Lincoln–Douglas debate format

This article is about a style of debate. For the historical debates, see Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

Lincoln-Douglas Debate, known by some previous debaters as value debate and for slang sometimes called Lincoln-Douglas, LD debate, or simply, LD, is a style of debate practiced in National Forensic League competitions, and widely used in related debate leagues such as the National Catholic Forensic League, National Educational Debate Association, the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association, and their related regional organizations. The Lincoln-Douglas Debate format is named for the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.

Overview

Lincoln-Douglas Debate involves the philosophical analysis and debate of a resolution that has no definite answer. One way that Lincoln-Douglas debate differs from the traditional policy style debate is that rather than creating a policy to help solve the issue in the resolution, they argue the values of the resolution, making it much more philosophical. In contrast, policy debate utilizes a massive amount of evidence. Also, in Lincoln-Douglas debate, 2 debaters argue in opposition to each other in a round, with one representing the affirmative (AFF) side and the other representing the negative (NEG) side. The affirmative must provide and uphold a case of WHY the resolution is true; the negative must provide and uphold a case that says the resolution is false. Throughout the debate, the debaters must uphold their case and make attacks on their opponents' case. Most debate events recognize two levels of competitors, Open and Novice divisions. Open is divided into two categories, Junior varsity (JV) and Varsity. Whether they are recognized as the same thing or not is up to individual tournament. The only difference between junior varsity and varsity is the level of experience.

Debate structure

There are many "unofficial rules" associated with the actual debates themselves. Almost any norm accepted by the community can be (and often is) challenged based on the desire for good debate. Many LD debaters have begun using arguments employed in Policy Debate, such as kritiks (attacks on the assumptions made by the affirmative debater and the attack on the resolution's own logic), and theory (the opponents arguments constitute bad debate). Norms also vary by locale; accepted standards in one state may be different from those in another. Usually local tournaments favor standard arguments based upon acceptance of norms, while national tournaments (the national circuit) favor more open argumentation.

In the standard LD debate structure, each side presents two kinds of speeches. The first is the constructive speech, where each side will present a prepared speech arguing for or against the resolution. The second is the rebuttal speech, used to refute arguments made by the other side and make a final attempt to gain the judge's vote. Note, however, that because the negative is trying to disprove the affirmative's position, the negative's constructive speech will ordinarily contain elements of rebuttal as well. Additionally, each debater has one opportunity to ask direct questions of the other in the cross-examination period.

The only binding rules are the time limits placed on the debaters for each speech they make. The commonly accepted common time structure is as follows:

Segment	Time
Affirmative Constructive (1AC)	6 minutes
Cross Examination (CX)	3 minutes
Negative Constructive/First Negative Rebuttal (1NC/1NR)	7 minutes
Cross Examination (CX)	3 minutes
First Affirmative Rebuttal (1AR)	4 minutes
Second Negative Rebuttal (2NR)	6 minutes
Second Affirmative Rebuttal (2AR)	3 minutes

Note that the total time for speeches is divided equally between the debaters, but unevenly among the speeches in order to compensate for one side having the first and last word.

Debaters are also given preparation time just prior to each speech. Each debater receives four minutes of total preparation time (or five minutes in the Tournament of Champions )to divide as they choose before speeches in the round. Some tournaments offer more than three minutes and others may give more time to participants in the Novice and Junior Varsity Divisions, due to their lack of experience. A recent trend among national circuit tournaments has been to allow debaters to combine their cross-examination and preparation time into a 7-minute block called flex-prep. In this time the debater both prepares for the next speech and asks cross-examination questions. (See below under "Alternative Forms of LD")

Constructive speeches

In the first two speeches debaters present cases, which are often pre-written speeches in favor of or opposed to the topic. The affirmative debater spends the entire six minutes presenting the constructive since the negative has not yet spoken. The following speech, the negative constructive, is typically split between the presentation of a negative case and a refutation of the affirmative. Although there are no set rules about how a debater must present his or her case, most debaters use the same generic or "stock" structure:

• Definitions are usually placed at the beginning of the debater's opening speech. These are explanations of key terms that appear in the resolution. The definitions can come from a source such as a dictionary or they can be contextually defined by the case (the usage of the term in the case explains it).

• Framework is a term used to describe the collection of observations and resolutional analysis, given near the beginning of a constructive speech. In addition to definitions debaters provide analysis that narrows the debate, makes the debate more clear and perhaps frames the resolution in a manner that improves the debater's chances.

• Value and Criterion are usually explained next. These are concepts or rules used to evaluate the round. Since both sides will likely make some convincing arguments in the course of the round, standards are used to determine which arguments matter more. Though not exclusively done in this fashion standards usually take the form of two conceptual objects:

• The "value", "core value", "highest moral value," or "value premise" represents the over-arching goal for the round and are usually nebulous and somewhat vague "good things." Out of fairness and convention debaters rarely use values which bias one side over the other. Examples of values include, democracy, liberty, societal welfare and justice. The wording of certain resolutions may implicitly prescribe the best value for the round. For example, the resolution "Democracy is best served by strict separation of church and state" implicitly suggests a value of "democracy". Since the wording of the resolution guides the selection of values the two debaters may have identical or similar values. In these circumstances focus is usually shifted to the criterion.

• The "criterion", or "value criterion", is the mechanism the debater proposes to achieve and weigh the value. Often, the debater will simply talk about the criterion, so it is sometimes referred to as the standard, in and of itself. First and foremost, the criterion is how the debaters achieve the value. Given a value of liberty, for example, debaters might propose a criterion of protecting free speech, reasoning that free speech is the most important aspect of liberty and that possessing it will allow society to criticize government thereby maintaining other types of liberty. A criterion will usually be stated as a gerund (e.g. upholding a system of checks and balances), or will be the name of a particular philosophy or term (e.g., democratic peace theory). The criterion serves several purposes then. First, it links the arguments made in the rest of the speech with the value. Since the value is usually abstract, the criterion is a way to relate the more concrete arguments in the round to this philosophical concept. In addition to this, there are two commonly used variations of criterion. The first is generally classified as "a weighing standard for the round," or a burden that both sides must prove they fit in order to win the round. The other is a "burden criterion," which is placed on the affirmative by either side, and lays out a burden the affirmative must fulfill in order to win. Values and criteria can be debated over which provides for a fairer debate, which one is more relevant, if the burden is fulfillable, etc.

• Contentions advance the actual arguments of the case. Contentions will usually contain both empirical evidence and inductive reasoning to prove their points. Subpoints within the contention are sometimes used to break arguments down into their specifics. They can be used to build up arguments to prove the entire contention true or to express points unique from those of the contention itself. Each contention or subpoint begins with a short tagline that summarizes the argument. A contention or subpoint generally has three parts: a claim (the tagline, an assertion of truth), warrant (logical or emipirical justification), and impact (effect on achieving standards). Debaters include cards, which are excerpts of an argument by someone of authority.

Cross-examination period (points of clarification)

Following each debater's constructive speech, the opponent is given a three-minute period to ask questions regarding the constructive that was just given. The time is used by each side to try to either clarify what was said or weaken the other debater's standing. The questioner often will go to specific points in the constructive where there may be an important assumption or other weakness, and ask detailed questions that will force an opponent to admit the weakness. Meanwhile, the questioned debater might try to avoid being forced to concede points by supplying long answers that will serve to (a) expend the questioner's allotted time and (b) expand upon the original constructive.

Rebuttal speeches

The rebuttal speeches are the speeches in the latter half of the debate. In this portion, most debaters focus on attacking their opponents' arguments and defending their own in a way that will cement a victory in the round. Toward the end of the final speech, the debaters will usually summarize the most important argumentation which forms the core voting issues, or "voters," in the round, and give reasons why the argumentation ought to be considered in the decision calculus.

A rebuttal argument typically consists of three steps: signpost (indicating which argument the debater is refuting), explain (attacking flaws in the opponent's evidence or logic), and weigh (evaluating the arguments based on the standards).

Alternative Forms of LD

Most debates center around proving the resolution either true or false; however, this is not the only way to handle the debate. The alternative approach, almost exclusively used by negative debaters, is "critiquing" the resolution. A critique (usually spelled "kritik" by debaters) does not abide by the conventional value structure nor does it attempt to prove or disprove the truth of the resolution; instead, it seeks to prove the resolution harmful or impossible to argue, or questions the fundamental assumptions made by the affirmative case (conceptions of justice, good and bad, etc.). This approach is rapidly gaining acceptance. Another new strategy a debater may use while arguing the negative is straight refutation. In a normal negative constructive the debater outlines a case and refutes the affirmative's points, but when a debater uses direct negation the negative constructive only consists of a refutation of the affirmative's points.

Affirmative debaters have responded to the negative's critique advantage by introducing a new affirmative strategy. Rather than affirm the resolution "as a whole," affirmatives pick a particular aspect of the topic as their case position. For example on the 2005 Nationals topic: "The pursuit of scientific knowledge ought to be constrained by concern for societal good" an affirmative using this strategy would discuss how certain pursuits (such as cloning or building a Matrix) ought to be constrained. In these rounds, the affirmative contends that they do not have to defend all aspects of the topic, rather they can "conditionally affirm" by defending just the ones they choose. This strategy is also adopted from Policy Debate, where the affirmative creates a policy plan that does not affirm the whole topic and challenges the negative to prove why the plan itself is bad. This approach is very new; so the debate community has had little discussion over the acceptance of this style. In the past however, conditionally affirming has been frowned upon and disallowed, so it is unlikely that this approach gains acceptance.

Some tournaments, or specific judges, may permit debaters to use what has become known as "flex-prep," which combines a debater's four-minute prep time with their three minutes of cross-examination time into a hybrid time that may be used throughout the debate. Using this form of time management, debaters will forego the normal cross examination period and will instead immediately sit and preparing for their next speech much like prep time, but they may decide to ask questions while doing so. This has not been widely accepted, though, as many debaters feel it changes the only real "rule" in the event, which is the structure of time limits. Some also see it as an erosion of one of the only truly performative aspects of the debate, as well as a gateway to the erosion of other rules. Other debaters view it as a logical extension to the debate, as both preparation and cross examination periods should be used as the debater sees fit, especially if it fosters better debate.

Judging

Debate rounds are typically judged by an adult, often a coach or a college student who participated in the event in the past. Some Novice-only tournaments will employ experienced students as judges. Elimination rounds often are judged by a panel of three or more judges, but always an odd number to ensure that a tie cannot exist.

Judging an LD round can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced judges. Not only are the questions intrinsically complex, but the typical debater uses arguments and citations from philosophers and other writers that the judge may not be familiar with. Additionally, LD topics often involve issues where the judge may have a strongly held opinion for or against the resolution. Being neutral and judging on the basis who upheld the round's standard (and not the nature of the argument itself) can be difficult. To avoid this potential problem, resolutions are usually rather abstract and do not touch on "hot button" issues of the day such as abortion or gay marriage.

In some regional or circuit tournaments with multiple divisions, inexperienced judges are most commonly placed in the Novice division, while the Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions enjoy much more experienced judges (often coaches of other teams or college students who debated in high school). Other regional circuits value the difficulty of debating in front of inexperienced judges, and recruit "lay" judges from the community in order to provide the debaters with the experience of attempting to explain complex issues to lay people. These judges are typically friends and relatives of the families of the debaters of the sponsoring school. Some circuits require all LD judges for rounds above the novice level to meet training requirements. Another popular possibility is to make use of lay judges for the rounds, but offer them a brief training or tutorial beforehand to prepare and inform them about the nature of the debate.

Approaches to academic debate

Different areas of the country approach debate with different goals. In some states, such as Kansas, Maryland and South Dakota, high school speech is a for-credit class with a competitive debate element. Inter-school tournaments are held on weekends, but the training for them is often curricular. In other areas, debate may be a school-sponsored team similar to football or basketball which has practice after school, rather than being part of the curriculum, or it may be organized as a club activity with very little involvement on the part of the school.

This distinction often results in a difference among the nation's high schools in their understanding of the purpose of competitive speech. Circuits like Kansas and South Dakota, in which Speech is part of the curriculum, set the goal of participation to be an improvement in the communication skills of the student. These circuits tend to use lay judges in all events to provide the student the chance to develop analysis and speaking styles which increase communication to the "everyday" person. Other circuits, which see the event as essentially competitive (as with sports) rather than curricular, place a higher value on expert judging so that the playing field is fair. This distinction provides endless controversy when students from districts with differing underlying philosophies compete against each other at regional or national tournaments.

Tournament organization

In a typical one-day tournament, each debater will debate four rounds, two rounds advocating the affirmative side and two rounds advocating the negative. Longer tournaments typically have five, six, or seven preliminary rounds, in which all debaters participate. The top debaters from the first rounds then advance to a single-elimination tournament to determine the winner of the tournament.

In many tournaments, and especially in smaller tournaments, all debaters present have the potential to "hit," or square off against, all other competitors in the tournament. A debate in which each competitor goes against every other one is called a Round Robin. At other events, generally larger tournaments, less experienced debaters may be separated from more experienced debaters, forming two parallel tournaments.

Some LD tournaments are "power-matched" (also called "power-paired," "power seeded," "high-high," or "low-low"). In this system, after each round, the meetings for the next round are decided on the basis that winners meet winners and losers meet losers. An alternative to power-pairing, which requires less organized tournament-running, is "lag pairing," in which debates are power-paired according to the results of not the last round, but instead the round before that. Other tournaments are "high-low," or "power-protected," meaning meetings for the next round are winner against loser. A combination of the two involves power-matching win-losses and power-protecting speaker points. Still other tournaments use randomized brackets. In "elimination rounds" after the primary four to six preliminary rounds, the top seed will "hit" the lowest "seed." Seeds are determined first by preliminary round records and then by the amount of speaker points awarded by judges in preliminary rounds.

Competition

Most high school debaters participate in local tournaments in their city, school district, or state. Hundreds of such tournaments are held each weekend at high schools throughout the United States during the debate season.

A small subset of high school debaters, mostly from elite public and private schools, travel around the country to tournaments on the national circuit. The seven largest and most competitive national circuit tournaments are the Glenbrooks, held at Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South high schools in the Chicago suburbs, the Barkley Forum at Emory University, the Harvard Invitational at Harvard University, the California Invitational at UC Berkeley, the Greenhill Fall Classic in Dallas, the Heart of Texas Invitational at St. Mark's School of Texas, also in Dallas, and the Minneapple at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota. As the debate season comes to a close, national championship tournaments are held to bring together the best debaters from around the nation to compete against one another. These tournaments tend to be invitation-only, based on success in various qualifying events.

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 qualifying tournaments held throughout the year. These tournaments are given a certain number of bids to be awarded to debaters who reach a certain level in the elimination rounds. The amount of bids given depends on the size of the tournament and the relative calculated strength of the debaters who attend. For example, the Southwest Championships held at Arizona State University is a medium-sized tournament attended by debaters of all experience levels from the surrounding states, and therefore only receives two bids, awarded to the debaters who reach the final round of the tournament. Conversely, the Glenbrooks tournament, considered the most competitive tournament in the country, is attended by approximately 200 experienced debaters and is given 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 the national tournament by placing in the top spots at local district-level tournaments. The number of competitors in each district determines the number of competitors that will qualify to the national tournament.

Resolutions

Resolutions (topics to be debated) change every two months. They are usually very vague and theoretical to allow for many different arguments and interpretations. Resolutions are chosen by a wording committee. This group releases ten potential topics for the upcoming year at the NFL Nationals Tournament. Past resolutions include:

Resolved: In the U.S. judicial system, truth seeking ought to take precedence over privileged communication. (September-October 2003)

Resolved: The United States has a moral obligation to mitigate international conflict. (November/December 2003)

Resolved: A government’s obligation to protect the environment ought to take precedence over its obligation to promote economic development. (January/February 2004)

Resolved: As a general principle, individuals have an obligation to value the common good above their own interests. (March-April 2004)

Resolved: Civil disobedience is justified in a democracy. (NFL Nationals 2004)

Resolved: A nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2004)

Resolved: Individual claims of privacy ought to be valued above conflicting claims of societal welfare. (September-October 2004)

Resolved: The United States has a moral obligation to promote democratic ideals in other nations. (November-December 2004)

Resolved: Democracy is best served by strict separation of church and state. (January-February 2005)

Resolved: To better protect civil liberties, community standards ought to take precedence over conflicting national standards. (March-April 2005)

Resolved: The pursuit of scientific knowledge ought to be constrained by concern for societal good. (NFL Nationals 2005)

Resolved: The primary purpose of formal education ought to be to impart knowledge. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2005)

Resolved: In matters of U.S. immigration policy, restrictions on the rights of non-citizens are consistent with democratic ideals. (September-October 2005)

Resolved: Judicial activism is necessary to protect the rights of American citizens. (November-December 2005)

Resolved: The use of the state's power of eminent domain to promote private enterprise is unjust. (January-February 2006)

Resolved: Juveniles charged with violent crimes should be tried and punished as adults. (March-April 2006)

Resolved: When in conflict, an individual's freedom of speech should be valued over a community's moral standards. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2006)

Resolved: In matters of collecting military intelligence, the ends justify the means. (NFL Nationals 2006)

Resolved: A just government should provide health care to its citizens. (September-October 2006)

Resolved: A victim's deliberate use of deadly force is a just response to repeated domestic violence. (November-December 2006)

Resolved: The actions of corporations ought to be held to the same moral standards as the actions of individuals. (January-February 2007)

Resolved: The United Nations' obligation to protect global human rights ought to be valued above its obligation to respect national sovereignty. (March-April 2007)

External links

• National Forensic League website
• National Catholic Forensic League website
• LD Debate.org
• LD Debate.com
• The Ultimate LD Debate Website - Free LD Debate Handbook
• Debate Central - NFL instructional videos
• NDR (National Debate Rankings)
• Victory Briefs Daily - LD Community Blog