here - College of Arts & Sciences - Bethel University

The primary thing I look for when judging a debate is offense. The government has the
advantage here in that their offense is usually their case. The opposition must not only
disprove the government case (since it is hard to disprove any case 100%), they must also
provide an offensive reason to vote for the opposition. This offense can come in many
forms – disadvantages, counterplans, critiques, or opposition cases (in resolutions of fact
or value).
Another general comment would be to use rebuttals strategically to highlight the reasons
you want to see on the ballot for your win. There is no reason in the last rebuttal that you
need to extend every argument made in the round – that defeats the point of the rebuttal.
Choose the arguments that you are winning and minimize the arguments that you are
losing in a manner that allows you to give the debate a sense of conclusion. Finally, I’m
not a huge fan of the race to magnitude. I prefer that teams evaluate and compare their
arguments on risk, probability and magnitude.
Procedurals – I think procedurals (topicality, vagueness, spec) are crucial tools that allow
the opposition to challenge abusive government interpretations. However, I have pretty
high standards for how these are argued; the opposition needs to provide a counterdefinition
or interpretation and explain why this establishes a better standard for the
debate. Voting issues, like all things in debate, are not a given – you must impact your
arguments, even topicality.
Value/Criteria – Even though I come from a policy background, I think that value and
criteria are greatly underutilized by most debaters. They provide an excellent way to
exclude the other side’s impacts and focus the debate on your ground. The also are
immensely helpful to the judge; without some value hierarchy, how do I compare war to
economic recession to losses of liberty without intervening based on my own value
hierarchy. The criteria of net benefits without a sense of what is important is meaningless
to me.
Resolution Analysis – I think the government has the burden to explain and justify their
interpretation of the resolution. This helps clarify the debate from the beginning and
prevents debates in which both sides are making arguments that don’t really contradict
each other. In the case of something other than a policy debate, governments should spell
out gov and opp burdens also make the debate clearer for the opp and the judge.
Impacts – Every argument needs to be impacted in a way that explains its relation to the
overall debate. This is where value and criteria can be helpful in highlighting the most
important substantive impacts. Impacts, however, are also crucial in procedural
arguments – i.e. why is the gov interpretation or opp counter-interpretation bad for this
debate At the end of each argument, you should answer the following question: why is
this important If you do that, it will stop you from making irrelevant arguments and
clarify the debate for both sides.
Clash – The complement to impacts is clash. If one side does not engage the other side’s
arguments, then it becomes very difficult for the judge to make a decision. More than just
the appearance of clash, however, is necessary. Each argument should evolve throughout
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