Cohn,+Nate

Nate Cohn Georgetown University November 2013

I will adhere to the Wake Forest speaker point rubric. This may result in higher points than I assigned prior to Harvard.

At this time, I am not revisiting the remainder of my judge philosophy. I did promise as much, but, unfortunately, I have not found the time to complete my thoughts--currently at 3200 words. Moreover, the new philosophy did not promise any substantive revisions to my approach to judging, but a roadmap for teams who want to pursue a more realistic, accessible, and inclusive form of topical debate. In the interim, know that I strongly believe in the potential for debaters to contest many of the prevailing norms of policy debate, reduce the risk of unrealistic scenarios to the point of elimination, defend non-traditional forms of evidence, and argue about important questions of white supremacy, injustice, and inequality.

-

The question for decision is whether the federal government should enact a topical plan. As a general rule, the modern “critique” is not an effective means for demonstrating that the plan shouldn’t be enacted. I am unlikely to vote for a critique if the affirmative checks the boxes and the negative doesn’t either mitigate the affirmative’s advantages to the point of elimination or read a counterplan that solves the whole case. In my view, the critique is at its most persuasive as a presumption argument.

I am not a good judge for presumption arguments.

Evidence plays a larger role in my decisions than it does for most other judges. I am willing and even eager to summarily disregard arguments supported by inadequate evidence, especially if those arguments are contested by smart indicts or analytics. Conversely, teams will generally be disappointed if they intend to overcome high-quality research with unsubstantiated framing or spinning.

Counterplans should compete off of a mandate of the plan. On the flip side, a counterplan isn't competitive if it can be interpreted as an example of the plan, nor can it include the possibility of fiating the enactment of the plan. As a result of the latter clause, I’m not convinced that “certainty” is a basis for competition, even if it’s plausibly winnable. The presence of topic-specific literature has precisely nothing to do with the competitiveness of a counterplan.

I have a liberal perspective on technique; as a general rule, I try and reduce the extent that technical errors short-circuit the rest of the debate. For instance, a team extending a theory argument must advance a coherent reason to vote on it, even if “voting issue” is conceded. I find it hard to punish the negative for dropping blippy assertions like “perm do the cp,” “perm do both, shields the link to politics” or "the disad's intrinsic, a logical policy maker can do both." None of these claims are meaningful absent additional, warranted explanation.

If the 2NR advances a counterplan, I’m not willing to revert to the status quo absent an explicit request from the 2NR. Since conditionality is logical, I'm usually willing to revert to the status quo, although the specifics of the debate could change my mind, like otherwise prohibitive time investment on a permutation.