Lewis,+Dan

Daniel Lewis
Title: Director of Forensics, Pine Crest Preparatory School, Fort Lauderdale, FL Experience: High School Policy Debater at Miami Beach Senior High. J.D. from the Univ. of Florida. Judged Policy for the last 14 years. I am a former high school policy debater, trial lawyer, and current head debate coach. I am also a fossil. Ohnnnn The following parameters may help if you have to decide on my pref: Clarity- I do not have total recall of all the cards on this topic. If a card is relevant -you need to slow down and be clear on the tag for me to get it. If you want to be sure I get a warrant - you need to slow down for that. T – I am convinced that limits is the one topicality argument that can be defined sufficiently to be decisive. This means that you should argue why your opponent is overlimiting or underlimiting the topic as applied. How many cases would be topical under your interpretation? How many undery theirs? Stock arguments are unlikely to be convincing unless they somehow coincidentally relate to the new and different abuse the aff is running. Tailor T to this special circumstance. K – Kritiks challenge a basic assumption of the SQ and offer an alt. I view them to be weighed against the aff unless another framework is debated. After all you are asking me to accept a different world view. Ks are an acceptable response to the opponents making the wrong assumptions. Don’t just read it, believe it, or make me believe you do. Evidence – must contain warrants which support the conclusions alleged by the presenter. Seems simple, but cards are too often tagged incorrectly. I don’t care how long the card is as long as the warrant is there and the context is not misrepresented. Too often debaters read cards full of vacuous ramblings that pollute the airwaves and steal time from arguments and analysis. Don’t just read cards, analyze warrants, provide me with impacts of the evidence, tell me why you win. I will decide theory arguments based on who I think did the best job of convincing me that education and competition values require allowing their strategy. Presentation skills and clash being equal, I will default to my preconceived notions of theory (beyond what I have stated above). In theory arguments, you are asking the judge to decide what the rules of debate are. This requires intervention. Tell me why what you are doing is the way it should be. Note however, that letting the debaters debate also means that my inclination is to hear arguments on the merits of the topic, K, DA or CP unless the theory you present calls for other treatment. Make sure you properly kick arguments in the 2NR or I will still consider them to be a part of the debate. For LD: I have judged at least 20 LD rounds last year. Again speed is OK but it must be understandable. Usually I appreciate a value and criterion, but you can convince me that burdens are better for the topic. I let the debaters debate the round and argue the theory. Policy theory can be appropriate in an LD round if argued convincingly.