Rogan,+Nick

I’ve just finished debating in high school for four years at Greenhill and will be debating at Harvard starting next year. I’ve judged rounds at a few of the early tournaments this year. Even though I’ve been out of town for the last few months, I’m pretty comfortable with the topic. Read what you want. None of my biases are strong enough that they’ll take priority over the arguments that the teams participating in the debate have made. Having said that, I find some arguments to be more persuasive than others. Here are some of my tendencies. __ Strong Biases __ Negative fiat is good PICs are good Conditionality is good Specification and Vagueness Arguments are quite difficult to win. __ Weaker Biases __ International Actor / States CP are good. I would be much less likely to vote against the CP if the affirmative’s main arguments deal with fairness, but the affirmative’s argument would be strengthened substantially if it centered around the role of the decisionmaker. Consult CPs: I tend to agree with some of the affirmative permutation arguments. __ Misc. Theory Advice __ -Reading evidence on theory is a crush! I think it is a very uneven debate if one team goes for their analytic pics hurt education argument when their opponents have evidence from a professor about the educational value of focusing on the pic’s specific distinction. Evidence on ANY theory question can dramatically improve your ability to win. -Debate theory is not only applicable to counterplans. It can be extremely relevant in many different situations. For example when making a rollback argument it would be relevant to debate whether or not fiat should be durable. Perhaps debating policy sustainability is an essential part of policy formation (evidence would be nice). Maybe fiat means that all elements of probability are irrelevant and all that matters is the policy’s desirability. This should be resolved by the debaters. If the plan says USFG how does that affect the negative’s congress politics da? Again this could be resolved by a theory debate. (And by this I do not mean A-Spec) In general when evaluating topicality I believe that if the affirmative meets the best interpretation of the topic they’ll win and if they don’t they’ll lose. Reasonability has never made quite as much sense to me. HOWEVER, “best interpretation of the topic” can mean many things. I’m probably more willing than many judges to believe that definitional quality outweighs an interpretation’s debatability (issues like limits). This becomes even more true if I can be convinced that an interpretation is contrived or untrue. For example a card defining the word in question in a completely different context (for example for the purposes of a very specific piece of legislation) might not apply at all. Be prepared to impact definitional quality though. Ultimately I still believe that topicality debate requires impact assessment to determine whose interpretation is best. The same things are important in kritik debates as policy debates. Effective impact comparison will often decide these debates. If a framework argument is relevant make sure your interpretation is clear (i.e. what is the role of the ballot?), and also impact your framework argument (i.e. how does winning it affect other arguments?). I have a high threshold to vote on theory cheap shots even if they are dropped. My default assumption is that a theory argument is a reason to reject the argument not the team. Saying the words “voting issue” is not sufficient to convince me otherwise because that is a catchphrase not an argument. However, even doing as little as attaching a warrant like that voting against the team would deter the practice in the future would be sufficient to change my presumption. Some judges default to the idea that if the affirmative wins a permutation it is a reason the counterplan goes away and that the negative could still theoretically win on the disad alone. I, however, do not believe this. Absent explicit arguments from either team explaining what should happen in this eventuality I default to the assumption that if the affirmative wins a permutation that solves all of the negative’s offense they should win the debate. (I don’t expect this to be an issue in most debates, but I thought I might as well put it here.. and I will be quite willing to explain my reasoning if anyone wants to know.. or in any decision where this is relevant). I like long walks amongst fields of sheep. Sheep are my friends. I tend to reward good strategy with higher speaker points (especially anything innovative or especially nuanced) Any other questions just ask me.
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 * __ Things You Should Know About Me As A Judge __**