Sylvester,+Cort

Stylistically, I’m sort of a typical “national circuit” judge—I like speed (as a concept--more on that in a minute), I focus on the flow and not on presentational issues, etc. However, by paradigm, I'm an old-school policymaker. The round decides whether the plan is a good idea. That’s usually done by asking whether the plan is uniquely advantageous. One other thing you might want to know is that I’m a lawyer, so I probably understand the background of legal topics and issues better than most debaters and judges. (And I can tell when you don’t understand them.)

I try to avoid intervening, but nobody's perfect. I'm more likely to default to "theoretical" preferences (how arguments interact to produce a decision) than "substantive" or "ideological" preferences (the merits or “truth” of a position). I don't recall ever simply rejecting an argument as repugnant, but it could happen--not something like Malthus or spark, but an explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. argument. I'm a moderate liberal, which makes me a lot less politically "lefty" than many circuit types (my real job is defending corporations in court, after all). I distrust conspiracy theories, nonscientific medicine, etc. Note, though, that although I'm unlikely to reject a repugnant position on my own initiative, I am willing to accept an ARGUMENT that the position is repugnant if a team puts it on the flow.

I detest critiques. I still vote for them, because of the whole noninterventionist thing, but I'd much rather hear a good disad (politics isn’t so "good" a disad, by the way). I don't understand most philosophy and don't much care to, so most of the critique literature is unintelligible junk to me. I'll listen, but I can't guarantee that my understanding of it at the end of the round is going to match yours. I'm especially vulnerable to “no voter” arguments. If you want to go for a critique, tell me why winning the argument means winning the ballot. (Taglines about "intellectual endorsement," and "symbolic resistance" have little meaning in my mind.) The link is also pretty important, so do the work on why the position applies to THIS plan or THESE debaters and their rhetoric. I’m profoundly uncomfortable with performance debates. I tend not to see how they force a decision. I'll listen, and perhaps be entertained, but need to know why I must vote for it. I am wide open to arguments that do-nothing alternatives (or "suffering good" or "death is meaningless") are repugnant. I have no idea what it means to "appreciate the beauty of things" or alts like that, so those sorts of attitudinal or mindset alts sound to me a lot like "do nothing." "Reject" also sounds a lot like do nothing.

I like topicality. It's usually a limitations issue for me. I default to not requiring specific in-round abuse--an excessively broad resolution is inherently abusive to negs. Critical or performance cases are not excused from the burden of being topical. Moreover, why the case is topical probably needs to be explained in non-performance language--I have a hard time understanding how a dance move or interpretive reading proves T. Critiques of the concept of T start out at a disadvantage. Some critical arguments might help justify particular interpretations of the topic, but I have a harder time seeing why they would make T go away. You aren’t topical simply because you’ve identified some great injustice in the world.

The best way to tell that an argument sucks is that it ends in "-spec." If the rez doesn't force you to specify a subunit of the USFG, you need to be prepared to debate an aff that doesn't specify. I'm not going to lose sleep about your "ground loss."

Counterplans are cool. Competition is the most important element of the CP debate, and is virtually always an issue of net benefits. Perms are a good test of competition (but "do both" isn’t really a perm, it's just a standard old-school competition argument). I don't have really strong theoretical biases on most CP issues. I do prefer that CPs be nontopical, but am easily persuaded that it doesn't matter. Perms probably don't need to be topical, and are usually just a test of competitiveness. I think PICs are seldom competitive and might be abusive. All of these things are highly debatable.

Oh, one last thing--I'm still relatively new to flowing on the computer, and although I seem to like it so far, I am still enough of a newbie that I am probably a slower flow than I used to be. It's really important to signpost well so that I know when you are moving from one argument to another (not so much from one position to another, but definitely from one line-by-line answer to a new one). I also have found that it is basically impossible for me to flow the normal theory blocks people read. Too many short arguments coming out too fast for me to get down the independent warrants, or sometimes even the tags. SPECIAL UPDATE FOR THE 2011 GLENBROOKS: I hurt my hand in a fall last weekend. (Thanks, whoever dropped food in the hallway at Highland Park and didn't pick it up.) I am in a wrist brace and have no idea how well I will be able to flow.

Feel free to ask about specific issues. I'm happy to provide further explanation of these things or talk about any issues not in this statement.

And as a side note: Baudrillard is 2-0 in front of me. I don't want you to read too much into that, I'm just sayin'. Peace homez (I have no idea who added this comment--well, I have an idea, but no proof. True as written, though. I still don't understand what the argument means or why it allegedly clashes with anything an affirmative would say. As a general rule, you can be pretty sure that anything containing the phrase "peace homez" isn't me.)