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(Redirected from Lincoln-Douglas Debate)
'Lincoln-Douglas debate', known by some previous debaters as 'value' debate and for slang sometimes called 'Lincoln-Douglas', 'LD debate', or simply, 'LD', is a style of one-on-one debate practiced in National Forensic League competitions, and widely used in related debate leagues such as the National Catholic Forensic League, National Educational Debate Association, the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association, and their related regional organizations. The Lincoln-Douglas Debate format is named for the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
Debate rounds are typically judged by an adult, often a coach or a college student who participated in the event in the past. Some Novice-only tournaments will employ experienced students as judges. Elimination rounds often are judged by a panel of three or more judges, but always an odd number to prevent a tie.
Judging an LD round can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced judges. Not only are the questions intrinsically complex, but the typical debater uses arguments and citations from philosophers and other writers that the judge may not be familiar with. Additionally, LD topics often involve issues where the judge may have a strongly held opinion for or against the resolution. Being neutral and judging on the basis of who presented the most sound argument (not the ideological leaning of the argument) can be difficult. To avoid this potential problem, resolutions are usually rather abstract and do not touch on "hot button" issues of the day such as abortion or gay marriage.
In some regional or circuit tournaments with multiple divisions, inexperienced judges are most commonly placed in the Novice division, while the Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions enjoy a more experienced pool of judges (sometimes called critics). Other regional circuits value the difficulty of debating in front of inexperienced judges, and recruit "lay" judges from the community in order to provide the debaters with the experience of attempting to explain complex issues to lay people. These judges are typically friends or relatives of debaters from the sponsoring school. Some circuits require all LD judges for rounds above the novice level to meet training requirements. Another popular option is to make use of lay judges for the rounds, but offer them a brief training or tutorial beforehand to prepare and inform them about the nature of the debate.
Different areas of the country approach debate with different goals. In some states, such as Kansas and South Dakota, high school speech is a for-credit class with a competitive debate element. Inter-school tournaments are held on weekends, but the training for them is often curricular. In other areas, debate may be a school-sponsored team similar to football or basketball which has practice after school, rather than being part of the curriculum, or it may be organized as a club activity with very little involvement on the part of the school.
This distinction often results in a difference among the nation's high schools in their understanding of the purpose of competitive speech. Circuits like Kansas and South Dakota, in which Speech is part of the curriculum, set the goal of participation to be an improvement in the communication skills of the student. These circuits tend to use lay judges in all events to provide the student the chance to develop analysis and speaking styles which increase communication to the "everyday" person. Other circuits, which see the event as essentially competitive (as with sports) rather than curricular, place a higher value on expert judging so that the playing field is fair. This distinction provides endless controversy when students from districts with differing underlying philosophies compete against each other at regional or national tournaments.
In a typical one-day tournament, each debater will debate three or four rounds, two rounds advocating the affirmative side and two rounds advocating the negative. Longer tournaments typically have five, six, or eight preliminary rounds, in which all debaters participate. The top debaters from the first set of rounds (preliminary rounds, pre-lims) then advance to a single-elimination tournament to determine the winner of the tournament.
In many tournaments, and especially in smaller tournaments, all debaters present have the potential to "hit," or square off against, all other competitors in the tournament (though if at all possible debaters are kept from hitting members of their own team). In contrast, a tournament in which each competitor goes against every other one is called a Round Robin. At other events, generally larger tournaments (or smaller ones early in the season), less experienced debaters may be separated from more experienced debaters (This is usually called the novice devision, or junior varsity), forming two parallel tournaments. A few tournaments have all three divisions.
Some LD tournaments are "power-matched" (also called "power-paired," "power seeded," "high-high," "low-low," or just "powered"). In this system, after each round, the pairings for the next round are decided on the basis that winners meet winners and losers meet losers. An alternative to power-pairing, which requires less organized tournament-running, is "lag pairing," in which debates are power-matched according to the results of not the last round, but instead the round before that. More commonly the cumulative record of a debater is used to par him/her. Other tournaments are "high-low," or "power-protected," meaning meetings for the next round are winner against loser. A combination of the two involves power-matching win-losses and power-protecting speaker points. Still other tournaments use randomized brackets. In "elimination rounds" after the primary four to six (or even eight) preliminary rounds, the top "seed" will "hit" the lowest "seed." Seeds are determined first by preliminary round records and then by the amount of speaker points awarded by judges in preliminary rounds.
Most high school debaters participate in local tournaments in their city, school district, or state. Hundreds of such tournaments are held each weekend at high schools throughout the United States during the debate season.
A small subset of high school debaters, mostly from elite public and private schools, travel around the country to tournaments on the national circuit. The seven largest and most competitive national circuit tournaments are the Glenbrooks, held at Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South high schools in the Chicago suburbs, the Barkley Forum at Emory University, the Harvard Invitational at Harvard University, the California Invitational at UC Berkeley, the Greenhill Fall Classic in Dallas, the Heart of Texas Invitational at St. Mark's School of Texas, also in Dallas, and the Minneapple at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota (The Minneapple exclusively does LD, and is the largest LD-only tournament in the country).
As the debate season comes to a close, national championship tournaments are held to bring together the best debaters from around the nation to compete against one another. These tournaments tend to be invitation-only, based on success in various qualifying events.
The unofficial national circuit championship is the Tournament of Champions (LD) (TOC) held at the University of Kentucky. To be eligible for the TOC, debaters must collect at least two bids at various qualifying tournaments held throughout the year. These tournaments are given a certain number of bids to be awarded to debaters who reach a certain level in the elimination rounds. The amount of bids given depends on the size of the tournament and the relative calculated strength of the debaters who attend. For example, the Southwest Championships held at Arizona State University is a medium-sized tournament attended by debaters of all experience levels from the surrounding states, and therefore only receives two bids, awarded to the debaters who reach the final round of the tournament. (The tournament lost its bid status prior to the 07-08 season. A full list of Bid tournaments for this season is available through many places, including [here.]) Conversely, the Glenbrooks tournament, considered the most competitive tournament in the country, is attended by approximately 200 experienced debaters and is given 16 bids to hand out to competitors who reach the octofinal round.
For non-national circuit debaters, either the National Speech and Debate Tournament of the National Forensic League or the Grand National Tournament of the National Catholic Forensic League is the national tournament of their sponsoring organization. Competitors qualify to the national tournament by placing in the top spots at local district-level tournaments. The number of competitors in each district determines the number of competitors that will qualify to the national tournament.
LD debate follows the basic time schedule 6-3-7-3-4-6-3, commonly remembered as a jingle or phone number. Each debater gets 13 minutes of speaking time, and rounds take approximately 45 minutes, when all is said and done. Each debater receives 3-5 minuted of preparation time (prep time) to use between speeches however they like. 3 Minutes was the NFL rule until mid-way through the 2006-2007 season, when 4 minutes became official and was adopted by most but not all local tournaments. Some very large and prominent tournaments chose to give debaters 5 minutes.
Resolutions (topics to be debated) change every two months. They are usually very vague and theoretical to allow for many different arguments and interpretations. Resolutions are chosen by a wording committee. This group releases ten potential topics for the upcoming year at the NFL Nationals Tournament.
The following list is far from exhaustive. A complete listings of NFL resolutions can be found at the NFL website. Past resolutions include:
:Resolved: Inaction in the face of injustice makes an individual morally culpable. (NFL Nationals 2000)
:Resolved: On balance, violent revolution is a just response to oppression. (NFL Nationals 2001)
:Resolved: Laws which protect citizens from themselves are justified. (NFL Nationals 2002)
:Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above punishment in the U. S. criminal justice system. (NFL Nationals 2003)
:Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified. (NFL Nationals 2004)
:Resolved: A nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2004)
:Resolved: The pursuit of scientific knowledge ought to be constrained by concern for societal good. (NFL Nationals 2005)
:Resolved: The primary purpose of formal education ought to be to impart knowledge. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2005)
:Resolved: In matters of collecting military intelligence, the ends justify the means. (NFL Nationals 2006)
:Resolved: When in conflict, an individual's freedom of speech should be valued over a community's moral standards. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2006)
:Resolved: A victim's deliberate use of deadly force is a just response to repeated domestic violence. (November-December 2006)
:Resolved: The actions of corporations ought to be held to the same moral standards as the actions of individuals. (January-February 2007)
:Resolved: The United Nations' obligation to protect global human rights ought to be valued above its obligation to respect national sovereignty. (March-April 2007)
:Resolved: Judicial activism is unjust in a democracy. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2007)
:Resolved: On balance, violent revolution is a just response to political oppression. (NFL Nationals 2007)
:'Resolved: A just society ought not use the death penalty as a form of punishment.' (September-October 2007)
★ Value Premise
★ National Forensic League website
★ National Catholic Forensic League website
★ The LD Boards.org
★ LD Debate.org
★ LD Debate.com
★ The Ultimate LD Debate Website - Free LD Debate Handbook
★ Debate Central - NFL instructional videos
★ NDR (National Debate Rankings-Old)
★ NDR (National Debate Rankings-New)
★ Victory Briefs Daily - LD Community Blog
'Lincoln-Douglas debate', known by some previous debaters as 'value' debate and for slang sometimes called 'Lincoln-Douglas', 'LD debate', or simply, 'LD', is a style of one-on-one debate practiced in National Forensic League competitions, and widely used in related debate leagues such as the National Catholic Forensic League, National Educational Debate Association, the National Christian Forensics and Communication Association, and their related regional organizations. The Lincoln-Douglas Debate format is named for the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
| Contents |
| Judging |
| Approaches to academic debate |
| Tournament organization |
| Competition |
| Format |
| Resolutions |
| See Also |
| External links |
Judging
Debate rounds are typically judged by an adult, often a coach or a college student who participated in the event in the past. Some Novice-only tournaments will employ experienced students as judges. Elimination rounds often are judged by a panel of three or more judges, but always an odd number to prevent a tie.
Judging an LD round can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced judges. Not only are the questions intrinsically complex, but the typical debater uses arguments and citations from philosophers and other writers that the judge may not be familiar with. Additionally, LD topics often involve issues where the judge may have a strongly held opinion for or against the resolution. Being neutral and judging on the basis of who presented the most sound argument (not the ideological leaning of the argument) can be difficult. To avoid this potential problem, resolutions are usually rather abstract and do not touch on "hot button" issues of the day such as abortion or gay marriage.
In some regional or circuit tournaments with multiple divisions, inexperienced judges are most commonly placed in the Novice division, while the Junior Varsity and Varsity divisions enjoy a more experienced pool of judges (sometimes called critics). Other regional circuits value the difficulty of debating in front of inexperienced judges, and recruit "lay" judges from the community in order to provide the debaters with the experience of attempting to explain complex issues to lay people. These judges are typically friends or relatives of debaters from the sponsoring school. Some circuits require all LD judges for rounds above the novice level to meet training requirements. Another popular option is to make use of lay judges for the rounds, but offer them a brief training or tutorial beforehand to prepare and inform them about the nature of the debate.
Approaches to academic debate
Different areas of the country approach debate with different goals. In some states, such as Kansas and South Dakota, high school speech is a for-credit class with a competitive debate element. Inter-school tournaments are held on weekends, but the training for them is often curricular. In other areas, debate may be a school-sponsored team similar to football or basketball which has practice after school, rather than being part of the curriculum, or it may be organized as a club activity with very little involvement on the part of the school.
This distinction often results in a difference among the nation's high schools in their understanding of the purpose of competitive speech. Circuits like Kansas and South Dakota, in which Speech is part of the curriculum, set the goal of participation to be an improvement in the communication skills of the student. These circuits tend to use lay judges in all events to provide the student the chance to develop analysis and speaking styles which increase communication to the "everyday" person. Other circuits, which see the event as essentially competitive (as with sports) rather than curricular, place a higher value on expert judging so that the playing field is fair. This distinction provides endless controversy when students from districts with differing underlying philosophies compete against each other at regional or national tournaments.
Tournament organization
In a typical one-day tournament, each debater will debate three or four rounds, two rounds advocating the affirmative side and two rounds advocating the negative. Longer tournaments typically have five, six, or eight preliminary rounds, in which all debaters participate. The top debaters from the first set of rounds (preliminary rounds, pre-lims) then advance to a single-elimination tournament to determine the winner of the tournament.
In many tournaments, and especially in smaller tournaments, all debaters present have the potential to "hit," or square off against, all other competitors in the tournament (though if at all possible debaters are kept from hitting members of their own team). In contrast, a tournament in which each competitor goes against every other one is called a Round Robin. At other events, generally larger tournaments (or smaller ones early in the season), less experienced debaters may be separated from more experienced debaters (This is usually called the novice devision, or junior varsity), forming two parallel tournaments. A few tournaments have all three divisions.
Some LD tournaments are "power-matched" (also called "power-paired," "power seeded," "high-high," "low-low," or just "powered"). In this system, after each round, the pairings for the next round are decided on the basis that winners meet winners and losers meet losers. An alternative to power-pairing, which requires less organized tournament-running, is "lag pairing," in which debates are power-matched according to the results of not the last round, but instead the round before that. More commonly the cumulative record of a debater is used to par him/her. Other tournaments are "high-low," or "power-protected," meaning meetings for the next round are winner against loser. A combination of the two involves power-matching win-losses and power-protecting speaker points. Still other tournaments use randomized brackets. In "elimination rounds" after the primary four to six (or even eight) preliminary rounds, the top "seed" will "hit" the lowest "seed." Seeds are determined first by preliminary round records and then by the amount of speaker points awarded by judges in preliminary rounds.
Competition
Most high school debaters participate in local tournaments in their city, school district, or state. Hundreds of such tournaments are held each weekend at high schools throughout the United States during the debate season.
A small subset of high school debaters, mostly from elite public and private schools, travel around the country to tournaments on the national circuit. The seven largest and most competitive national circuit tournaments are the Glenbrooks, held at Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South high schools in the Chicago suburbs, the Barkley Forum at Emory University, the Harvard Invitational at Harvard University, the California Invitational at UC Berkeley, the Greenhill Fall Classic in Dallas, the Heart of Texas Invitational at St. Mark's School of Texas, also in Dallas, and the Minneapple at Apple Valley High School in Minnesota (The Minneapple exclusively does LD, and is the largest LD-only tournament in the country).
As the debate season comes to a close, national championship tournaments are held to bring together the best debaters from around the nation to compete against one another. These tournaments tend to be invitation-only, based on success in various qualifying events.
The unofficial national circuit championship is the Tournament of Champions (LD) (TOC) held at the University of Kentucky. To be eligible for the TOC, debaters must collect at least two bids at various qualifying tournaments held throughout the year. These tournaments are given a certain number of bids to be awarded to debaters who reach a certain level in the elimination rounds. The amount of bids given depends on the size of the tournament and the relative calculated strength of the debaters who attend. For example, the Southwest Championships held at Arizona State University is a medium-sized tournament attended by debaters of all experience levels from the surrounding states, and therefore only receives two bids, awarded to the debaters who reach the final round of the tournament. (The tournament lost its bid status prior to the 07-08 season. A full list of Bid tournaments for this season is available through many places, including [here.]) Conversely, the Glenbrooks tournament, considered the most competitive tournament in the country, is attended by approximately 200 experienced debaters and is given 16 bids to hand out to competitors who reach the octofinal round.
For non-national circuit debaters, either the National Speech and Debate Tournament of the National Forensic League or the Grand National Tournament of the National Catholic Forensic League is the national tournament of their sponsoring organization. Competitors qualify to the national tournament by placing in the top spots at local district-level tournaments. The number of competitors in each district determines the number of competitors that will qualify to the national tournament.
Format
LD debate follows the basic time schedule 6-3-7-3-4-6-3, commonly remembered as a jingle or phone number. Each debater gets 13 minutes of speaking time, and rounds take approximately 45 minutes, when all is said and done. Each debater receives 3-5 minuted of preparation time (prep time) to use between speeches however they like. 3 Minutes was the NFL rule until mid-way through the 2006-2007 season, when 4 minutes became official and was adopted by most but not all local tournaments. Some very large and prominent tournaments chose to give debaters 5 minutes.
| Time (minutes) | Abbreviation | Speech | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | AC | Affirmative Constructive | The Affirmative reads a pre-written case |
| 3 | CX | Cross Examination | The Negative asks the Affirmative questions |
| 7 | NC (1NR) | Negative Constructive (and first negative Rebuttal) | The Negative (almost always) reads a pre-written case and (almost always) moves on to address the Affirmative's case. |
| 3 | CX | Cross Examination | The Affirmative asks the Negative questions |
| 4 | 1AR | First Affirmative Rebuttal | The Affirmative addresses both their opponent's arguments and their own |
| 6 | NR (2NR) | The Negative Rebuttal | The Negative covers everything said in the round and gives the judge reasons to vote for them |
| 3 | 2AR | The Second Affirmative Rebuttal | The Affirmative may either summarized the round or cover everything, but they always give reasons to vote for them |
Resolutions
Resolutions (topics to be debated) change every two months. They are usually very vague and theoretical to allow for many different arguments and interpretations. Resolutions are chosen by a wording committee. This group releases ten potential topics for the upcoming year at the NFL Nationals Tournament.
The following list is far from exhaustive. A complete listings of NFL resolutions can be found at the NFL website. Past resolutions include:
:Resolved: Inaction in the face of injustice makes an individual morally culpable. (NFL Nationals 2000)
:Resolved: On balance, violent revolution is a just response to oppression. (NFL Nationals 2001)
:Resolved: Laws which protect citizens from themselves are justified. (NFL Nationals 2002)
:Resolved: Rehabilitation ought to be valued above punishment in the U. S. criminal justice system. (NFL Nationals 2003)
:Resolved: Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified. (NFL Nationals 2004)
:Resolved: A nation's citizens' rights ought to take precedence over its security. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2004)
:Resolved: The pursuit of scientific knowledge ought to be constrained by concern for societal good. (NFL Nationals 2005)
:Resolved: The primary purpose of formal education ought to be to impart knowledge. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2005)
:Resolved: In matters of collecting military intelligence, the ends justify the means. (NFL Nationals 2006)
:Resolved: When in conflict, an individual's freedom of speech should be valued over a community's moral standards. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2006)
:Resolved: A victim's deliberate use of deadly force is a just response to repeated domestic violence. (November-December 2006)
:Resolved: The actions of corporations ought to be held to the same moral standards as the actions of individuals. (January-February 2007)
:Resolved: The United Nations' obligation to protect global human rights ought to be valued above its obligation to respect national sovereignty. (March-April 2007)
:Resolved: Judicial activism is unjust in a democracy. (NCFL Grand Nationals 2007)
:Resolved: On balance, violent revolution is a just response to political oppression. (NFL Nationals 2007)
:'Resolved: A just society ought not use the death penalty as a form of punishment.' (September-October 2007)
See Also
★ Value Premise
External links
★ National Forensic League website
★ National Catholic Forensic League website
★ The LD Boards.org
★ LD Debate.org
★ LD Debate.com
★ The Ultimate LD Debate Website - Free LD Debate Handbook
★ Debate Central - NFL instructional videos
★ NDR (National Debate Rankings-Old)
★ NDR (National Debate Rankings-New)
★ Victory Briefs Daily - LD Community Blog
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