Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 5 | Opponent: Westlake AC | Judge: Dandu, Keshav
Interpretation: the affirmative must defend the hypothetical implementation of a governmental policy that designates appropriation of outer space by private entities as unjust
Violation: they don’t.
Resolved indicates a policy action.
Words and Phrases 64 Words and Phrases Permanent Edition (Multi-volume set of judicial definitions). “Resolved”. 1964.
Definition of the
AND
establish by law”.
Vote neg for predictable limits—post-facto topic adjustment structurally favors the aff by manipulating the balance of prep which is anchored around the resolution as a stasis point. Not debating the topic allows someone to specialize in one area of the library for 4 years giving them a huge edge over people who switch research focus ever 2 months, which means their arguments are presumptively false because they haven’t been subject to well-researched scrutiny. I can’t go for any disad, specific CPs, solvency turns, etc in order to answer the aff, you’ll just delink my offense in the 1ar. Kills neg ground since certain principles are good in the abstract; it only makes sense taking everything into context. Ground is key to fairness since equal access to arguments controls equal access to the ballot. Truth testing - you can’t vote on the case outweighs T because lack of preparation prevents rigorous testing of the AC claims. If we win fairness we don’t have to “outweigh” other impacts.
3 impacts:
First is fairness—debate is fundamentally a game which requires both sides to have a relatively equal shot at winning and is necessary for any benefit to the activity. That outweighs:
a. decision-making: every argument concedes to the validity of fairness i.e. that the judge will make a fair decision based on the arguments presented. This means if they win fairness bad vote neg on presumption because you have no obligation to fairly evaluate their arguments.
b. probability: voting aff can’t solve any of their impacts but it can solve ours. All the ballot does is tell tab who won which can’t stop any violence but can resolve the fairness imbalance in this particular debate.
c. Extra T they get offence from their method not just the topic which means that they’ll always win against topical neg.
Second is switch side and idea-testing --- only a limited topic that leaves a role for the negative allows contestation and second-order testing that overcomes polarization. Switching sides forces them to scrutinize their own beliefs, which is valuable for developing and defending their own convictions more robustly.
Poscher 16 Ralf Poscher, Diat the Institute for Staatswissenschaft and Philosophy of Law at the University of Freiburg “Why We Argue About the Law: An Agonistic Account of Legal Disagreement”, Metaphilosophy of Law, Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki/Adam Dyrda/Pawel Banas (eds.), Hart Publishing. 2016.
Hegel’s dialectical thinking
AND
to be discovered?
Third is the small schools disad - under-resourced are most adversely effected by a massive, unpredictable caselist which worsens structural disparities
Ballot paradox - either they want the ballot and prove the competition arguments, or they’re only here for the discussion in which case vote neg but recognize the aff’s education is valuable – proves T comes first.
TVA -
Disads to the TVA prove there’s negative ground and that it’s a contestable stasis point, and if their critique is incompatible with the topic reading it on the neg solves and is better because it promotes switch-side debate.
Paradigm –
- TFW is drop the debater – it indicts their method of engagement and proves we couldn’t engage fairly with their aff.
2. Competing interps – reasonability is arbitrary, you can’t be reasonably topical, and causes a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation.
3. NO RVIS- RVIs and impact turns encourage all in on theory which decks substance and incentivize baiting theory with abusive practices.
4. No impact turns— exclusions are inevitable—there are infinite topics that are important discussions but not all of them are debatable. Even if our vision of the topic can’t fully include their scholarship they have to weigh the marginal benefit of allowing their scholarship against having literally no limit on what the affirmative can talk about which proves maintaining the topic as a stasis point outweighs.