Lawrence,+Jason

Created/updated 12/5/16. I'm Jason Lawrence, and I'm currently a senior associate at the Davis Brown law firm in Des Moines, IA. I've practiced with national and regional firms in Minneapolis and Pittsburgh previously. I debated for Muscatine HS and Dowling Catholic HS, and was a run-off round participant in Lincoln Douglas in 1999 (eliminated on the worst RFD of my debating career: North Korea is both awful and identifiable on a map...so I try to make good decisions), and the 2000 TOCs. I was a policy debater for the William Pitt Debate Union at the University of Pittsburgh, but gave that up early in my sophomore year to be a normal college kid. I also have a J.D. from the University of Chicago.


 * Judging Philosophy:**

At this point in my personal and professional development - and in having distance from the activity - my philosophy is more informed by my legal practice than by my prior history as a debater. [I think this is a good thing - happy to discuss too.] My approach as a judge is that you're creating a record before me, and I will evaluate the round based upon the record. That means I will call for evidence - and if my flow is spotty on theory or analytical arguments, the shell you read from - and critically read and evaluate the evidence. Given the scope of the record and the depth of the source material, I do not expect HS aged kids to read copious amounts of dense information for the first (or, at best, maybe fifth or tenth time) mid-round and be able to identify every specious warrant or flaw in the evidence. You are responsible for your evidence, and I will evaluate its credibility independently. This is not "intervention," it is "adjudication." I will give weight to "dropped" arguments, and without compelling justification, I will not consider belated responses, but I will still evaluate the weight - the credibility - of the evidence and the arguments independently. Debaters who judiciously - or even out of blind luck - decide to ignore poor arguments and bad evidence will not be penalized.

My decisions will carefully follow the evidence/record. On substantive arguments, I will carefully consider whether the portions of evidence read support the premise identified by the debaters. If you "power-tag" the arguments you expect to win on, you can expect to do poorly in front of me, both in terms of a win-rate and speaker points. Over-representing evidence destroys your credibility and preys upon both the intellectual impossibility of your opponents digesting everything you read in the limited time available and the trust many judges place in the hands of debaters by issuing a decision without carefully scrutinizing the evidence on which they decide a round. Similarly, if you offer me a coherent tagline and then read dense - to incomprehensible - academic works, I may very well read segments I struggle with or do not fully understand back to you and ask for clarification. If you cannot offer me more than a regurgitation of the tagline or show me that you're capable of engaging the source material on a respecatable level, I will most likely discount the credibility of the evidence so steeply as to be meaningless in reaching a decision.

This is not to say that I will not vote for the K - or perms or answers thereto. It's just to say that you must present me with evidence that is accessible to both me and you, and you must demonstrate your understanding of the text you read.


 * Relevant examples of prior decisions**

I think it would be best to give you examples of (semi)-recent RFDs that demonstrate my approach to adjudication:

Round A (NFL Qualifiers, 2016): Negative team has a politics disad with pretty light responses from the affirmative team. The affirmative's plan is to protect the privacy of individuals receiving state benefits. The negative's link to privacy is not even generic, but pertains to specifically identified programs in the card that have no relationship to the affirmative's plan. I afford the disad 0 weight and vote aff on weight of solvency. Though the affirmative team did not make this argument on the disad; I evaluated the evidence and adjudicated the round.

Round B (NFL Qualifiers 2010): Affirmative team runs a plan to stop nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. They read inherency evidence that is years old. I know from following the news that Senator Reid, in the status quo, has killed this proposal, and that it will not have any chance of passing as long as he is in the Senate. The affirmative team has no offense on the negative flow. I negate on presumption because the affirmative's plan is not inherent. I will not accept factual assertions that I know to be demonstrably false, even if unargued by the opposition. With that said, my threshhold for adjudicating this round in this particular way is incredibly high - if I weren't able to get my phone out and pull several articles that post-dated the affirmative team's inherency evidence, I would not have decided the round on this basis. You should not expect this sort of intervention in more than 1 out of a few hundred rounds. You should expect this careful evaluation of the record.

Round C (Iowa City West, 2009): Negative team runs a states counterplan to having states, via a constitutional convention, implement the affirmative team's immigration reforms, which without evidence and on mere assertion, I would have accepted as anathema to the Republican governors and legislatures that controlled numerous (if not then, a majority of) governor's mansions and a majority of statehouse legislatures, and in any event at least enough to make 2/3 ratification politically impossible. I also would have accepted a claim that fiat in this manner is inappropriate, as when the policy proposal itself is not being tested, but only its means of implementation, only viable means of implementation should be used to challenge the affirmative's chosen means. The affirmative could have easily won on a solvency deficit without reading a shred of evidence. However, the negative's counterplan still prevailed for lack of an effective affirmative response because I wasn't prepared to say on my own intervention that such reforms, at a constitutional convention, were impossible, even as a result of the horse-trading that would inevitably occur. The negative team was advised to never run such a poor argument again.

Round D( UNI high school tournament elimination round, 2009): Affirmative team's solvency evidence rests on a card that says "taking action, A" will result in "outcome B" that will eliminate housing discrimination. This was their only solvency card. After scrutinizing the card, I could not find any highlighted section (or context) that, in my mind, remotely supported the premise for which the evidence was offered. I vote neg on presumption because the affirmative team failed to show any risk of solvency.


 * Thoughts on Performance**

Finally, when it comes to performance, I have neither debated a performance round, nor have I adjudicated one. Having not been in that situation, I have no idea how I would decide it. If there were mutual agreement on a framework, I would endeavor to decide the round within the framework agreed upon by the parties. If not, I would adjudicate the framework debate based on the evidence and reasoning offered to me and evaluate the performance within the framework. I will also note that inherent in the idea of performance is a concept of subjective audience reaction. I will endeavor to be charitable and understanding of what you're trying to communicate through performance. But if it does not resonate with me, your chances of getting my ballot probably have decreased.

But again, I won't know how I decide a performance round until I judge one, so do not hold me to any of this. Factoring in the uniqueness of each individual performance, I may never come to a unified theory of judging a performance round. Or I might. Stay tuned.


 * Thoughts on "Framework"**

Except as described immediately above, I find framework debates to be mostly unnecessary and detrimental to a round. My scope of deciding a round is plenary, and the record is everything you read/say. I will figure out the arguments that you "go for," and I will figure out the arguments that they "go for." Unless both sides agree that I should decide the round in a very specific way (in that case, I'm happy to do so based on the consent of the teams), I will decide the round based on the evidence (or theory or analytics) pertaining to the arguments each side chooses to rest on in their final speeches. Having a debate over how I should decide the round is not going to help me decide the round, and it's only going to take away time from you making effective substantive arguments.

If you want to have a "framework" debate as a disguised clash over impact analysis, drop the "framework" term and just argue why I should prefer the risk of your impacts to the risk of theirs.