and any other members of the audience may be addressed either directly or generally and
it is common to refer to “Ladies and Gentlemen”. “My point, ladies and gentlemen, is simply that ...”
Correspondingly, teams are not the “Government” and the “Opposition” but rather the “affrmative” and the
“negative” (or occasionally the “proposers” and the “opposers”). Of course, individual members of a team
may be referred to as noted above, but as there is no “House”, they are not “Honourable Members” but at best,
“Honourable Friends”.
I
wrote two monographs on cross examination in
the 1980’s. Lauren Bialystok wrote a very fne
monograph in A Debater’s Manual. The following
is an edited version of my earlier material, with some
very heavy borrowing from Lauren’s work.
Cross examination debate differs from other styles
because at the end of each constructive speech,
the debater is subject to cross examination by an
opponent. When well done, this prevents a debater
from avoiding key opposition challenges to the case
and forces the debater to respond to specifc issues.
The purpose of cross examination debate is the
same as the purpose of any other style: to make a
favourable impression on the judge. So it doesn’t
matter if you can’t convince your opponent during
the debate, and it doesn’t matter if he or she doesn’t
admit that you are right. Your objective is to convince
the judge.
Constructing Effective Questions
1. Deal directly with the key issues in the debate Where
possible, stick to the key issues. In a debate on
advertising prescription drugs, one issue maybe
making people aware of medical conditions they did
not know they had. If that is a key issue, try to frame
questions which deal with it.
2. Decide what admissions you want from the witness.
What is the purpose of the questioning? The easiest
way to write questions is to start backwards: decide
what you would like your opponent to admit (be
reasonable!) and devise questions that will elicit that
admission.
3. Recognize that admissions fall into two principal
categories: admissions of fact, and conclusions. Normally
you will ask a series of factual questions designed
to produce a conclusion. So once you start with what
conclusion you want the audience to draw, attempt to break
that conclusion into a series of factual statements that
lead to it. “Has the crime rate increased or decreased
since 1980?” and “Have the number of assaults
against police offcers increased or decreased since
1980?” are two factual questions that might lead to
the conclusion that you want, that there is no need
for an increase in police powers.
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4. Once you have your draft question, make it a leading
question. McDonald’s asks “Do you want fries with
that?” because leading questions are hard to resist. A
leading question is one that implies the answer you
want, and is normally accomplished by inverting it.
The questions in the example above become, “The rate
of violent crime has declined since 1980, hasn’t it?”
and “The number of assaults against police offcers
have declined in the same period, hasn’t it?”
5. Add the factual basis to the question. It is not enough
to imply the answer; your question should also have
the content that makes it indisputable. In the two
examples above, the questions, although leading,
might still produce an unsatisfactory or disputed
answer. They should be proved. “In 1983, the rate of
violent crime declined from 14 incidents per thousand
population to 9 incidents per thousand, didn’t it?”
and “In the same period, assaults against police
offcers declined from 312 to 249 across Canada,
didn’t they?”
6. Start friendly, end up aggressive (but only if necessary)
Friendly questions enable you to get as much as
possible out of the witness and make him or her look
defensive if they won’t answer friendly questions
truthfully. Once you have as much as possible in this
way, you can then get tougher. Be careful, though, not
to overdo it: leading questions are inherently tough.
Don’t alienate your judges.
7. Ask short questions And a short, leading question
should result in a short answer. Ask a series of short
questions, instead of one long question. They give
the witness less time to think, and you may get
agreement to the pieces without getting agreement
to the whole.
8. Don’t ask “why”. Why questions are the opposite
of leading: they allow the witness to say whatever
he wants. You want to control and limit what he
can say.
9. Avoid absolutes. It is easier to have a witness
acknowledge that “some Canadians” believe
something, than that all Canadians believe something.
The more reasonable statement is normally enough
for your purposes.
10. Ask questions in a positive form. A “yes” to “You
don’t believe advertising works?” could mean
anything.
You now have your cross-examination questions.
They may beneft from editing and polishing (and
they may identify to you areas of your own case that
require further research) but you should now be a
strong cross-examiner.
Of course, what specifc questions you ask is very
much a result of the particular debate resolution, the
side you are on, and the position your team takes on
THE EXAMINER

ROLE: to ask questions of an opponent following his/her speech
GOAL: to extract damaging admissions from opponent using a crafty progression of questions

TECHNIQUES: short, straightforward, specifc questions, yielding an answer about 5
seconds in length, often just “yes” or “no”

• a series of short questions leading to a self-evident conclusion
• a series of questions, each of which yields the same answer
• offensive attack of witness’s speech through questioning on its inconsistencies and logical faws
• maintaining control of cross-examination by questioning on more obscure information, such as specifc surveys or statistics
• questioning on points that will be brought up in examiner’s speech, but are as of yet unknown to witness, thus resulting in
confusion as to the desired response of the examiner
DESCRIPTION: polite, patient, confdent and knowledgeable
WOULD NEVER:
deliver a speech
ask why
ask a question to which he/she does not know the answer
ask personal questions, or questions that are irrelevant to the debate
converse with partner or opponent
demand a “yes or no” answer from witness
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Strategies in Answering Questions
In answering questions, you must, of course, tell the
truth and be (and convey the impression of being)
forthright; but you can do so within the limits of the
following. You have two possible approaches:
(1) The examiner is wrong or mistaken - and so you
give him or her an answer he or she does not want
or does not expect. You disagree with him or her. If
this is to succeed, you should have at hand suffcient
information or reasoning to make it clear why your
answer is correct, and not merely an evasion.
(2) Sometimes you can give the examiner the answer
he or she wants or expects without hurting your
case. This can be very effective. For example, it may
be that,
(a) the logic or premise on which the
questions are based is wrong: even if you answer all
of the questions the way the examiner wishes, that
may not prove the conclusion he or she wishes to
draw. (For example, even if you admit there have
been a number of recent, sensational police killings,
that does not show that the rate of violent crime is
generally increasing.)
(b) the answers you give do support the
conclusion your examiner wishes to draw, but that
conclusion itself does not prove his or her case as a
whole. (An admission that there are a lot of abuses
under the existing parole system does not demand a
return to Capital Punishment; rather it may indicate
the need for parole reform.)
(c) many of the answers you give are ones
your examiner seeks, but to crucial questions you give
an answer he or she does not want or does not expect.
You may be able to give the examiner most of what he
or she wants without hurting your case. (Even if you
admit that 40% of car accidents are “alcohol-related”,
that statistic does not mean that 60% of those who
drink-and-drive don’t have accidents; it means that
of all drivers - both those who have been drinking
the several issues in the debate. Because the examiner
may only ask questions, it is very diffcult to cross-
examine on abstract issues (which, in any event,
should be avoided in a debate). The possibility of
error or police abuses in the present system is vague;
the case of Donald Marshall is concrete. The crime
rate is vague; the case of Paul Bernardo is specifc.
If abstract issues are to be dealt with, they should
be illustrated with concrete examples, analogies or
particular instances.
Examples of an Opening Cross Examination
Question

While debating daycare, your opponent asserts that
daycare enriches the lives of all toddlers. You want to
ask about a study showing that toddlers enrolled in
daycare are more susceptible to pneumonia. What is
the best way to open your series of questions?
1. Aren’t all toddlers enrolled in daycare more
susceptible to pneumonia than those who aren’t?
This opening is hostile. It welcomes denial from your
opponent because of its obvious clash against his/her
case. Since it’s not furnished with specifc evidence,
it also invites a speech from your opponent instead
of the brief answer you are seeking. Your opponent
would have no cause to agree with this damaging
assertion unless you convince them that it is true. Who
says that toddlers in daycare are more susceptible to
pneumonia? Certainly not your opponent.
2. Were you aware that a 1994 study showed that
toddlers are 29% more likely to acquire pneumonia
if they are enrolled in a daycare program?
This opening is specific, and chances are your
opponent will not have heard of your particular
study. The specifcity of your evidence gives you
credibility and might shock your opponent initially.
At the same time, this question leaves you little or
no room to manoeuvre. Supposing your opponent
concedes to being unfamiliar with your damaging
study — then what? It is very diffcult to follow up
an opening like this with questions about daycare’s
adverse affects on children. Since you’ve already
played your aggressive card, your opponent is much
more likely to argue with your subsequent questions;
he/she already knows what you were trying to prove,
and will do the utmost to resist letting you get away
with it.
3. You mentioned that daycare enriches the lives of
toddlers?
This question is both friendly and specifc. By opening
with a quote or paraphrase from your opponent’s
speech, you are guaranteed to receive your desired
answer to at least one question (it would be ridiculous
for a debater to deny something he/she said just a
few minutes earlier). The question is innocuous, since
your direction is unclear and your opponent therefore
can’t spot your trap.

The question will also allow you to continue nudging
your opponent toward the damaging concession you
desire. Consider the questions that might constitute
the remainder of this series:
Being exposed to health hazards would not enrich
the life of a toddler?
[“No”]

Pneumonia is a rather serious health hazard?
[“Yes “]

Were you aware that a 1994 study proved that
toddlers enrolled in daycare are 29% more likely to
contract pneumonia than toddlers not enrolled in
daycare?
......... no... I mean, er.. .
Voila- trapped!
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THE WITNESS
ROLE: to answer examiner’s questions as honestly and reasonably as possible

GOALS: to defend position and avoid admitting to damaging concessions

TECHNIQUES:
• qualify an answer with reasonable information
• use up full 30 seconds allotted to each answer
• surprise the examiner by remaining unfustered at all times, even when offering damaging information

DESCRIPTION: calm, cool and collected

WOULD NEVER:
• refuse to answer a question, unless it be of an uncomfortably personal nature
• ask any questions

of the examiner, other than clarifcation of the question
• be evasive by deliberately stalling or talking around the question instead of providing a direct answer
• deny obvious truths or dispute accepted facts for the sake of irritating the examiner
• formulate an answer longer than 30 seconds
and those who haven’t been - a disproportionate
percentage of the total accidents are caused by those
who drink and drive.”
(d) the answers you give do support the case
of the examiner, but it may be that the evidence as a
whole is against it. (An admission that incarceration
is more expensive than Capital Punishment doesn’t
end the debate on the death penalty!)
Whichever approach you take - and of course, it may
be different for different lines of questioning - it will
be necessary to make clear to the judges why the
conclusion the examiner wants does not follow from
the answers you have given. I recommend that the
next debater on your team begin his or her speech
by referring to the two most recent cross-examination
periods - in which your team answered questions and
in which your team questioned an opponent. His
or her purpose in doing so is to explain away any
apparently damaging answers you may have given,
and to highlight the damaging nature of the answers
your opponent has just given. (“Before I begin my
constructive remarks, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like
to say a brief word about the two cross-examinations
just concluded. Under examination, my opponent
admitted that the crime rate has declined over the
last three years, while at the same time, complaints
against the police have increased. This reinforces our
belief that there is no present need for an increase
in police powers. At the same time, you will recall
that when my colleague was cross-examined, he
admitted that protection of the public is the reason
for a police force, and that a police force is vital to
the protection of society. But these questions show
that the affrmative team has missed the point of the
debate: we are not suggesting that the police force be
disbanded - of course we need a police force. The real
question is whether we need a more powerful police
force at a time when crime is declining and there are
many objections to the existing police powers ...”
Particular Advice
1. Don’t be in denial However you answer the
questions put to you, it is best to be forthright and
cooperative, and so create a favourable impression
with the judges. If the examiner is mistaken, show
later why his or her questions don’t make sense
or don’t justify the conclusion he or she seeks. If
the question requires an extended answer, ask
for permission to give an extended answer; if the
examiner refuses, you win the point in the minds of
the judges; if he or she consents, he or she can hardly
complain that you are taking too long. (For example,
you might say, “There are four reasons why we
believe that. Do you want me to explain them?”)
2. Listen to the Question. Most witnesses get
themselves into trouble by jumping to conclusions.
Listen to what you are actually being asked.
3. If you need to qualify your answer, give the qualifcation
frst.
Your objective as witness is the same as your objective
as examiner: to create a favourable impression
with the audience. To do that, you should appear
cooperative and helpful. You should not become
defensive (which suggests that you are making
damaging admissions). And you should not stall -
this signals that you do not know the answer, that it is
damaging, or that you are unprepared. Answering a
question with a question reveals a poor knowledge of
the rules. You want to convince the audience that
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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questions, ask the examiner which one he or she
wants answered;
(c) Answer the question truthfully, and as briefy as
possible. Long answers always look evasive and may
create a bad impression on the judges. Worse, a long
answer uses up the examination period - and the best
impression you can create comes when you answer
“all of the questions your opponent could possibly
have” and still have time left over. A long answer is
also more likely to contain information damaging to
your case than a short one.
(d) Don’t make speeches, and don’t declare to the
audience “I know where you are going with that
line of questioning!” Far better that you should
(apparently without trying) turn the questions to
your own advantage.
The cornerstone of cross examination debate is that each debater is cross examined after
his or her constructive remarks. However, in some provinces the order of cross examination is
different from others. Some provinces do it in two person teams, and some in three person teams.
Some have a rebuttal included as part of the initial speech, and some have separate rebuttals. The
following illustrate two of the formats in use:
Modifed* Oxford format (two-person teams) (sample maximum speaking times)

1st Affrmative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 2nd Negative 3 minutes
1st Negative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 1st Affrmative) 3 minutes
2nd Affrmative (constructive speech) 8 minutes
Cross-examination by 1st Negative) 3 minutes
2nd Negative (constructive speech) 8 minutes
Cross Examination by 2nd Affrmative 3 minutes
1st Negative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
1st Affrmative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
Complaints of rule violations, misquotations, etc. by either team.
Cambridge format (three-person teams) (sample maximum speaking times)
1st Affrmative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 2nd Negative 3 minutes
1st Negative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 1st Affrmative) 3 minutes
2nd Affrmative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 3rd Negative) 3 minutes
2nd Negative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 2nd Affrmative 3 minutes
3rd Affrmative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 1st Negative 3 minutes
3rd Negative (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Cross-examination by 3rd Affrmative 3 minutes
1st Negative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
1st Affrmative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
2nd Negative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
2nd Affrmative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
3rd Negative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
3rd Affrmative (rebuttal-defence-summary speech) 3 minutes
Complaints of rule violations, misquotations, etc. by either team.
you are forthright, well prepared and correct in your
views; you don’t want to alienate them through bad
manners. In particular, if a question has trapped
you, be as nonchalant and pleasant as possible - by
doing so, the judges may miss (or misunderstand)
the effect of the admission you are forced to make.
Further, such an attitude may bluff the opposing
debater into thinking the admission unimportant or
also to your advantage.
Your job as a witness breaks down into four steps:
(a) Listen to the question carefully. Be certain that
you understand what is being sought before you
attempt an answer, but don’t stall;
(b If you do not understand the question, ask
for clarification; if the question is really several
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 22
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Examples of Answers to Cross Examination
Questions
How should you answer the following questions
under cross- examination?
1. You’re opposing a resolution that proposes the
redistribution of funds to educational programs.

“Should we look for ways to reduce the cost of
providing special needs programs in highschool?”
a) Yes, we should always be looking for ways to
save money.

This answer is indeed honest and reasonable.
However, it may give your examiner too much
ground. He/she may be able to prove that a certain
method of redistributing funds would be more cost-
effective for special needs programs.
b) Only so long as we remember that our frst priority
is to provide quality programs that meet students
needs.

This answer is reasonable and protects you from
being forced to make dangerous concessions. Your
cross-examiner may be able to prove that it is possible
to save money on special needs programs, but you
will have already indicated that saving money is
secondary if education suffers as a result.
2. “Which organism is more complex, something like
a tomato or a potato or a human being?”
a) It’s quite judgmental to say that one organism is
necessarily more complex than another one. A chimp
has 98% of the DNA of a human.
This answer attacks the premise of the question with
a biological example. The answer is nevertheless
unreasonable because the question was simple and
uncontroversial; even biologists would agree that a
human is more complex than a vegetable.
b) I’d have to say the human being is more
complex
This answer is reasonable and honest. In this case,
it makes more sense to agree with the examiner
unconditionally than to look for ways to twist the
question.
3. You’re opposing the resolution BIRT that no
principle justifes the taking of a human life.

“Don’t you think that we should stop euthanasia,
because — well, don’t you believe that it’s wrong to
let people kill each other and isn’t that in our Charter
of Rights?”
a) Could you clarify that question please?

Although the witness’s duty is to answer all questions
honestly, exceptions are made when the examiner
does not formulate a comprehensible question. A
witness is allowed to respond with a request for
clarifcation whenever this occurs.
b) It’s not wrong to let someone take another’s life
when that person has asked the other one to do so.
Euthanasia is not addressed in the Charter of Rights
— murder is. Euthanasia is different from murder.
This answer attempts to address all aspects of
the examiner’s confusing question. Although the
answers are all reasonable, it is easy for answers
to be misinterpreted when the exact question is
incomprehensible. In this case, it’s better to ask the
examiner to narrow it down so that your own words
aren’t equally vague.
4. You’re opposing the resolution BIRT that the
ownership of personal automobiles be outlawed in
all urban centres.

“Do you want your children to face the increased health
hazards associated with the pollution caused by urban
life?”
a) I’m not going to have any children
This answer is purely evasive and sarcastic.

b) No, but we must remember that the causes of the
health hazards, suchas the exhaust from automobiles,
provide benefts as well, such as quick and convenient
transportation.
This answer is well-qualifed. However, by starting
with the word “no— the examiner’s desired response
— you allow the examiner to cut you off before you
are able to qualify your stance. After you say no the
examiner could easily say “thank you” and move on
to the next question.
c) We beneft greatly from cars. While I don’t want
my children to face health hazards in the future, I
wouldn’t trade the benefts of modern transportation
to protect them.
This answer provides the same information as answer
b), but in a safer order. The evidence is presented
frst, and the answer next. The examiner is therefore
unable to cut you off before you’ve completed your
response.
Compiled by Brian Casey with excerpts
from A Debater’s Manual by Lauren
Bialystok with permission from the
author
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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E
ACH DEBATER has an individual speaking style. It
is in this area that general comments are least
useful. There are at least four elements that
combine to affect the presentation of your remarks;
your delivery should be critically assessed in respect
of the language you use, your use of your voice and
body, and the personality you project.
A. Language
The language you use should be clear and simple.
You are speaking for an audience that cannot re-
read the portions of your argument that it does not
understand.
“Combine abstract notions with concrete
examples. Your audience will not follow you
if you always speak in First Principles and do
not get into actual cases. Likewise, they will
become restless if you always talk in specifcs
and do not take the long view from time to
time on central issues.”
(McKenzie, Debating Tips, page 2.)
Your language should be concrete. Use single words,
not long expressions. Use short words when they are
available. Vary your language, but aim for simplicity.
Oratory requires the right word, not the long word.
Ensure that your speech is grammatically sound.
Each sentence must be correct and each word must
be used correctly. “Continually” does not mean
“continuously”; “enormity” means “immense
wickedness”; it does not mean “large”. The careful
speaker should refer to H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary
of Modern English Usage (Oxford University Press) or
some similar work when a question of usage arises.
B. Voice
The second element of your delivery is your voice.
The single most important requirement, of course,
is that you be heard. If your audience cannot hear
you, they will not be persuaded by you. Your voice
has two other chief functions - it must sustain the
audience’s interest (often through variety) and it
must be easily understood. You must not only be
loud enough; your articulation and enunciation
must be clear.
Beyond these obvious comments, much remains.
Your voice takes on variety when you change the rate
at which you speak or the tone, volume or infexion of
your voice. A pregnant pause or a rhetorical question
can serve to punctuate your speech.
Your voice is your single most important performing
instrument. Use it well. There is no substitute for
practise. You need not rehearse a particular speech ad
nauseum - reading anything aloud with appropriate
emphasis will accomplish your purpose. But
rehearse you must, unless you are fortunate enough
to have a voice which is naturally clear, audible and
interesting.
C. Body
Your body is also an important debating instrument.
A few rules of thumb, although subject to exceptions,
may be stated:
Stand erect. It is all right to appear at ease and
relaxed, but never slouch. Similarly, never stoop to
use a microphone - adjust it so you can use it standing
upright You may rest your notes or both hands on
a table, chair or podium if you can do so without
bending over. If you cannot do so, then change the
height of the table, chair or podium, or don’t use it.
Do not put your hands into your pockets.
Gesture naturally and without exaggeration.
You may wish to make a hand or arm gesture to
emphasize a point - or use your entire body. If most
of your speech is delivered from behind a podium,
it may be helpful to emphasize a point by moving
forward, becoming closer and more confding to your
audience. However, you should not cross the foor
or otherwise appear to menace your opponents.
You should generally avoid repeated movements.
A routine gesture (or swaying, or walking back and
forth) distracts the audience. Likewise you should
try to avoid nervous mannerisms, such as repeatedly
clicking your pen or playing with a paper clip.
Look your audience in the eye. Walter Cronkite was
a superb newscaster - few of us are as convincing
reading a script as he was, looking up only
occasionally. A speech in which the debater is always
engaging the audience - by gesture, or eye contact - is
a winning and persuasive speech. Far better that you
maintain eye contact, even if you have to stop and
fnd your next point periodically, than that you read
your remarks without interruption or glancing up.

Try to interpret your judges’ reactions. One of the
benefts of eye contact is that you can often guage
how well your audience understands the point
you are making and whether they are favourably
disposed to you. If your audience appears to be
confused, explain at greater length; if you think
they have grasped your point, move on to your next
argument. If they seem set against you, try another
tack. The most persuasive speaker is he who best
reads his audience.
Smile when it is appropriate to do so. Smiling and
taking a deep breath before you begin speaking
can often reassure your audience as well as relax
yourself.
DELIVERY
(An Excerpt from Some Elements of Debate)
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 24
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D. Personality
Every debater by the combination of his language,
voice and body conveys a message to his audience
about his personality. If he is good, he will seem
warm, enthusiastic, but not biased. He will be
comfortable, but not arrogant; gracious, but not
condescending. He will be concerned, occasionally
troubled, always collected and sometimes agitated.
He will be a person speaking normally to an audience
he respects.
Consider what personality you display. Your debate
is more than a written argument; it is a persuasive
exchange.
E. Courtesy
A debater can never be too courteous. Although
debating has always been characterized by witty
personal jibes, such comments if pointed are out of
place in competitive debate. Debaters who are on
the receiving end of such comments frequently think
they are intended in earnest. Judges will penalize
debaters for such remarks. Debaters who utter them
look petty and mean spirited.
There is no harm in levity, however. To make it clear
that the remarks are only in fun, lampoon yourself
and your partner(s), if you wish. (“The Opposition
may have been well served by a public school
education, Mr. Speaker, but the system has also
produced unfortunates such as my partner, who can
barely write his own name.”)
You should never argue with the judges or the
moderator, especially if they are clearly wrong.
You may know far more about debating than these
offcials - but telling them so is unlikely to convince
them. Bite your tongue and say nothing at the time,
reporting the matter to the tournament co-ordinator
later if it is serious enough. You should not publicly
complain about judging: this is in poor taste and
demonstrates bad sportsmanship. Debate judges
are volunteers who usually do their best to be
impartial and to render a fair and objective decision.
Accord them and other offcials the respect that they
deserve.
You should normally introduce yourself to the
other team before the debate and congratulate them
afterwards. It is a common practice for debaters to
walk over to their opponents’ table and shake hands
with them at the conclusion of the contest.
While they are speaking, pay attention to your
partners. If you spend your time looking out the
window, several other spectators probably will
follow suit. On the other hand, if you keep looking
at him or her, it will be harder for other observers to
let their attention wander. If you wish to stare out
the window, wait until your opponents are speaking.
Remember, however, that the judges may conclude
that you are not paying attention to the debate and
penalize you. It is wiser to appear to be attentive and
involved right to the end of the debate by carefully
observing and taking notes of your opponents’
remarks, and you should always be alert to the
possibility of heckling, raising points or complaining
about rule violations by your opponents (depending
on the style of debate).
O
NE OF THE frst things you may want to disagree
with in a debate is the Affrmative's defnition
of the resolution. An Affrmative team has
the right to defne the resolution, but they also have
a responsibility to defne it fairly and reasonably.
Consequently, the Negative team is entitled to dispute
all or any defnitions that they consider unfair or
unreasonable.
The actual moment at which the Negative team
raises its objections to an Affirmative definition
varies according to the type and style of debate.
In bilingual debates, any dispute about defnition
takes place at the very beginning, before the frst
Affrmative constructive speech. These disputes are
settled by the moderator. In unilingual debates, there
is more variety. The rules of some parliamentary
tournaments allow the opposition to interrupt the
Prime Minister's frst speech on a point of order,
make their challenge to the defnition immediately
and have it ruled on by the speaker. Alternatively,
the first opposition speaker may dispute the
defnition during his frst address and the speaker
may rule on it then. In most Academic and Cross-
Examination debates, the moderators stay out of
these arguments, requiring the teams to dispute the
terms of the defnition within their speeches. In any
event, challenges must be made before the end of
the frst negative speech. Before the debate begins,
make sure you know when you should make any
challenge (when the moderator asks "Are there any
questions regarding the rules?"). By simply asking
this question, you may discourage the Affrmative
from sneaking in an unfair defnition.
When deciding whether or not to challenge a
defnition, bear in mind:
1. Affrmative teams may be tempted to defne terms
in such a way as to make their task easier.
a) They may overstate or undervalue key terms of
the resolution such as "good", "success", or "failure".
For example, in the resolution "The modern Olympic
games are a failure", the Affirmative could win
more easily if a "failure" was interpreted as "not
achieving all of one's goals" rather than "one's major
objectives" and if this interpretation was accepted
by the negative.
b) They may resort to tautologies. For example, "Is
Canada a great nation?" would become tautologous
if "Canada" is defned as "the great nation in which
we live" (A equals A).
c) They may be vague or unclear, either deliberately
or accidentally. A vague definition allows the
Affrmative to shift their position during the debate
in response to your attack. For example, with the
question "Should the U.S. take military action against
countries that harbour terrorists?", they might defne
"military action" as "an undertaking by the armed
forces". This sounds reasonable, but in reality
REFUTATION:
DISPUTING DEFINITIONS
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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is rather broad and unspecific. It could include
anything from nuclear devastation to the dropping
of propaganda leafets from B-52's. In policy debates
a vague defnition is sometimes accompanied by an
equally vague plan. An inexperienced Affrmative
team may hope to win the debate by stressing the
obvious problem, or the need to punish terrorists and
their supporters, and avoiding the diffcult issue of
how this would be done. When the Negative points
out the disadvantages in nuclear attacks, invasions,
or large commando raids, the Affrmative retreats,
claiming "that is not what they meant”. Towards
the end of such a debate, the Affrmative reveals a
more moderate interpretation of "military action",
suggesting that "naval blockades" or intercepting
airliners carrying known terrorists" is the sort of thing
they had in mind.
An Affrmative team is unlikely to win with such
an approach, but may succeed in frustrating the
Negative. In Cross-Examination debates, the frst
question period is an excellent opportunity to pin
down exactly what is within and what is outside of
the Affrmative's defnition.
d) They may squirrel, that is, interpret the resolution
in a deliberately unusual way just to make things
diffcult for you. For example, "Teachers should have
the right to strike" means "Teachers should be allowed
to administer corporal punishment". Although
some latitude is allowed in impromptu debating,
squirreling is widely frowned upon. Included here
would be defnitions that take a too literal approach to
metaphorical statements. With "A stitch in time saves
nine", one cannot defne "stitch", "time" and "nine"
independently, with no regard to the context.
e) They may defne a term too narrowly. For example,
with "Cartoons are detrimental to society" they might
defne cartoons as "animated flms", hoping to discuss
the violence in T.V. cartoons, while you might wish
to make reference to the positive contributions of
political cartoonists in the newspaper.
2. Judges are often bewildered and annoyed by
debates that focus too much on questions of defnition.
If they expect a discussion of native rights, they will
be disappointed by a debate that deals mainly with
the true meaning of the word "better". You should
therefore accept defnitions that do not signifcantly
affect your chances of winning, even if they are not
what you had expected. When preparing a debate,
decide with your partner the sorts of defnitions you
can accept and try to anticipate likely problems.
When challenging a definition, follow this
procedure:
1. Restate the affrmative's defnition.
2. Explain which parts you disagree with.
3. Explain why (unclear, tautologous, etc.).
4. Explain how the debate will be affected by
accepting this wrong defnition.
5. Propose your own defnition.
6. Support this on the basis of authority and/or
common usage.
7. Explain how the debate will work better with
your defnition.
8. Restate a full defnition of the whole resolution
as it is acceptable to your team.
A sample challenge to a defnition.
The resolution is that "The modern Olympic Games
are a failure". The Affrmative team has defned
the resolution thus: the international athletic
competitions, summer and winter, held every four
years, with some interruptions, since 1896, have not
achieved all of the goals of their founders.
The frst Negative speech would begin: "Mister
Moderator, the Affrmative has defned the resolution
before us today as (see above). The negative must
take issue with one key word in this defnition: it is
'all'. By defning a failure as something that occurs
when all one's goals are not met, the Affrmative
is assigning to 'failure' a value that it simply does
not possess. The effect of such a rigid defnition of
this term would be to render the Affrmative's case
much easier, and the Negative's much harder, than
seems the intent of the resolution. Accepting such a
defnition would mean that if the Affrmative could
show that just one minor objective of the games had
not been achieved, while the vast majority of worthy
goals had been met, then they would win the debate.
And since no one would be foolish enough to pretend
that the Olympics have been a completely unqualifed
success, there would be little for the negative team
to argue.
Consequently, we propose what we consider a more
reasonable and even-handed defnition of failure. A
failure is an attempt that achieves less than half of its
signifcant objectives.
Such a defnition conforms with normal Canadian
usage. For instance, a student in school or university
who successfully solved nine out of ten problems
on a math test, would not consider ninety percent a
failing grade, but would have failed with forty-nine
percent or less.
By accepting our defnition, Mister Moderator, the
debate will consist of an honest comparison of the
strengths and weaknesses of the modern Olympics,
where one team attempts to show that the disasters
outweigh the triumphs, and vice-versa. This, surely,
is the intent of the resolution.
The resolution, then, means ‘The international athletic
competitions, summer and winter, held every four
years, with some interruptions, since 1896, have
achieved less than half of the signifcant objectives
of their founders.’”
This may sound somewhat detailed but it should.
Refuting a defnition can sometimes be crucial to
winning the debate. Your attack on a defnition
should be as clear, specific, well-organized and
substantiated as all other forms of refutation. This
skill needs practice. To begin, try to prepare your
own attack on each of the false defnitions contained
in number 1. b)-e) above.
Excerpted from “Refutation and Rebuttal” by Nigel
Marshall
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 26
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FRAMING
The importance of picking a vocabulary
for dying
ANDRÉ PICARD
The Globe and Mail
Published Monday,
Jun. 18 2012, 10:45 PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Jun. 19 2012, 8:14 AM EDT
In matters of life and death, words matter.
That is an important message that emerges from
Friday’s B.C. Supreme Court decision that struck
down the ban on …Well, on what exactly?
Gloria Taylor, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis, won the right to end her life at the time
of her choosing. Because of the physical limitations
caused by ALS, the 64-year-old can get a physician
to help by administering a death-hastening drug –
the nuance that landed the case in court and on the
front pages.
What do you call the right she won?
Physician-assisted suicide? Physician-enabled death?
Physician-hastened death? Euthanasia? Voluntary
euthanasia? Rational suicide? Suicide? Mercy killing?
State-sanctioned murder? Death with dignity? And
there are many more variations, each loaded with
legal and moral baggage.
The language we choose tends to reflect where
we stand on the underlying question of whether
grievously and irremediably ill people should have
the right to choose to end their lives rather than let
an illness take its course.
Ultimately, the fundamental legal issue is choice: Do
individuals have control over their bodies in death
as in life?
There are obvious parallels with the abortion debate.
The battle lines are similar, with civil libertarians at
one end of the spectrum, religious fundamentalists at
the other, and most people uncomfortably pragmatic
in the middle, meaning they want choice to exist
but hope they never have to exercise the choice
themselves.
Those who are pro-choice use neutral language like
consensual physician-assisted dying and describe
their quest as ensuring death with dignity. Those who
are anti-choice use more loaded terms like assisted
suicide and euthanasia.
Suicide is an act of self-harm that is almost always
a byproduct of mental illness like schizophrenia or
severe depression. This is in no way comparable to
hastening death via a methodical, sober process with
a number of legal safeguards.
Calling medically assisted dying suicide is a lot like
calling surgery a knife attack....
I
n the following article, André Picard makes the important point that the language we use in debating an issue
often defnes the issue and reveals our position.
For debaters, the language you use should be deliberately chosen to advance your position. So don’t fall into the
trap of using the language your opponent does to describe an issue; recognize that the value-laden terms that give
him or her an advantage may place you at a disadvantage. Read the excerpt from the article and then consider
the questions at the end.
Picard goes on in his piece to discuss the issue - and
offer some particularly clear insights. However, the
excerpt here is to illustrate the importance of framing,
not discuss the underlying issue.
Please give a Government framing for the following
issues (to support the change) and an opposition
framing for the same issues:
1. Reduce spending on transfers to mothers
2. Increase sentences for drug offences
3. Offer fnancial help to car manufacturers
4. Increase tuition costs at university
5. Increase spending on military equipment
6. Reduce spending on health care
7. Provide health care to immigrants
8. Supply armaments to terrorists
There are other examples you can practice on once
you get the hang of framing an issue in a way which
is favourable to your position.
You need to be able to spot when someone else has
framed an issue unfairly, and to substitute a frame
which supports your position.
Later in the materials on Issues, I include a piece on
Statistics and Psychology, which points out again the
value of framing.
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1. When to Heckle
A
good heckle is a witty or pointed comment
which either relieves the seriousness of the
debate or underlines a weakness of fact or
reasoning in the opposing case. Never heckle
unless the comment you make achieves one of
these purposes.
A heckle must be short and it should usually be
funny. It is not easy to give examples - a witty
heckle depends greatly upon the context. What is
funny in one debate is frequently not in another.
Heckling must be infrequent, or else the heckler
seems vicious or vindictive. As a rule of thumb,
there should be fewer than ten heckles in a debate.
Unless the previous heckles have brought the
house down, don’t be the tenth heckler.
2. How to Handle Heckling
The most effective way to deal with heckling is to
prevent it. The heckler depends on a pause in your
remarks to get his or her comments in; if you don’t
pause, he or she can’t comment. He or she also
depends upon an appropriate place to interrupt.
If the debate is very serious, any interruption may
seem inapt. Therefore, if the House starts to get out
of hand, speed up your speech slightly, raise your
voice a little, and become more serious and grave.
Don’t give opponents a chance to heckle you.
Unless you have a response to a heckle which is
certain to be immensely more humorous than the
heckle itself, ignore it: a heckle is more likely to
fall fat if it is ignored. If you can respond in kind,
however (“Next week I’ll teach my friend to read”
- “That gives you seven days to learn!”), do so. If
you are going to respond, pause until the laughter
has died down so that your response will be heard.
Forestall a reply from the heckler by moving on
briskly with your speech after the second laughter
has started to die down.
If the heckle has made a serious point, and if you
have time to deal with it, respond immediately, if
doing so does not unduly interrupt the point you
were making at the time of the heckle. If heckling
is excessive, the Speaker should intervene. A
debater should not solicit the Speaker’s assistance,
however.
Brian Casey, from
An Introduction to Parliamentary Debate
HECKLING
LOGIC AND ARGUMENTATION
WHAT IS AN ARGUMENT?
An argument is composed of PREMISES and a
CONCLUSION.
The premises provide the information that leads you
to the conclusion.

Argument 1.
Premise 1: I tend to do better at debates when
I have prepared carefully.
Premise 2: I have a debate this weekend.
Premise 3: I want to do well at the debate this
weekend.

Conclusion: I should prepare carefully for the
debate this weekend.
In your constructive speech, you are trying to
establish conclusions that further your case by
introducing premises and explaining how they lead
to the desired conclusion.
In all other aspects of debate, too – from POIs to
cross-examination to refutation and rebuttal – the
strength of your reasoning depends on your ability
to construct and deconstruct arguments.
SEPARATING TRUTH AND VALIDITY
An important skill in constructing and deconstructing
arguments is knowing when an argument is valid.
An argument is valid if the conclusion follows
logically (necessarily) from the premises. But this
isn’t the same as saying the argument is true, or what
we call sound. In a valid argument, it doesn’t matter
whether the premises or the conclusion are independently
true.
Here’s an example of an argument that sounds crazy,
but is actually valid:
Argument 2.
Premise 1: Cucumbers are purple.
Premise 2: Lauren is a cucumber.
Conclusion: Lauren is purple.

Notice that the premises (the frst two lines) guarantee
the conclusion, even though the premises and the
conclusion are all false. If it were true that cucumbers
were purple and that Lauren was a cucumber, it
would be true that Lauren would be purple. In
other words, in this argument, being a cucumber
is a suffcient criterion for being purple; if you are a
cucumber, you are necessarily purple.
Now look at this argument:

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Argument 3.
Premise 1: Cucumbers are purple.
Premise 2: Lauren is purple.
Conclusion: Lauren is a cucumber.
Is this valid? Notice the structure of the premises
and the conclusion. There is nothing in the premises
that guarantees that Lauren is a cucumber. It may be
true that cucumbers are purple, and it may be true
that Lauren is purple, but who said that cucumbers
are the only purple things around? Lauren could be
a purple tree, or a purple dog, or a purple book. In
other words, in this argument, being purple is not a
suffcient criterion for being a cucumber; you could be
purple, but not necessarily be a cucumber.
Similarly, you can have an argument where all the
premises are true but the argument is invalid, because
the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises:
Argument 4.
Premise 1: The Canadian fag has a maple leaf.
Premise 2: Ottawa is the capital of Canada.
Premise3: Today is Saturday._______

Conclusion: The York School is in Toronto.
So, truth and validity are not the same thing. Premises
and conclusions may be independently true or false.
Validity refers to the logical relationship between the
premises and the conclusion. The logical relationship
can be valid even if the statements are false, or can
be invalid even if the statements are true.
An argument that is both valid and contains only true
statements is called sound. Here is an example of a
sound argument:
Argument 5.
Premise 1: All beagles have long ears and a tail.

Premise 2: Darwin is a beagle.
Conclusion: Darwin has long ears and a tail.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?
Once you can identify the structure of a good
argument, you can strengthen both your own
constructive points and your critique of opponents’
points. Both truth and validity come into play here.
As a constructive debater, you want to:
Provide true (or, as convincing as possible) statements,
backed by evidence and analysis; and
Provide valid arguments, identifying the logical
necessity of each step along the way.
In ot her words, you want t o make sound
arguments.
When you are tackling opponents’ arguments, you
want to:
Dispute the truth of their claims (for instance by
providing counterexamples, conficting evidence, or
alternative analysis); and/or
Dispute the validity of their arguments, showing that,
even if the premises are true, the conclusion they want
may not necessarily follow.
On the constructive side, here are some ways to check
your statements. Whenever you present a piece of
evidence, you should ask yourself:
Is this a convincing premise, or am I just making
assumptions?
Is this premise a reason for arriving at the conclusion
I want to arrive at, or just a nice statistic? (i.e. the “so
what?” test)
Of course, you can ask yourself the same questions
about your opponents’ points – and when you fnd
a weakness, use it in your refutation.
Putting together an argument
Imagine someone is debating the motion “This
House Believes That the war on drugs has failed.”
As Proposition, they have several points they want
to make:
a) Everybody knows that drugs are bad.
b) By the age of 15, 30% of Canadians have tried
marijuana.
1
c) The cost of imprisoning drug offenders is over $1
billion per year.
1
d) Sometimes drug dealers target very young people
to try to get them hooked.
e) A lot of the crime, especially violent crime, in
Canada is associated with drugs.
Do these points add up to a convincing argument?
Consider statements b) and c). They are nice statistics
(or would be, if they were true). But are they reasons
for concluding that the war on drugs has failed? Not
necessarily. Your opponents could take statistic c) and
argue, for example, that the war on drugs is doing
exactly what it should: putting people who do drugs
in jail. Maybe “success” in the war on drugs doesn’t
mean that nobody uses drugs, but that those who do
are punished. So you will defnitely need to defne
“failed” very carefully.
Consider statement a). This is exactly the kind
of generalization that debaters often use to open
debates, especially familiar debates about value.
But it may not turn out to be a strong opening, even
if most people accept it. First, it seems like it could
be refuted by a daring enough opposition. Surely
not all drugs are bad all of the time. Even if “drugs”
1
Note: This is a made-up statistic for the purposes
of illustration. Never use made-up statistics in a debate.
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has been defned as “illegal recreational drugs,” this
seems like a crude statement. Drugs may be bad
insofar as they’re related to crime, prostitution, and
violence. But perhaps the drugs aren’t always bad
in themselves. In fact, maybe it’s their illegal status
that makes them bad.

Second, even if you could confidently say that
everybody knows that drugs are bad, where does this
get you? Is it essential to getting to your conclusion
that the war on drugs has failed? Probably not. The
important thing is to defne “war on drugs” and
“failed” and then examine the evidence closely.
Here’s an example of a stronger argument Proposition
might put forward in this debate:
Premise 1: The war on drugs was intended to reduce
the overall use of drugs.
Premise 2: The prevalence of drugs is associated with
violence, crime, and illness.
Premise 3: If the war were successful, there
would be fewer drugs around today than when the
war started, as well as fewer associated costs due to
policing, incarceration, and health costs.
Premise 4: By the age of 15, 30% of Canadians have
tried marijuana. This is 10% more than in 1980.
1
Premise 5: Although convicted drug users are now
being given longer prison sentences, this doesn’t seem
to be impacting the overall prevalence of drug use.
Premise 6: The types of illegal drugs available
now are more detrimental to health than earlier street
drugs – e.g. crystal meth and crack. Hence, the health
costs of drug use are getting higher.____________
Conclusion: The war on drugs has largely failed.
Notice how this argument does several things that the
frst one didn’t. First, it contextualizes the premises:
it says how you would know if a war on drugs had
succeeded or failed. Next, it shows that on several
measures of success, the outcomes of the war on
drugs have been very weak. What is relevant is
not just how prevalent drug use is today, but how
today’s statistics compare to earlier ones. Finally, it
connects every point to the conclusion that the war
on drugs has failed. It doesn’t get sidetracked by
questions about whether drugs are good or bad, or
even whether the war on drugs was a good idea.
Practice assessing claims
Debaters have a tendency to make overly broad
generalizations when it suits them. This is
understandable: you are required to defend one side
of a binary resolution, and you want to say something
powerful. However, not even generalizations
that sound plausible can stand alone without
some evidence. Assess the following statements,
which may serve as premises of an argument. Are
they convincing and hard to refute? Or are they
ambiguous and easy to refute?
Canadians are in favour of multiculturalism.
We should do everything in our power to prevent
people from smoking.
Women are more nurturing than men.
The justice system should treat all people equally.
Grade 13 was useless, and that’s why it was phased out.
The rights of the many trump the rights of the few.
Greater diversity is always better than less diversity.
The state should act in the best interest of its citizens.
Everyone is entitled to privacy.
Now assess the following statements as conclusions
to an argument. What kinds of premises, or evidence,
would be good reasons for accepting them? What
logical steps would need to be included in the
argument?

There is no justifcation for restricting civil rights.
The economy is less important than the quality of
health care.
The internet chatting culture is degrading human
communication.
A national gun registry would save lives.
It’s better to let things occurs naturally, without
human interference.
Complete voter participation would be ideal.
You’ve probably noticed that most statements that
come up in debates require a lot of evidence and
analysis to withstand refutation. This is because none
of these statements are undeniable empirical facts – we
would never ask you to debate, for instances “apples
are a type of fruit.” The claims involved in balanced
debates are never that obvious. A clever debater could
refute them with a bit of creativity or counter-evidence.
To bolster your own claims, support them with logical
premises and persuasive evidence.
REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM (“Slippery Slope”)
Many debaters like to criticize their opponents’ case
for leading to a slippery slope. What they may not
know is that the slope is actually a logical form called
reductio ad absurdum. This is when a valid argument
with convincing premises leads to a preposterous
conclusion. Some claims (premises) sound okay in
a certain context, but if you extend them logically to
a different context, they turn out to be absurd.
This is also called a paradox. A paradox is when two
things both seem to be true at the same time, but
they’re logically incompatible.
Example of a slippery slope paradox:
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Argument 6.
Premise 1: One hair never makes the difference
between a bald man and a not-bald man.
Premise 2: If a man with 0 hairs is bald, then a man
with 1 hair is also bald.
Premise 3: If a man with 1 hair is bald, then a man
with 2 hairs is also bald.
…….... etc.
Premise n: If a man with (n-1) hairs is bald, then
a man with n hairs is also bald
Conclusion: A man with any number of hairs (say
1,000,000) is still bald.
Somewhere along the “slippery slope” (between
Premise 3 and Premise n), we get the paradox that both
baldness and not-baldness apply to the same man.
Here’s another example of a valid argument that
goes too far:
Argument 7.
Premise 1: It is good to reduce pollution levels in
Toronto.
Premise 2: It is justifable to restrict some rights for
the good of the community.
Premise 3: Private automobiles are a very large
source of pollution in Toronto.
Premise 4: The more people who stop driving, the
less pollution will be created by car exhaust.
Conclusion: Private automobile ownership
should be banned in Toronto.
You can see how each of the premises is plausible
and leads to the conclusion. However, the conclusion
sounds extreme. The best solution is probably
somewhere between doing nothing and adopting the
radical policy suggested in the argument.
The “slippery slope” is usually invoked when an
opposing team defends a contentious new practice, e.g.
cloning animals. The other team then typically raises
the question, “Where does it end? Is it okay to clone
humans? Is it okay for rich people to clone themselves?
What about evil dictators?” and so on. Note that this
is only a genuine slippery slope if you have a premise
resembling Premise 1 in Argument 6 above. In other
words, the different steps down the slope have to be
convincingly similar to each other. You can powerfully
defect the slippery slope critique if you have a good
argument as to where the line can be drawn. For
instance, you could argue that cloning animals has
signifcantly different moral parameters than cloning
humans would, so although the technology exists, the
former would not lead to the latter. In other words,
cloning isn’t like baldness: one step can make a clear
difference.
Lauren Bialystok
I
N GENERAL, OF COURSE, it’s a good idea to avoid
logical fallacies if at all possible, because a
good debater will almost always catch you. It is
especially important to avoid obvious logical fallacies
like the one above (argumentum ad populum),
because they are vulnerable to such powerful (and
persuasive) refutations. But sometimes, a logical
fallacy — or at least an unjustifed logical leap
— is unavoidable. And there are some types of
argument that are listed as logical fallacies in logic
textbooks, but that are perfectly acceptable in the
context of the rules of debate. The most important
guideline for committing such fallacies yourself is
to know when you are doing it, and to be prepared
to justify yourself later if the opposition tries to call
you down for it. For examples of logical fallacies
that can sometimes be acceptable in the context of
debate, see ad ignorantiam, ad logicam, complex
question, slippery slope, straw man, and tu quoque
in the list below.
The list of logical fallacies
What follows is not a comprehensive list of all the
known logical fallacies. Nor is this intended as a
rigorous philosophical treatise on logical reasoning.
(If that’s what you’re looking for, you should check
out the following excellent web resources: The
Atheist Web’s logic page, or San Jose University’s
Mission: Critical page; I owe a debt to these pages
for reminding me of a number of fallacies I had
forgotten about.) What I have done is compile a list
of fallacies that debaters should be familiar with —
either for pointing them out in others’ arguments or
for using and defending them in one’s own.
Argumentum ad antiquitatem (the argument to
antiquity or tradition). This is the familiar argument
that some policy, behavior, or practice is right or
acceptable because “it’s always been done that
way.” This is an extremely popular fallacy in debate
rounds; for example, “Every great civilization in
history has provided state subsidies for art and
culture!” But that fact does not justify continuing
the policy.
Because an argumentum ad antiquitatem is easily
refuted by simply pointing it out, in general it
should be avoided. But if you must make such
an argument — perhaps because you can’t come
COMMITTING YOUR VERY OWN
LOGICAL FALLACIES
This is an excellent summary of common logical
errors, from the Glen Whitman website,
http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/dgwdebate.html.
He does a good job, in particular, of explaining
when its okay to commit a logical fallacy in a
debate.
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In debate, the proposing team in a debate round
is usually (but not always) assumed to have the
burden of proof, which means that if the team fails
to prove the proposition to the satisfaction of the
judge, the opposition wins. In a sense, the opposition
team’s case is assumed true until proven false. But
the burden of proof can sometimes be shifted; for
example, in some forms of debate, the proposing
team can shift the burden of proof to the opposing
team by presenting a prima facie case that would, in
the absence of refutation, be suffcient to affrm the
proposition. Still, the higher burden generally rests
with the proposing team, which means that only the
opposition is in a position to make an accusation of
argumentum ad ignorantiam with respect to proving
the proposition.
Argumentum ad logicam (argument to logic). This
is the fallacy of assuming that something is false
simply because a proof or argument that someone
has offered for it is invalid; this reasoning is fallacious
because there may be another proof or argument
that successfully supports the proposition. This
fallacy often appears in the context of a straw man
argument.
This is another case in which the burden of proof
determines whether it is actually a fallacy or not. If
a proposing team fails to provide suffcient support
for its case, the burden of proof dictates they should
lose the debate, even if there exist other arguments
(not presented by the proposing team) that could
have supported the case successfully. Moreover, it
is common practice in debate for judges to give no
weight to a point supported by an argument that
has been proven invalid by the other team, even if
there might be a valid argument the team failed to
make that would have supported the same point;
this is because the implicit burden of proof rests with
the team that brought up the argument. For further
commentary on burdens of proof, see argumentum
ad ignorantiam, above.
Argumentum ad misericordiam (argument or
appeal to pity). The English translation pretty much
says it all. Example: “Think of all the poor, starving
Ethiopian children! How could we be so cruel as not
to help them?” The problem with such an argument
is that no amount of special pleading can make the
impossible possible, the false true, the expensive
costless, etc.
It is, of course, perfectly legitimate to point out the
severity of a problem as part of the justifcation for
adopting a proposed solution. The fallacy comes in
when other aspects of the proposed solution (such
as whether it is possible, how much it costs, who
else might be harmed by adopting the policy) are
ignored or responded to only with more impassioned
pleas. You should not call your opposition down for
committing this fallacy unless they rely on appeals
to pity to the exclusion of the other necessary
arguments. It is perfectly acceptable to use appeal to
pity in order to argue that the benefts of the proposed
policy are greater than they might at frst appear (and
hence capable of justifying larger costs).
up with anything better — you can at least make
it marginally more acceptable by providing some
reason why tradition should usually be respected. For
instance, you might make an evolutionary argument
to the effect that the prevalence of a particular
practice in existing societies is evidence that societies
that failed to adopt it were weeded out by natural
selection. This argument is weak, but better than the
fallacy alone.
Argumentum ad hominem (argument directed at the
person). This is the error of attacking the character or
motives of a person who has stated an idea, rather
than the idea itself. The most obvious example of this
fallacy is when one debater maligns the character of
another debater (e.g, “The members of the opposition
are a couple of fascists!”), but this is actually not
that common. A more typical manifestation of
argumentum ad hominem is attacking a source
of information — for example, responding to a
quotation from Richard Nixon on the subject of free
trade with China by saying, “We all know Nixon
was a liar and a cheat, so why should we believe
anything he says?” Argumentum ad hominem also
occurs when someone’s arguments are discounted
merely because they stand to beneft from the policy
they advocate — such as Bill Gates arguing against
antitrust, rich people arguing for lower taxes, white
people arguing against affrmative action, minorities
arguing for affrmative action, etc. In all of these cases,
the relevant question is not who makes the argument,
but whether the argument is valid.
It is always bad form to use the fallacy of argumentum
ad hominem. But there are some cases when it is not
really a fallacy, such as when one needs to evaluate
the truth of factual statements (as opposed to lines of
argument or statements of value) made by interested
parties. If someone has an incentive to lie about
something, then it would be naive to accept his
statements about that subject without question. It is
also possible to restate many ad hominem arguments
so as to redirect them toward ideas rather than people,
such as by replacing “My opponents are fascists” with
“My opponents’ arguments are fascist.”
Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to
ignorance). This is the fallacy of assuming something
is true simply because it hasn’t been proven false.
For example, someone might argue that global
warming is certainly occurring because nobody has
demonstrated conclusively that it is not. But failing
to prove the global warming theory false is not the
same as proving it true.
Whether or not an argumentum ad ignorantiam
is really fallacious depends crucially upon the
burden of proof. In an American courtroom, where
the burden of proof rests with the prosecution, it
would be fallacious for the prosecution to argue,
“The defendant has no alibi, therefore he must have
committed the crime.” But it would be perfectly valid
for the defense to argue, “The prosecution has not
proven the defendant committed the crime, therefore
you should declare him not guilty.” Both statements
have the form of an argumentum ad ignorantiam; the
difference is the burden of proof.
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Argumentum ad nauseam (argument to the point of
disgust; i.e., by repitition). This is the fallacy of trying
to prove something by saying it again and again. But
no matter how many times you repeat something, it
will not become any more or less true than it was in
the frst place. Of course, it is not a fallacy to state the
truth again and again; what is fallacious is to expect
the repitition alone to substitute for real arguments.
Nonetheless, this is a very popular fallacy in debate,
and with good reason: the more times you say
something, the more likely it is that the judge will
remember it. The first thing they’ll teach you in
any public speaking course is that you should “Tell
‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, and
then tell ‘em what you told ‘em.” Unfortunately,
some debaters think that’s all there is to it, with no
substantiation necessary! The appropriate time to
mention argumentum ad nauseam in a debate round
is when the other team has made some assertion,
failed to justify it, and then stated it again and again.
The Latin wording is particularly nice here, since it is
evocative of what the opposition’s assertions make
you want to do: retch. “Sir, our opponents tell us
drugs are wrong, drugs are wrong, drugs are wrong,
again and again and again. But this argumentum ad
nauseam can’t and won’t win this debate for them,
because they’ve given us no justifcation for their
bald assertions!”
Argumentum ad numerum (argument or appeal
to numbers). This fallacy is the attempt to prove
something by showing how many people think that
it’s true. But no matter how many people believe
something, that doesn’t necessarily make it true
or right. Example: “At least 70% of all Americans
support restrictions on access to abortions.” Well,
maybe 70% of Americans are wrong!
This fallacy is very similar to argumentum ad
populum, the appeal to the people or to popularity.
When a distinction is made between the two, ad
populum is construed narrowly to designate an
appeal to the opinions of people in the immediate
vicinity, perhaps in hope of getting others (such
as judges) to jump on the bandwagon, whereas ad
numerum is used to designate appeals based purely
on the number of people who hold a particular belief.
The distinction is a fne one, and in general the terms
can be used interchangeably in debate rounds. (I’ve
found that ad populum has better rhetorical effect.)
Argumentum ad populum (argument or appeal
to the public). This is the fallacy of trying to prove
something by showing that the public agrees with
you. For an example, see above. This fallacy is nearly
identical to argumentum ad numerum, which you
should see for more details.
Argumentum ad verecundiam (argument or appeal
to authority). This fallacy occurs when someone tries
to demonstrate the truth of a proposition by citing
some person who agrees, even though that person
may have no expertise in the given area. For instance,
some people like to quote Einstein’s opinions about
politics (he tended to have fairly left-wing views), as
though Einstein were a political philosopher rather
than a physicist. Of course, it is not a fallacy at all
to rely on authorities whose expertise relates to the
question at hand, especially with regard to questions
of fact that could not easily be answered by a layman
— for instance, it makes perfect sense to quote
Stephen Hawking on the subject of black holes.
At least in some forms of debate, quoting various
sources to support one’s position is not just acceptable
but mandatory. In general, there is nothing wrong
with doing so. Even if the person quoted has no
particular expertise in the area, he may have had a
particularly eloquent way of saying something that
makes for a more persuasive speech. In general,
debaters should be called down for committing
argumentum ad verecundiam only when (a) they rely
on an unqualifed source for information about facts
without other (qualifed) sources of verifcation, or
(b) they imply that some policy must be right simply
because so-and-so thought so.
Circulus in demonstrando (circular argument).
Circular argumentation occurs when someone uses
what they are trying to prove as part of the proof of
that thing. Here is one of my favorite examples (in
pared down form): “Marijuana is illegal in every state
in the nation. And we all know that you shouldn’t
violate the law. Since smoking pot is illegal, you
shouldn’t smoke pot. And since you shouldn’t
smoke pot, it is the duty of the government to stop
people from smoking it, which is why marijuana is
illegal!”
Circular arguments appear a lot in debate, but they
are not always so easy to spot as the example above.
They are always illegitimate, though, and pointing
them out in a debate round looks really good if you
can do it. The best strategy for pointing out a circular
argument is to make sure you can state clearly
the proposition being proven, and then pinpoint
where that proposition appears in the proof. A good
summing up statement is, “In other words, they are
trying to tell us that X is true because X is true! But
they have yet to tell us why it’s true.”
Complex question. A complex question is a question
that implicitly assumes something to be true by its
construction, such as “Have you stopped beating
your wife?” A question like this is fallacious only if
the thing presumed true (in this case, that you beat
your wife) has not been established.
Complex questions are a well established and time-
honored practice in debate, although they are rarely
so bald-faced as the example just given. Complex
questions usually appear in cross-examination or
points of information when the questioner wants the
questionee to inadvertently admit something that
she might not admit if asked directly. For instance,
one might say, “Inasmuch as the majority of black
Americans live in poverty, do you really think that
self-help within the black community is suffcient to
address their problems?” Of course, the introductory
clause about the majority of black Americans living
in poverty may not be true (in fact, it is false), but an
unwary debater might not think quickly enough to
notice that the stowaway statement is questionable.
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not necessary to call an opposing debater down
for making this fallacy — it is enough to point out
why the sweeping generalization they have made
fails to prove their point. Since everybody knows
what a sweeping generalization is, using the Latin
in this case will usually sound condescending. It is
also important to note that some generalizations are
perfectly valid and apply directly to all individual
cases, and therefore do not commit the fallacy of dicto
simpliciter (for example, “All human males have a
Y chromosome” is, to my knowledge, absolutely
correct).
Nature, appeal to. This is the fallacy of assuming that
whatever is “natural” or consistent with “nature”
(somehow defined) is good, or that whatever
conficts with nature is bad. For example, “Sodomy is
unnatural; anal sex is not the evolutionary function of
a penis or an anus. Therefore sodomy is wrong.” But
aside from the diffculty of defning what “natural”
even means, there is no particular reason to suppose
that unnatural and wrong are the same thing. After
all, wearing clothes, tilling the soil, and using fre
might be considered unnatural since no other animals
do so, but humans do these things all the time and
to great beneft.
The appeal to nature appears occasionally in debate,
often in the form of naive environmentalist arguments
for preserving pristine wilderness or resources. The
argument is very weak and should always be shot
down. It can, however, be made stronger by showing
why at least in specifc cases, there may be a (possibly
unspecifable) beneft to preserving nature as it is. A
typical ecological argument along these lines is that
human beings are part of a complex biological system
that is highly sensitive to shocks, and therefore it is
dangerous for humans to engage in activities that
might damage the system in ways we cannot predict.
Note, however, that this approach no longer appeals
to nature itself, but to the value of human survival.
For further comment on this subject, see the
naturalistic fallacy.
Naturalistic fallacy. This is the fallacy of trying to
derive conclusions about what is right or good (that
is, about values) from statements of fact alone. This
is invalid because no matter how many statements
of fact you assemble, any logical inference from them
will be another statement of fact, not a statement of
value. If you wish to reach conclusions about values,
then you must include amongst your assumptions (or
axioms, or premises) a statement of value. Once you
have an axiomatic statement of value, then you may
use it in conjunction with statements of fact to reach
value-laden conclusions.
For example, someone might argue that the premise,
“This medicine will prevent you from dying”
immediately leads to the conclusion, “You should
take this medicine.” But this reasoning is invalid,
because the former statement is a statement of fact,
while the latter is a statement of value. To reach the
conclusion that you ought to take the medicine, you
would need at least one more premise: “You ought to
try to preserve your life whenever possible.”
This is a sneaky tactic, but debate is sometimes a
sneaky business. You wouldn’t want to put a question
like that in your master’s thesis, but it might work in
a debate. But be careful — if you try to pull a fast one
on someone who is alert enough to catch you, you’ll
look stupid. “The assumption behind your question
is simply false. The majority of blacks do not live in
poverty. Get your facts straight before you interrupt
me again!”
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc (with this, therefore
because of this). This is the familiar fallacy of
mistaking correlation for causation — i.e., thinking
that because two things occur simultaneously, one
must be a cause of the other. A popular example of
this fallacy is the argument that “President Clinton
has great economic policies; just look at how well the
economy is doing while he’s in offce!” The problem
here is that two things may happen at the same time
merely by coincidence (e.g., the President may have a
negligible effect on the economy, and the real driving
force is technological growth), or the causative link
between one thing and another may be lagged in time
(e.g., the current economy’s health is determined by
the actions of previous presidents), or the two things
may be unconnected to each other but related to a
common cause (e.g., downsizing upset a lot of voters,
causing them to elect a new president just before the
economy began to beneft from the downsizing).
It is always fallacious to suppose that there is a
causative link between two things simply because
they coexist. But a correlation is usually considered
acceptable supporting evidence for theories that
argue for a causative link between two things.
For instance, some economic theories suggest that
substantially reducing the federal budget deficit
should cause the economy to do better (loosely
speaking), so the coincidence of defcit reductions
under Clinton and the economy’s relative health
might be taken as evidence in favor of those economic
theories. In debate rounds, what this means is that it
is acceptable to demonstrate a correlation between
two phenomenon and to say one caused the other if
you can also come up with convincing reasons why
the correlation is no accident.
Cum hoc ergo propter hoc is very similar to post hoc
ergo propter hoc, below. The two terms can be used
almost interchangeably, post hoc (as it is affectionately
called) being the preferred term.
Dicto simpliciter (spoken simply, i.e., sweeping
generalization). This is the fallacy of making a
sweeping statement and expecting it to be true of
every specifc case — in other words, stereotyping.
Example: “Women are on average not as strong as
men and less able to carry a gun. Therefore women
can’t pull their weight in a military unit.” The
problem is that the sweeping statement may be true
(on average, women are indeed weaker than men),
but it is not necessarily true for every member of the
group in question (there are some women who are
much stronger than the average).
As the example indicates, dicto simpliciter is fairly
common in debate rounds. Most of the time, it is
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The naturalistic fallacy appears in many forms. Two
examples are argumentum ad antiquitatem (saying
something’s right because it’s always been done that
way) and the appeal to nature (saying something’s
right because it’s natural). In both of these fallacies,
the speaker is trying to reach a conclusion about what
we ought to do or ought to value based solely on what
is the case. David Hume called this trying to bridge
the “is-ought gap,” which is a nice phrase to use in
debate rounds where your opponent is committing
the naturalistic fallacy.
One unsettling implication of taking the naturalistic
fallacy seriously is that, in order to reach any
conclusions of value, one must be willing to posit
some initial statement or statements of value that will
be treated as axioms, and which cannot themselves
be justifed on purely logical grounds. Fortunately,
debate does not restrict itself to purely logical grounds
of argumentation. For example, suppose your
opponent has stated axiomatically that “whatever
is natural is good.” Inasmuch as this statement is an
axiom rather than the conclusion of a logical proof,
there can be no purely logical argument against it. But
some nonetheless appropriate responses to such an
absolute statement of value include: (a) questioning
whether anyone — you, your judge, or even your
opponent himself — really believes that “whatever
is natural is good”; (b) stating a competing axiomatic
value statement, like “whatever enhances human life
is good,” and forcing the judge to choose between
them; and (c) pointing out logical implications of
the statement “whatever is natural is good” that
confict with our most basic intuitions about right
and wrong.
Non Sequitur (“It does not follow”). This is the
simple fallacy of stating, as a conclusion, something
that does not strictly follow from the premises. For
example, “Racism is wrong. Therefore, we need
affrmative action.” Obviously, there is at least one
missing step in this argument, because the wrongness
of racism does not imply a need for affrmative action
without some additional support (such as, “Racism is
common,” “Affrmative action would reduce racism,”
“There are no superior alternatives to affrmative
action,” etc.).
Not surprisingly, debate rounds are rife with non
sequitur. But that is partly just a result of having to
work within the time constraints of a debate round,
and partly a result of using good strategy. A debate
team arguing for affrmative action would be foolish
to say in their frst speech, “We also believe that
affrmative action does not lead to a racist backlash,”
because doing so might give the other side a hint
about a good argument to make. A better strategy
(usually) is to wait for the other team to bring up
an argument, and then refute it; that way, you don’t
end up wasting your time by refuting arguments
that the opposition has never made in the frst place.
(This strategy is not always preferable, though,
because some counterarguments are so obvious and
important that it makes sense to address them early
and nip them in the bud.)
For these reasons, it is generally bad form to scream
“non sequitur” just because your opposition has
failed to anticipate every counterargument you might
make. The best time to point out a non sequitur is
when your opposition is trying to construct a chain
of causation (A leads to B leads to C, etc.) without
justifying each step in the chain. For each step in the
chain they fail to justify, point out the non sequitur,
so that it is obvious by the end that the alleged chain
of causation is tenuous and implausible.
Petitio principii (begging the question). This is the
fallacy of assuming, when trying to prove something,
what it is that you are trying prove. For all practical
purposes, this fallacy is indistinguishable from
circular argumentation.
The main thing to remember about this fallacy is that
the term “begging the question” has a very specifc
meaning. It is common to hear debaters saying
things like, “They say pornography should be legal
because it is a form of free expression. But this begs
the question of what free expression means.” This
is a misuse of terminology. Something may inspire
or motivate us to ask a particular question without
begging the question. A question has been begged
only if the question has been asked before in the
same discussion, and then a conclusion is reached
on a related matter without the question having
been answered. If somebody said, “The fact that we
believe pornography should be legal means that it
is a valid form of free expression. And since it’s free
expression, it shouldn’t be banned,” that would be
begging the question.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore
because of this). This is the fallacy of assuming that
A caused B simply because A happened prior to B.
A favorite example: “Most rapists read pornography
when they were teenagers; obviously, pornography
causes violence toward women.” The conclusion is
invalid, because there can be a correlation between
two phenomena without one causing the other. Often,
this is because both phenomena may be linked to the
same cause. In the example given, it is possible that
some psychological factor — say, a frustrated sex
drive — might cause both a tendency toward sexual
violence and a desire for pornographic material, in
which case the pornography would not be the true
cause of the violence.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc is nearly identical to cum
hoc ergo propter hoc, which you should see for
further details.
Red herring. This means exactly what you think it
means: introducing irrelevant facts or arguments to
distract from the question at hand. For example, “The
opposition claims that welfare dependency leads
to higher crime rates — but how are poor people
supposed to keep a roof over their heads without
our help?” It is perfectly valid to ask this question
as part of the broader debate, but to pose it as a
response to the argument about welfare leading to
crime is fallacious. (There is also an element of ad
misericordiam in this example.)
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caricatured or extreme version of somebody’s
argument, rather than the actual argument
they’ve made. Often this fallacy involves putting
words into somebody’s mouth by saying they’ve
made arguments they haven’t actually made,
in which case the straw man argument is a
veiled version of argumentum ad logicam. One
example of a straw man argument would be to
say, “Mr. Jones thinks that capitalism is good
because everybody earns whatever wealth they
have, but this is clearly false because many
people just inherit their fortunes,” when in fact
Mr. Jones had not made the “earnings” argument
and had instead argued, say, that capitalism
gives most people an incentive to work and
save. The fact that some arguments made for a
policy are wrong does not imply that the policy
itself is wrong.
In debate, strategic use of a straw man can be
very effective. A carefully constructed straw man
can sometimes entice an unsuspecting opponent
into defending a silly argument that he would
not have tried to defend otherwise. But this
strategy only works if the straw man is not too
different from the arguments your opponent
has actually made, because a really outrageous
straw man will be recognized as just that. The
best straw man is not, in fact, a fallacy at all, but
simply a logical extension or amplifcation of an
argument your opponent has made.
Tu quoque (“you too”). This is the fallacy
of defending an error in one’s reasoning by
pointing out that one’s opponent has made the
same error. An error is still an error, regardless of
how many people make it. For example, “They
accuse us of making unjustifed assertions. But
they asserted a lot of things, too!”
Although clearly fallacious, tu quoque arguments
play an important role in debate because they may
help establish who has done a better job of debating
(setting aside the issue of whether the proposition
is true or not). If both teams have engaged in ad
hominem attacks, or both teams have made a
few appeals to pity, then it would hardly be fair
to penalize one team for it but not the other. In
addition, it is not fallacious at all to point out that
certain advantages or disadvantages may apply
equally to both positions presented in a debate, and
therefore they cannot provide a reason for favoring
one position over the other (such disadvantages
are referred to as “non-unique”). In general, using
tu quoque statements is a good way to assure that
judges make decisions based only on factors that
distinguish between the two sides.
It is not fallacious, however, to argue that
benefts of one kind may justify incurring costs
of another kind. In the example given, concern
about providing shelter for the poor would
not refute concerns about crime, but one could
plausibly argue that a somewhat higher level
of crime is a justifable price given the need to
alleviate poverty. This is a debatable point of
view, but it is no longer a fallacious one.
The term red herring is sometimes used loosely
to refer to any kind of diversionary tactic, such
as presenting relatively unimportant arguments
that will use up the other debaters’ speaking
time and distract them from more important
issues. This kind of a red herring is a wonderful
strategic maneuver with which every debater
should be familiar.
Slippery slope. A slippery slope argument is not
always a fallacy. A slippery slope fallacy is an
argument that says adopting one policy or taking
one action will lead to a series of other policies
or actions also being taken, without showing
a causal connection between the advocated
policy and the consequent policies. A popular
example of the slippery slope fallacy is, “If we
legalize marijuana, the next thing you know
we’ll legalize heroin, LSD, and crack cocaine.”
This slippery slope is a form of non sequitur,
because no reason has been provided for why
legalization of one thing leads to legalization of
another. Tobacco and alcohol are currently legal,
and yet other drugs have somehow remained
illegal.
There are a variety of ways to turn a slippery
slope fallacy into a valid (or at least plausible)
argument. All you need to do is provide some
reason why the adoption of one policy will lead to
the adoption of another. For example, you could
argue that legalizing marijuana would cause
more people to consider the use of mind-altering
drugs acceptable, and those people will support
more permissive drug policies across the board.
An alternative to the slippery slope argument is
simply to point out that the principles espoused
by your opposition imply the acceptability of
certain other policies, so if we don’t like those
other policies, we should question whether we
really buy those principles. For instance, if the
proposing team argued for legalizing marijuana
by saying, “individuals should be able to do
whatever they want with their own bodies,” the
opposition could point out that that principle
would also justify legalizing a variety of other
drugs — so if we don’t support legalizing other
drugs, then maybe we don’t really believe in
that principle.
Straw man. This is the fallacy of refuting a
Glen Whitman, : http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/
dgwdebate.html
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The Forgotten Art
W
hen most people are taught how to debate,
they learn about what a case is, how to build
one, how to deconstruct an argument, and
how to fll their time. But watch any frst time debater,
and you’ll see a common feature emerge, one that
coaches and other debaters rarely focus on correcting
– they will have no idea what to write down before
they speak. Some will try and write out their entire
speech and rebuttal, and thus will only be able to fll
thirty seconds of time, will sound deadly boring, and
will miss the other team’s points altogether. Some
will not write anything, and will have no idea what
to say when they stand up.
From these observations alone, we begin to see why
note taking is essential to debate. Among many other
benefts, excellent note taking is important because:
• It is key to remaining organized during a debate—if
you don’t have organized notes, you won’t sound
organized. If your notes are organized correctly, the
organization of your speech should be clear and
correct.
•Your memory isn’t as good as you think it is. You’re
not going to remember the opposition’s third point,
let alone your response to it, if you don’t write it
down. Even though this isn’t APDA – the American
league where not addressing an argument raised by
the other team may cause you to lose the round – you
need to be able to know the other team’s major points
in order to demonstrate to the judges that you can
rebut most of the material that they bring up.
• Taking proper notes during a round forces you to
distill the issues of the debate into the most essential
points and arguments. This greatly infuences your
ability to analyze a round, which is an indispensable
skill.
•If you are worried about flling the entire time
allotted for you to speak, having proper notes will
definitely give you material to fall back on, an
‘itinerary’ for you to follow, and the confdence you
need to use that entire ten-minute Leader of the
Opposition speech. So with all of these benefts, why
are novices so rarely taught how to take notes? Well,
your guess is as good as mine, and I’m about to give
you some tips that are extremely intuitive but very
helpful.
A Few Basic Pointers
Before I begin a discussion of the various systems of
note taking which I have discovered over the years, I
want to provide you with a very few basic tips which
are essential to any system. Even if you choose not to
use one of the methods of note taking I will advocate,
please remember that these tips are useful regardless
of the strategy you adopt.
• Don’t try and write everything down!!!: As
mentioned above, this is a classic novice mistake.
Many people when they begin debating attempt to
write out, word-for-word, the entirety of the speech
they are about to give and the arguments of the
opposing team. This is absolutely unnecessary to
give an effective speech, and in fact has a variety
of negative effects. First, you won’t succeed at this
endeavor – it’s an impossible task. Writing out the
points you are able to give takes way too much time,
and you will discover that time is of the essence
when you are preparing for an impromptu debate.
Second, even if by some miracle you could write
out everything you were going to say during your
speech, this technique will cause you to have a terrible
speaking style. During a debate, you never want to
be reading off a page – you’re in a lively, combative
debate, not giving the speech from the Crown. You
need to get your eyes off your page to look at and
engage with the judges and audience, your hands
away from the podium and your notes so you can
gesticulate, and your feet moving around (within
reason). Finally, if you are busy writing down word-
for-word what you are going to say and what the
other team says, you will miss the debate entirely.
The best debaters spend most of their time in a
debate listening to what their partner and the other
team is saying, and writing down only as much
as is necessary to remember the main gist of each
argument. Remember: you’re not taking notes in a
class where the notes are going to help you remember
what your hideously boring political theory professor
said about Hegel eight months ago – you’re trying to
remember the main arguments of a speech you heard
within the last half an hour and the responses you
are going to make.
•Don’t use full sentences: If you are writing in
sentences, you’re writing too much. If you’re writing
in paragraphs, you’re writing too much. If you look
down and discovered you’ve written a sequel to
Moby Dick, you’re writing too much.
• Write something down: While you’re not aiming
to record the arguments you want to present in
Dickensian detail, you need to write down something
for each argument you want to present, each
argument the other team makes, and each response
you want to make to the arguments of the other
team. As mentioned above, your memory, while
not requiring word-for-word transcriptions of the
speech, does need a reminder – a key word about
each argument – in order to remember it accurately
(or at all). This is a skill you are going to have to
work on developing, but practice hearing a long
and complicated argument and coming up with a
key word that accurately captures the meaning of
the argument. Think Hemingway, not Tolstoy – you
want to eliminate description and detail, and cut
to the heart of the argument. See below on point
labeling and the section on various systems for more
information on how this works.
THE IMPORTANCE AND TECHNIQUE
OF NOTE TAKING
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• Use abbreviations: An excellent technique to avoid
taking time away from listening to the debate and
your preparation time is to use abbreviations. This
sounds trite, but if you’re spending your time
writing out “government”, “weapons of mass
destruction”, “economics of scale”, and “supranational
constitutionalism”, you’re in trouble.
• Label and number your points and the other team’s
points: This technique provides innumerable benefts.
First, it automatically makes you look organized,
prepared, and analytical, even if none of those things
are true – it’s a very good move stylistically. Second,
it provides structure and organization to your notes
and thus to your speech. If you number the three
points that you are going to say, then go through
them one-by-one, then number the oppositions points
and deconstruct them one by, you will likely have
presented a reasonably strong case and done a nice
job of undermining the case of the other team. Third,
labels and numbers help judges and the other team to
better record your arguments and thus the debate, an
excellent technique because your arguments appear
front and centre on the judge’s sheet and in the mind
of the other team. If your arguments are the focus of
the debate, you’re in good shape.
• Find some method of discerning between what
your team says and what the other team says in
your notes: One of the toughest things to do when
taking notes is to fnd a method of distinguishing
what you say from what the other team says.
Getting these things confused is disastrous, and yet
it seems diffcult to disassociate the two. Thus, you
will observe that in each of the note taking systems
I suggest, there is some method for making this
distinction. Once you’re able to glance at your notes
and clearly see what each team is saying and how
they interact, you’re discovered an effective note
taking strategy. So whether you’re able to make this
distinction through highlighters, different coloured
pens, a dividing line on your paper, or whatever, it is
a necessary component to good note taking.
• Use notes to communicate with your partner: One
of the most annoying things as a debater or a judge is
to have one team ignoring the speaker and chatting
away as they try and fgure out a way to address the
arguments of the other team. It’s rude and distracting,
and being thought of as rude and distracting by the
judges isn’t what you’re going for. An excellent idea
is to use notes to communicate with your partner –
write out arguments they could use, thoughts you
are having, and caricatures of the other team instead
of talking. This is also helpful for your poor partner
who just wants to listen to the arguments of the other
team instead of you telling him or her that you “just
have the perfect opp to that point.” If you write down
what you’re trying to tell them, they can look at your
brilliant point when they get the chance.
Note Taking Systems
These basic strategies will help a ton in your note
taking. But they still don’t provide a systematic
method. This section will describe what I think are
the two most effective methods. Obviously there are
many others, and what is most important is that you
fnd a system that works for you.
(A) DIFFERENT COLOURED PENS
Note: Statements in italics should be thought of in one
colour; statements which are underlined represent
another. For individuals viewing this document on
their computer or as a colour printout, this formatting
will be redundant.
Before the debate begins, the government should
have the debate recorded as follows:
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There are a number of things to note about the way
this is set up:
• The original resolution, the link, and the new case
are recorded.
• There is a large space left after each point.
• Each point has a clear but short title, with only a
very brief description of the argument.
• The government and the opposition cases are on
separate pages.
After the Prime Minster’s speech, the opposition
should have recorded something very similar to
the government page (without the MC argument,
obviously). However, then they must create their
own case and fgure out how to respond to the PM.
Before the MO stands up to speak, their sheets should
look like this:
Notice that it’s extremely clear with the different
pen colours who said what and when. Also observe
that the numbering helps everyone to stay organized
and the debate can focus on all of the arguments
presented.
While the MO was speaking, the MC will have
recorded the MO’s points and responds to the PM.
Before the MC speaks, their sheets should look like
this:
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all his/her remarks in the appropriate places. I would
suggests that the PM create a separate sheet to write
down the three themes he/she will focus on during
the PMR; however, seeing the whole fow of the
debate through the colour method is very helpful.
(b) Them/Us
The next system of note taking is just as easy as the
colour method, and many top debaters have used
it with excellent results. The basic principle in this
method is that you are able to keep what your team
and the other team separate by drawing a line down
the middle of each page:
with an argument, just write it out (very briefy) on
the sheet. This should help the MO enormously.
• Try writing less and less: As you get more and more
experienced with debating in general and note taking
in particular, I would advise trying to take fewer and
fewer notes. It will give you more time to listen and
think during the round, which is always good!
• Give your points sharp, witty, and brief names:
We’re all sick of point names that are all the same
(“The Nature of x”; “The Economic Point”; “The
Socioeconomic Analysis”, etc). If you can give your
points names that accurately refect their content
while being snappy and funny, you’re defnitely
adding to the debate and getting away from tired
cliches.
Hopefully this gives you the general idea. The
different colours permit the speakers to distinguish
who said what, and the organized, number points
with short titles and minimal description keep
everyone organized and makes sure that no
arguments are lost.
While the MC was speaking, the LO would have
recorded his/her responses to the government
arguments under the appropriate point and in the
appropriate colour, his/her rebuilding of the MO’s
points under the appropriate point, and his/her own
points on the “opposition page.”
Then while the LO is speaking, the PM would record
This also keep the debate organized, and you are
able to follow the flow of each argument. The
disadvantage to this system, unlike the coloured pens
system, is that it is more diffcult to record rebuttals
and rebuilding of points. Thus, I would advise the use
of the coloured system for speakers later in the round
and the Them/Us method for the MO especially.
Advanced Tips:
With either of these two systems and the use of the
basic tips above, your note taking should drastically
improve. For those who feel that they have mastered
these basics, I will suggest a few other pointers:
• Use a ‘Points Sheet’ to Brainstorm: When you
are debating on the opposition side of a debate in
Canadian style, the biggest challenge is coming up
with arguments quickly enough for the MO to be
able to give a couple during his/her speech. I suggest
putting a sheet of paper on the table between the LO
and the MO, and whenever either of you come up
An excerpt from the Cusid Central Debate Guide, edited
by Jessica Prince and Paul-Erik Veel (Dash). Much of
this article is by Joanna Langille. The complete guide
is available at http://www.cusid.ca/documents/
guides/central_debating_guide.pdf
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 40
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OPENING LINES
By: Gordon Shotwell
T
HE FIRST 20 seconds of your speech is the only
time when you are guaranteed everyone’s
undivided attention. Ask yourself what
you need to do at the beginning of your speech
in order to maintain their attention.
Within the frst 30 seconds of any speech you
should provide your audience with a roadmap.
Tell them where you are going, what points you
will address, and when you will be presenting
rebuttal arguments. This will allow the judges
to follow your brilliant arguments. Aside from
the basic organisational stuff, there are some nice
rhetorical tools that you can use as well.

PMC: Must include, (in this order)
-Statement of the resolution
-Defnitions or Link
-Government’s position in a SHORT, CONCISE
STATEMENT (easy to write down), and some
background info if necessary.
-Outline of the Government’s points
MO, MC, LO, PMR: At the beginning of these
speeches you can do one of fve things:
1. Rephrase the contention: “What the
government is proposing is that we abandon
all our founding principles.....”
2. Crystallise your position: “The case that we
have presented on the government is one of
Liberty....”
3. Identify fundamental faw: “The government
would have you believe that people don’t know
how to vote......”
4. Identify what the resolution comes down to:
“Justice is about what ought to be done...”
5. Statement of what must be proven: “What
the government must prove here today is that
airbags really do save lives.”
PMR: Keep the opening short. Explain where
you are going to go (and how you plan to use
your time) then do it.
ORGANISATION
A
reader who does not understand an argument
in writing has the opportunity to re-read it
until he does. Your listener does not have that
chance. He either understands your point or he does
not. That makes it essential that your argument be
clear and well organized. Your listener should be
able to answer the following questions after your
speech:
a. What was your central thesis?
b. On what points do you and the opposition
disagree?
c. What did you present in support of your view?
d. Did you answer all opposition arguments?
It is therefore essential that your remarks be organized
in the following four respects:
a. Your team’s proof must be logically divided among
the team members.
b. Each argument you make must be identifed and
it must be made clear where it fts in the debate.
c. Each opposition argument must be identifed and
separately answered.
d. You must summarize the result of the foregoing,
both within each speech and as a team.
A. Introduction
Although good organization is essential if your
arguments are to be understood and sound convincing,
it is no substitute for content. The introduction and
conclusion should therefore be as brief as possible.
The frst speaker must introduce his team’s arguments
(maximum: 30% of his speech); the last speaker must
conclude for the team.
In presenting your introduction, you should aim
to win favourable attention, unify the audience’s
thoughts, and set the tone for the debate. The
introduction should always make provision for the
following parts:

a. a defnition of terms;
b. a statement of the origin and history of the case;
c. a statement of irrelevant matter;
d. a statement of admitted or waived matter;
e. a statement of the issues; and
f. a division of the issues amongst team members.
Clemens, Classroom Debates

2012 Summer Debate Camp
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Your introduction should be tailored to your debate.
You might consider including some of the following
in your introduction:
a. Asking (dramatically) a question or series of
questions that arouse an interest in your topic;
b. Telling a short anecdote that demonstrates your
case in simple emotional terms;
c. Making a historical, personal or timely reference. The
historical reference adds authority; the personal and
timely references add sincerity and an appreciation
in the audience that you are genuine. For example,
“In 1867, such and such happened ...” or “I read in
the paper this morning ...”;
d. Quoting something relevant to your debate;
e. Using an analogy or theme that continues through
the debate until the conclusion. This can be effective
and unify the speech.
D.S.A.B.C., A Guide to the Elements of Debate
A sample might look like this:
“Last week’s newspaper contained the headline ‘John
Hinckley Acquitted of the Attempted Assassination
of President Reagan’. This travesty of the criminal
law has focused attention on the need for the Insanity
Defence to be abolished.”
By this we mean that the accused in a criminal trial no
longer have the right to be acquitted because he was
insane at the time of the alleged offence. [Defnition
by paraphrase.] The key term is “Insanity Defence”
by which we mean the defence given by section 16 of
the Criminal Code, which provides for an acquittal
in certain circumstances. [Defnition of particular
terms.]
Society is no longer accepting - if it ever did - that an
accused should be spared from criminal punishment
merely because he convinces a psychiatrist he is crazy.
[Essence of the government case.] Even Edward
Mortimer, the seventh person to make an attempt
on the life of Queen Victoria, said from his insane
asylum (when hearing of the thirteenth attempt on
her life), ‘it is a pity they did not hang me, for then
our dear Queen would not have to fear attempts on
her life.’ [Example.]
I make perfectly clear that we are not discussing
ftness to stand trial, or the appropriate treatment
for the insane on their release - but only whether
people who commit crimes while insane should be
held responsible on grounds similar to those which
face the rest of society. [A statement of irrelevant
matter.]
We admit that the basis of the defence is the principle
that only those responsible for their acts should be
punished. We suggest, Mr. Speaker, that there is good
reason to depart from this general principle here.
[Admitted matter, limiting of the issue.]
The issue’s in today’s debate are:
1. The seriousness of the abuse of the defence;
2. The need for a fexible approach to remedy these
abuses;
3. The government plan to commit such people and
provide appropriate treatment for all who suffer from
insanity or serious psychological disorder while in
prison. [Organization of the argument.]
I shall deal with the frst two issues while my partner
will deal with the third.” [Division of the issues
among team members.] (Speaking time elapsed:
about two minutes.)
B. Development of Your Argument
In organizing the body of your argument, you
must reduce your points to snappy headlines for
easy reference. In the above example, you might
summarize the issues as “Abuse, Flexibility and
Treatment”. Similarly, in developing your argument,
make it obvious which heading you are discussing
and whether the argument you are making is in
response to a particular opposition argument.

At page 2 in A Guide to the Elements of Debate,the
Debate and Speech Association of British Columbia
offers the following tips on developing your debate
speech [re-lettered]:
a. Make certain that your points are relevant to the
resolution;
b. Support your argument with examples: “History
is clear; ...”
c. Rely on quotation as an effective, persuasive means
of documenting your point;
d.Use statistics when they are available. (But do not
bore the audience through overuse, and do not use
questionable sources.) Give your source;
e. Prefer to make a few, well supported points rather
than a plethora of unsupported assertions. Do not
exaggerate a weak point;
f. Use rhetorical questions;
g. Add humour to your debate (remembering that
your purpose is to persuade, not to entertain);
h. Reinforce, but do not repeat, your partner’s
arguments;
i. Describe your points vividly and concretely. Be
concise;
j. Explain exactly what you are trying to say; (assume
that the audience is intelligent but ignorant of your
subject;)
k. Express yourself simply (never a fault unless it
interrupts coherence).
C. Order of Arguments
It is good strategy to choose an effective order for
your arguments, rather than simply presenting
them in the order they occur to you. If each builds
on the preceding argument, choose the most basic
argument and work from there. If each argument is
independent, start and fnish with a strong argument.
The order of your arguments must depend on the
speech you are making. At least settle on a deliberate
reason for the order you adopt.
To enable your audience to understand better the
argument you pose, make it clear when you move
from one point to the next. Leave points distinctly
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 42
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and announce your next argument or wrap
up a point by suggesting it leads to your next
argument.
D. Summary
There is an important difference between a
summary and a conclusion. A debate should
have both. A summary reviews the important
arguments and the answers that were made to
them and identifes which opposition arguments
were answered and which were not; a conclusion
is an inference drawn from the summary. Your
summary should be short - if your speech is
well organized, it may not always be necessary,
although a conclusion must always be present.
In the example already given, the summary
might look like this:
“Mr. Speaker, society has lost faith in the criminal
justice system in part because of the abuse
of the Insanity Defence. What is needed is a
fexible response that recognizes that human
beings with human problems do not ft the neat
compartments of the Criminal Code’s Insanity
Defence. This means that those who are tried but
found insane at the time of the commission of the
offence should be convicted, but the treatment
adjusted to correspond with each person’s
needs. The only opposition challenge to this
was, as I’ve already shown, that this is different
from the general principles of the criminal law
and that the abuse of the Insanity Defence is
trivial. Society does not think that the abuse is
trivial and this is a unique problem which will
not suffer from an original solution.”
E. Conclusion
Your conclusion is a one paragraph burst that
by quotation or other appropriate turn of phrase
leaves your audience on your side. It is logically
an ending to the argument. Conclude strongly
and leave a positive impression with your
audience. Many debaters like to use a quotation
and, in appropriate circumstances, something
similar to “I expect that you too, Mr. Speaker,
have come to the inescapable conclusion that this
resolution should be defeated.” Some merely
say “Thank you.” Whatever tack you take, you
should not merely fade away, slowly inching
towards your chair and only stop speaking
completely as you seat yourself. Instead
conclude powerfully, pause, and sit down
purposefully. Try to use your full speaking time
but do not run overtime.
from Some Elements of Debate
T
o my thinking, the following are the keys to an
outstanding Prime Minister’s speech:
1. In a sentence, explain the need for the resolution,
or make a reference to a recent event which makes it
timely. For example (using the 2004 McGill topic as
a point of reference): “Mr Speaker, Maher Arar was
deported to Syria by the US so he could be tortured.
Is it appropriate that a country, like Canada, agree to
extradite its own citizens to face torture?” or, “Mr
Speaker, Canada has recently decided that it is wrong
to extradite its citizens, once convicted, to face the
death penalty. Is it proper to extradite them to face
torture, even before they are convicted?”.
2. Defnitions: Identify and defne the key words.
(See the case construction materials for some
advice).
It is important that you not defne the topic in a
way that gives you an unfair advantage or makes
the case easier to argue. However, there is nothing
wrong about arguing the case in a way which gives
you an advantage; that is the whole point, really.
So the question which I posed at the beginning,
(“Mr Speaker, Canada has recently decided that it
is wrong to extradite its citizens, once convicted, to
face the death penalty. Is it proper to extradite them
to face torture, even before they are convicted?”)—is
perfectly fair as a matter of argument. The point is
to ensure that there are strong arguments available
to both sides.
3. Paraphrase the defnitions in a sentence.
4. Caseline: tell us what you are discussing,
including any limitations on the debate.
For example, “the Government case today is that, in
the vast majority of cases, we should not extradite our
own citizens, no matter what they are accused of”....
Obviously we cannot prove that it is never appropriate
to extradite someone; the government case is that this
is true in the vast majority of cases...
5. If you have chosen a topic that requires the
specialized knowledge to be debateable, give a
one-sentence outline of why it is debateable. For
example, if you are going to debate reform of the
Electoral College in Canada, your audience may
not know enough to understand the debate, and it
would be unfair to your opponents to require them to
debate it without outlining for them the background
facts. “In the US, the president is not directly elected
by the population. Instead, each state has a number
of votes in the electoral college, according to its
population. That means that a candidate who wins
a bare majority of votes in a particular states, receives
all of that states share of the electoral college votes.
Opponents of reform argue that the existing system
OUTLINE OF A
PRIME MINISTER’S SPEECH
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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T
here are two types of Points permitted in
Parliamentary style debates: Points of Order
and Points of Privilege, which both confer the
right to interrupt). Points of Order and Privilege may
be raised at any time unless there is already another
such Point on the foor.
A Point of Order may be raised whenever a rule of debate
has been broken, except for repetition or irrelevance: CSDF
Parliamentary Rule 08.(a). A Speaker who notices such
a breach may call the House to order himself or herself.
If the Speaker does not, any of the debaters may raise a
Point of Order. Rules of the House which often give rise
to Points of Order through their breach include:
(a) Form of Address required. Debaters must refer all
remarks to the Speaker and must refer to one another
in the third person by title. Hence the objection, “Mr.
Speaker, the Prime Minister failed to refer to you ...”;
(b) Language permitted in the House. Unparliamentary
language such as “liar” is not allowed;
(c) Who may hold the foor, in what sequence, and for
what length of time;
(d) What conduct is permitted in the House. (Example:
heckling must be verbal.)
A Point of Privilege may be raised by a debater whose
privileges as a member have been infringed by being
misquoted, misrepresented, slandered or referred to
incorrectly: CSDF Parliamentary Rule 08.(b). Other
privileges of members are the right to be treated with
respect, to comment on any matter coming before the
House when his or her turn comes, and to comment on
speeches which have already been given. Such a point
is “personal” to the member, so only the member whose
privilege has been impugned (or the Speaker) may raise
it.
The procedure for raising a Point of Order or Privilege
is as follows:
1.The member rises and says (without waiting to be
recognized by the Speaker) “Mr. Speaker, I rise on a Point
of Order [or Privilege].,” and
remains standing.
2. If another debater has the foor at that time, he or she
sits down.
3. The Speaker then calls upon the debater who has raised
the point to explain the interruption, saying “I recognize
the Honourable, the Leader of the Opposition. Please
explain your Point of Order [Privilege].”
4. The debater who has raised the point must then explain
it briefy, making specifc reference to the rule broken or
comment complained of. For example, “Mr. Speaker, the
Prime Minister is in breach of Rule 19 because
he is introducing new constructive evidence in his fnal
rebuttal.” The debater raising the point sits down.
5.The Speaker will then rule whether the point was “well
taken” (justifed) or “not well taken”. Such points and the
rulings on them are not debatable.
6.A debater who was interrupted then resumes the foor.
If the point was well taken, he or she should apologize to
the House (and withdraw the remark, if applicable), then
continue with his or her speech.
PARLIAMENTARY POINTS
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forces presidential candidates to campaign in small
states.”
6. State the points which the government will
make:
“There are three arguments that we will rely on
today, Mr Speaker. I shall deal with •, while my
colleague will deal with •.
7. State your frst point, and then prove it. The
British have a formula they use,“sexi” -
State it, explain it, illustrate it. Content counts. We
specialize in impromptu cases—sometimes with
fabby content. Brilliantly structured cases are not
enough: they need good content, too. When a Sacred
Heart debater doesn’t know what to say, she simply
spends more time outlining or summarizing her case.
Content is as important.
This doesn’t always require research: it requires
thinking. What is the most important issue on each
side? Deal with those issues. In the example at the
outset, the issues may be protecting Canadian citizens
(even if they turn out to be terrorists) or protecting
Canadian citizens (by extraditing terrorists). It may
be that international relations trump civil rights.
Whatever it is, decide what the key issues are, and
deal with them during the debate.
Don’t just state the point, develop it. Let me give an
example from the “same sex education” issue.
• The key issues in the debate are academic results
vs social results. If you can prove that same sex
education produces better marks and no social costs,
you win. Conversely, if you can prove that same sex
education has social costs and no academic benefts,
you win. More challenging, may be to decide who
wins when you have to balance some academic gains
against some social costs.
Point “Students perform better academically in
single sex classrooms”
Explain: “Studies done in Britain, Australia and
the United States confirm that students in same
sex classes achieve better test scores, with fewer
discipline issues.”
Illustrate it: “In Britain, the Education department
studied 9,000 students in grades 7-10 in an effort to
decide what school confguration produced the best
test results. In July, 2003, the study concluded, “(set
out quote).” This result was true regardless of the
social-economic back ground of the students.
In the US, schools have gone from co-ed to single sex,
with astounding results, for example—
Conclude, “In fact, there is no study in which students
have moved from co-ed classrooms to single sex
classrooms without improving their marks
8. Summarize what you have covered.
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 44
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P
ARLIAMENTARY DEBATE, with its opportunity for wit
and Parliamentary interruptions, is a lively debate
format. It offers rewards to those who think on
their feet and can remain confdent and good-natured
in the face of criticism. It also gives the debater with a
fare for policy a chance to show off this talent. Because
of the opportunity for a debater to be interrupted at
any stage of his remarks, it is particularly important
that he be well organized and that his remarks be
visibly structured, so that the audience is able to
follow his thread of thought despite interruptions
during the course of the debate.
Features of Parliamentary Debate
Educational Parliamentary debate attempts to
transform the detailed discussion that occurs in the
House of Commons (sitting as the Committee of the
Whole House) to a format that teaches principles
of reasoning, research and argument. In this style
of debate, “[O]pponents are not referred to as
opponents. The other team is called the Government
or the Opposition, as the case may be. The Prime
Minister’s full title is ‘The Honourable the Prime
Minister’ (the defnite article is used twice). Ditto
for the Leader of the Opposition.” (Gray-Grant,
Remarks on Parliamentary Debate) The other members
of the teams are the second Government member
(or the Minister of Finance, Defence, etc.) and the
frst speaker for the Opposition. (The Leader of the
Opposition is the last negative speaker.) Similar
titles are used for additional debaters in three-a-side
debates.
Parliamentary debate, in addition to taking place in a
Parliamentary setting, also differs from other styles of
debate in its convention that resolutions be questions
of policy. The Government does not merely express
an opinion (“Health care costs are unacceptably
high”, “Capital Punishment is an effective deterrent
to murder”, “The level of unemployment is
unacceptably high”); it also proposes a change in
policy (“The federal government limit the availability
of medicare”, “Capital Punishment be reinstated”,
“The government devote greater resources to
the retraining of the unemployed”). Except in
impromptu Parliamentary debates, where a Plan is
optional, the Government is required to produce a
detailed Plan outlining how the proposed changes in
policy are to be implemented: Rule 2 of the Canadian
Student Debating Federation’s (CSDF’s) General
Rules of Debating.
The Government in a policy debate, then, must show
that:
1. The value statement [goal] is desirable and is not
being satisfactorily achieved; and
2. The Government plan will substantially achieve that
goal, and will do so better than the alternatives.
In the examples already discussed, a value statement
is that “limiting medicare would be ‘good’ (for
whatever reason: perhaps because health care costs
are unacceptably high)”; the plan might be that
medicare be limited to individuals whose family
income is less than $18,000.00 a year who suffer
from a chronic illness, with an annual per-family
deductible of $200.00. Or, in the third example, “It
is desirable to retrain the unemployed (for whatever
reason: perhaps because the level of unemployment
is unacceptably high)”, the Plan might be that the
government establish fourteen centres, one in each
of the following cities (list them), staffed by the
following sorts of vocational counsellors (describe
them) to be available to the chronically unemployed
(defne them) under the following conditions (defne
them).
It is the Government, not the Opposition, that
proposes the change to the existing state of affairs
(the “status quo”); this is accomplished by the rule
that requires the resolution (the “Bill”) to be worded
in a positive manner. The proposed change will be
measured against the status quo or any counter-
proposal offered by the Opposition (a “Counter-
Plan”). To succeed in discharging its burden of
proof, the Goverment must therefore show that there
is something wrong with the status quo (a need for
a change) and that the Government proposal (the
“Plan”) will remedy that wrong. In the event that
the Opposition proposes an alternative means of
remedying the wrong, the Opposition assumes the
burden of proof and the debate focuses on which
Plan will better succeed. Because debaters have
only a limited amount of time, the Government (or,
in the event of a Counter-Plan, the Opposition) does
not need to present a perfect case, answering every
possible objection: it is enough to establish that, on
balance, its case is more likely right than not (proof
on a “balance of probabilities”). As well, while a
Plan or Counter-Plan must be proved to be feasible,
it need not be shown to be legal or constitutional:
CSDF General Rule 10. On the other hand, inclusion
of “should” in the resolution does not relieve the
Government of the duty to present a Plan or prove
that the course of action entailed in implementing
the Plan is warranted.
The rules of Parliamentary debate differ only slightly
from those of Academic and Cross-Examination style
debating. The main differences are:
1. Parliamentary interruptions (Points of Order, Privileg) and
heckling may occur at any time during the debate.
2. Unlike Cross-examination debate, there is no opportunity to
cross-examine members of the opposing team (though questions
may be raised by heckling, rhetorically during speeches.
3. “[A]ll remarks are addressed to the Speaker. Debaters should
begin their speeches with the introduction, ‘Mr. Speaker, ...’, not
‘Mr. Speaker, Honourable Members ...’ It is an effective rhetori-
AN INTRODUCTION TO PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
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cal device to refer to the Speaker in one’s debate: ‘... and can you
believe, Mr. Speaker, the illogical plan of the Government?’”
(Gray-Grant, Remarks on Parliamentary Debate).
Procedures that prevail in a Parliamentary debate are much the
same as those in a Cross-examination or Academic debate, with
a chairman (the “Speaker”) moderating and introducing each de-
bater at the beginning of his remarks. Speaking times are similar
to those used in Academic and Cross-examination debate, with all
debaters receiving an equal amount of speaking time (apart from
heckling and any Parliamentary points that may be raised).
In Canada, two types of Parliamentary debate are in use. The
usual and traditional one follows the Oxford rebuttal format,
in which each debater except for the Prime Minister must incor-
porate his rebuttal into his single block of speaking time. The
speaking order and sample speaking times areset out below.
1. Necessity for a Plan
As previously noted, CSDF General Rule 2 requires the Govern-
ment in a prepared Parliamentary debate to propose a Plan. Such
a Plan is optional (but may be highly desirable, as it can provide
extra content) in an impromptu debate.
Because Parliamentary debates focus on questions of policy, it
is important that the Government team give careful attention to
the preparation of a detailed Plan. In particular, the Government
should consider addressing the following issues in its Plan:
(a) Cost involved, and how it will be afforded;
(b) The mechanism for implmenting the plan; (For ex-
ample, will there be a new government agency, or a change in
existing legislation?)
(c) Timing (Over what period will the Plan be phased
in?);
(d) Consequences and what will be done to alleviate dis-
advantages of the Plan; (For example, what will be done about
those displaced as a result?)
(e) Structure. (For example, the manpower required,
enforcement measures, penalties for violation.)
Certain issues take particular prominence in different debates.
In a debate on the resolution, “Be it resolved that the federal
government take steps to reduce Acid Rain”, for example, all
of the above issues are relevant: cost, mechanism, timing,
consequences (What will be done for those thrown out of work
by the closing of offending factories?), and structure (What is
to be done to violators?) By contrast, a debate on reinstating
Capital Punishment will probably focus on the value statement
(whether it is desirable) and not on the Plan. In such a debate,
it would still be necessary to detail briefy how the Criminal
Code would be amended, for what crimes capital punishment
would be imposed, whether conviction of a capital crime would
require particular rules of evidence or jury selection, whether
the execution would be performed by lethal injection, hanging,
gassing or electrocution, when the change would come into force
and what provision would be made for those awaiting trial at the
time of the new law.
Government teams lose many debates by poorly thought-out
Plans, and win many by anticipating potential Opposition argu-
ments and Plan objections and tailoring the Plan to overcome
these objections. Government debaters should therefore craft
their Plan carefully and Opposition debaters should be vigilant
to spot Plan weaknesses.
CSDF General Rule 10 requires that a Plan must be introduced
in the frst Government speech and be completely described
before the last Government constructive speech; thus in a two-
person team debate, the Prime Minister must both introduce and
completely describe the Plan in his opening address while in a
three-person team debate, the second Government member may
Prime Minister (constructive speech) 5 minutes
1st Opposition debater (constructive speech/rebuttal) 8 minutes
2nd Government member (constructive speech/rebuttal) 8 minutes
2nd Opposition speaker (constructive speech/rebuttal) 8 minutes
3rd Government member (constructive speech/rebuttal) 8 minutes
Leader of the Opposition (constructive speech/rebuttal) 8 minutes
Prime Minister (offcial rebuttal) 3 minutes
It is also possible, although unusual, to employ the Cambridge rebuttal format in Parliamentary style. In this case, the
speaking order and typical maximum speaking times for two-person teams would be:
Prime Minister (constructive speech) 5 minutes
1st Opposition debater (constructive speech) 5 minutes
2nd Government member (constructive speech) 5 minutes
Leader of the Opposition (constructive speech) 5 minutes
1st Opposition speaker (rebuttal) 3 minutes
2nd Government member (rebuttal) 3 minutes
Leader of the Opposition (rebuttal) 3 minutes
Prime Minister (rebuttal) 3 minutes
(The constructive speeches in two-person team debates are often 7 minutes.)
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 46
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complete the description of the Plan. (The rule makes similar
requirements for Counter-Plans.)
2. Elements requiring Proof
Each issue that arises in the debate presents three parts to con-
sider:
(1) the value statement,
(2) the need for change, and
(3) the effect of the Plan.
In a debate that “Canada withdraw from all military alliances”,
the value statement for a particular issue might be that “military
alliances are too costly”, “military alliances are unnecessary”,
“military alliances endanger world peace”, or “military alliances
offer Canada inadequate protection”. (These may be linked: for
example, the cost may be too great given the level of protection we
receive.) These statements can actually be broken down further:
when we say “military alliances offer inadequate protection”, we
are really making two assertions: that some (particular) level of
protection is necessary (or desirable) and that the present level
of protection does not reach that standard. Together, these two
assertions may establish the need for change.
The Government must also show how the Plan meets this need - in
this instance, by increasing the level of protection. Sometimes
the value statement may be obvious but the need for change
diffcult to show; at others, the need for change will be obvious
but the success of the Plan diffcult to demonstrate. In the above
example, one of the value statements is that “world peace is a
good thing” - something with which most people would prob-
ably agree. It is not at all clear, however, that military alliances
endanger (rather than safeguard) world peace. So the need for
change is unclear. In order to win a particular issue, the Govern-
ment must show that its value statement is correct, that there is
therefore a need for change, and that the Plan answers the need.
For the Opposition to win an issue, the Government need only
fail in one of these tasks (unless the Opposition introduces a
Counter-Plan, in which case it assumes the full burden of proof
from the Government).
The Opposition Case
1. GENERALLY
A Parliamentary debate offers distinct targets for the Opposition
to attack: the value statement and the Plan. The Opposition, how-
ever, cannot forecast exactly what the Government Plan will be.
It is therefore essential that the Opposition research thoroughly.
Only then can it hope to anticipate all potential Government Plans
and know the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Once that is done, the Opposition must evaluate the six arguments
available in response to each value statement and decide which
it will use in the debate:
1. The Opposition may disagree with the value statement.
(This will rarely happen.) In the earlier example, that Canada
withdraw from military alliances, one reason suggested was that
the alliances offer inadequate protection. This could be analyzed
as “X level of protection is desirable” (value statement); “Mili-
tary alliances now offer only Y level of protection to Canada”
(taken together, the need for change); “Therefore Canada should
withdraw from alliances and place her military expenditures in
Z over a three year period” (Plan). The Opposition in this case
might well disagree that X level of protection is desirable.
2. “Prove it.” The Opposition argues that whether or not the
value statement is true, there is a need for change, or the Plan
is sound (and it might stop short of denying this), the evidence
is insuffcient to justify the conclusion. The case is unproved.
(Without the support of one of the other arguments, this is not
a very powerful attack. As with any rebuttal, however, the Op-
position will probably discover that parts of the Government case
have not been logically proved. A specifc attack on these parts
may torpedo an otherwise successful Government case.)
3. If the Opposition agrees with the value statement (as
they probably will), only four arguments remain:
A. Deny the need for change. The Opposition maintains
that the Government has not shown a need for change: the sta-
tus quo adequately achieves the value statement identifed, and
therefore no problem exists. (In practise, this tends to blur with
Attack 1, above.) Even a weak Government team will normally
have identifed some need for change in coming to its Plan - so it
will be rare that the Government will be so inept that you are able
to make this attack. Occasionally, however, the Government will
assume agreement on the need for change which does not exist.
For example, in a debate on increasing military expenditures,
the Government might rely on Canada’s obsolete Armed Forces
as suffcient justifcation of the value statement; the Opposition,
however, might maintain that the current level of expenditure
is
adequate because it denies that increased defence spending would
increase national security, or because the country simply cannot
afford any further expenditure on anything at this time.
B. Admit the need for change (the status quo needs to be
improved) but suggest:
i. Repairs - Minor changes (perhaps more funding,
manpower or more effective monitoring for violations) will
correct the problem and so no major change is needed (which is
otherwise too costly, radical or unwieldy). The signifcance of
the Government advantage is challenged and the inherency of
the need for change disputed. (For example, parole violations
may not justify the reinstatement of Capital Punishment; instead
they may call for tighter parole procedures.)
ii. Counter-Plan - There is a need for change, but the
Opposition has a plan that will meet the need better than the
Government’s Plan. A Counter-Plan has two essential require-
ments: the Counter-Plan must be superior to the Plan in some
respect (for example, cost, effciency, or fewer disadvantages)
and it must differ signifcantly from the Plan. (See Part 2. C.,
below.)
iii. Plan Objections (short of a Counter-Plan)

a. No solution. The Opposition admits there is a need
for change but denies that the Government’s Plan solves the
problem.
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b. Disadvantages. The Opposition admits there is a
need forchange (and sometimes, although not necessarily,
that the Government Plan achieves its purpose) but argues
that the disadvantages make the change undesirable on bal-
ance.
One of these six attacks deserves special discussion.
2. The Counter-Plan
A. FORMAL REQUIREMENTS
If the negative desires to introduce a Counter-Plan, it
must do so during the address of its frst speaker; this may
be done informally (that is, it requires no formal motion
of amendment or seconder). The negative must prove
that such a Counter-Plan is an alternative solution to the
problem with which the resolution is concerned, that it is
signifcantly different from the affrmative proposal, and
that it is demonstrably more desirable than the affrmative
Plan. A Plan or Counter-Plan must at least be outlined dur-
ing the frst speech of a team and be completely described
before its last constructive speech. A Plan or Counter-Plan
must be proved to be feasible but not necessarily legal or
constitutional.
Rule 10, CSDF General Rules of Debating
It follows from Rule 10 that in two-person team debating,
the Counter-Plan must be completely described by the frst
Opposition speaker. The essence of the Counter-Plan case
is to admit the need for change and instead take issue with
the Plan. The debate, in effect, then focuses on the relative
ability of the Plan and Counter-Plan to meet the admitted
need for change (though the affrmative team is at liberty to
dispute the need for a change once a Counter-Plan has been
introduced, as it no longer bears the burden of proof).
B. WHEN TO USE A COUNTER-PLAN
The Counter-Plan is an attractive alternative strategy for
Opposition teams to consider. It offers the following ad-
vantages:
1. It heightens the clash in the debate;
2. It allows the Opposition to take the offensive. It may
force the second Government debater to throw away his
prepared speech and deal instead with the Opposition
Counter-Plan. This may catch the Government by surprise
and thereby give an advantage to the Opposition;
3. It rewards teams with policy talents; and
4. It is content oriented and therefore may give an individual
better point totals than mere denials of the Government
case.
Opposition debaters are often uncomfortable with a Coun-
ter-Plan, however. In the frst place, they are reluctant to
assume the burden of proof in the debate, especially since
the affrmative team will still have the last word. Opposi-
tion debaters may think they have an easier job of it if the
Government has the burden of proof and all they need do
is snipe at Government faults. It is true that in assuming
the burden of proof the Opposition debaters increase the
likelihood of losing the debate - they must now establish
on balance that the Counter-Plan is better than the Plan.
But they may improve their individual point scores in the
process (by having more concrete content in their remarks).
In most provincial tournaments (and at National Seminars)
the competition is decided on individual scores, not win-
loss results. So in some events, any apparent disadvantage
caused by assuming the burden of proof is illusory and
may be more than compensated for by the added content
introduced, or the other advantages noted above.
A Counter-Plan is sometimes inappropriate: in debating a
resolution which apparently focuses on the need for change
(for example, that Capital Punishment be reinstated) it may
be unwise to admit the need for change and instead argue
about Plan details. Similarly, whether a Counter-Plan should
be used depends on the cleverness of the Plan presented: if
a very good Plan is presented, a Counter-Plan may be the
only effective answer to the Government case. Ironically,
if a very good Government Plan is presented, you may be
unable to devise a better Counter-Plan and instead be forced
to attack the need for change. So even though you intend
to use a Counter-Plan, remain fexible until you have heard
the Government Plan. If you decide not to use a Counter-
Plan, you can still rely on the research you have done to
show that the existing Plan details are weak or unsound (in
those respects that they differ from the Counter-Plan you
would have presented).
C. HOW DIFFERENT MUST THE COUNTER-PLAN BE?
Under CSDF General Rule 10, the Opposition must prove
that a Counter-Plan is “signifcantly different from the af-
frmative proposal”. This ingredient of the burden of proof
assumed by the Opposition should not be overlooked.
Some Opposition debaters are concerned that the Counter-
Plan they use will end up admitting too much of the Govern-
ment case. In fact, such a strategy - admitting all but one
key part of the Government case or Plan - is very effective.
Typically the Government argument will be divided among
all parts of the case. When the Opposition admits most of
these points, it renders much of the Government arguments
useless. The Opposition is able to focus its speeches entirely
on one or two points - which the Government, needing to
cover everything, could defend only briefy.
If a resolution requires the Government to propose a par-
ticular Plan, the Counter-Plan must deny the substance of
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the resolution. So, for example, in a debate on the resolu-
tion, “University tuition fees be abolished”, the Opposition
could present a Counter-Plan proposing that “University
housing and accommodation costs be subsidized”. This
is an alternative solution to the problem (the high cost of
attending university) and is arguably superior: housing is
a larger expense than tuition, and less directly related to a
student’s education. By making a student pay his own tui-
tion fees, he feels a stake in his education. The same is not
true of mere living expenses. Accordingly, housing costs
should be subsidized for university students, not tuition
fees. This Counter-Plan denies the resolution. It would not
be suffcient for the Counter-Plan to admit that tuition fees
should be abolished but argue that housing costs should also
be subsidized because this would not exclude the operation
of the resolution.
When a resolution does not require a specifc Government
Plan, but merely outlines the need for change, it is submitted
that a different result obtains. For example, the resolution
“The federal government take steps to balance the federal
budget” does not explicitly dictate the Plan (which could
be to raise taxes or revenues from other sources, or to
lower expenditures). Therefore, it would be proper for an
Opposition team in such a debate to counter a Government
Plan that expenditures be decreased with a Counter-Plan
that expenditures remain constant but taxes be increased
or revenues be raised from other sources. Such a Counter-
Plan is an alternative solution to the problem with which the
resolution is concerned and is distinctly different from the
Government Plan; even though it does not deny the resolu-
tion. In my opinion, this should be suffcient to satisfy the
spirit as well as the exact wording of CSDF General Rule
10, assuming that the Opposition proves the Counter-Plan
to be “signifcantly different from” and “demonstrably more
desirable than” the Government Plan.
D. HOW TO INTRODUCE A COUNTER-PLAN
If you are going to introduce a Counter-Plan, do so frmly
and clearly. The audience must not be left to wonder
whether you are merely criticizing Plan details or whether
this a a genuine Counter-Plan. Introduce the matter with
words such as, “The Opposition admits (whatever the need
for change is) but denies that the Plan is the best way to (meet
that need). The Opposition proposes the following Counter-
Plan, which we submit is superior to the Plan in respect of
(cost, effciency or whatever).” Then state the Counter-Plan
details and present the Opposition arguments.
An excerpt from Introduction to Parliamentary Debating
©1984, 1995 Brian Casey & John Filliter
P
oints of information were borrowed from British
debating. However, in a couple of respects they
have taken on a life of their own in Worlds’ Style,
and have to be treated as a phenomenon new to British
and non-British judges alike.
A point of information is offered in the course of a
speech by a member of the opposing team. The speaker
may either accept the point or decline it. If accepted,
the opponent may make a short point or ask a short
question that deals with some issue in the debate
(preferably one just made by the speaker). It is, if you
like, a formal interjection.
5.1 DEBATING IS MORE THAN A SPEECH
Points of information bring about a major change
in the role of speakers in a debate. In this style each
speaker must take part in the debate from beginning to
end, not just during their own speech. A frst speaker
for the government continues to play an active role
in the debate even when the third speaker for the
opposition is speaking. Equally, the third speaker
for the opposition must play an active role in the
debate when the frst speaker for the government is
speaking.
The speakers play this role by offering points of
information. Even if the points are not accepted, they
must still demonstrate that they are involved in the
debate by at least offering. A speaker who takes no part
in the debate other than by making a speech should
lose marks for content and strategy - content for failing
to take advantage of opportunities, strategy for failing
to understand the role of a speaker under this style.
Equally, speakers must ensure that they accept at least
some points of information during their speech. In an
8 minute speech, taking at least 2 would be expected
(depending, of course, on how many are offered). A
speaker who fails to accept any points of information
must lose marks for content (failing to allow the other
side to make points, thus reducing the amount of
direct clash between the two teams) and particularly
strategy (for not understanding the role of the speakers
in this style - or, to put it another way, for cowardice’).
Of course, a speaker who takes too many will almost
certainly lose control of the speech and thus lose marks
for style and probably also for strategy (poor speech
structure) and content as well.
5.2 The etiquette of points of information
A point of information is offered by standing and
saying “point of information” or something similar.
The speaker on the foor is not obliged to accept every
point. She or he may -
(i) ask the interrupter to sit down
(ii) fnish the sentence and then accept the point, or
(iii) accept the point then and there.
POINTS OF
INFORMATION
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altogether.
To begin with there is a practical problem. Judges
must have some system of recording points of
information from the beginning of the debate even
tor speakers who will not speak until the end of the
debate. In other words, during the frst speaker tor the
government a judge must be able to record something
about the offering of points by the third speaker of the
opposition. even though that speaker will not make
a speech for nearly an hour.
A simple solution has been devised in Australia by
Annette Whiley. Each judge has a separate sheet
of paper. divided into o boxes (one line down the
middle, three across the page). Each box represents
the offering of points by a speaker. During the frst
speaker for the government, the three boxes on the
right hand side will be used to record the offering
of points by the three opposition speakers. A simple
tallymark shows one was offered. If one was accepted,
a brief note about it can be included in the box. At the
end of the debate this allows the judge to see what
sort of contribution was being made by each speaker
in offering points of information.
At the 1994 National Schools Championships in
Australia we experimented with a separate category
worth 5 marks for the offering of points of information.
On the whole I don’t think this worked very well. So
we seem to be back with marking the offering of points
within each speaker’s speech marks.
This should not be a problem except in an unusual
situation where a speaker does a poor speech but
offers superb points of information (or vice versa). In
that case the mark will not refect the speech alone,
because points of information forced the speech mark
up (or down, as the case may be).
A summary of how to mark points of information is
as follows
1. The primary component of the speaker’s marks is
the speaker’s speech
2. That mark can increase by up to a couple of marks
if the speaker offered superb points of information
during the rest of the debate
3. That mark can decrease by up to a couple of marks
if the speaker -
(i) offered no points of information (or almost none)
during the rest of the debate
(ii) offered bad points of information during the rest
of the debate
(iii) failed to accept points of information during her
or his own speech.
Note that just because the response to a point of
information was good, it doesn’t mean that the point
was not a good one. Don’t judge the worth of the
point on the response. After all, if a motion is strongly
arguable on both sides, then the major points on each
side should have good counter-arguments.
More than one member of the opposing team may rise
simultaneously. The speaker on the foor may decline
all or some, and may choose which one to take. The
others then sit down.
Opposing speakers must sometimes tread a fne line
between the legitimate offering of points of information
on the one hand, and barracking on the other. The fact
that points must be offered makes the style more
aggressive and more prone to interruptions. However,
continuous offering by more than one member of a
team really amounts to excessive interruption and is
barracking. This should incur penalties in style for the
team members involved.
As a rough guide, in one debate in the 1994 Australian
Schools Championships one team offered no less
than 63 points of information in the 3 speeches of the
opposing team. This was around 4 per minute, at times
from all 3 members of the team. There could not be
much doubt that this was barracking.
It is impossible to put a fgure on how many should
be offered, because national practices vary somewhat.
In some places no speaker would offer more than 3
points of information to an opposing speaker during
her or his speech (or a team total of 9 offered to
that speaker). In other places the fgure would be
somewhat higher, especially if the debate is conducted
with some aggression and passion. But at some
point it crosses the line and ceases to be legitimate.
Hopefully, adjudicators will fnd this a problem only
in rare cases.
The point of information may be in the form of a
question to the person making a speech, or it may be
a remark addressed through the person chairing the
debate. Some teams tend to use the latter format, while
most teams tend to ask a question. Let it be clear that
either format is perfectly acceptable.
The point of information must be brief. 10 to 15 seconds
is the norm, and over that the interrupter should be
told to sit down by the speaker. As well, when the
person making the speech understands the point, she
or he can tell the interrupter to sit down - the speaker
does not have to let the point get right through to the
end in all cases. Always remember that the speaker
who is making the speech has complete control of
points of information - when to accept them, whether
to accept them, and how long they should go on for.
Which, of course, puts a premium on clear simple
points. In one debate the interrupter began by saying
“I may be particularly dense and paused, whereupon
the speaker said “Yes you are” and continued with his
speech. This was a waste of a good opportunity, all
because the interrupter chose to indulge in pompous
oratory rather than a crisp clear point.
5.3 Marking points of information
It is relatively easy to mark the responses to points of
information, because each response is incorporated
into the speech, and that is where it gets marked. The
problems come in marking the offering of points of
information, because speakers will offer points other
than during their own speech. at a time when the
judge is making notes about another speaker
Chris Erskine, Rosemary Dixon, Andrew Stockley,
Elizabeth Virgo and David Pritchard World Schools
Debating Adjudication Notes
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PERSUASION
A. Generally
E
veryone has personal likes and dislikes. Your
aim in a debate is to persuade an audience
and this requires that you ask yourself “What
approach will be most persuasive for this audience?”
This entails two questions: “Which of the available
arguments are most persuasive?” and “What is the
most persuasive way to present those arguments?”
To take an obvious example, if you are complaining
of waste in the civil service, using the example of
your own teachers (“who work only fve hours a day,
eight months of the year”) is not going to persuade
many teachers in the audience and will probably
alienate them. They do not consider themselves civil
servants and they do not think (rightly or wrongly)
that they work only fve hours a day, eight months
a year. The same teachers might be more easily
convinced by an argument that complains that the
Ministry of Education has one bureaucrat for every
four teachers — and your suggestion that axing
the bureaucrats and adding more teachers would
provide better quality education, save dollars and
eliminate waste.
You try to convince the opposition as well as the
audience — and the arguments that the opposition
fnds most persuasive they will fnd most diffcult
to rebut. In attacking the quality of education today,
don’t point to them as examples of the bad system
(they won’t believe that) — rather fatter them and
point out that they are exceptions and ask how many
of the students at their school have the ability they
have demonstrated. This is good manners; it is also
good debate. Similarly, if you can paint yourself and
your partner(s) as examples of where the system has
failed — that accords with what the opposition wants
to believe anyway.
B. Language
One key ingredient in a persuasive speech is the
language used. The English language is rich with
synonyms. Choose the one that most advances your
case. If you are defending government payments
to the public, speak of “social security” and “family
support programmes” — not “welfare” and
“unemployment insurance”. Your team’s plan is a
“case”, the opposition’s a “theory” or a “scheme”.
You live in a “mixed economy”; they are products
of the “welfare state”.
Similarly, in analysing the resolution and defning it,
be conscious of the interpretation you can use which
will be the most persuasive to the opposition.
C. Your Style and Theirs
Few debaters give much attention to the combination
the judges see: the combined effect of the two (or
three) affrmative speakers and the combined effect
of the two (or three) negative speakers. It is elemental
that your argument and your partner’s (or partners’)
interlock, not overlap. But his (her or their) style(s)
should do so also. If you are the voice of reason,
let him (or her or them) be the voice(s) of passion,
morality, or idealism.
“Have people on your team that you can work
with but who are different from you in the
way they argue, talk, or reason. Remember,
debating is a team effort. If the members of
one team all talk, look, and reason alike, you
might as well have one person giving all the
speeches and let the rest of the team sit in
the audience to watch. If you are the slow,
patient, methodical type who writes out every
word of a fne, closely reasoned argument,
have a partner who never uses notes and rips
into issues with concentrated, aimed fre. If
you have a fashy wit that can shred an enemy
proposition down to the essential absurdity it
is, have a tall, dry companion who can stand
aloof from petty bickerings and pronounce
statements with an Olympian air of disdain
and discernment. Remember that if Oliver and
Hardy had both been fat or both been thin, no
one would ever have paid fve cents to watch
their movies.”
McKenzie, Debating Tips, page 1
It is correspondingly important to divide the points
your team will cover logically and in a way that
furthers your strategy. Those points which are to be
factually presented should be given to someone who
excels at this, while those which call for examples
should be given to someone who tells good stories.
But this obvious injunction applies as well to the
presentation of your case. If the opposition is
famboyant, excited or loud, try to be restrained, calm
and quiet. If they are calm, bring life to the debate.
Help the audience to see differences between you and
the opposition in style as well as in content.
Similarly, do not overlook the advantages of your
own organization. If your team has three arguments,
and the opposition has replied to each, deal with
your points when re-establishing them in your order
of preference. Use your organization and force
the opposition to use yours too. Keep the debate
organized on your terms.
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PROOF
A
debate poses very substantial difficulties of
proof. The matters of fact suitable for debate are
necessarily those on which the evidence is not
conclusive; matters of value are inherently matters on
which persons of intelligence and good will can come to
different conclusions. So it is impossible to “prove” your
case, and it is this fact that sometimes leads a team to try
to avoid its responsibilities by defning away diffculties
There are two ways out of this diffculty: to realize that
proof is not absolute, and to be selective in what you
seek to prove.
“Proof” is whatever “tends to create belief.” In mathematics
and physics we begin with certain assumptions that
make it possible to have absolute proofs (subject to those
assumptions) . In debating, those assumptions are absent
and nothing can be proven absolutely. But nor is that
necessary. The debate is won by doing a better job than
your opponent, not by an absolute proof. The winner is
the team who the audience believes is more likely to be
right.
Inherent in debating is a limited time for argument. In
most high school debates, it would be rare for a team to
have more than about 15 minutes of constructive speaking
time. It is impossible in 15 minutes to say everything there
is to say about the differences between men and women
and why one is better than the other.
So the key is being selective, and making an assumption.
The assumption is that if you choose two or three
important characteristics, and can convince the audience
about the correctness of the resolution with respect to
those characteristics, then the resolution is more likely to
be true than false if the characteristics you have chosen are
representative. So in the debate that “Women are better
than men” you might consider the relative ability of the
sexes as parents, wage—earners, and peace makers. But
be prepared not only to explain things on those fronts,
but to defend your choice of those three characteristics. A
debate on whether the 20th century is a better century to be
living in than any in the past might consider (1) standard
of living, quality of life and distributions of income; (2)
culture; (3) security.
In each case—and in these two sorts of debate generally—
you begin with the assumption that if you’re right with
respect to these characteristics, you’re probably right as a
whole. The other team may (and frequently will) challenge
the particular examples or parameters of your proof, either
as a whole or in part. (“We agree that it’s appropriate to
look at the relative ability of men and women as parents
and peacemakers, but we don’t think their ability as wage
earners tells us which is better. We live in a world in which
men have monopolized the positions of power, and they
pay their own sex more than they pay women. This is not
inherent in the sex, but rather is a function of power in
society. If women controlled the positions of power, they
might well pay their sex more, and that would be equally
irrelevant in deciding which was the better sex. The real
focus of this debate should be on the characteristics of
each sex which are inherent.”)
If you choose two or three characteristics, and limit the
debate to those particular characteristics, you may be able
to cover the subject reasonably well in the time available
to you.
REBUTTAL AND REPLY
P
erhaps the most important skill in debate is
rebuttal. If the essence of a debate is the
clash between teams, then effective rebuttal is
the means to achieve it. The team with the better
rebuttal will often win the debate.
Part of the secret of an effective rebuttal is appearance:
you need to look like you have dealt with all of the
opposition arguments. That means that you need to
be organized, and label what you have done, so the
judge can clearly see how it relates to what he or she
has already heard.
The purpose of the rebuttal and reply speech is to help
the judge to relate the arguments which have been
made by each side. Something happened during the
debate: a point was made, it was conceded, or it was
knocked down, or it was knocked down and rebuilt.
The rebuttal lets you knock down points, but it also
lets you tell the judge what happened in the round
and therefore what points remain (and consequently
why your side wins the debate).
There are at least three separate skills at work in an
effective rebuttal speech:
• point by point rebuttal of the opposing team’s
points;
• defence of the points you and your partner have
made; and
• big picture analysis (a summary of the round).
I will go on to talk about each of these three skills
in a moment, but frst let me make some general
observations.
Rebuttal time is very precious. In a conventional
parliamentary debate, your opponents might have
about 20 minutes to make their case: your rebuttal
is likely no more than three minutes. It follows that
you cannot simply deal in order with everything
that has been said. You and your partner need to
coordinate your rebuttals: you mustn’t waste time
dealing with issues she has already effectively dealt
with, but you must deal with all of the “big issues”
which are still outstanding.
Accordingly the most important rebuttal skill is
judgment: you have to choose which arguments to
respond to, and in how much detail.
Typically, your opponents will have organized their
speeches around several points. Take a moment to
consider which of these points are the key to winning
the round. Don’t waste much time on red herrings,
or trivial points.
Second, consider which of these points have already
been successfully dealt with by your partner, and
not rebuilt. You need to deal with only those points
which she did not deal with.
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Third, consider whether these are separate arguments,
whether they are consistent (do they contradict each
other?), and what your answer to each of the points
would be. Feel free to re-label or combine the points
the opposition team put forward so that it makes
more sense to the judge.
Let’s look at an example:
Suppose you are the affirmative in a debate on
whether single sex education is superior to co-
education for junior high. Suppose the negative team
offered three reasons why co-ed schools are better
for junior high:
• co-ed schools offer important social benefts
• academic performance is similar in co-ed and single
sex schools;
• co-ed refects what happens in the real world.
If your affirmative case dealt with the issues of
academic performance, then that is something that
you can point out, without a huge amount of rebuttal.
That argument needs only a brief rebuttal, or maybe
a rebuilding of your case.
The “it refects what happens in the real world” is not
an argument, it is a statement of fact. The negative
may have labelled their point this way, but it is still
not an argument.
An argument is a reason for doing something, and
you can normally restate it as a “beneft” statement.
In the frst two negative arguments, for instance, you
have social benefts and academic benefts.
What’s the beneft referred to in the third point? Well,
it’s not stated. To answer it effectively, you need to
make the beneft statement. It is: “that students will
beneft from attending a school that refects the real
world.”
Re-stating the issue this way makes it clear that this
“argument” only means something if the negative
team can answer the question, “how (or why) is it a
beneft to attend a school that refects the real world?”
If the negative hasn’t answered that question (and
if there is no answer which is obvious) — then the
point is meaningless. Point out to the judge that this
is a statement of fact, not an argument, and that the
negative has offered no reason why it is a beneft,
and that’s it.
In this example, the third argument may simply be a
re-statement of their frst argument — that there are
social benefts in attending co-ed schools (because
it prepares students for a co-ed existence in the real
world). It may be that the negative has two points
under this heading: there are social benefits to
students while they are in a co-ed junior high; there
are social benefts to students when they leave a co-ed
junior high. When the argument is sized up in this
way, it may be easier to answer it—because the focus
is clearly on the benefts, and (as a result) whether
it is necessary to have co-ed junior high schools to
obtain those benefts.
In your rebuttal in a particular debate, you need to
decide which of the three skills (rebuttal, defence, big
picture) you need. Because these are distinct skills,
it’s often important to decide which you need to use
today. In some debates, you don’t have time for point
by point rebuttal. In some debates, there is really no
need for a detailed defence (rebuilding of your team’s
points). In some debates you may in fact divide these
two responsibilities among the debaters.
In my judgment, every debate requires a big picture
analysis in which you offer a summary, however.
In some cases it is logical to leave this for the last
speaker for each team, in others every debater should
attempt it.
Point by point rebuttal
What many debaters mean by “rebuttal” is point-by-
point rebuttal.
This consists of two steps, and many debaters forget
the frst step. FIRST, you have to tell us what the
opposition point was, for example:
“The opposition told you that there are academic
advantages to co-education.”
Don’t feel you have to adopt the label that the
opposition used themselves. If it is convenient, by all
means do so, but if there is a label that works better,
feel free to substitute it. Some debaters can ridicule a
point by substituting another label, “What their frst
point amounts to is “Aw, mom, it’s hard.”
SECOND, answer the point. There are different
ways to do this, depending on how important the
point is:
• already dealt with it
“My partner dealt with this issue when she was
reviewing the studies from the American Association
of Girls’ Schools” or
• “It’s wrong”: facts are wrong
“in cross examination I asked my opponent to give
us a single study that showed students improved
their academic results when they switched to a co-ed
school, and she was unable to do so.” or
“the only study the opposition was able to refer to was
a study of 8 to 10 year old children. The resolution we
are debating today is for junior high. The opposition
has given us no evidence to show that the results
from one study concerning children in elementary
school should be preferred over the several studies
we presented for junior high students.”
•”It’s irrelevant”: reasoning is wrong
“the opposition argued that most workplaces are co-
ed. That’s true, but it is irrelevant to this debate. We
have already agreed in our frst speech that it would
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be appropriate for high schools to be co-ed. We
don’t need co-ed junior highs to prepare students
for the “real world” because that can occur in
high school.
•”It supports our side”
“it’s true that students attending co-ed schools
enjoy the social aspect of having girls and
boys in the same class. That’s exactly why it’s
desirable to have single sex classes. Because the
social aspect is a distraction for students and the
purpose of school is education.”
In any event, begin your rebuttal by characterizing
or summarizing the opposition case. A useful
technique is to characterize the whole opposition
argument as essentially one point: “What the
opposition case amounts to is basically that
we shouldn’t trust western governments with
nuclear weapons.” If your characterization is
accurate, and you answer that point, there is no
need to answer each of the arguments later. It
may be more effective to deal with the argument
as a whole rather than with each part.
If you don’t have enough time to answer all
of the arguments, you must choose which to
answer. You must reply to all of the important
arguments. Reply as well to the less important
arguments according to which you can most
effectively answer. For the sake of clarity, it is
normally easier to answer the major arguments
in the order in which they were made. But if
the arguments are clear, it may be possible to
answer them in the order you presented your
case - with the weakest rebuttal in the middle
and the strongest at the beginning and end.
The most effective way to rebut an argument is
to employ several answers. For example, “My
friend the Prime Minister told us that the system
worked well in the United States. We have three
answers to this claim:
l. There is no evidence it has worked in the U.S.
as it has only been in place for eighteen months
and the consumer price index was declining over
that period in any event;
2. The Canadian economy is different from
the American because the Canadian dollar is
weaker and because foreign trade is much more
important to Canada than to the U.S., so even
if the statistics were accurate, they would not
prove that the same result would occur here.
3. Finally, even if the affrmative plan would
work here, it still does nothing to provide
for the 110,000 unemployable that the federal
government admits exist but would not beneft
from this plan.”
Defence
An important, and overlooked part of rebuttal
is re-building your own case. Be selective. It
may be that a couple of your points have been
successfully attacked and you cannot (in the time
available, anyway) rebuild them. Rebuild what
you can. The formula is very similar to the one
used for rebuttal. State the opposition argument
(or evidence) and answer it. You might do that
by showing the facts are wrong, the reasoning
is wrong.
Big Picture (summary)
In some respects, the most important part of
rebuttal is to summarize the debate. This is not
a re-statement of your team’s points as they were
introduced into the round half an hour ago: this
is a summary of what happened in the debate.
Your purpose is not to produce a record but a
judgement. Identify the key issue or issues in the
debate, and deal with them. Tell us why—given
what happened in the debate on those key
issues—your side wins the debate.
“Mr Speaker there were two key ideas in this
debate: Junior high schools are places for
learning academic skills, and junior high schools
as places for building social networks and social
skills.”
“We concede that co-ed schools offer a number
of social opportunities not present in single sex
schools, although we also argued that single
sex schools lead to closer, and better, same-sex
friendships.”
“But that means the key issue in the debate
is whether the academic benefits of single
sex junior high schools outweigh the cost of
postponing the social skill building until senior
high school.”
“The negative team was unable to identify a
single reason why those social skills could not
take place in high school.”
“Because we have shown you that same sex
junior high offers academic benefts, and because
the negative has not been able to show why the
social benefts cannot wait til high school, you
should have no trouble answering this question
with a yes.”
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M
any topics have a similar structure and therefore
the same style of preparation and argument
can often be applied to them. The following
list is merely illustrative of the way topic types can be
analysed.
Is/ought (or normative/empirical) topics
Normative topics are topics about what should be the
case, empirical topics are topics about what is the case.
Thus, ‘That we should reform the welfare state’ is
normative whereas ‘That the welfare state is alive and
well’ is empirical (the issue in the latter topic involves
an analysis of what ‘the welfare state’ commonly refers
to and whether current policies meet this description).
Empirical topics often contain a normative component.
For example, ‘That Australians watch too much sport’
requires an analysis of how much sport Australians
watch and whether this is too much.
Normative topics often require a ‘model’. A model
is a specifc proposal, usually to be implemented by
an organisation (eg, the Government, the church, the
UN, the international community) that provides more
detail about the issue to be debated. Thus, in a debate
about the republic, it is necessary to introduce a model
of what sort of republic is being supported. A negative
team should present a counter-model, although often
that will just involve supporting the status quo. For
example, the affrmative in a drug law reform debate
might propose that, to address drug-related problems,
marijuana be decriminalised. The negative can just
support the current system and say they support the
current emphasis on policing. Models are useful because
they clarify the issue of the debate. Essentially, they are
just an extension of the defnition.
Empirical topics often require a test (or burden of proof,
or yardstick). A test is a measure against which a claim
can be established. For example, ‘That the Greens have
failed’ requires a test of failure. This might hinge on
electoral impact, it might hinge on popular support
and changes in attitudes, it might hinge on legislative
change or it might be a combination of all three. Another
example, ‘That Australians watch too much sport’
requires a test of ‘too much’. This might focus on the
point where the personal effects of TV watching are
deleterious or circumstances where the societal effects
of TV watching are deleterious, or both.
Big red ball topics
(eg That the United States is an evil empire)
To show that something is a big red ball, one must
show that the thing is: big, red and a ball. So, ‘big red
ball topics’ refer to topics that require the affrmative
to prove several points. Often, only one of these points
becomes an issue in the debate but the affrmative must
begin by arguing all points. Furthermore, the points
should not be split between speakers, that is, the team
should not set the frst speaker to prove the thing is a
red ball and the second speaker to prove it is big. This
is a ‘hung argument’ and is strategically weak because
the case is not proven until the end of the second speech.
Case divisions should identify two arguments that
independently prove the case.
Prohibition topics
(eg That we should legalise prostitution, That
pornography should be banned, That we should
legalise marijuana, That we should ban land mines,
That we should legalise euthanasia, That abortion
should be illegal)
All of these topics involve banning something or lifting
a ban. There are several standard arguments in such
debates.
Argument one. Lifting a ban usually allows regulation
of a previously unregulated activity, which could
improve safety and allow for taxation (eg regulated
prostitution means condoms and information on STDs
can be provided to sex workers).
Argument two. Bans don’t work, they just drive the
problem into the black market. Typical example is the
prohibition on alcohol in the US in the 1920s.
Argument three. Bans send a strong moral message.
Argument four. We don’t legalise things just because
bans aren’t totally effective – otherwise we’d legalise
murder!
‘X is a failure’ topics
(eg That the Greens have failed, That feminism has
failed, That economic rationalism is a failure)
These topics ask us what X has achieved (an empirical
question) and what X ought to have been able to achieve.
The latter component is not really normative, although
words like ‘failure’ and ‘success’ have normative
overtones. What is important for discussing what X
ought to have been able to achieve is a ‘test’ or ‘standard’
of what is achievable for entities like X. For example, on
the topic ‘That feminism has failed’, the test of failure
might be the inability to achieve substantial legislative
or societal change regarding women’s rights. This still
leaves the question of what constitutes ‘substantial
change’ but the point of a test is to give a guide for
interpreting vague terms like failure. A test cannot turn
a vague term into a perfectly precise term.
‘That we should fear X’ topics
(eg That we should fear the rise of Pauline Hanson, That
we should fear the collapse of Indonesia)
These topics ask us to speculate about what events X
is likely to cause (which makes the topic similar to an
empirical topic) AND to argue that those events are
bad (giving the topic a normative component). Like
‘X is a failure’ topics, the normative component
does not require a model. For example, the topic
on Pauline Hanson does not require a discussion of
an alternative to Hansonism. Instead, it requires an
analysis of the merits of Hansonism.
from Tips for Debaters, by
Harry Greenwell, Rose Driscoll, Emily Byrne and
Madeleine Moss
RECOGNISING GENERIC TOPICS
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R
esolutions often canvass familiar territory, even
when the topic is new. I want to take a look at
some of the familiar questions in a debate. Just
as some forms of topic are generic, so are some of the
underlying questions debated.
First a few observations:
• Some resolutions require case-specifc knowledge.
If you are debating implementing a particular
smoking ban, you would beneft from knowing the
effects of this particular ban. Detailed policy cases
often fall into this category, where the government
is proposing a specifc course of action. One of the
appropriate responses is to attack the plan details,
another to consider how it has worked in jurisdictions
where it now exists.
• All resolutions require a certain level of background
knowledge. You need to make your point by reference
to background facts. If you’re going to talk about the
difference between the developed and developing
world’s pollution, you should have a sense of how
serious China’s contribution is (relative, say to New
Zealand’s). You don’t need numbers, but you need
to have information just the same.
• Many resolutions, however framed, raise the same
philosophical issues. The resolution’s wording
may favour one side or the other, and you need
to debate the resolution as worded, not just the
general underlying idea. But spotting the familiar
issues should assist you to quickly identify the key
arguments.
In the pages that follow, I consider fve familiar points
of analysis: Affrmative Action, Security v. Liberty,
Liberty v. Equality, Majority v. Minority and Ends
justifes the means.
I have labelled these “points of analysis” because the
same topic may raise issues under several of these
headings. For example, affrmative action is often
also a majority and minority issue, and also raises
issues of liberty and equality. One analysis may
yield one result, a different analysis a different result.
These are more approaches to a particular issue than
formulas to plug into a debate.
Affrmative Action
Examples:
“This House supports affrmative action in
hiring”
“We should compensate Japanese Canadians
for their internment during world war
two”
“Canadian content regulations should be
repealed”
In my view, all three resolutions are essentially
the same!
The idea behind these resolutions is that
we take a particular step now, to remedy or
compensate for some past action. In each
case, we are doing this because of belief
that it is appropriate to treat people based
on their membership in a group, rather than
their individual merits. This only matters if
we are acting differently now than we would
but for that past action. The issue is normally
focused on four ideas:
• Is it appropriate to treat persons based
on a particular characteristic (membership
in a group), rather than on what would
otherwise be their merits?
• Is the beneft offered now proportionate
to the harm done in past?
• Different (or changing) membership in
the groups: Should we beneft one group
(for example, the children of Japanese, who
may not even have lived in Canada at the
time) for the wrongs done to them by the
Canadian government, by giving them an
advantage at the expense of other Canadians
(who may have suffered more, or not been
at all responsible for what the government
did)?
• whether the action taken now creates its
own problems in the future.
In the affrmative action debate, both sides
agree that (for example) being a woman
is not relevant to the particular job, but
argue that it should be taken into account
(for example, because women are under-
employed statistically).
It is not valid to limit the debate to rape-crisis
counsellors on the basis that there are special
reasons why women should have preference
in hiring as rape crisis counsellors. We all
agree that there are jobs for which women
have more merit than some men, but the
issue in the debate is what should be our
policy when the individual woman does not
merit the job. The fundamental issue is the
frst one, should group membership trump
individual merits?
RECOGNISING GENERIC ANALYSIS
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This issue is perfectly debateable: it is open
to members of the audience to believe that
the historical disadvantage trumps merit, or
to believe the reverse.
This is a case which requires the judge to
weigh the costs and benefts, so the teams
must assist him in deciding why the several
reasons on their side outweigh those on the
other side.
Security v. Liberty
“This House believes that current events call
for more emphasis on police powers and less
emphasis on civil liberties.”
“Canadians should be required to carry an
Identity card”
“Canada should legalize marijuana”
The idea behind these resolutions is that
there is a trade-off between security and
liberty. The point of the resolution is about
where we draw the line, not whether there
is one.
The argument really follows along this
line:
• There is some specifc fact (or series of
facts) which shows that the existing balance
between (for example) police powers and
civil rights is not working;
• As a result, specifc changes are required
(either to provide more security or more
liberty);
• The abuses that will result are justifed, or
a necessary evil;
• Those changes are proportionate: the
decrease in liberty is no more than absolutely
necessary to achieve the increase in security
needed. The benefts are worth the cost, or
alternately, the decrease in security is worth
the increased liberty.
A key issue in the debate is always “why
should we draw the line here?” Why do
present events call for an Identity card, as
opposed to some other solution? Why give
the police more powers rather than simply
increase the sentences imposed on the
guilty? Why legalize marijuana rather than
decriminalizing it?
Equality v. Liberty
“This House would implement a Flat Tax”
“Thi s House woul d permi t Sunday
shopping”
“Resolved that Nova Scotia abolish its
minimum wage”
The idea behind these resolutions is that an
increase in equality leads to a reduction in
liberty and vice versa. We can have more
freedom, or more fairness, but not both.
A law which takes into account all of my
personal circumstances is more fair, but
provides much less liberty.
The whole idea of the welfare state (in which
the government provides unemployment
insurance, free health care, and the like)
necessarily involves less liberty: we give up
liberty (for example, from taxes) to obtain a
“fairer” safety net.
An important distinction between Canada
and the United States is where the two
countries draw that line: Americans
have much more “liberty” and much less
equality.
The point is to recognize that there is a trade
off between the two qualities: we cannot
simply get an increase of both.
Majority v. Minority
“Resolved that we ban the celebration of
Christmas in public schools”
“Canada should privatize Health Care”
“This House supports Affrmative action in
hiring”
Most public policy decisions involve a
confict or a trade off between the rights of the
majority and the rights of a minority. Should
the majority be obliged to accommodate the
minority?
Let me illustrate with two approaches to the
problem. In the Christmas resolution, we
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TONES & COUNTERTONES IN
COMPETITIVE DEBATING
T
oo many times debaters, particularly novices,
fall into the pitfall of allowing their adversaries
to set the tone of a debate. Sometimes this tone
is both inappropriate and ineffective. Of course,
many debates have no particular favour beyond that
of normal, reasoned discourse. This is fne, but on
occasion somewhat lacking in fair. Other debates, or
debate sides, or parts of debates have a very marked
tone. What is important is to learn to recognize your
opponent’s attempts to set a particular tone and to
know how to counter it.
In speaking, communication occurs on a number
of different levels. You should be aware not only
of what your words but also of what the tone of
your argument is communicating to your listeners.
Remember that the most important of your listeners,
by far, are the debate judges. How will they react
to the tone of your argument? You should think
seriously about this. It is usually ineffective to allow
your opponent to set the tone and then imitate it,
particularly if the tone is a negative one. For instance,
if someone is being very sarcastic, it’s a mistake to
be sarcastic in return. It does not impress judges to
listen to you and your opponent engage in a contest
to establish which one can be the nastiest. This simply
makes them uncomfortable. Instead, recognize that
sarcasm is often a defense mechanism designed to
conceal nervousness, insecurity, lack of preparation,
or all three combined. The correct countertone to
sarcasm is gentle, calm persuasiveness. It makes
you look reasonable and mature and leaves your
adversary to be nasty all by him, or herself.
Another tone of argument, sometimes a very effective
one, is that of highly charged emotionalism. Many
topics lend themselves easily to such an approach;
Separatism is an example.
“English Canadians have kept us in chains since
the Plains of Abraham. We suffer each day the
imprisonment of the soul of our people.”
This kind of argument, charged with passion and
rhetoric, often works well because people like to
identify with a perceived “underdog.” It is usually
packed with loaded words which invite an emotional,
rather than a rational response (chains, suffer,
imprisonment, soul). It is very diffcult to counter
such an approach when it is well done; it is fatal
to counter it with ridicule. If you are perceived as
representing only the interests of the “big guy”, you
won’t win. Rather, be sympathetic, polite and very
logical. In countering the speaker above, for instance,
say something like:
“Madame Speaker, we recognize this unfortunate
part of our mutual history. But consider the number
of items of special legislation enacted by our
government to recognize the special status of Quebec.
Let me outline them for you.”
could require the public school system to
celebrate all religious occasions. Christmas
could be celebrated, but so could the faith
traditions of others. That allows everyone’s
religious tradition to be respected, but
of course it is antithetical to atheists and
agnostics, and it may lead to a lot of missed
time from school.
An alternate solution is to ban the celebration
of any religious occasion. We can have a non-
religious winter celebration, but that’s it.
Both treat people equally, and to that extent,
both are an equivalent reconciliation of
the rights of the minority with the rights
of the majority. But they are very different
solutions: the second requires those who
would like a particular celebration to have
it occur somewhere else or at some other
time.
One of the problems occurs when a minority
feels very strongly about an issue on which
the majority is much less passionate, or
when the minority wishes the majority not
simply to respect their views, but to govern
itself by the minorities wishes.
End justifes the means
“Current events call for more emphasis on police
powers and less emphasis on civil liberties”
“Torture is justifed to combat terrorism”
This is a misunderstood idea. It is sometimes
debated as if the resolution were “any end justifes
any means”. It then becomes a debate about whether
it is all right (for example) for the police to frame a
guilty man, to make sure he gets caught, or to beat
a confession out of a guilty person, or to torture a
terrorist. The objective—preventing terrorism—is so
important, it justifes abolishing civil liberties.
That is not the resolution, although it raises an
important idea. The resolution is more narrow:
“A particular end justifes some particular means”.
When re-stated this way, it is hard to disagree with.
We sentence murders to jail, but not shoplifters,
because a different objective (punishment of murder)
justifes a different means.
What the debate often becomes, however, is the
related idea spoken of, and in particular, of drawing
the line: when does a particular objective justify a
particular means?
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It’s easy to be intimidated by a debater who is
completely unemotional and terrifyingly factual.
Such people seem not only read books and articles
you have never even heard of, but also to have
committed them to memory. Typically, people who
use this approach are condescending and love to
“wow the judges with numbers.” They say things
like:
“A survey of statistics based on the G.N.P. for
the years 1952 to 1978 inclusive supports the
diagnostic of this signifcant decline in numbers of
the unemployed formerly earning under $12,500
per annum when the variant fgures are seasonally
adjusted.”
Quite often the judges don’t know what these
“experts” are talking about either, so there is no
need to be afraid. The most effective way to counter
this kind of clinical analysis is to be very warm
and humane.
“Mr. Speaker, all the numbers in the world won’t
alter the fact that we are dealing here with human
beings in desperatecircumstances who need our
help.”
Perhaps most difficult of all to counter is the
humourous tone, but it helps if you understand
some things about humour. First, being humourous
in front of an audience comes very easily to some
people; for most of us it comes much harder. If
your opponent is one of those people of quick and
clever wit who loves an audience, he or she has
a genuine advantage. It’s no good matching joke
for joke with someone who is better at it than you.
Your best defense is to remain good-humoured
and calmly logical. If the jokes persist, you might
try conveying slight indignation at the frivolity of
this approach.
On the other hand, if you plan on being humourous
yourself (as often happens in an impromptu
debate) remember that humour is much harder
than seriousness. You can’t “wing it.” It is very
diffcult to keep a joke going after the initial funny
opening line. The joke often falls fat and you are
stuck for six or seven minutes with both the tone
you have created, and the initially funny, but
probably absurd, idea you have introduced. In
addition, beginning humourously and then trying
to become serious often backfres.
Remember too that humour is very generational
and that it dates very quickly. What you think is
hilarious the judges may not think funny at all.
Think about jokes that appeal to your parents or
teachers. How often do you fnd them really funny?
On the other hand, when you were fve and, for the
frst time you heard the answer to “Why does the
chicken cross the road?” you probably thought it
was hysterical. Do you still? Do your little brothers
and sisters tell you jokes now? Are they funny?
Humour often depends on how old you are and
what your values are.

I once saw an important debate at a district
tournament for which the resolution was “What
Canada Needs Is More Government.” The six
fnalists had had a long hard day and they wanted
a humourous topic. They were disappointed with
this one, but they decided to treat it humourously
anyway. They didn’t realize how closely matched
they were, but they did know that the prize for
the winner was a trip to the National Debating
Seminar in British Columbia. The government
argued, with the most absurd logic imaginable,
that Canada needed a dictator and a fascistic
government just like Hitler and Nazi Germany.
The youthful audience found this display of Monty
Python reasoning extremely funny. The debaters
were having a wonderful time waxing more
and more ridiculous except for one fellow who
was being good-natured, but treating the topic a
little more seriously. I happened to glance at the
judges; the four of them were in their ffties or
early sixties. They were not laughing. These were
people whose lives had been directly affected by
the Second World War; it was neither history, nor
funny to them. Want to guess who got the trip to
British Columbia?
By all means use humour, especially if you’re good
at it, but be calculating! Estimate the effect on your
audience and particularly on the judges. Think
about how long you can keep a joke going and how
you can make the transition to seriousness if you
have to. People who enjoy debating usually like
clever word-play and verbal absurdities, but avoid
self-depreciation with them. If you have judged
your audience correctly and if you’ve got the tone
and pacing right, humour can be an extremely
powerful weapon. But weapons are dangerous
to the user if they are not handled correctly. Use
humour intelligently!
The same advice applies to the other tones of
argument. Know what they are. Know how to
counter them. You’ll be surprised at how quickly
you develop an awareness of the tone of all sorts
of messages being delivered to you. Such an
awareness helps to empower you.
David Lavoie.
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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T
he arguments in favour and against many
policies follow the same lines, regardless of the
particular issue being argued about. Many of
the arguments against “banning something” are the
same regardless of what it is proposed to ban.
As a debater, you need to consider universal and
stock arguments in three circumstances: when you
don’t know much about the topic and so are arguing
from general principles (and universal and stock
arguments are a part of those general principles);
when you’re trying to come up with additional
arguments to support your case (even when you have
one or two obvious arguments), and when you are
trying to anticipate the arguments your opponents
will raise.
Accordingly, many of these arguments are opposition
arguments to a particular government proposal, or
additional arguments to support a government case
for which you already have one or two arguments.
Universal arguments
Universal arguments are ones that apply generally
to all resolutions of a particular type.
“Case by case basis”
Many resolutions call for the government to argue
that something should “always be done”. For
example, if the Government is arguing that we
should take children away from teenage mothers,
it is appropriate to argue that this decision be made
on a case-by-case basis. No invariable rule, but one
which suits the circumstances.
“Opportunity costs”
Economic analysis teaches us that in doing one thing,
we lose the opportunity to do something else – that
lost opportunity is the “opportunity cost” of the
policy. So, adding a daily gym period to every school
day may be a sensible policy in itself, but it may mean
that we lose time from math class, or the opportunity
to implement some other policy. Most affrmative
resolutions implicitly cost us the opportunity to do
something else with those resources.
“Banning leads to a black market”
Many prohibitions on human behaviour do not work
because people will undertake the activity illegally.
If we prohibit people from drinking alcohol, they
may drink and purchase alcohol illegally. It may be
easier to regulate drinking if it is a lawful, regulated
behaviour, rather than a banned one which goes on
outside of government view. So one question when
a resolution proposes banning particular conduct
is whether it can be more effectively regulated if it
is a lawful activity. Of course, not every ban will
necessarily create a black market – banning beauty
pageants is not likely to create black market beauty
pageants –– but banning tobacco will likely create
black market tobacco sales.
“Disproportionate response”
A general criticism is that a particular policy is
disproportionate – it hurts many for the sake of a
few. The small number of people who drive drunk
does not justify banning automobiles.
Other universal arguments are:
• Thin edge of the wedge/principle/precedent: if
we do this, it will be harder to resist doing x, which
is bad.
• Nanny state issues – requires losing freedom and
ignoring someone’s decision, govt judgment replaces
yours, not suit everyone, won’t work because ones
that need help will ignore rules, better approaches/
real problem
• Caution is the best policy
• harm reduction is preferable to trying to reduce
demand or supply
• principle argument – show principle then it
follows
• democracy – do what people want, give choice,
• Ain’t broke don’t fx it – is there a problem
• Pragmatic argument rather than principle
Stock Arguments
Stock Arguments are standard arguments used for
particular resolutions or types of resolutions. Some
university judges like “new” approaches as well but
that does not mean that you shouldn’t use some. The
table on the next page includes examples.
John Robinson
Universal & Stock Arguments
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 60
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Political Philosophy
Arguments
Social contract
Where do rights come
from?
Rights are political
trumps
Self-expression
Positive v. negative
rights
Permissive v. facilitative
rights
Policy Arguments
Black market
Backlash and political
will
Perverse incentives
Collective action
problems
Race-to-the-bottom
Moral Philosophy
Arguments
Doing v. allowing harm
Moral luck
Kantian harms
Symbolic recognition
Otherizing- Us v Them
Self-actualization
IR Arguments
Soft power
Meaningful tipping
point
Domestic political
benefts
Sovereignty
Rule of Law
Legal Arguments
Equal protection
Discrete and insular
minorities
Clear and present
danger
Disparate impact
Compelling national
interest
Retribution
Rehabilitation
Incapacitation
Deterrence
Marginal deterrence
Expressive
punishment
Right to privacy
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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A
T THE WORLD SCHOOLS’ tournament, debaters
use a style of debate honed in Australia which
is quite different in its expectations from what
we do in Canadian parliamentary debate. Here, as we
understand it, are the differences in style.
Two cases — in Canada, the government or
proposition proposes a case, and the Opposition
opposes. The opposition team does not often present
an affrmative case of its own. If the government
argues in favour of proportional representation, the
opposition can defend the status quo, or argue for a
different system. In Worlds style, there are two cases
on the foor: one from the proposition, one from the
opposition. The proposition still has a burden of
proof, though it is a signifcantly reduced burden. In
practice, if the proposition makes a clear and prima
facie case in the frst speech, they have fully discharged
the burden of proof. The opposition in the majority of
cases cannot win the debate simply by relying on the
burden of proof, or maintaining the government has
not proved its case. The opposition has to prove on
the balance of probabilities the proposition is a fawed
one. The debate is a comparison of the two positions,
not an examination of the proposition’s case.
Caseline —In a World’s Style debate, the caseline
is the basis for your entire case. IT NEEDS TO BE
CLEARLY STATED at the start of your case (whether
proposition or opposition) and all points need to
tie back to the case line. After you introduce your
case line the debate stops being about the actual
resolution, and starts being a clash of caselines and
how they apply to the defnitions. In a debate on
legalizing marijuana, if the proposition caseline is
that the “health benefts outweigh the dangers to
society” the proposition cannot argue that legalizing
marijuana would reduce crime. That might be a
reason for the resolution, but it is irrelevant to the
caseline.
Defnition — In order for the “two cases” theory
to work, both teams prepare for the debate and know
in advance what the government case will be. That
means that the opposition and proposition must have
the same understanding of the topic from the time
it is announced. To achieve that, the defnitions are
what would occur to a reasonable person. Squirreling
and tight defnitions are not permitted at all. The
proposition runs the case straight, right down the
middle. A team that tries to win the debate through
an unusual or narrow defnition will lose the debate.
Even a subset – considering just a portion of the topic
rather than the whole, is prohibited. If the resolution
is that the US should close its military bases in Asia,
it is not enough for the proposition to deal only with
closing military bases in Japan (unless they also
show that the Japanese experience is representative).
Failure to provide appropriate defnitions will be
grounds for loss of the round regardless of the quality
of debate that follows.
MAKING THE TRANSITION FROM
CANADIAN PARLIAMENTARY TO
WORLD’S STYLE
Role — Each debater has a very specific role.
The frst proposition and frst opposition speakers
introduce the entire plan for their teams and the frst
two points FULLY. In Canadian style, we would
expect second and subsequent debaters to fesh out
points made by the frst speaker, and perhaps to have
a new idea which was not outlined at the start. Not
here. All arguments are identifed and put on the
table at the outset; all points and examples to prove
the frst two arguments will also be fully presented
by the frst speaker.
Order —The important points must be presented
by the first speaker for each team. Just as it is
improper in Canada to introduce a new argument
in the fnal rebuttal, so it is improper in World’s style
to present an important argument in a second or
subsequent speech.
Division — The frst debater outlines the entire
case, and makes most of the case. He or she will
have two points, the second speaker for the team one
point. The third speaker will normally not introduce
any new point in the debate (partly because of the
expectation that he or she will be spending the entire
time in rebuttal and rebuilding, and partly because of
the unfairness of leaving until the end of the debate
an important argument).
Time Splits — Just as the role has very specifc
expectations, so the division of the speech between
construction and rebuttal is very strict. The
frst proposition spends his or her entire time in
construction, of course. The frst opposition speaker
spends two minutes in rebuttal, and six minutes in
construction. The second speaker for the proposition
team should have a 5-3 time split, where fve minutes
are spent on constructive and 3 on rebuttal. The
second speaker on the opposition side have a 4-4
time split. The fnal members of both teams spend
the majority of their speeches in rebuttal. The
proposition speaker has a time split of 2-6 while the
3
rd
opposition speaker has a time split of 1-7. While
there is no hard and fast rule, rebuttal often occurs
before the constructive material.
Consistency — In Canada, it would be
common for a debater to use a different example
when rebuilding a point than the original debater
used in presenting it. In World’s style, the debater
who constructs the point establishes the examples
to be used to make the point. It is not proper for a
subsequent speaker to rely on alternate examples to
prove it. That is an “inconsistency” in the case. When
defending or rebuilding a point, you are limited to
the examples already introduced in the round by one
team or the other. In addition to examples and points
used, you must also live and die by the caseline (as
already explained). What ever the frst speaker says
for defnitions or the caseline are divine truth and
you will stand by them NO MATTER WHAT!
Rebut examples — As a result, you must not
simply produce counter examples when you are
confronted with an argument, you must rebut the
2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 62
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actual example used when you can and produce a
counter example only if you are able to explain how
it relates to the point.
Points of Information —(POI)—At least one
debater from the opposing team should be standing
every 30 seconds during unprotected time (this is
a matter of strategy rather than a frm rule). Each
debater should offer at least 2 POI’s during each of
their opponents’ speeches, and accept two during
their constructive address. The time splits, however,
remain sacred — so under no circumstances should
a debater take a point of information at the moment
when he or she should be switching from rebuttal to
construction. It is bait for the inexperienced to rise
on a point at the moment of the time split. Be sure
you always stand to offer a question at that point,
and be sure you never take one.
Rebuttal and Reply speeches — In this
style of debate, all of the speakers after the frst
proposition engage in some rebuttal as part of their 8
minute speech. Most of the rebuttal during the main
speech is what we would think of as point-by-point
rebuttal, and rebuilding. A debater identifes the
objections raised by an opponent, and answers them
(remembering the directions about consistency and
rebutting examples).
However, after all of the main speeches are concluded,
each side gets a single 4 minute reply speech. The
reply may given by either the frst or second speaker,
beginning with the opposition. This speech is
distinct from the rebuttals which are part of the main
speaking time. The focus here is on the “big picture”.
Remember that the third opposition speaker has just
fnished his or her speech – 7 minutes of which were
devoted to rebuttal. It would not be effective for the
Opposition reply to simply be a restatement of that
rebuttal. Instead, the reply debater tries to summarize
the major issues in the debate, and explain why they
resolve in his team’s favour. The reply speech is not
just a summary of what happened, but a judgment
-- an assessment of why one case prevails over the
other. By convention, the reply speech is calm and
measured, whereas the rebuttals themselves may be
quite heated.
Blair MacDonald and Brian Casey. We
acknowledge Harold Kyte, A Modest
Precis re. World’s Style Debate; and
Chris Erskine, Rosemary Dixon,
Andrew Stockley, Elizabeth Virgo
and David Pritchard World Schools
Debating Adjudication Notes
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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WEIGHING COSTS AND BENEFITS
H
AVE YOU EVER witnessed a debate that lacked clash,
where the two teams seemed to be talking about
different issues? Sometimes it occurs because
it is easier to talk about the issues we have prepared
and thought about ourselves, than it is to respond to
the other team’s issues.
One way to solve this, of course, is to be suffciently
well informed about the issues in the debate that
you can reply to the issues presented by your
opponents, whether or not they are ones you planned
to address.
However, there is a second structural reason why a
debate appears to lack clash. The debate lacks clash,
not because the debaters aren’t very knowledgeable,
but because judges fnd it diffcult to know how
competing lists of advantages and disadvantages ft
together. The government presents 4 advantages, the
opposition presents 4 (different) disadvantages. How
does a judge reconcile the 8 different points?
The answer to the judge’s problem is for you as
a debater to provide the judge with a means of
measuring costs and benefts: a scale, if you will.
You have to explain how the different arguments ft
together, and why one argument (or set of arguments)
should trump the others. That’s what this paper is
about.
Here’s why the problem exists in most debates, and
how to solve it.
A debate resolution is (one hopes) controversial:
there are arguments to be made for each side. Let’s
take a resolution about capital punishment.
It is easy for this to become a debate of “lists”:
the government lists the advantages of capital
punishment, the opposition lists the disadvantages.
Although both teams are talking about the same
issues, and both are giving convincing lists of
advantages or disadvantages, the advantages of
capital punishment—say cost and preventing
someone from re-offending—are not easily balanced
against the risk of wrongful execution. If one team
talks about “punishment ftting the crime”, is there
clash when the other team talks about wrongful
executions?
While there are pros and cons of each resolution,
in many debates the “pro” for one side is not
necessarily a “con” for the other. In a debate on
capital punishment both sides may agree that capital
punishment is cheaper than life imprisonment.
Presumably, both agree that saving money is a good
thing. They simply disagree about the signifcance of
the cost savings. So one side talks about costs, the
other talks about error and human life.
Well how does the judge weigh the risk of wrongful
execution against issues about cost and re-offending?
The judge cannot simply give the debate to the team
that has more items on its list; some items are more
important than others. Maybe the concern about
wrongful executions trumps all of the arguments on
the other side.
And how does the debater make his argument clash
with his opponent’s? How does he tie together the
competing lists from each side?
The frst rule, if you can, is to frame your issues in
ways that mirror your opponent’s issues. “What the
government is really putting forward Mr Speaker, is
that the beauty of capital punishment is that it is fnal.
In fact, the terror which capital punishment holds is
the very fnality which the government puts forward
as an advantage: the impossibility of correcting a
mistake once made”. That takes a government case
about a punishment that prevents a criminal from
re-offending and makes it ft clearly with the risk-
of-wrongful-conviction argument. Same arguments
as before, but packaged to make the clash more
apparent.
But there is a second underlying strategy to be
employed whether or not you can position your
argument as the mirror image of another. That is
to provide the judge with a device to measure or
determine which side is right.
As a debater you have to provide the judge with a
means of deciding which reaons are more signifcant:
you tell the judge that the debate is not simply
measuring the number of reasons given by each
side and instead offer the judge a criterion he or she
can use in deciding which list is more important,
regardless of length. You might say something like
this:
“Mr Speaker, there is no question that capital
punishment is cheaper than life imprisonment, even
when innocent people are executed. But the issue
today is not whether there are several benefts to
capital punishment, but whether the benefts are so
signifcant, that they outweigh the risk of a wrongful
execution.”
The government may be able to produce a dozen
benefts of capital punishment —it will cut down
on crowding in prisons, and maybe in housing
projects. And the opposition can only produce one
overwhelming disadvantage. But the question is
not the number of benefts, but their signifcance.
Do they outweigh the disadvantage—not in sheer
numbers, but in importance? If you agree with us
that Donald Marshall and David Milgaard and Guy
Paul Morin—all innocent men—deserve to be alive
today, then the benefts of capital punishment are
insignifcant.”
Your objective is to frame the debate as a single
fundamental question, and offer the judge a reason
for deciding that question in your favour.
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Defining Motions and Constructing
Cases
F
or a debate to proceed, both teams need a clear
understanding of what the motion means.
This requires the motion to be ‘defned’ so that
everyone (audience and adjudicators included)
knows what is being debated. Problems arise if the
two teams present different understandings of the
meaning of the motion. This can result in a ‘defnition
debate’, where the focus of the debate becomes the
meaning of the words in the motion, rather than the
motion itself. Interaction and clash between the two
teams concentrates on whose defnition is correct,
rather than the issues raised by the motion. Defnition
debates should be avoided wherever possible. They
make a mockery of what debating seeks to achieve.
1. REASONABLE DEFINITIONS
The Proposition must present a reasonable defnition
of the motion. This means:
(a) On receiving a motion, both teams should ask:
‘What is the issue that the two teams are expected to
debate? What would an ordinary intelligent person
reading the motion think that it is about?’
(b) If the motion poses a clear issue for debate (i.e. it
has an obvious meaning), the Proposition must defne
the motion accordingly. When the motion has an
obvious meaning (one which the ordinary intelligent
person would realise), any other defnition would
not be reasonable.
(c) If there is no obvious meaning to the motion, the
range of possible meanings is limited to those that
allow for a reasonable debate. Choosing a meaning
that does not allow the Opposition room for debate
would not be a reasonable defnition. Truisms and
tautologies leave the Opposition no room for debate
and are clearly illegitimate. Defning absolute words
literally may prevent a reasonable debate, and they
can therefore be read down.
(d) When defning the words in the motion so as (i)
to allow the obvious meaning to be debated or (ii)
(when there is no obvious meaning) to give effect
to a possible meaning which would allow for a
reasonable debate, the Proposition must ensure that
the defnition is one the ordinary intelligent person
would accept.
These requirements are summarised in clauses
6.2 and 6.3 of the Judging Schedule of the Rules
of the World Schools Debating Championships.
They are further elaborated upon below. the World
Schools Debating Championships. They are further
elaborated upon below.
(A) IS THERE A CLEAR ISSUE TO BE DEBATED?
Teams at the World Schools Championships are
expected to debate the topic set (‘the motion’). The
Proposition team advances arguments supporting
the motion and the Opposition team opposes it. Team
members may not necessarily agree with the side of
the motion they are arguing, but their task is to try to
persuade the audience that their side of the motion
is to be preferred.
It may seem obvious, but in order to prove their side
of the motion, teams must debate the motion– not a
subset or some bizarre or unusual variant of it.
‘Squirreling’ is banned at the World Schools
Championships. The Judging Schedule to the Rules
notes that ‘squirreling is the distortion of the
defnition to enable a team to argue a pre-prepared
argument that it wishes to debate regardless of the
motion actually set’. Squirreling does not attempt to
fnd a reasonable defnition of the motion as a whole;
it just asserts some sort of ‘link’ between the words
of the motion and the case the Proposition wishes
to run.
An example of squirreling is defning ‘This House
would legalise performance-enhancing drugs in
sport’ to mean that marijuana should be legalised
(asserting a link by saying sport is fun; life is fun; and
soft drugs enhance people’s ability to have fun in the
sport of life). This sort of debating quickly becomes
artifcial and pedantic.
Debates work best when everyone understands
what is going to be debated. Both teams can go
away and prepare their cases, knowing they will be
talking about the same subject. The audience and
adjudicators can predict the broad subject matter
that will be debated.
The sorts of motions set at the World Schools
Championships lend themselves to this occurring.
Typical motions might include ‘This House believes
that we should break unjust laws in democracies’ and
‘This House believes that the media serves us well.’
Both motions raise specifc issues. One involves the
merits of civil disobedience (one side will talk about
the dangers of majority oppression; the other about
ways of seeking to change the law without needing to
break it); the second requires analysis of the positive
and negative attributes of the media today.
The organisers of World Schools Championships
avoid setting vague or metaphorical motions such
as ‘This House believes there is light at the end of
the tunnel’ or ‘This House believes life is a bowl of
cherries’. Such motions lack a clear or obvious issue.
They give the Proposition enormous scope to say ‘this
is what the topic is about’, without the Opposition or
audience having been able to predict this. They place
a heavy burden on the Opposition, which is forced
WORLD SCHOOLS DEBATING CHAMPIONSHIPS
GUIDELINES FOR COMPETITORS AND
ADJUDICATORS
2012 Summer Debate Camp
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to prepare any number of cases on the off chance
that one of them may prove relevant and can end up
having to face the Proposition effectively unprepared.
Such motions invite the Proposition to try to catch the
Opposition out by putting the most unexpected spin
possible on the motion.
The people who set motions for World Schools
Championships have an obligation to ensure that
each poses a clear issue to be debated. This being
so, the teams have an obligation to take the obvious
meaning of the motion and to debate the issue posed.
A Proposition that avoids doing so deserves criticism.
Refusing to engage with the plain meaning of a
motion deprives the Opposition of its preparation
time and results in debates on unduly narrow or
bizarre subjects, or disputes over the definition.
Audiences, who anticipated a certain subject being
debated, see something substantially more limited or
unexpected, and come to regard debating as overly
technical and confusing.
On receiving a motion, both teams must ask: ‘What is
the issue that the two teams are expected to debate?
What would an ordinary intelligent person reading
the motion think that it is about?” This should give a
good idea as to what the audience, adjudicators and
people setting the motion expect to see debated.
(B) TAKING THE OBVIOUS MEANING
If the motion poses a clear issue for debate (i.e. it has
an obvious meaning), the Proposition must defne the
motion accordingly. When the motion has an obvious
meaning (one which the ordinary intelligent person
would realise), any other defnition would not be
reasonable.
The motion ‘This House believes that governments
should subsidise the arts’ can be used by way of
illustration. The motion poses the issue of whether
government money should be spent on cultural
activities such as art exhibitions, music and drama
performances, and building and operating museums.
Not much more needs to be said by way of defnition.
None of the words in the motion cause any real
problems; ‘subsidise’ simply means ‘pay some of
the costs of’.
Finding the correct level of abstraction
Debating the obvious meaning of a motion means
that if the motion poses a very specifc issue, the
debate will itself be specifc and must focus on the
narrow, particular question posed. If, on the other
hand, the motion expresses a very general principle,
the debate will be much broader in scope and will
include a correspondingly greater range of material.
The defnition must match the level of abstraction
(or specifcity) of the motion, so that the debate is as
specifc or general as the motion itself.
‘This House would maintain United States military
bases in Asia’ was debated as one of the prepared
rounds at the 2002 World Schools Championships
in Singapore. The motion posed a clear issue and
required to be defned accordingly. The Proposition
would be defning the motion too generally if it
ignored the words ‘United States’ and ‘in Asia’ and
took the debate to mean that countries should have
off shore military bases (and spent much of its time
on examples from the Roman and British empires and
their alleged benefts). The motion is more specifc
than this and requires the teams to focus on American
bases in Asia today. The Proposition could validly use
the more general principle in support of its specifc
argument (saying that American bases should remain
in Asia because there are benefts to countries having
off shore military bases, and the sorts of benefts
derived during the time of the Roman and British
empires show, by analogy, the sorts of benefts gained
from having American bases in Asia today). However,
the focus must remain on American bases in Asia,
meaning that material directly related to this will be
much more relevant. The Opposition would be at
liberty to argue that the Roman and British empire
examples are not that analogous and fail to assist the
Proposition case.
The Proposition would be equally at fault if it defned
the motion too specifcally. The motion is framed in
terms of maintaining ‘United States military bases
in Asia’ and a proposition that said it would only
talk about American bases in Japan (while ignoring
those in Korea) would be giving a defnition more
specific than the motion itself. Arguing that the
existence of bases in Japan is more controversial is
unlikely to justify limiting the words of the motion.
The organisers have set the debate on ‘United
States military bases in Asia’ not on ‘United States
military bases in Japan’, and the issues that apply
to bases in Japan also arise, even if less acutely, with
respect to bases in Korea and other parts of Asia.
The Proposition might be entitled to use Japan as the
major example supporting its case, but cannot claim
it is the only one able to be raised in the debate.
As at other World Schools Championships, the
motions at the 2002 contest in Singapore ranged
from the very specifc (‘This House supports missile
defence’, ‘This House supports the international
trading of pollution permits’) to the more general
(‘This House believes that low taxes are preferable to
extensive government services’, ‘This House would
compromise civil liberties in the interest of security’).
The organisers sought to test the debaters’ ability to
argue both specifc cases and general principles.
A Proposition team in the semi-fnals defned the last-
mentioned motion (‘This House would compromise
civil liberties in the interest of security’) to mean
that all countries should adopt a system of national
identifcation cards (this compromise of civil liberties
being warranted by the security benefts that would
result). The problem with this defnition is that it took
a motion expressed as a general principle and tried
to confne it to a single example. The organisers had
not set the motion ‘This House supports national
identifcation cards’ and the Proposition team, by
defning the motion to mean this, was turning a topic
of general application into something extremely
specific. The plain meaning of the motion was
whether, as a general principle, civil liberties should
be reduced when this would beneft security, and
national identifcation cards comprised but a single
example which might or might not be contested in
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the course of this debate. By trying to make national
identifcation cards the entire debate, the Proposition
pitched the motion at a much more specifc level
than had been set and, as such, failed to provide the
reasonable defnition required. prised but a single
example which might or might not be contested in
the course of this debate. By trying to make national
identifcation cards the entire debate, the Proposition
pitched the motion at a much more specifc level
than had been set and, as such, failed to provide the
reasonable defnition required.
Proving motions expressed as general principles
The Notes for Adjudicators at the World Schools
Championships stress that when teams debate
general issues, the emphasis ‘is upon the principle,
not the specifics’. The Proposition has the onus
of proving the motion is generally true. In other
words, it must prove the motion correct as a general
proposition. This means showing it is true more often
than not– that it is true in the majority of cases.
There will always be examples for and against any
motion expressed as a general principle. This places
a premium upon logical argument. As mentioned
in the Notes for Adjudicators, the Proposition ‘has
to present a generalised case and prove it logically,
rather than relying on large numbers of examples
in the hope that these will do the job instead.’ Just
as a single example will not prove a generalised
motion, nor will a welter of examples. What becomes
important is not the number of examples, but the
analysis of them, fnding how they are linked, and
the reasons and arguments they point to and that
prove the team’s case.
The construction of team cases is discussed below.
The point to note here is that motions expressed as
general principles must be proven true as general
principles. A single example will neither prove nor
disprove a general principle. Finding arguments
that explain the majority of examples will be more
important.
(C) ALLOWING FOR A REASONABLE DEBATE
Because the defnition must be reasonable, if there
is no obvious meaning to the motion, the range of
possible meanings is limited to those that allow for
a reasonable debate. In other words, if the person
setting the motion has failed to frame a clear issue
for debate, the Proposition must defne the motion in
such a way as to provide an issue for debate.
As mentioned, the organisers of World Schools
Championships endeavour to set motions which
pose clear issues for debate. Proposition teams that
fail to take the obvious meanings of such motions
often do so with a view to reducing the Opposition’s
room for debate.
The dangers were illustrated in a national fnal on the
motion ‘This House believes that we need a world
government’. The wording appeared specifc enough,
as did the issue involved. The United Nations is not a
world government. Did the state of the world today
require a governing body with a lot more power and
could this be made to work? What would the dangers
be and could these be surmounted? The Proposition
team chose to take an unexpected defnition of the
motion and ended up arguing that there should be
a new body that was similar to but more effective
than the International Criminal Court then being
established, and that it should have the ability to deal
with the most terrible crimes against humanity, such
as genocide. Such a body could hardly be what was
meant by the concept of a ‘world government’, yet the
Proposition proceeded to run its debate on this basis.
Presumably the intent was to make the Opposition’s
preparation redundant and, by changing the issue
to be debated, to frame the debate in such a way
that this signifcantly increased the burden on the
Opposition (witnessed by members of the Proposition
issuing challenges such as ‘do you want people to be
able to commit genocide without being punished?’
throughout the debate). The Proposition’s defnition
can be condemned as (i) having ignored the obvious
meaning of the motion (which provided a clear issue
for debate) and (ii) having set up an alternative
meaning of the motion designed to be one-sided.
The Rules of the World Schools Championships
outlaw defnitions that are truistic or tautological.
Such defnitions do not leave the Opposition any
room for debate.
Truisms
A truism is something that is obviously true.
It would be a truism to define the motion ‘This
House believes that the sun is rising in the East’
literally. The Opposition would have nothing to say
to three speeches that discussed the manner in which
the earth revolved around the sun. In terms of the
questions posed above, the Opposition should be
asking whether there is a clear issue to be debated.
There is no issue as to whether the sun actually rises
in the East. literally. The Opposition would have
nothing to say to three speeches that discussed the
manner in which the earth revolved around the sun.
In terms of the questions posed above, the Opposition
should be asking whether there is a clear issue to
be debated. There is no issue as to whether the sun
actually rises in the East.
On the other hand, what might the ordinary
intelligent person believe the motion means? Taking
it as a metaphor for Asia (‘the East’) becoming much
more important in the world (‘the sun is rising’)
seems eminently sensible: this poses a very real issue
for both sides to debate. (China’s/ Asia’s importance
in the world militarily/ economically/ politically.)
While the motion is not so specifc that the issue is
immediately apparent, other possible meanings (e.g.
that Eastern Europe is prospering) seem much more
strained and artifcial– and correspondingly less
reasonable.
Tautologies
A tautology is something that is true by defnition.
The motion for the semi-fnals of the 1995 World
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Schools Debating Championships in Cardiff was
‘This House believes that extremism is the catalyst
for progress’. One of the proposition teams was
concerned that it might have to defend ‘bad
extremists’ (e.g. the IRA), so tried to limit the debate
to ‘good extremists’ (e.g. the South African anti-
apartheid movement) by defning ‘extremism’ in
terms of positive change. The Proposition defned
‘extremism’ as radical groups that contribute to the
advancement of society, so ended up arguing that
radical groups that contribute to the advancement
of society help cause the advancement of society
(progress). A tautology becomes a circular argument
and leaves the Opposition nothing to debate. In this
case, the Opposition frst speaker pointed out that
the defnition was tautological, and her team won
the debate unanimously.
Another example of a tautology would be defning the
word ‘best’ in the motion ‘This House believes that
government is best when it governs least’ to mean
‘least intrusive into the lives of ordinary people’.
Truistic and tautological definitions are clearly
unreasonable. They leave the Opposition no room
for debate.
Absolute Words
Motions with absolute words such as ‘all’, ‘everyone’,
‘always’ and ‘never’ need to be approached with
caution because, while their plain meaning might
suggest taking such words literally, doing so might
prevent a reasonable debate. People setting motions
generally avoid using absolute words unless there is
good reason to the contrary.
A motion such as ‘This House believes that all
politicians are incompetent’ seems on its face much
more diffcult to prove than ‘This House believes that
politicians are incompetent’. If a single competent
politician can be found, this seems to have disproved
that ‘all politicians are incompetent’, whereas ‘This
House believes that politicians are incompetent’ only
requires this to be shown in the majority of cases
The Judging Schedule to the Rules of the World
Schools Debating Championships provides that when
a topic is expressed as an absolute, the Proposition
‘must prove the topic true in the signifcant majority
of cases, but not in every conceivable instance’. ‘All’
can therefore be defned as ‘in the signifcant majority
of cases’.
As with the prohibition on truisms and tautologies,
the reading down of absolute words is designed to
ensure there is a reasonable debate. This after all is
why six debaters show up. To debate. Not for one
side to use the words in the motion to claim victory
from the outset.
(D) WOULD THE ORDINARY INTELLIGENT PERSON ACCEPT
THE DEFINITION?
Once the Proposition has decided upon a defnition
following the above guidelines, it should check this
is a reasonable defnition by asking whether it is one
the ordinary intelligent person would accept.
The phrase ‘ordinary intelligent person’ has no
particular magic. It is just a means of trying to
express the idea that motions and the words in
motions should be defned in accordance with what
the average member of the audience would expect
(‘ordinary intelligent person’ being used instead of
‘average member of the audience’ to cover the fact
that an adequate level of education and general
knowledge must be assumed).
The reason for this last provision is to reinforce the
point that a reasonable defnition involves doing what
is expected; it is not about trying to win by playing
tricks with words. It is not reasonable to take the
obvious meaning of the motion and set up a debate
which addresses the anticipated issue, but at the
same time to defne one word in the motion in quite
an unexpected way, so as to give the Proposition a
much easier burden of proof than the Opposition
when debating this issue.
In one debate on the motion ‘This House would break
unjust laws in democracies’, the Proposition team
correctly discerned the issue for debate, whether
civil disobedience was justifed when living in a
democracy. The Proposition quite rightly made much
of the fact that majorities might oppress minorities
and that, even although the United States was a
democracy in the 1950s, black Americans faced
immense diffculty enforcing civil rights through
legal means. Nevertheless, the Proposition in this
debate made a critical mistake when it defned the
word ‘democracies’. The Proposition wanted to
talk about South Africa and to say that people like
Nelson Mandela were quite justifed in breaking the
laws of the apartheid regime there. Quite clearly
those laws were ‘unjust’, but was apartheid South
Africa a ‘democracy’? The Proposition argued yes, by
saying there was a democracy if there were elections,
no matter if some people were ineligible to vote in
them.
The Proposition’s desire to use a strong example which
the Opposition would have diffculty answering
led it into the trap of distorting the defnition to
do so. As the Opposition correctly pointed out, no
reasonable person would have considered apartheid
South Africa a democracy when ninety percent of its
populace was not allowed to vote in free elections.
The Proposition had got the right issue in one sense
(civil disobedience) but had missed it in another (the
exact issue was civil disobedience in democracies).
Its unreasonable defnition of one word meant it was
not in fact debating the motion set.
DICTIONARIES AND COMMON USAGE
The Proposition’s task is to defne the motion, not
every word in it. Individual words need not be
defned if their meaning is obvious. But when words
do need to be defned (such as ‘democracies’ in the
above example), the question is what would the
ordinary intelligent person expect those words to
mean. Dictionary defnitions may assist in fnding
a commonly accepted meaning and can provide
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speakers with quick, concise explanations. But a
dictionary has no particular authority; it is nothing
more than an aid to determining the commonly
accepted meaning of a word.
Taking an obscure dictionary defnition and claiming
that this is what the motion must mean is clearly
illegitimate. Some time ago, a Proposition team
defned ‘rape’ in the motion ‘This House believes
that rape is a problem for us all’ to mean the oil-
producing seed called rape. While this is one of the
dictionary defnitions of that word, it ignores the clear
issue (is the crime of rape a problem men should be
addressing as well as women?) and is not what the
ordinary intelligent person would expect ‘rape’ to
mean in this sentence.
A dictionary often lists a number of meanings for
each word; some of these may be specialised, archaic
or obscure meanings. Words must always be defned
in context, and debaters should look to work out the
meaning of the motion frst. If any particular word
is diffcult to understand or is especially important
for the debate, a dictionary might be consulted for a
quick, concise explanation of its meaning, provided
the dictionary defnition chosen is one the ordinary
intelligent person would accept in the context of
the motion as a whole. When a dictionary is used,
it makes no difference what dictionary it is; what
matters is if it helps explain the proper use of the
word in question.
The motion ‘This House supports missile defence’
was debated as one of the prepared rounds at the
2002 World Schools Debating Championships in
Singapore. At that time, the phrase ‘missile defence’
was commonly used to refer to United States
President George W. Bush’s controversial proposal
to develop a missile system that could intercept and
destroy incoming ballistic missiles. It would have
been inappropriate to resort to dictionary defnitions
of ‘missile’ and ‘defence’ to support any other more
general defnition. In the context of the times, there
was an obvious meaning to the motion and a clear
issue that was already being debated internationally.
2002 World Schools Debating Championships in
Singapore. At that time, the phrase ‘missile defence’
was commonly used to refer to United States
President George W. Bush’s controversial proposal
to develop a missile system that could intercept
and destroy incoming ballistic missiles. It would
havebeen inappropriate to resort to dictionary
defnitions of ‘missile’ and ‘defence’ to support any
other more general defnition. In the context of the
times, there was an obvious meaning to the motion
and a clear issue that was already being debated
internationally.
There can sometimes be genuine ambiguity. The
word ‘Asia’ in the motion ‘This House would
maintain United States military bases in Asia’
might be interpreted as including the Middle East
(dictionaries defne the continent of Asia as doing
so) or as excluding this region (common usage of
‘Asia’ and ‘Asian’ often fails to include the Middle
East). It is unclear whether the framers of the motion
intended American military bases in the Middle East
to be included in the debate. In view of the genuine
ambiguity of the word ‘Asia’ in this context, the
Proposition might reasonably define the motion
to include or not include bases in the Middle East
and the Opposition would have to be prepared for
either eventuality. This example can, however, be
distinguished from the one mentioned earlier, namely
a proposition excluding discussion of bases in Korea,
which would clearly be illegitimate, given that any
reasonable definition of ‘Asia’ must encompass
Korea.
2. PARAMETERS, MODELS AND
CRITERIA
In some national debating competitions the
Proposition has a much greater right of defnition
than at the World Schools Championships. There are
American university tournaments where the teams
only have 15 minutes preparation time and it is
accepted that the Proposition can defne the motion as
it wishes, so long as there some sort of a ‘link’ between
the motion and the Proposition’s case. Motions
often end up being ‘squirreled’ so that proposing
teams can argue pre-prepared cases. There are other
competitions where it is usual for the Proposition to
present a detailed ‘policy’ or ‘model’ for achieving
the broad object of the motion, and debates focus
on the merits of different models proposed. The
World Schools Debating Championships are quite
different from these sorts of competitions in that the
Proposition has neither an absolute right of defnition
nor the ability to transform a broad philosophical
motion into a detailed policy debate.
Because of longer preparation times, the belief
that both teams have the right to employ that time
gainfully, and an emphasis upon debating to an
audience, the World Schools Championships are
suffused by the principle of reasonableness. The
Proposition must provide a reasonable defnition. It
must be one that the ordinary intelligent person would
accept. When suggesting parameters to the debate,
or proposing particular models or criteria to judge
it by, the Proposition must ensure such parameters,
models or criteria are themselves reasonable. They
must be ones that the ordinary intelligent person
would accept as applicable to the debate.
(A) PARAMETERS FOR DEBATE
On occasion there may be an implicit context to
a debate, which gives the Proposition reasonable
grounds to set parameters or boundaries to what is
included.
The motion ‘This House believes that gay couples
should be allowed to adopt children’ was debatedas
one of the prepared rounds at the 2001 World Schools
Championships in Johannesburg. While normally
general motions at a world competition must be taken
as applicable to the whole world, doing so in this
instance would have allowed the Opposition to argue
that gay adoption should not proceed because there
were many countries that outlawed homosexuality
and persecuted gay men and women. The implicit
context of the motion did not include situations
where gay couples were not allowed to exist. The
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issue to be debated was the merits of gay couples
adopting children, and this was an issue that could
only arise in societies where gay relationships were
not illegal. Proposition teams were thus entitled to
confne the debate to such societies. Such parameters
were reasonable in view of the implicit context of
the motion.
The Proposition’s ability to set reasonable parameters
to a debate does not provide a licence to restrict the
motion arbitrarily.
‘This House believes that private schools should
be subsidised by the state’ could not be defned
asrelating only to private schools in the United States.
This would be altering the motion to read ‘This House
believes that private schools in the United States
should be subsidised by the state’, which is not what
has been set. No matter that the Proposition knows
a lot about American private schools or believes
state subsidies to be particularly controversial there
as a result of ‘school voucher’ proposals. While
the motion may implicitly be limited to areas of
the world where there are private schools, there is
nothing to limit it to the United States given there are
well-known examples of private schools in Britain,
Australia and many other countries which could be
used. s that private schools should be subsidised
by the state’ could not be defned as relating only
to private schools in the United States. This would
be altering the motion to read ‘This House believes
that private schools in the United States should be
subsidised by the state’, which is not what has been
set. No matter that the Proposition knows a lot about
American private schools or believes state subsidies
to be particularly controversial there as a result of
‘school voucher’ proposals. While the motion may
implicitly be limited to areas of the world where there
are private schools, there is nothing to limit it to the
United States given there are well-known examples of
private schools in Britain, Australia and many other
countries which could be used.
Motions that state general principles can normally be
debated as such. ‘This House believes that low taxes
are preferable to extensive government services’,
debated at the 2002 World Schools Championships
in Singapore, poses the issue of the extent to which
society or the consumer should pay for services such
as health care, education and public transport. The
motion can be debated with reference to examples
from all these areas and from a variety of different
countries. Restricting the debate to just one country
or to just health care would amount to rewriting
the motion without cause. The Proposition would
be attempting through its defnition (rather than its
debating) to gain an advantage over the Opposition,
by making many of its examples redundant.
While the Proposition may on some occasions be
required to set parameters to a debate, this will
normally have been done by the person setting the
motion. When there is a genuine ambiguity that needs
to be resolved or an implicit context that needs to be
stated for the debate to proceed, the Proposition must
remember its over-arching responsibility to debate
the issue posed: what the ordinary intelligent person
would expect, not a subset thereof.
(B) MODELS
The word ‘model’ needs to be used with care at the
World Schools Championships.
As mentioned, there are some competitions where
teams are expected to propose specific plans
or models. In American ‘policy debating’, the
Proposition will often outline a specifc plan for
achieving the goal of the motion, and the Opposition
will defend the status quo (present situation), attack
the Proposition’s plan, and/ or present an allegedly
better plan. At the World Schools Championships,
teams are expected to take the motion as it stands. If
it proposes a specifc policy, to argue for or against
this. If it puts forward a more general principle, to
debate whether or not it is valid.
The closest the World Schools Championships come
to ‘policy debating’ is when the motion involves
a ‘change debate’. This requires the Proposition to
propose a change in the status quo (present situation)
and will often have the word ‘should’ in the motion.
In order to propose a change, the Proposition will
need to suggest there is a major problem and that
the change will alleviate it.
The motion ‘This House believes that smoking
should be banned’ is an example of a change debate.
The Proposition must frst identify the problem that
exists (e.g. the health effects of smoking and the costs
these impose on society). The Proposition must then
propose banning as the solution to this problem and
argue that this will be effective (i.e. the solution will
in fact solve the problem).
In a change debate, the Opposition may argue one
or all of the following:
(a) the problem is not as bad as the Proposition
suggests (costs are borne by individuals who know
the risks, and are similar to other legal activities, such
as drinking alcohol or driving cars);
(b) the Proposition’s solution will not solve the
problem (prohibition only leads to a black market,
which causes more problems);
(c) there are better solutions for the problem (raising
taxes, education programmes). Sometimes it is
necessary for the Proposition to set out its proposed
solution in a fair amount of detail in order to prove
it will be effective. When this occurs, the proposed
solution is called a ‘model’ or ‘plan’. As with the
defnition and any parameters, the Proposition must
ensure that its model is a reasonable one if it is to
serve as a basis for the debate.
The motion ‘This House believes that voluntary
euthanasia should be legalised’ may require the
Proposition to spell out what exactly it means by
‘voluntary euthanasia’, given that there have been
different proposals before different legislatures
around the world. So long as the Proposition’s model
is a reasonable one (looking to common features of
these proposals, such as the person being terminally
ill and suffering from severe and untreatable pain, the
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person making the decision by free choice, certifed by
at least two medical experts), this will be the model
to be debated. If the Proposition left out an important
part of any scheme for voluntary euthanasia, it would
be open for the Opposition to argue that this must
also be included. hat voluntary euthanasia should
be legalised’ may require the Proposition to spell
out what exactly it means by ‘voluntary euthanasia’,
given that there have been
different proposals before different legislatures
around the world. So long as the Proposition’s model
is a reasonable one (looking to common features of
these proposals, such as the person being terminally
ill and suffering from severe and untreatable pain, the
person making the decision by free choice, certifed by
at least two medical experts), this will be the model
to be debated. If the Proposition left out an important
part of any scheme for voluntary euthanasia, it would
be open for the Opposition to argue that this must
also be included.
Debaters at the World Schools Championships can
‘use a model’ in the sense they are entitled to set
out the details of a proposed solution required by
the motion, provided that they do so reasonably
(detailing what is meant by ‘voluntary euthanasia’ in
the example given above; explaining what is accepted
as ‘international trading of pollution permits’ in a
debate proposing such a scheme). What debaters
cannot do is use the word ‘model’ as some sort of link
between the motion and what is in fact a different
or much more limited case. A team proposing
‘This House believes that low taxes are preferable
to extensive government services’ cannot say ‘our
model involves only providing free healthcare upon
means-testing’ any more than it could say it was only
going to debate the motion with respect to means-
tested healthcare. This would be arbitrarily restricting
the motion and little different to ‘squirreling’ or
‘policy debating’. The same would be true of a team
that said ‘our model is the United States presidential
election in 2000’ when proposing “this House would
break unjust laws in democracies’ or that said ‘our
model is setting up a worldwide system of national
identifcation cards’ when proposing ‘This House
would compromise civil liberties in the interest of
security’. Models cannot justify failing to debate the
issue posed; they are best used to fesh out a proposed
solution in a ‘change debate’ and, even then, must be
reasonable if they are to form a basis for the debate.
(C) CRITERIA
The standard of reasonableness is no less important
when the Proposition puts forward criteria for
assessing the truth of a motion. This often occurs
in ‘judgement debates’, when the Proposition’s task
is to judge a particular subject favourably or
unfavourably, and the Opposition has to challenge
that judgement.
A judgement debate often has the word ‘is’ in the
motion. For example, ‘This House believes that there
is too much money in sport’ is a judgement debate.
One of the frst tasks of the Proposition is to set up
criteria (some form of ‘measuring stick’) by which
the subject can be judged. In this debate it will not
be enough to show that there is a lot of money in
sport; the Proposition must show there is ‘too much
money’. How can we judge when money in sport has
become ‘too much money’? The Proposition could
suggest criteria such as when the traditional values
of sport become corrupted (fair play ideals; playing
being more important than winning). The Proposition
would then argue these criteria have been satisfed
(the media and sponsors support winners; athletes
resort to drug-taking and playing when injured; even
at amateur level, the behaviour of side-line supporters
shows the corruption of fair play ideals).
In a judgement debate, the Opposition may argue
one or all of the following:
(a) the Proposition’s criteria are not appropriate (sport
has always been competitive and the Proposition
is mythologising the idea of playing being more
important than winning);
(b) the Opposition has better (i.e. alternative) or
additional criteria for judging the issue, and these
criteria have not been satisfed (There is too much
money in sport if it negatively affects sport’s
popularity and enjoyment derived from it. Money in
fact allows for better sporting events seen by more
people; it helps standards in sports improve);
(c) even taking the Proposition’s criteria, their
arguments are incorrect (media and sponsors demand
fair play; sports are taking action to deal with the few
who engage in drug-taking and similar practices;
people play sports at the amateur level for enjoyment
of the game).
The Grand Final motion at the 1995 World Schools
Debating Championships in Cardiff, ‘This House
believes that the United Nations has failed’, similarly
called for a judgement debate. The Opposition
expected the criteria for whether the United Nations
had ‘failed’ would be whether it had lived up to its
objectives (promoting peace, economic prosperity,
human rights) and had prepared examples of UN
peace-keeping operations, economic and social
development programmes, human rights committees
and the like. The Proposition said that failure, in
terms of an institution, was whether it was doing
as well as it should be, and the UN was performing
more poorly than it should after fifty years of
existence due to its failure to adapt or evolve to
meet changing circumstances during that time (thus
a Security Council that did not refect the modern
world; executive offcers not appointed on merit;
bloated bureaucracies impeding effective delivery of
programmes; inadequate and politicised processes).
believes that the United Nations has failed’, similarly
called for a judgement debate. The Opposition
expected the criteria for whether the United Nations
had ‘failed’ would be whether it had lived up to its
objectives (promoting peace, economic prosperity,
human rights) and had prepared examples of UN
peace-keeping operations, economic and social
development programmes, human rights committees
and the like. The Proposition said that failure, in
terms of an institution, was whether it was doing
as well as it should be, and the UN was performing
more poorly than it should after fifty years of
existence due to its failure to adapt or evolve to
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meet changing circumstances during that time
(thus a Security Council that did not reflect the
modern world; executive officers not appointed
on merit; bloated bureaucracies impeding effective
delivery of programmes; inadequate and politicised
processes).
The Opposition expected the Proposition team would
be arguing the UN was not meeting its objectives,
whereas the Proposition in fact argued the UN
was not meeting its objectives as well as it should
(demonstrating institutionally poorer performance
than would have been the case had it changed its
structures and processes over the last ffty years).
The Proposition also took on on the examples raised
by the Opposition, arguing that they only further
demonstrated the problems of the UN (peace-keeping
operations had been blighted by politicised processes
and unwieldy bureaucracies; the UN had in fact been
irrelevant in terms of the major steps taken to promote
peace in the world, human rights declarations were
not enforced, and so on). The Proposition won the
debate by having set up criteria for judging ‘failure’
more carefully (and such criteria being reasonable in
terms of the motion).
3. THE OPPOSITION’S OPTIONS
Presuming the Proposition’s defnition is satisfactory,
the First Speaker of the Opposition will not argue the
defnition, but will proceed immediately to dealing
with the Proposition’s arguments. There is no need to
say that the Opposition accepts the defnition; this is
presumed unless the First Speaker of the Opposition
challenges it.
If the Opposition is unhappy with the Proposition’s
defnition, it has several options:
(A) ACCEPT AND DEBATE
The first option is to accept it anyway. If the
Proposition’s definition leads in to the expected
issue and allows the Opposition to put forward the
arguments and examples it was intending, there
is no point to arguing over the precise words the
Proposition has used. Some inexperienced debaters
do exactly this. The words used by the Proposition
differ from those they have written down, so they
‘clear up’ the defnition by using different words
with much the same meaning or that still result in
essentially the same debate. The Opposition gains
no marks talking about the defnition unless it has
to. Trifing objections are counter-productive. The
best advice is to move into the debate and take on
the Proposition’s arguments.
Much more serious is an unreasonable defnition
by the Proposition that, if accepted, will result in a
different debate to the one the Opposition expected.
One option is for the Opposition, despite quite
understandable annoyance, to accept the defnition
anyway. The rationale for doing this is to avoid a
‘defnition debate’, where the focus of the debate
becomes the meaning of the words in the motion. In
such debates, interaction and clash between the two
teams concentrates on whose defnition is correct.
The two teams’ arguments and examples may end up
having little to do with each other, and there might
as well be two parallel debates. For both teams and
audience, the result is tedious. A lot will hinge on the
adjudicators’ opinion as to whether the defnition was
unreasonable or not. If the Opposition believes the
matter is dicey, and the adjudicators might side with
the Proposition, it may make more sense to accept the
defnition, borderline as it is.
Often when Proposition teams prepare surprise
defnitions, they put more effort into twisting the
definition than to preparing solid cases. If the
Opposition feels that what the First Speaker of the
Proposition actually said (definition aside) is
eminently rebuttable, it may wish to abandon its
prepared case (or adapt what it can from this) and take
the Proposition on its own ground. The Opposition
may mention in passing the unexpected nature of
the Proposition’s defnition which, presuming the
audience agrees, may win it some sympathy. The
adjudicators will also give credit to an Opposition
that takes an unexpected defnition in its stride.
audience agrees, may win it some sympathy. The
adjudicators will also give credit to an Oppositionthat
takes an unexpected defnition in its stride.
The national fnal on the motion ‘This House believes
that we need a world government’ has already
been mentioned. The Proposition team gave an
unexpected defnition, arguing that there should be
a new body that was similar to but more effective
than the International Criminal Court then being
established, and that it should have the ability to deal
with the most terrible crimes against humanity, such
as genocide. The Opposition team, while well aware
that this sort of body did not begin to encompass
what was meant by a ‘world government’ (although
effectively punishing people who committed crimes
against humanity might constitute a small sub-set
of a world government’s role), decided to accept
the defnition and avoid a defnition debate in front
of several hundred guests. The Opposition went
on to argue there was no ‘need’ for the sort of body
proposed by the Proposition, as the specifics of
what they were suggesting (‘the model’ they were
proposing) was little different from the International
Criminal Court and would have the same degree
of effectiveness. Since the Proposition was not
proposing to transform the world order, there was
likely to be little change.
(B) CHALLENGE
The second option for the Opposition is to challenge
the Proposition’s defnition, arguing it is unreasonable.
The Opposition will have to explain exactly why it
is unreasonable, then put up an alternative (and
reasonable) defnition, before proceeding to advance
arguments and examples based on its own defnition.
It will meanwhile ignore the arguments and examples
the Proposition has put forward (based, as they are,
on an unreasonable defnition).
The problems of a defnition debate are canvassed
above, but the Opposition may feel the Proposition’s
definition to be so grossly unreasonable, it has
no choice but to challenge it. If the Proposition is
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arguing a truism or tautology, the Opposition must
challenge the defnition, or it would otherwise be
shouldering an impossible burden. (Neither of the
other options mentioned below is available for a
truism or tautology.)
As mentioned above, unless the First Speaker of the
Opposition challenges the defnition, it is deemed
to be accepted. The Judging Schedule to the Rules of
the World Schools Debating Championships provide
that the Opposition ‘may not challenge the defnition
in any other speech unless the [Proposition…]
signifcantly alters the defnition in their subsequent
speeches.’
The ‘content’ of defnition debates hinges on which
team presented the better arguments about the
defnition and which team then put forward the better
case based on its own version of the defnition. The
defnition having become the most important issue
in the debate, it is marked accordingly. It is therefore
vital that each team sticks to its defnition. Even if the
Proposition’s defnition was unsound, the second
and third speakers will have to defend it and argue
for it being reasonable, or they risk having their frst
speaker’s speech become irrelevant.
As with any other argument put forward in a debate,
the adjudicators must decide a defnitional challenge,
not on the basis of the adjudicators’ own opinion (if
the adjudicators believe the defnition was reasonable
or not), but in terms of the strength of the arguments
offered. Even if the adjudicators feel the defnition
was a tautology, the Opposition will need to explain
why this is so. If the adjudicators feel the Proposition
argued better in its defence than the Opposition
did in challenging it, the Proposition will ‘win the
definition’. But that said, the more unexpected,
bizarre or unusual the defnition would appear to the
ordinary intelligent person, the less argument will be
needed to point this out.
A team may still win despite a bad defnition. Its
marks for style and strategy may be considerably
better. It may have much stronger arguments and
examples, despite a poorer defnition. But while
winning remains possible, it has handicapped
itself signifcantly by allowing the other team the
opportunity to attack the premise of its case.
(C) BROADEN
The third option for the Opposition is neither
outright acceptance nor outright rejection, but instead
to supplement the definition. The Proposition’s
defnition may be incomplete. It may have omitted
to defne a word in the motion that the Opposition
considers pivotal. In this case, the Opposition can
offer a defnition of this word, so long as it meets the
standards of reasonableness outlined above (or it may
in turn be challenged by the Proposition). The best
response by the Proposition would be to ignore the
Opposition supplementing the defnition if this leaves
unaltered the basic issue in dispute, and the nature
of the arguments and examples being contended.
If the word was in fact important, the Proposition
might claim its defnition was implicit in the case and
arguments it put forward.
‘Broadening the debate’ is a form of supplementing
the defnition, and is one of the best tactics available
to the Opposition. In many cases when there is an
unexpected defnition, the Proposition will be seeking
to debate a narrower version of the motion. What is
being put forward is not alien to the motion, it is just
a small subset of what it should encompass.
A number of examples have been given above: ‘This
House believes that we need a world government’
meaning that there should be a new body similar to
but more effective than the International Criminal
Court; ‘This House would compromise civil liberties
in the interest of security’ being restricted to the
merits of national identifcation cards.
In each of these cases it is possible to say, yes, we will
take on the example you have given, and show why
you are wrong, but this is only one aspect of what the
motion encompasses and we will present examples
showing that in other aspects it is also wrong,
thereby demonstrating that as a general proposition
it is wrong. The Opposition is not rejecting the
defnition and the arguments that fow from it; the
Opposition is instead saying they are incomplete, and
is supplementing them.
Broadening the debate (back to what was originally
expected) avoids the pitfalls of a defnition debate,
while allowing the Opposition to present its case and
arguments, as prepared. If the motion ‘This House
believes that low taxes are preferable to extensive
government services’ was restricted to health care
(on the basis this was particularly controversial at
present), the Opposition could spend a fair amount
of time dealing with health care arguments (which
it should have anticipated, given these are a major
area in which consumer choice policies have been
implemented or discussed), but could broaden the
debate by noting that such policies have also been
applied in education and public transport and failings
in these areas further prove why it is wrong to suggest
the consumer rather than the state should pay for
such commodities.
The Opposition’s decision to broaden the debate
rather than just accept the Proposition’s restriction
will depend on how much it can say about the
Proposition’s chosen subset (if it knows a lot and
believes the Proposition’s case is weak, it may be
better to concentrate on demolishing the Proposition
rather than having to set up and defend other
examples). It will also want to consider the effects of
broadening the debate on the Proposition (while the
Opposition has to cover more ground, so too does the
Proposition, which may be rattled by the by-passing
of its defnition and may not know a lot about the
other areas raised by the Opposition).
(D) ‘EVEN IF’
The fourth option for the Opposition is to both reject
and accept the defnition. This is called an ‘even if’
case and involves:
(a) rejecting the Proposition defnition as unreasonable
and explaining why;
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(b) putting up an alternative (and reasonable)
defnition, then proceeding to advance arguments
and examples based on this;
(c) rather than ignoring the Proposition’s arguments
and examples on the basis they derive from an
unreasonable defnition, arguing that ‘even if’ the
Proposition’s defnition was reasonable, its arguments
and examples do not prove what is alleged.
This is sometimes known as the ‘you’re wrong, and
even if you’re right, you’re wrong’ case. Historically,
‘even if ’ debates were more likely to arise in
Australian competitions, where the Opposition
had an equal right of defnition. Historically, ‘even
if’ debates were more likely to arise in Australian
competitions, where the Opposition had an equal
right of defnition.
While this option avoids the danger of rejecting
the Proposition’s definition, only to have the
adjudicator uphold it, the ‘even if’ case requires
the Opposition to cover a lot of ground. There are
three separate issues to be argued: the defnitional
debate, the Opposition’s case and the Proposition’s
case (rejecting the defnition involves the frst two;
broadening the debate blends the last two). The
adjudicators will have to judge both teams over each
of the areas they tackle (the Proposition might decide
to rely on winning the defnition, or could reply with
‘even if the Opposition’s defnition is correct’ counter-
arguments of its own).
In addition to the quantity of argument involved,
an ‘even if’ case has the further disadvantage that
it makes the Opposition’s definitional challenge
appear less pressing. If the Opposition can argue on
the Proposition’s terms, and indeed wants to hedge
its bets on the Proposition’s defnition being found
unreasonable, how vital was it to clog up the debate
with an inevitably tedious and protracted defnitional
tussle? An ‘even if’ debate is almost always less
advantageous than one of the three
options set out above.
4. CONSTRUCTING CASES
The defnition settled, each team has to present a
case, arguments and examples. Each team presents
a single case. The team’s case is supported by several
arguments. Each argument is backed up by one or
more examples.
(A) CASE
The team’s case is sometimes called the team line or
team theme. This is the essence of what the team is
arguing. Every individual argument made must help
prove the case, which in turn must prove the team’s
side of the motion.
During preparation, the team should always try to
work out the key point it wants to make. Does this
prove its side of the motion? Does each individual
argument derive from this?
Often the team case can be written out as a ‘because
statement’. For example, ‘affuent nations should
accept more refugees’ because there is dire human
need, they can easily afford to help alleviate it, and
they themselves beneft from doing so; ‘we should not
cancel third world debt’ because the real problem is
not the debt but the governments of these countries.
(These are two sample cases argued at the 2001 World
Schools Debating Championships in South Africa.)
All three team members should write down the team
case once it has been agreed. By referring each of
their arguments back to the team case and repeating
it at different junctures, the team’s three speeches are
given a unity and consistency.
‘Remember there are people in need; we’ve got the
means to help them; and we ourselves beneft from
more diverse communities’ is the sort of ending to
a speech that sounds good and, more importantly,
reiterates and reinforces the team case in the ‘affuent
nations should accept more refugees’ debate.
The Opposition team case against cancelling third
world debt is less wordy. Team cases can always be
simplifed and given more punch. The Proposition
team case in the refugees debate could be refned to
read ‘affuent nations should accept more refugees’
because this benefits both the refugees and the
affuent nations.
(B) ARGUMENTS
The team will need to ensure that it provides
arguments in support of its case and that these
arguments are divided among the three speakers, the
most important arguments being made frst.
An argument is a reason or rationale why the team’s
case is right. Inexperienced debaters sometimes
state the team case, but then descend into a series
of examples, without trying to show how they are
linked or the underlying reasons why they prove
the team’s point.
A Proposition team speaker claiming affluent
nations themselves benefit from accepting more
refugees might say that this occurred when European
countries took in some of the Kosovo Albanian
refugees who were feeing into Macedonia in 2000.
But this would be to go from case to example, without
the intervening stage of argument. What is needed is
an explanation as to why this example shows affuent
nations beneft from taking more refugees. What was
the beneft they gained?
The Proposition speaker should have said: Affuent
nations themselves benefit from taking more
refugees [part of the case]. Refugees often flood
into neighbouring countries that face many of the
same problems; this destabilises these countries,
causing regional instability that often affects the
affuent countries’ political and economic interests
[argument]. For example, the Kosovo Albanians
fleeing into Macedonia in 2000 threatened to
overwhelm that country and spark a civil war which
could have involved Greece and directly affected
NATO interests, meaning Europe helped its own
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regional stability by taking some of those refugees
[example linked to argument].
The Proposition speaker could then provide another
example making the same point, then move to a
second argument supporting this part of the case
(regional stability is not the only self-interest affuent
nations have in taking more refugees; doing so adds
to those nations’ diversity and multiculturalism,
which is an element in their success) followed by an
example in turn.
Debates without arguments become a hotchpotch of
examples. What is important is not the number of
examples, but the analysis of them.
In a debate on the motion ‘This House would keep out
of other people’s wars’, the Proposition team said that
peacekeeping missions had exacerbated problems in
Rwanda and Kosovo. The Opposition replied that
peacekeeping ventures had assisted the situations in
East Timor and Eritrea. Both teams resorted to citing
examples without attaching them to arguments.
What they needed to do was to provide reasons why
intervening (here, by way of peacekeeping) in other
people’s wars was detrimental or advantageous
(multinational peacekeeping forces suffered from
cumbersome command structures which prevented
their being effective when threatened; once enough
nations committed to a multinational force it could
deter local and neighbouring military threats due
to its frepower and international standing). The
examples that supported such arguments would
then follow.
Examples alone can never win a debate. There will
always be examples for and against the motion. The
strength of the arguments that seek to explain the
examples will therefore be more important.
(C) EXAMPLES
Arguments require logic and reason, and need to be
supported by examples. The problem of the speaker
who lists a series of examples without providing
any argument is matched by that of the speaker who
offers a variety of arguments, but with no supporting
evidence. Without proof, arguments are reduced to
assertions and generalisations.
The best examples are those that the ordinary
intelligent person (hopefully most audience
members!) will have heard of. These are facts, events
and occurrences that have been widely reported in
the media. A common usage example will have much
more immediate credibility than an obscure statistic
from an unknown author.
This is not to suggest that general knowledge is
the only source of good evidence. Research will
produce useful facts, fgures and examples that can
be introduced into a debate. But such specifc material
works best when it complements or provides detail for
something that is commonly known or understood.
Personal anecdotes (stories involving the speaker)
are to be avoided; impartiality and credibility are
dubious when arguing for a particular side of the
motion. credibility are dubious when arguing for a
particular side of the motion.
When presenting an example, it is important that it be
fully explained. It is better to mention a few examples
well, linking them carefully to arguments just made,
and explaining why they are relevant and signifcant
to the debate, than merely to list a series of examples
without proper clarifcation.
(D) RESTRICTIVE CASES
A lot has been said about the defnition and about
constructing cases. The aim is to make defnitional
issues less prominent, not more; for teams to debate
the motion set, not the motion one team prefers.
The dangers of unexpected defnitions and restrictive
cases were illustrated in the final stages of the
2002 World Schools Debating Championships in
Singapore. The semi-fnals motion has already been
mentioned. One of the proposition teams defned
‘This House would compromise civil liberties in the
interest of security’ to mean that all countries should
adopt a system of national identifcation cards (this
compromise of civil liberties being warranted by the
security benefts that would result). The Proposition
in the Grand Final debate affirmed ‘This House
believes that the media has become too powerful’ by
claiming the media had become overly intrusive into
the private lives of citizens.
Both cases were restrictive. The Proposition in the
semi-fnal mentioned sought to restrict a general
debate to a single example. The Proposition in
the Grand Final was restricting its case to a single
argument. The former approach was open to
challenge; the latter was not.
The semi-fnal Proposition was effectively suggesting
that if it proved a system of national identifcation
cards to be benefcial, it would have proved that civil
liberties should be compromised in the interest of
security. The logic was faulty. At most, the Proposition
would have proved the general principle true
with respect to a single example. The Proposition
having no grounds for narrowing a debate of
general application to a single, specifc example, the
Opposition team was entitled not only to question
the validity of the Proposition’s example, but also to
suggest that other examples proved the converse. The
fact that the Proposition was restricting the motion
to a much more specifc level of abstraction than
had been set is demonstrated by trying to write the
team’s case as a ‘because statement’. ‘Civil liberties
should be compromised in the interest of security
because a system of national identifcation cards is
benefcial’ becomes nonsensical. The Proposition
First Speaker spent most of his frst speech talking
about the mechanics of a national identifcation card
(how it would be issued, updated, and replacement
procedures in the event it was lost), itself an indicator
of how peripheral his speech had become to the actual
motion. Setting out a detailed model as to how a
national identifcation card system might work was
no substitute for providing reasons as to why civil
liberties should be compromised in the interest of
security.
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The Proposition’s case in the Grand Final makes
sense when expressed as a ‘because statement’. ‘The
media has become too powerful because it is now
overly intrusive into the private lives of citizens’
suffers no problems of logic or coherence. While the
Opposition might be surprised that the Proposition
had decided to rest its case on a single argument
(media intrusion into the private lives of citizens)
when there were a variety of other arguments
available for claiming the media has become too
powerful (ownership concentrations; the media’s
effect on public perceptions of politicians and public
fgures; biased and distorted news coverage), there
is no necessity for the Proposition to raise every
argument that might have been raised. Media
intrusion into the private lives of individuals is not
an unexpected argument in this sort of debate, and
the Opposition needed to be able to counter it. Unlike
the Proposition in the semi-fnal debate mentioned,
the Proposition here has defned the motion at the
correct level of abstraction: ‘the media’ and ‘powerful’
are not being interpreted in an unexpected or unduly
narrow manner. The Proposition has not arbitrarily
declared the debate is only about television media or
that it is restricted to the western world.
The Proposition’s case in the 2002 Grand Final became
muddled when it failed to set out clear criteria for
assessing ‘too powerful’, simply linking this with the
media’s intrusion into individuals’ private lives. The
Proposition said its ‘model’ was to restrict the media
to reporting on individuals’ private lives when this
impacted on their jobs. In terms of the discussion of
models and criteria above, this being a ‘judgement’
rather than a ‘change’ debate, the Proposition should
have focused on setting out criteria for judging when
the media’s power became excessive rather than
providing a model for how to change this.
The Opposition in turn misread the debate when it
attempted to ‘broaden’ the defnition so as to include
the sort of arguments it had been expecting (which it
could then rebut by pointing to regulatory schemes
that inhibited ownership concentration and news
distortion, and an educated populace able to deal
with the same). In addition to questioning whether the
media had gone too far in its coverage of individuals’
private lives, the Opposition may have fared better
by coming back to the overall question posed and
establishing a framework for assessing whether
the media was ‘too powerful’. Media intrusion into
individuals’ private lives was, at the end of the day,
only one argument towards proving the media was
‘too powerful’ and it could be contended that, even
conceding some unjustifable media intrusion into
individuals’ private lives, this was outweighed by the
controls on the media and the media’s lack of power
in a host of other signifcant areas (thus introducing
the arguments the Opposition wanted to make
about mechanisms preventing media distortion and
the like). include the sort of arguments it had been
expecting (which it could then rebut by pointing
to regulatory schemes that inhibited ownership
concentration and news distortion, and an educated
populace able to deal with the same). In addition to
questioning whether the media had gone too far in its
coverage of individuals’ private lives, the Opposition
may have fared better by coming back to the overall
question posed and establishing a framework for
assessing whether the media was ‘too powerful’.
Media intrusion into individuals’ private lives was,
at the end of the day, only one argument towards
proving the media was ‘too powerful’ and it could
be contended that, even conceding some unjustifable
media intrusion into individuals’ private lives, this
was outweighed by the controls on the media and the
media’s lack of power in a host of other signifcant
areas (thus introducing the arguments the Opposition
wanted to make about mechanisms preventing media
distortion and the like).
Whereas an unduly restrictive defnition (such as
limiting a general motion to a single example) is
illegitimate and can be challenged or broadened, a
Proposition that runs a restrictive case (limiting itself
to a single argument) acts legitimately and cannot
be challenged for doing so, but runs the risk of the
Opposition being able to more easily counter that
case (by disproving that one argument and/ or by
raising other arguments that disprove the motion,
as defned).
The moral of the story is as mentioned at the outset.
To debate the motion set. There are dangers in trying
to run restricted defnitions or restricted cases at the
World Schools Championships, where teams are
expected to take the obvious meaning of a motion
and to debate the issue posed. Sometimes motions
will be extremely specifc, at other times they will
be very general, and the Proposition’s defnition is
expected to follow suit. Specifc motions should be
defned specifcally and general motions generally.
Good debating involves an effective blend of
argument, rebuttal, speaking ability and teamwork.
It means displaying the best material, presentation
and strategy on the motion set, not seeking to
handicap the Opposition before the debate begins
or confounding the reasonable expectations of
audiences and adjudicators who have come to watch
an exchange of ideas and arguments for and against
a particular motion.
Andrew Stockley, New Zealand 2002
Disclaimer: Mention has been made of particular
debates for the purpose of discussion and analysis.
Not all aspects of these debates have been included,
meaning that the commentary given should not be
taken as any refection on which team should have
won or lost a particular debate. The commentary given
is the opinion of the author and other adjudicators
and people present at the debates mentioned should
not be taken as necessarily agreeing or disagreeing
with what is written.
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W
hat is true about a case or argument?
•What is logical
• What most people would understand
• What affects people, not institutions
You will always be able to fnd facts to support what
you say, but if everyone has that, what sets you
ahead? Judges are normal people (often not even
debaters, so actually normal) and all these facts will
do nothing but bore them. So focus on trying to argue
something that they will be able to intuitively get a
handle on, the average person’s “truth”.
The average person is not likely to read The Economist,
so it might be better to focus your quotable efforts on
things they have read, like the newspaper, or even
fction. Bestsellers like Freakonomics work well too.
Because I won’t trust what you say, but somewhere,
hopefully, I already know it—so remind me. Or
describe a situation to me that will invoke something
I’ve read, even if you never say it. When talking
about the oversexualization of society and young
girls, it will help for you to have read Lolita. Using
rhetoric like “nymphette” will get you further than
the percentage of girls who have had oral sex before
the age of 15.
The point of debating (widely misunderstood) is to
prove that there is truth to what you are saying, not
necessarily that what you are saying is correct. This is
precisely why people who do not debate fnd some of
the most compelling arguments ludicrous—because
they are, we’ve simply identifed truth in them that
the average person has not.
Some of the best debaters win cases by proving
something that even they themselves know isn’t
possible in the real world. Consider a case like
“Having discovered proof that god does not exist,
destroy it”. It is in reality ridiculous to argue
that you should destroy what would be the most
incredible scientifc discovery of all time in favour
of the wellbeing and peace of mind of a god loving/
god fearing people. But just last year this case was
won, because it did the unthinkable, by displaying a
truth in the beneft of lying that the average person is
unable to grasp. This is at the heart of debate.
Ways to avoid getting bogged down in
facts:
TRY RUNNING CASES NOT SET IN THIS REALITY:
Running a case on the mutant registry act in X-Men
is a great way to avoid the pitfalls of fact. It is for
all intents and purposes a case about why it is
wrong to isolate and discriminate against minorities
without all the practical arguments of, say, a case
about why Arizona should not be allowed to stop
anyone they suspect of being illegal immigrants.
Because all sensible people know that it is wrong
to use racial profling at an airport, but facts in the
form of statistics tell you that actually, ethnic or racial
profling could very well reduce crime. As soon as
that fact comes up in the round though, something
has been lost. We are no longer discussing why racial
profling is good or bad, but instead are faced with
the “lives lost” trump card.
DON’T USE ANY:
Try running a case you would usually need a lot
of facts for, like a geopolitical case. Get a basic
background of the situation without using any
numbers, or any “predicted outcomes” (that you
probably found in The Economist). Use the debate to
talk about what might happen given the proposition,
try to use logic or precedent instead of hard numbers,
you might be shocked to discover that a bunch of high
school students can assess what might be the best
course of action without any help from our friends
at The Globe and Mail. (However, a tournament level
geopolitics case still requires facts, this is simply an
exercise.)
DEBATE ARGUMENTS VS. REAL WORLD ARGUMENTS:

Incredibly talented debaters fall into this trap all the
time, especially with social cases, because they are
less concrete. It goes something like this: “We should
enact super crazy piece of legislation x, because
of implausible but clever argument y! HA!” After
you make this argument, many debaters are very
impressed. Your (probably parent) judge however,
probably thinks you’re a tool.
YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW EVERYTHING, JUST SOMETHING
“The truth is more important than the facts.” –Frank Lloyd Wright
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2012 Summer Debate Camp
Instructional page 77
THERE IS NO RIGHT WAY TO REFUTE AN ARGUMENT:
I’ll get in trouble for this, but I stand by it. You often
hear at the end of the round what the correct way to
opp a case was, or the right refutation to an argument,
but what the judge means to say is “I personally
would have been more convinced by a different
defense of your case”. Some judges like social
arguments, most hate them. You have two options
when dealing with these differences, one is to attempt
to know your audience (many are debaters and will
all be impressed by the same things), or simply to use
whatever angle you know best—probably it will be
your best bet. You may have heard a piece of debate
wisdom that has a similar message: “economics cases
are not won with economics”. This is how I feel about
all debating.
If a case comes up about policy in a country that I’ve
never heard of, with roots in an issue I’m unaware
of, I often lean over to have my partner give me
the rundown. But I can also use what I already do
know to argue it. Sometimes this is working with
generalities, called frst principles (as in, what sounds
wrong about this argument?), but you can also work
with your own set of specifc knowledge. So, when
that complicated geopolitical case comes up, I can
talk about socialization, poverty, or women’s issues.
I know about these things and they are certainly
somehow relevant to the round. Everyone else may
know more about current events, but that doesn’t
mean I’m out of the round, in fact, it may mean I can
contribute the newest analysis (which is particularly
valuable in BP if it becomes important). Sometimes
it even happens that there will be a roomful of
law students debating, and the round becomes
(mistakenly) all about legal process. That one science
student in the room may be the only one who hits on
the real issues, and that can win it single handedly,
particularly if the judge knows nothing of law.
Deirdre Casey
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2012 Summer Debate Camp Instructional page 78

1) Three rol es t o be f i l l ed ( by any one,
and anyone can do each and all of the roles)
a) The Generator – One who j ust keeps
giving ideas, analysis, information, anything
t hat coul d be usef ul t o const ruct a case
b) The Cri t i ci zer – One who eval uat es
t he af orement i oned i deas, and of course
says why when t hey accept / rej ect i deas
c)The Synthesizer – One who sees everything from the
birds eyes’ view. They will guide the information as they
look at the whole picture and see where the case is going
so that information can be wrapped into arguments.

2)Time your prep time – you have 60 minutes
Fi r st 5 mi nut es – Si l ent br ai nst or m so
that you are all thinking independently and
think of different ways to view and address
things. Don’t get caught in “ group think.”
During this time you can think of important
quest i ons f or t he case, t hose bei ng why
are we debating this and what is this debate
about. The whole group should answer these.
** Remember to ask yourself about forgotten actors
Definitions and model are needed to frame
the debate and what you are talking about.

Next 25 (if you must, 30) minutes – Share
your t hought s on why t hi s, why now.
At the 10-12 minutes mark, hopefully with more than
40 minutes left to prep, you should have content,
ideas, and such together collected to form into a case.
At the 25 -28 minutes mark, you should have
a case, arguments, exampl es and anal ysi s

At this point you may, if confdent, take a 2-3 minute break.

Next 20 mi nut es – Ask yoursel ves: why
is this the wrong case? Give a sober second
thought. In the second half of prepping, you
should split up the 5 people working into 3 roles.
WHAT TO DO IN THE PREP ROOM
Debi Ogunrinde
Although all impromptu debates require disciplined case preparation in a short time, when
debating internationally, Canadians have 60 minutes to prepare. That is much longer than
we are used to, but of course much more is expected, too.
For those in content positions, namely the first
and second speaker, take an addition person with
you and get out almanacs, go out and practise
the case, attack it, rebuild it, and make it better.
* * Wr i t e a nd pr a c t i s e i nt r o duc t i o ns .
The remaining two will do the job for the third
speaker and think of clash. Think of 3, 4, or 5
possible opp points and 2-3 clashes for each.

Last 10 minutes - Distribute clashes, angles, points
and run through all analysis. Make sure nothing
contradicts and everything is developed suffciently.
Burdens and Push Burdens, which should
now be easy to establish after you’ve decided
what you’re proving and what the debate is
about, need to be done as well as your Caseline.
** Thi nk of how t o sum up your case i n
a sentence ( maybe arguments as well); it is
us ef ul as c l ar i f i c at i on f or t he debat e.
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