Introduction
Note: This is the first version of an article which I have since revised, you can find that here. While I’ll agree with most of the content in this article, it wasn’t expressed as clearly as I’d like. I think my response to David’s comment helps clear up some of those issues.
This is the first part of a 3-article series on framework in policy AFF vs neg K debates. In the first part, I will define models of framework, their relation to the judge, and the role of the ballot. I critique some contemporary conceptions of the role of the ballot and offer a workable alternative that will win more rounds and make judges’ lives easier. In the second part, I explain the composition and advantages of popular framework models and explain why contemporary middle ground interpretations many judges default to is nonsensical. In the third part, I attempt to revive a framework that got lost in the sauce of judge choice debates as a coherent compromise between the judge as policymaker and educator.
As a side note, these articles are proof that the ballot can force debaters to rethink arguments – it took a lot of Ls on bad framework interpretations to figure out exactly what I was getting wrong and how I could fix it. For the sake of making this already long article slightly less wordy, I’ll use the word “model” to describe an individual framework interpretation, even though in practice this can cause confusion with the very different type of models envisioned by T debates.
Definitions
Before we examine competing frameworks, we have to define them. As I understand it, the key distinction for framework in policy vs. kritik debates and framework as it applies to topicality is that one offers a model of argument evaluation while the other offers a model of debate.
The former defines a role for the judge and their ballot, giving them instruction on what position they should evaluate arguments from and what it means when they vote one way or another. They do not include or exclude arguments being made on the basis of substance, but different forms of arguments might become more or less important based on the weight they are given in the evaluation process.
T-USFG debates are a question of the content that is considered “permissible argumentation” in debate. It creates a model for the kind of debates that happen, but does not render a judgement on how the judge should evaluate those when they do. This does exclude certain argumentation on face if it does not meet the resolutional requirements, just as judges are told to simply disregard a topical policy AFF rather than “give it less weight in evaluation”.
The Role of the Judge
The single most important question for a framework interpretation is the role of the judge. If the judge does not know the perspective from which to evaluate arguments in the round, then they can’t determine what to do with their ballot.
To be a good model for debate, a prerequisite should be that the judge’s role is at least somewhat predictable. This is important, as debaters should be able to have a sense before the round to tailor their arguments in such a way to appeal to the perspective of that judge. This makes for better argumentation and clash, both of which are generally considered to be valuable.
One major caveat: predictability is only one factor among many justifications for any given role of the judge. There might be a slightly less predictable framework that provides other educational benefits that could outweigh.
To determine what makes a model’s ROTJ predictable, we need to look at what debaters can anticipate about the perspective any given judge takes.
Perhaps the most obvious starting point is the resolution. It offers a normative question on the desirability of policy action open to interpretation. The judge can be reasonably expected to have something to do with this question and have that decision be informed by the arguments in the round.
That the resolution might be the most obvious starting point for the role of the judge does not make it the only one, nor even the most desirable. What absolutist policymaking frameworks overlook is that a debate judge is many other things besides a policymaker. In many cases, they are much closer to these other things than a policymaker. The most common alternative position (citation needed) besides a policy maker we see argued for in rounds is conceptualizing the judge as an argument critic, or an educator more generally. This makes sense: when the judge decides a round, the feedback and criticism for the individual debaters is arguably practically more valuable than the substantive outcome of the round.
While this is a good start, I want to slightly push back on visualizing the judge’s position as a sort of scale with policymaker and educator on opposite ends. There are other properties all judges possess: they are all humans (hopefully) living in the world, with all the implications that come with that. That’s why more niche frameworks that are less about the judge as argument critic and more appealing to characteristics everyone shares are defensible. Take for example a ROTJ that argues that they should decide between competing orientations towards death; while this might not have much to do with the judge’s position as a critical educator, it appeals to the universal trait of mortality.
Thus, we can visualize the role of the judge in any given framework as lying not on a line graph but a sort of spectrum. You can go further away from the judge as policymaker in any direction towards the other individual factors about them.
Determining what model is better in any given round then is a question of which interpretation of the judge’s role is better, weighing the implications of predictability (clash, etc.) vs. the pedagogical or educational benefits from a slightly less predictable one.
The Role(s) of the Ballot
The role of the ballot in a debate can only be understood once the role of the judge is established, as they should be a natural extension of introducing the judge’s perspective into a competitive environment. For example, take the judge as a policymaker. When this is their perspective as to how to evaluate the arguments in the round, the logical role of the ballot is to endorse the AFF’s proposed policy if it is a “good idea”. The ballot itself renders a judgement as to whether the plan is “good” or “bad”.
This abstract ROTB is different from what I’ll call in-round ROTB claims, which function as framing arguments for judges’ ballots not theoretical claims about judges’ roles. These in-round ROTB claims are always present, even if not explicitly stated. The default for policy v. policy rounds is likely whether or not the plan is desirable under an act-utilitarian framework. This provides the standard for the judge to use to figure out if the plan is “good” or “bad” BUT that underlying abstract ROTB remains the same.
Problems occur when debaters and judges fail to differentiate between these abstract ROTB arguments and in-round ROTB claims.
For example:
1NC: Security K
2AC: Framework – only the plan!
2NC: “1AC is an object of research. That means the ROTB is to vote for whoever best represents the world.”
1AR: Arbitrary and self-serving – unpredictable!
3-0 AFF
The problem in this round is not the framework interpretation, but the way in which the role of the ballot was approached. It does not make sense for the ballot under the neg model to always endorse whoever best represents the world; instead the abstract ROTB for this model is more like the judge deciding if the 1AC is “good” or “bad” as a research project. The neg argument is an in-round ROTB claim, and a good one at that–knowing what the world looks like and if the AFF is justified in their action is a logical prerequisite to evaluating that action.
The judge instruction done by teams like Kansas BF and more recently Wake in 2022 CEDA finals does a good job of illustrating the significance of the difference between abstract and in-round ROTB claims. In these rounds, the abstract role of the ballot is consistent from judge to judge (endorsing a “good” method), but the in-round ROTB is different for each judge based off their social positions and the implications that has for their ballots.
AT: “Vote for the Team Who Did the Better Debating”
Understanding the difference between these two different “role of the ballots” helps understand why “the role of the ballot is to vote for whoever did the better debating” is problematic, or at the very least nonsensical.
First, this is clearly an abstract role of the ballot. In any individual round, the judge will have to determine what it means to do the better debating based off of in-round ROTB claims for what that looks like.
Then, the question we should ask is what role of the judge does this abstract ROTB connect to? Well, if the judge’s ballot endorses the team that did the better debating, that makes them exactly that–a judge in a debate round. There are two major issues with understanding the judge in this way.
First, it does not help the judge understand how to evaluate the debate. What does it mean to do the better debating? For a judge less concerned with the line-by-line like the parents I started out debating in front of, that might mean whoever sounds better from a speaking skills standpoint. For a more technical judge, this could mean whoever is winning “substance”. Even then though, things are not so clear cut. When Liberty CR stands up and says to put Black women’s’ ability to exist in debate before the ticky-tacky details of the flow, how does winning that argument implicate how you decide who does the better debating?
This ambiguity flips the idea of any other role of the ballot being “arbitrary” or “self-serving”; instead, alternative frameworks like plan focus or the judge as an argument critic have clear justifications based on the clash-based and educational benefits they provide, while also giving the judge a useful understanding of what their ballot signifies.
Second and perhaps more damningly, judges do not consistently vote for whoever does the better debating. I can believe that one team largely out-debated the other, and still vote on a technical concession of an argument. This is why low point wins exist–what else do speaker points represent outside of a metric to assess the quality of debating in a round not captured by the ballot alone?
Additionally, individual judges will always have predispositions towards certain beliefs and argumentative styles; that’s why we have mutual preference judging and attempts to correct for personal bias. That means that what the “better debating” looks like for one judge can look very different for another, making it difficult to establish any sense of consistency or objectivity.
As a solution to this unhelpful framework, Nick Sciullo offers a corrective in his 2016 article: debaters should be making in-round ROTB claims over who did the better debating (41-42). These offer more straightforward instruction as to how a judge should decide a round, rather than appealing to a useless tautology. While a good start towards rejecting an unhelpful vision of debate and proposing better arguments debaters make, I have 2 issues with how Sciullo goes about making this argument.
First, he confuses abstract and in-round ROTB claims. Nowhere is this more clear than in his first example of a corrective:
By way of example, the Affirmative Team (AFF) in the 1st Affirmative Constructive offers spoken word poetry about rejecting structural racism by police. The Negative Team (NEG) offers a framework argument that indicates the AFF must offer a policy option for the critic/judge to vote on and also offers an argument about the spoken word poetry’s relationship to the Resolution—a Topicality violation. Then, the 2nd AFF speaker argues that the role of the ballot is to vote for whoever does best addresses anti-racism. The 2nd AFF speaker then indicates how to evaluate anti-racism analysis (comparison of evidence, impact framing, argumentative fidelity, translatableness to outside the round action, etc.). The 2nd AFF speaker also provides examples of how the critic/judge could do these things (“The team that raises issues that prevent people of color from being killed in the world, which is an impact occurring while we debate, is doing the best debating about anti-racism.” “Ask yourself what team helps the debaters in this round avoid impacts. I’m not afraid of being first struck, but I am afraid of being shot when i pull my wallet out at a traffic stop.” “Ask yourself if you went back to your community and read the 1A the IN, which would interest people more?” “If anti-racism isn’t central to the speech, then the NEG has done a worse job advocating for anti-racism.” “If our authors represent different positionalities and their authors don’t then you should vote for us because their evidence presentation is not anti-racist.”). (41-42)
Sciullo, Nick J. “Toward a Theory of “The Role of the Ballot is to Vote for Whoever Does the Best Debating”.” The Forensic of Pi Kappa Delta 101.2 (2016). https://www.academia.edu/35120585/Toward_a_Theory_of_The_Role_of_the_Ballot_is_to_Vote_for_Whoever_Does_the_Best_Debating_.
Or, TL;DR:
1AC: Poetry, critiquing structural racism and police violence
1NC: T USFG/FW – ROTB = who does the better debating
2AC: ROTB = whoever does best to be anti-racist, appealing to real-world relevance and other reasons to prefer.
In this debate, the affirmative is offering an in-round ROTB claim. The problem is that this is not tied to an abstract ROTB claim, and thus fails for the reasons explained above. If the judge is still just deciding who does the better debating and that better debating is now determined by whoever debates anti-racism better, it still leaves open the question of what it means to do the better debating over that question. If the judge is conceived as an educator and their ballot as endorsing good or bad research, the instrumental justifications for why that education should center anti-racist efforts make sense. On its own, however, conceptualizing this as its own abstract ROTB is problematic. Why the judge should specifically only center anti-racism seems arbitrary and makes it impossible to negate these affirmatives. This is why distinguishing between abstract and in-round ROTB claims is so important–framing issues should be self-serving, they’re helping the judge resolve the debate in your favor.
Second, even when Sciullo does end up parsing out abstract vs. in-round ROTB claims, he does not offer a cohesive explanation of how to justify these alternative abstract ROTBs in relation to various roles of the judge. Examples like the ballot signifying allyship with a specific team’s strategy, or evaluating rounds from the perspective of the broader debate community lack an understanding or explanation of the connection between the role of the judge and role of the ballot (Sciullo 43). Why are these predictable in terms of the role of the judge, how do these connect to the frameworks debaters regularly see in rounds, and how do we justify them?
The solution then is to understand abstract and in-round ROTB claims as distinct. We can say that the judge should endorse the more desirable policy option, or the better research, or whatever the abstract ROTB is under the model we’re endorsing while at the same time making framing or in-round ROTB arguments to help win those rounds.
Who Cares?
What does an understanding of this distinction between abstract and in-round ROTBs help debaters and judges accomplish in practice?
Take my doubles round from CEDA 2022, which was one of the original inspirations for this article:
1AC: Do antitrust on CCS to solve climate change AFF
1NC: SetCol with a more framework-heavy alternative
2AC: FWK – weigh the plan vs. the alt, climate change makes settler domination inevitable so aff = prerequisite for the alt.
2NC: 1AC is an object of research!
1AR: Pls judge weigh plan, only CCS solves climate so the alt can’t solve their impacts
2NR: Framework go brrrr
2AR: But what about the plan – only we solve!!!
Swift 3-0 NEG.
Putting aside the futility of desperate appeals to weighing the plan that don’t offer an explanation for an abstract ROTB (which will be addressed in part 2), the 1AR fails on a strategic level. When both teams have agreed that one impact matters more than anything else (climate change for the AFF’s big stick impacts and NEG’s genocide impacts), the 1AR should be making an in-round ROTB claim about how the ballot in this round should be to vote for whoever’s method can best solve climate change. This distills the judge’s decision, while avoiding issues of arbitrariness because the abstract ROTB is different but not mutually exclusive: endorsing the “better” method, for example.
If you can understand the different between these abstract and in-round ROTBs, you will win more clash rounds by distilling key issues into a question of the ballot and not accidentally making theoretically incoherent abstract ROTB claims. As a judge, you can distinguish between truly self-serving abstract ROTB claims and perhaps poorly phrased in-round ROTB claims that you can vote on.
A critique of the ways framework is currently debated and the so-called “middle ground” of weighing the plan vs. a competitive alternative is up next!
3 replies on “Framework Part 1: Roles of the Ballot, Abstract and In-Round”
I don’t really like thinking about debate in an abstract sense. I find it much less interesting than strategizing/cutting cards, and I think that the former has helped me understand debate a lot more than trying to develop a robust understanding of the merits of positional competition or plan in a vacuum external to their applications to whatever argument I’m trying to win. I’m also not very ideological when it comes to such questions. I genuinely couldn’t care less whether conditionality is good or the true meaning of limited intrinsicness.
However, framework is a rare exception because I must first think about it in the abstract before understanding how to deploy it strategically. This is all to say that my thoughts on the subject, like my thoughts on everything, are long-winded, incoherent at times, and redundant as all hell (if you found the redundancy in that list, bonus points for you.) At the very least, I hope this provides some food for thought and a counter to interesting points raised in Evan’s original article.
Some preliminary notes: framework is not impact calculus. It is commonly misunderstood as impact framing. Framework is about the win conditions for each side of the debate. It is not about impact prioritization nor is it about a role for the judge. The role for the judge is always confined to deciding who wins, and framework determines the means through which the judge is to make that determination.
1. Framework is not about the role for the judge.
The judge serves the same role no matter what debate occurs. Deciding whether to evaluate particular arguments does not change the purpose that the judge serves in the debate. The 1AC always begins as the starting point. You will seldom find a framework interp that does not include at least part of the 1AC as its point of reference as the burden for the negative is to disprove the aff, and the burden for the aff is to prove the desirability of a departure from the status quo. When you do, it is more often than not an impact calculus argument disguised as a framework interp. If a 2NC framework interp says, “vote for the team that best protects X group of people,” the more logical response to this is for the aff to say “extinction outweighs” rather than “weigh the plan” as this interpretation is questioning the desirability of the 1AC rather than the win condition for each side. I don’t think that framework has said that the judge is a “policymaker” since the aughts.
Broad, theoretical conceptualizations of the judge are not helpful as they are equally meaningless as not providing one at all. Rather, both sides recognize that the judge is there to decide who won. However, even within those frames, the other parts of the judge are not eliminated. No one thinks that judges that see themselves as policymakers ought not to give post-round feedback. The death example pointing to the judge’s inherently fear of mortality is a perfect example of an impact calculus argument disguised as a framework argument. Let’s run through a quick example on the antitrust topic:
1AC—antitrust big ag for food security reasons
1NC—stop fearing death you bozos
2AC—weigh the plan + fearing death is good because death is bad
2NC—decide between competing orientations towards death + fearing death is bad
Now we are at an impasse. Deciding between competing orientations towards death is in no way mutually exclusive with weighing the plan. After all, voting affirmative represents a material consequence of the judge’s fear of death as the judge has voted based on that fear. So, if you take away the entire framework portion of that hypothetical debate, the substance of the round has not changed at all. This, again, is proof of where framework turns into impact calculus, and where I fear Evan has conflated the two in the “role of the judge” section. I anticipate some response in the vein of “well, the neg framework interp precludes evaluating non-deathly concerns,” and while this may be true, the neg hasn’t introduced those concerns into the debate. If they did, the affirmative could easily just concede the framework interp and not answer any of them. Hence, these types of interps are never made in debates where the block proliferates a variety of 2NR options. Also, and perhaps more importantly, deciding between competing orientations towards death does not imply that the judge shouldn’t also evaluate other arguments. Rather, it says that the orientation towards death determines other parts of the round, in the same way that a 2NR extending a warming impact to a DA does not prevent the judge from determining probability of impact when after concluding that nuclear war doesn’t cause extinction. The neg would never make this interp if they had links that weren’t about death, so the only purpose this role of the judge serves is to center the debate on the neg’s core piece of offense just like any other impact calculus argument would. But enough about the role of the judge.
2. A Defense of the Better Debating Standard
There is no such thing as a non-abstract role of the ballot. This, again, conflates framework with impact calculus, as the example of a policy v. policy round with an implicitly utilitarian role of the ballot has nothing to do with win conditions beyond the ethical theory that the judge uses to evaluate impacts. As for the example of roles that change with varying judges’ subject positions, I will talk about that more as I get into the meat of the “better debating” interpretation.
The better debating standard is little more than a stated truism. There is no non-arbitrary way for a judge to decide a round. It is impossible to adjudicate the claim that the judge should not vote for winning arguments because that itself implies that a team has won that argument. The competitive structure of debate and the necessity of response to arguments requires that the judge vote for the winning team based on the most compelling argument. Now, what constitutes a compelling argument both varies from judge-to-judge and can be determined by a variety of other framing tricks, but as far as the ballot itself is concerned, it decides who debated best.
The fact that it doesn’t help the judge understand how to evaluate arguments is not a bug but a feature. Obviously, judge instruction serves that purpose. Impact calculus, even if statements, and persuasion are just a few of the slew of things that factor into how a judge determines which side is winning a particular argument. The better debating standard is the only way to ensure that those things are uniformly applied to both sides. The Liberty CR example is proof of both the inevitability and desirability of this model: winning this argument is a “detail” of the flow just like any other argument. The judge has to determine, somehow, that Liberty wins this argument as a pre-requisite to using it to frame how they view the rest of the flow. Again, this is just impact calculus! It is the same thing as “link controls uniqueness” or “PC solves” in a politics 2NR. It provides a lens through which the judge views the rest of the debate. I will agree that the label of “self-serving” is a bit misleading. After all, the majority of arguments in debate are at some level made to win rounds. They can serve other purposes, but teams seldom make arguments to lose. The inevitability of the better debating standard is proof that it exists at a higher level than framing arguments that guide how the judge evaluates arguments. The judge first must understand why they must evaluate arguments, and that is precisely the function of “better debating.”
I think that the notion that judges do not vote for the team doing the better debating is perhaps the closest you can get to 100% false in the entire article. Judges always vote for who did the better debating because there is no uniform way to determine that. The way that the better debating team is determined is through the judge. Low point wins show which team sounded better, but they ultimately did not debate better because they lost. If a team loses on conditionality but wipes the floor otherwise on a counterplan, they did not debate better. They debated a particular issue better, maybe, but they did not debate the issue that ultimately mattered sufficiently, and thus, in the totality of the round, they debated worse. Judge dispositions are an inevitable consequence of judges being humans. As much as anyone would like to imagine they are unbiased, nobody truly is. This means that the “better debating team” is the team that best appeals to the judge in front of them. After all, the best debaters can adapt to as many judges as possible. The fact that “better debating” means different things for different judges, again, points to the nature of judging, not the nature of the interpretation. No interpretation avoids judge bias, nor should they try to.
Take the anti-racism/better debating example. How is the judge supposed to determine who does the best to be anti-racist if not by deciding who won their arguments? The alternatives of “more desirable policy option” or “better research” requires the judge to make an abstract calculation. If it isn’t by argument, this invites judge intervention as the judge, rather than looking at the flow, is now tasked with deciding which team did the better thing based on their own gut feeling. Better debating is a necessary pre-requisite because it implies that the judge must look at and evaluate what was said in the round.
3. I Care
Based on this round report, the place where the 1AR failed is precisely in conflating impact calculus with framework. The advantage to the plan should never be the justification for weighing the plan. It should always be rooted in a concern for fairness or a reason why advocating for and debating about the desirability of the normative statement of the plan is a good thing. Having an “in-round ROTB” would not help in this situation. I’m not sure what that even is. What helps in this situation is just developing offensive justifications for the model of debate forwarded by the 2AC and 1AR. Other than that, it really isn’t that deep.
Before I get into the substance of my response, I just want to thank you for taking the time to read my article and type out a lengthy original piece on debate (the first for this site)! This helped me really distill and clarify my thoughts, as well as rethinking what the ROTB as to vote for whoever did the debating actually means.
Preliminary notes:
100% agree. My arguments about differentiating between “in-round ROTBs” vs. “abstract ROTBs” was attempting to demonstrate that the former is simply impact framing under a different name, and should be utilitized and regarded as such by judges. The latter is what determines the win condition. When 2 very different things are called the same things by debaters, it can be confusing. A point that shouldn’t been more explicit is that you should stop confusing your judges by conflating them. For example, “the judge is a logical policymaker–that means the ballot should endorse the more desirable of two policies. In this round, that means voting for whoever saves the more lives, which is us!” Even though for strategic reasons this interaction would never happen, you can clearly see the distinctions between the 3 different concepts (ROTJ, abstract ROTB, in-round ROTB/framing).
I agree with the second part, but disagree with the first. I’ll answer the substance below.
Section 1: Framework is not about the role for the judge.
This is technically correct–if you boil it down to the simplest actions, the judge decides the winner and loser of the debate. However, the perspective from which the judge approaches evaluating the debate and the arguments within it (what I’m calling the role of the judge) may vary. This begins the issue in your criticism of confusing the role of the judge on a more meta-level, which is confined to more strict interpretations, and the role of the judge as they sit down to evaluate a round.
I disagree with this assessment. Even if I don’t believe these to be the most defensible, there are frameworks that exist that completely disregard the 1AC. Take a hypothetical framework that says “the judge is an empath. Vote for the team that was kinder to the other”. Obviously, the content of the 1AC is at best slightly relevant and at worst completely useless. A ballot would not render judgement on the 1AC whatsoever, but instead reflect a criticism of the individual traits of debaters in the round. Hence why a judge can vote down a team for saying something problematic–they have rendered a decision, but not one based off the 1AC. This is not strictly outside frameworks that are debated in round; model that consider the judge as an educator can appeal to the actions of individual debaters are reasons why a team should lose.
100% agree with this, with some caveats. This will be emphasized more in part 2, but a lot of contemporary justifications for alternative frameworks to plan focus are more critiques of impact calculus than a model for evaluating arguments. That said, I think the interpretation themselves like the object of research model are different since they offer the judge a different perspective from which to view the debate as a whole, not just how to weigh arguments against each other.
Disagree. Even if this is not explicitly stated, policy focus as a framework starts from the assumption that the judge is acting as a policymaker.
This conflates the difference between the judge’s role inside the debate round and outside the debate round. Once the outcome of any given debate round is decided, the judge ceases to embody the perspective of the given role of the judge in that round and reverts to being, well, a debate judge. This also means that specific conceptualizations of how the judge should operate to resolve arguments within the round help provide insight for making decisions, but don’t deprive them of all their other responsibilities outside of rendering that judgement.
I don’t agree with your assessment of what is happening in this round. As you yourself have said, it does not make sense to begin to evaluate the consequences of the plan under this framework – how do those consequences themselves inform weighing between two different orientations towards death? The only arguments that might be related to the 1AC would be arguments about how fearing death might lead to more political activism and policy propositions, the success of which would prevent death proven by the hypothetical consequences of the 1AC. Even then, you are not directly weighing the consequences of the plan but rather the consequences of talking about the plan.
This misunderstands how this role of the judge would operate. In this round, they are deciding between orientation that says we should fear death (AFF) and another that says we should not (NEG). Voting affirmative has nothing to do with the judge’s fear of death, but would rather signify the judge deciding that it is “better” to fear death.
This makes no sense. Even if the round is technically the same on a substantive level, it is completely irresolvable without a framework argument. Any round is, for that matter. The judge only decides to focus the locus of debate on fearing death good/bad because of framework. If the framework was to decide if the plan was a good or bad idea from a policy perspective, the orientation towards death of anyone in the round would be irrelevant.
I might be somewhat confused by your wording here, but I don’t understand how this makes any sense. The neg framework interp does preclude evaluating any concerns that don’t relate to competing orientations towards death, and as a result wouldn’t matter even if the neg was the one that introduced them. That’s why you’re correct that conceding the framework interp would moot that offense–not making these interps in a debate with a lot of 2NR options is why these frameworks are less strategic sometimes. However, if the AFF concedes the neg interp to get out of the rest of substance, they are also only left with 1 1AR/2AR out–to defend their orientation towards death.
This is somewhat answered above, but winning that the judge’s role should be to evaluate competing orientations towards death does mean the judge shouldn’t evaluate other arguments. Or at least, shouldn’t evaluate other arguments that don’t relate to justifying any team’s given orientation. This is because those arguments become irrelevant, which is not the case in your example since the probability of the impact still matters when the judge has to evaluate a round based on consequentialist util or whatever.
This conflates strategic reasons for making an argument vs. the theoretical position of that argument. While you are correct that a negative team arguing for this model would almost certainly only be doing so in the context of a death K, there is substantive difference for how it operates compared to any other impact calculus arguments–this is sort of explained in the article. Similarly, a policy team would say “plan focus” to center their core piece of offense (a plan that solves extinction) in a framework debate for the same reason that they’d say “extinction outweighs,” but as stated in the preliminary assumptions we agree these are distinct.
Section 2: A Defense of the Better Debating Standard
As stated (somewhat far, to be fair) above, the distinction I make in the article between abstract and non-abstract/in-round ROTB claims is that one is theoretical while the other is a form of impact calculus. Abstract ROTBs are natural, and even necessary extensions of roles of the judge under given frameworks. The example I give for a policy vs. policy debate of act-based utilitarian calculus is–as the article says–an example of an implicit in-round ROTB claim, not an abstract one. For a plan focus model, the role of the ballot is “a judgement as to whether the plan is ‘good’ or “bad’”.
I agree. However, I think the way in which it is characterized (as fitting into a model of debate for evaluation of arguments in round) in contemporary debates is misleading and vacuous.
The point of a role of the judge with a necessarily implied role of the ballot is that it provides a framework for deciding what is a winning argument and how to evaluate it. Even granting your later criticisms, while the ballot itself might decide “who debated best,” that view does not give any insight into how the judge is supposed to figure that out. This confuses the ballot as it function in-round, where a judge makes a decision based off certain criteria from a certain perspective, and how it is defined out of round–as a statement on who debated better in that round. This distinction will be expanded on more below.
My point doesn’t disagree that judge instruction is good, great even. At the end of the day however, it does not help the judge figure out how to weigh arguments on a theoretical basis, rather than a substantive one. The point about judge bias is that different judges will weigh persuasion and other techniques when received from different participants differently. Giving up on any sort of theoretical basis means that contrary to a uniform application, you justify uneven application!
I’ll agree that the Liberty CR argument about not deferring to the line-by-line is more akin to an impact calculus argument, but I wasn’t using it as an example of a framework with its own role of the judge. The point is that to determine that Liberty wins this argument in the first place to implicate the flow, they need to understand from what perspective they are evaluating arguments (the ROTJ).
I’ll concede all of this stuff, I think both of us misunderstood the level at which this conception of the ballot operates. This demonstrates the tautological nature, and resulting uselessness, of this concept AS IT RELATES TO RESOLVING ARGUMENTS IN THE ROUND. I’ll agree that this sort of role of the ballot might operate on a sort of higher level, but I disagree in conflating it with either the in-round ROTB arguments (framing) OR abstract ROTB arguments (framework). I It answers the question of why the judge should evaluate arguments in the first place, but does nothing to answer the question of how. Of course judges should vote for who did the better debating, but that is not mutually exclusive from deciding based on adopting a position as a policymaker or argument critic.
Your counterargument, and this section in particular, seems to assume that the argument that we shouldn’t use “who did the better debating” as a metric necessarily implies that we abandon technical argumentation altogether. A judge can discern who does the best to be anti-racist through comparisons of the offense and defense offered by each side on the issue. The flow still exists, roles of the judge and ballot just serve to tell the judge how to piece together the pieces on there.
Section 3: I Care
The point of this example was to demonstrate 2 errors, but my failure to write more than 3000 words a day meant that I couldn’t address my failure to justify a good theoretical framework/abstract ROTB in this piece. Instead, the point was that in-round ROTBs/framing arguments along those lines are helpful for winning debates. Just making that without a robust theoretical defense of your model of debate would not be enough to win the round, as I largely agree with your advice.
I appreciate the response! Below are some points of clarification. I will write a longer reply when the next couple parts come out, as I think a lot of my responses to what you said pertain more to the necessity of consequentialism, something that I assume will be covered later.
1. Role of the Judge
I appreciate the clarification. The abstract v. in-round distinction makes a lot more sense to me. I think we agree that they are more complimentary of one another than they are mutually exclusive.
I definitely agree that framework interpretations do not always center the 1AC. I am not quite sure why I wrote that part.
Where I still disagree is in the difference between the judge’s role inside and outside of the round. The reversion to being a debate judge doesn’t imply a difference between how the judge behaves inside and outside of the debate. There are, with extremely rare exceptions, things that a judge always must do: decide a winner/loser, assign speaker points, construct an RFD, and submit all of that to the tab. These things are as much “inside” the round as the methodology that the judge uses to arrive at their conclusion, but they aren’t questioned as much as their method as they are the practices that generally benefit both sides equally and are far more difficult to convince the judge to abandon.
For the death example, the reason why consequences are necessary is because those consequences are what inform the 1AC’s orientation towards death. You cannot determine the aff’s orientation towards death without first evaluating the 1AC. This seems to get more at questioning the idea of what is/isn’t a “consequence” of the 1AC or of the plan, but I’m assuming there will be a mention of that in a later part, so I will save my thoughts for then. I think that the problem is more with the example than anything.
However, as for the ballot question of the example, from my perspective, if the neg has forwarded the claim that fearing death is bad, this necessarily clashes with an affirmative ballot regardless of a framework argument. This may be an ideological difference between you and I, as my default when I judge debates is to evaluate links to both representations and to the plan itself. Again, this will probably be discussed in part 2, so I won’t flesh out those details now, but I don’t think it is ever logical to not evaluate links to representations at least equally to the consequences of the plan. I will concede that the framework interp in this context does eliminate other questions from consideration.
2. Better Debating
I wish people would stop saying “role of the ballot.” I think there are more compelling ways to frame the importance of your offense. The argument over the vagueness/meaning of “better debating” points to the inability of these types of arguments generally to actually tell a judge how to evaluate a debate round. They generally just tell a judge what they are supposed to reach conclusions about, but how they reach that conclusion is still ultimately up to them.
I agree that the better debating standard does not guide the judge to reaching a conclusion. However, the way that either team guides the judge is through debating! The point about judge instruction is meant to say that it is the ultimate guide to reaching a conclusion. The fact that judges aren’t robots means that it is the necessary guide for weighing arguments. The theoretical basis upon which the judge is to weigh things is determined as much by impact calculus as anything else. I think the willingness of a team to be less specific in the role of the ballot is a strategic choice based on the judge in front of them. If they believe that a judge is likely to evaluate the debate in their favor absent a specific role of the ballot, then they strategically benefit from this interpretation as it doesn’t confine them to winning any particular argument as the win condition, and they are comfortable having the judge determine that for them. At least based on the way that we debate, this is generally a good thing because we feel as though we are technically proficient enough (read: my 2A is technically proficient enough) to hold our own if the debate comes down to technical details. The reason that teams shouldn’t want to abandon that vague, non-uniform approach is because judges are equally likely to be arbitrary in their evaluation of more specific theoretical roles. If you agree that all interpretations are relatively meaningless, we should be after the more beneficial meaningless piece of debate jargon. Trying to confine the judge through other standards only leaves room for interpretation on their part as to what your win condition ought to be. This is why, more often than not, the better debating standard is paired with offensive justifications for weighing the plan. Instead of confining how the judge weighs the plan, the better debating standard allows them to reach their own conclusions about the application of winning the plan to the rest of the flow. The “more desirable policy option” is intuitively unappealing from the judge’s perspective because it often won’t give the neg team going for the K a win condition, and judges are generally uncomfortable completely discounting one team’s offense regardless of technical prowess in winning the interpretation.