Maier,Darin

Judge Philosophy – Darin Maier (St. Andrew’s Episcopal School) Last Updated –January 6, 2015 1/6/2015 Update -- At this point in the year, I have judged a couple handfuls of policy debate this season -- a number of rounds at Isidore Newman and the odd round or two at local tournaments. In the interest of full disclosure, I am also the Mississippi delegate to the NFHS Topic Selection Meeting (attending since 2011) and authored the Latin America topic paper and co-authored the Income Inequality paper, so I have some insights into the topic selection process. Caveat: Full credit to Tim Alderete for the thought, but this is how I think I judge debate. Others may have had different experiences.

POLICY DEBATE

Absent an attempt on the part of the debaters to frame the debate otherwise, I will default to a policymaking paradigm to adjudicate the round. I have been thinking more about the critic-of-argument perspective in recent years as stories emerge about certain teams running arguments that seem to fuel the notion that policy debate is intent on cannibalizing itself. As far as specific meta-debates within the community... The resolution -- It's there for a reason, and a lot of good people put in a lot of time, effort, and thought in developing the resolution. If your performance act specifically upholds the resolution, then I will vote for it should you win it. If your performance avoids the question of the resolution, then I won't be offended if you strike me. On the tech v. truth discussion, I probably lean more towards truth in terms of adjudicating the round. A dropped argument isn’t automatically a true argument (e.g. if you tell me the sky is green or that clipping cards is perfectly acceptable, I'm just not buying it), but dropped arguments will carry greater weight if extended by the team and explained as to how it impacts the overall debate. Kritiks -- Like all other arguments, some are better than others. Those that ground the link in the affirmative's evidence or discourse and have a clearly articulated alternative that gets me to a "better place" are more likely to have success than those that go something like this: {Insert usually-French author's name} mahnamana no value to life. I prefer to resolve debates on substantive grounds than procedural ones, but if the affirmative is not topical or one team did something pretty theoretically egregious, then go for it – I have voted on those things in the past as well. I find reciprocity to be a pretty good starting point for evaluating debate theory – if the negative runs four conditional counterplans and then the affirmative perms each one three times, a negative that starts complaining about how the affirmative has made a mess of the debate is not likely to get a warm reception. On the “reasonability versus competing interpretations” debate regarding topicality, my default is to err on the side of reasonability but I can be argued off of this. Clipping cards, internet searches during the round, other forms of cheating, just don’t do it. If you get caught cheating (either by me or by the other team), it’s a loss and zero speaks – if the tab room wants to raise it to another number, that’s their business. If you don’t get caught this time, karma has a nasty tendency of setting the world right at a point when it delivers the most justice. LINCOLN-DOUGLAS My general observation is that Lincoln-Douglas has been undergoing a sort of struggle for the soul of the event. To that end, on many of the philosophical questions (policy arguments v. values, traditional v. progressive, etc.), I probably answer to the term "agnostic" more than anything else. I will confess to the following predispositions, though, regarding L-D. >
 * I am unlikely to vote for arguments I don't understand. If your ideas are intellectually complicated and you break it out at breakneck speed without some sort of explanation of what the claim really is and how it implicates the round, don't be surprised if you get voted down.
 * I would much rather vote on substantive issues than procedural ones. Theory claims are much stronger when you are actually being abused in the round.
 * While I don't flow cross-examination, the words that come out of your mouth during it are binding.
 * The resolution is there for a reason. Debaters that try to circumvent it are likely to get punished for their insolence.