Lincoln–Douglas debate format

Lincoln–Douglas debate (commonly abbreviated as LD Debate, or simply LD) is a type of one-on-one competitive debate practiced mainly in the United States at the high school level. It is sometimes also called values debate because the format traditionally places a heavy emphasis on logic, ethical values, and philosophy.

The Lincoln–Douglas debate format is named for the 1858 Lincoln–Douglas debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, because their debates focused on slavery and the morals, values, and logic behind it. LD debates are used by the National Speech and Debate Association (NSDA) competitions, and also widely used in related debate leagues such as the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association, the National Catholic Forensic League, the National Educational Debate Association, the Texas University Interscholastic League, Texas Forensic Association, Stoa USA and their affiliated regional organizations.

Teams in a debate competition are given a resolution (a statement). In the competition, one side (called the affirmative) must support the resolution, and the other side (called the negative) must show that the action does not conform to the principle or that the affirmative has not shown how it does so (there are different schools of thought as to the negative's burden).

{| class="wikitable"

! Stage

! Time (minutes)

! Abbreviation

! Description

| Affirmative Constructive

| 6

| AC (or 1AC)

| The Affirmative (always) reads a pre-written case, outlining why the resolution is valid.

| Cross Examination

| 3

| CX

| The Negative asks the Affirmative questions, in order to expose logical flaws in the Affirmative's argument.

|Preparation time - Negative

|up to 4 (5 at some tournaments)

|prep time (down time)

|The Negative prepares the attack against the Affirmative's case.

| Negative Constructive (and first negative Rebuttal)

| 7

| NC (1NR)

| The Negative (almost always) reads a pre-written case and (almost always) moves on to address the Affirmative case.

| Cross Examination

| 3

| CX

| The Affirmative asks the Negative questions.

|Preparation Time - Affirmative

|up to 4(5 at some tournaments)

|prep time (down time)

|The Affirmative prepares the attack against the Negative's case.

| First Affirmative Rebuttal

| 4

| 1AR

| The Affirmative addresses both their opponent's case and their own. This speech is considered by many debaters to be the most difficult speech, as debaters must use 4 minutes to respond to a 7-minute speech, whereas the Negative has 6 minutes to respond to the 1AR of only 4 minutes.

|Preparation time - negative

|The balance of Negative's prep time

|prep time

|The Negative prepares the attack against the Affirmative's case.

| Negative Rebuttal

| 6

| NR (or 2NR)

| The Negative addresses the arguments of the previous speech and summarizes the round for the judge. New arguments and evidence are typically frowned upon because the affirmative only has 3 minutes to respond to this speech.

|Preparation time - affirmative

|The balance of Affirmative's prep time

|prep time

|The Affirmative prepares the attack against the Negative's case.

| The Second Affirmative Rebuttal

| 3

| 2AR

| The Affirmative addresses the arguments of the previous speech and summarizes the round for the judge. No new arguments or evidence are allowed in the 2AR because the negative does not have another speech to answer these final arguments.

Each debater gets thirteen minutes of total speaking time, and three minutes of question time. The rounds take approximately 45 minutes in total. Each debater receives four to five minutes of preparation time to use between speeches however they like. While the amount of prep time is at the tournament's discretion, the NSDA advocated three minutes until midway through the 2006–2007 season, when it decided on four.

For example, a negative case for the resolution "Resolved: A just society ought not use the death penalty as a form of punishment" could have a value of justice, a value criterion of deterring crime, and then evidence-supported contentions that demonstrate that the death penalty uniquely fails as a deterrent. An affirmative case could have a value of justice, a criterion of respecting human life, and contentions giving evidence based arguments that all methods of execution are inhumane. The debaters would then argue whether crime deterrence or adherence to the principle of essentialist humanity is more effective at encouraging justice based on the evidence in their cases. There are a few different types of kritiks. The resolutional kritik argues that a fundamental assumption of the resolution is flawed or offensive and thus it can't or shouldn't be debated or proven true. For example, in the January–February 2014 topic, "Resolved: Developing countries should prioritize environmental protection over resource extraction when the two are in conflict," a kritik of the resolution would be that the resolution uses the words "resource extraction", opening itself to an anthropocentrism kritik by assuming the world to be a resource for human use and degrading the moral character of nature. This kritik would further argue that an anthropocentric mindset would justify major harms, which, in order to avoid, would require the win go to the side presenting the criticism. The discourse kritik argues that the effects of an action one's opponent has taken during or in relation to the round should outweigh consideration of the resolution. An example of a common discourse kritik is a gendered language kritik, which could be used if an opponent's case has been written exclusively containing the male pronoun. Another example is if the opponent uses a slur (such as a derogatory term for homosexuals) in or out of the round, which opens the way to a "bad discourse" kritik.

A kritik is generally composed of four parts: the role of the ballot, link, impact, and alternative. In order to make a criticism, there has to be a link, or reason. A link can be a certain phrase in the resolution, something the opponent said, something conceded in cross-examination, etc. The link opens the gate to the criticism. Now that the link to the mindset being criticized has been established, there has to be a significant harm linked to that mindset, or impact. For example, if an opponent links in to statism, a harm or impact of this would be that statism justifies nuclear war or rights violations. An impact explains why the mindset is bad. In general, the alternative provides solvency for the harms proposed. Most alternatives look something like, "reject the negative," "reject statism," or something along those lines. The role of the ballot functions as framework for the kritik. A role of the ballot explains how the judge should view the debate round. If a kritik criticizes the ethics of the round, then an acceptable alternative would propose another type of ethic that should be used for reasons like better discourse.

Theory shells

A theory shell proposes rules to follow in a debate. The negative can do this by criticizing something the affirmative does that does not follow their vision of the debate. Shells include arguments such as that of disclosure theory and have become increasing popular in the high school circuits. A theory shell consists of four parts: the interpretation, violation, standards and the voters. A theory shell most often uses fairness and education to weigh the round, but many other standards and values are used when debating on them.

Tricks

Tricks are a type of argument that relies upon the technical nature of progressive debate, focusing on trying to "out-flow" your opponent, or making them concede arguments. This can stem from the idea in progressive debate that concession equals truth, which makes room for some technically abusive arguments. A common trick used by the affirmative is to say, "evaluate the debate after the 1AC," asking the judge to vote only on the content in the 1AC, automatically voting affirmative. These arguments have become extremely controversial with judges, many explicitly saying on their paradigm to strike them if you are a "tricks debater."

Plans

Sometimes, the affirmative advocates for a plan, which is a certain specified action which falls under the resolution. For example, with the January/February 2015 Topic (Resolved: Just governments ought to require that employers pay a living wage) a plan could have been to bring the Asia Floor Wage to a living wage level. These arguments are often countered by theory (see below) or topicality. Plans originated from policy debate. Despite the growing popularity of affirmative plans, they are unacceptable in certain debate districts. In some states, the ballots used by judges instruct them to disregard affirmative plans. The only type of case that is virtually universally accepted is the value/value criterion/contention structure, and even that has its detractors.

Recently, methods of winning the round have become prominent that cannot be classified as true cases, because they are used as a semi-independent part of or in addition to the case proper, and do not advocate an extensively developed position. These include the "a priori" or "prima facie" argument which attempt to demonstrate that the resolution is true/false outside of the typical syllogistic model, most commonly by collapsing it into a tautology or presenting some reason why it's nonsensical. "Theory" debate, which says that an opponent's argument or style of argumentation (e.g. talking too fast or interpreting the resolution in a certain way) is unfair or noneducational and explains why fairness or educational considerations supersedes the resolutional evaluation, has also proliferated. Like atypical cases, the merit of these types of arguments is heatedly contested, although both are common on the national circuit.

Judging

Judges fall under many categories, the most common of which are:

Lay judge (a judge who does not have experience in debate of any form, and is partial to basic and/or slow arguments); usually parents tend to be lay judges
Flow judge (a judge who seeks to minimize intervention in the round by judging based solely on the arguments as made by the debaters in the round. Arguments are usually tracked in a short-hand called "the flow".)

As the debate season comes to a close, national championship tournaments (collectively referred to as the postseason) are held to bring together the best debaters from around the nation to compete against one another. These tournaments require reaching certain levels of success at a qualifying tournaments throughout the season.

The unofficial national circuit championship is the Tournament of Champions (LD) (TOC) held at the University of Kentucky. To be eligible for the TOC, debaters must collect at least two bids at various designated tournaments held throughout the year. (They cannot be considered qualifying tournaments because they technically exist independent of TOC authority and are significant in their own right.) These tournaments are granted a certain number of bids by the director of the TOC (Prof. Angela Reed) with the input of her advisory committee that debaters receive upon reaching a certain level in the elimination rounds. The level of elimination round at which bids are awarded is subjective, but depends chiefly on the size of the tournament, the perceived collective quality of the debaters in attendance, and the quality of the tournament itself (whether it is run well or not). There are fluctuations in tournaments' bid levels and the tournaments that have bids in the first place, but the major tournaments have very secure bids. For example, the Dowling Catholic Paradigm held at Dowling Catholic High School in West Des Moines, Iowa is a medium-sized tournament attended by debaters of all experience levels mostly from the Midwest, and therefore receives four bids, awarded to the debaters who reach the semifinal round of the tournament. The Glenbrooks tournament, considered among the most competitive regular season tournaments in the country, is attended by approximately 200 experienced debaters and has for many years had 16 bids to hand out to competitors who reach the octofinal round.

For non-national circuit debaters, either the National Speech and Debate Tournament of the National Forensic League or the Grand National Tournament of the National Catholic Forensic League is the national tournament of their sponsoring organization. Competitors qualify to these national tournaments by placing in the top spots at district-level tournaments held specifically as qualifiers. The number of competitors in each district determines the number of competitors that will qualify to the national tournament. Most NSDA districts have two to four, but some NCFL districts have six.

Rankings

The National Speech & Debate Association provides a ranking of inputted points gained throughout events, with the option of filtering out points solely earned in Lincoln-Douglas debate.

There is also a system of points for Lincoln Douglas Debate known as the Dukes and Bailey cup, which takes a debater's top 5 tournaments of the year, and assigns a point value to them.

Resolutions

NSDA resolutions (topics to be debated) change every two months. They always propose that a specific policy or issue (the "resolutional policy/action") conforms to a certain principle (the "value"). The affirmative must uphold the resolution, and the negative must show that the action does not conform to the principle or that the affirmative has not shown how it does so (there are different schools of thought as to the negative's burden).

Ten possible resolutions for the upcoming year are chosen by a wording committee and released at the NSDA National Tournament. Anybody can submit a resolution for consideration to the wording committee. Each coach in the country receives a ballot with a copy of the official magazine of the NSDA, the Rostrum, and votes for a topic for each two-month slot. Voting can also be done online. Until the 2007–2008 season each coach could only rank the topics on one list, with the one receiving the overall highest ranking becoming the National Tournament topic, the second highest becoming the March–April topic, the third highest Jan/Feb topic, etc. However, because of the prominence of the Jan-Feb slot (the TOC and several other tournaments not actually in January or February elect to use this topic, resulting in it being jokingly referred to as the "six-month topic"), coaches now select their three highest choices for each two-month slot.

The resolutions of the NCFL National Tournament, UIL (which includes LD debate as one of its academic contests), and NCFCA are selected independently of the NSDA resolutions.<!--

External links are not allowed (these may be relocated to an External links section though it is not clear there is good justification for that). **

A complete listing of NSDA resolutions, since 1979, can be found at the NSDA website.

New resolutions can be found at the NSDA website.

-->

References

External links

National Speech and Debate Association website
National Catholic Forensic League website