For those new to Lincoln-Douglas debate, I will try to post helpful information in order to help everyone get on track before the season starts. I figure, the more you learn now, the less you learn later, and the more time we can spend researching instead of teaching.
To begin, Lincoln-Douglas (LD for short) is a form of value debate. What that means is debate focuses on the value of plan x rather than its effects of whether or not it is pragmatic. By focusing on value, LD incorporates philosophical concepts instead of facts and figures during rounds, like Policy and Public-Forum debate.
A decent article on LD may be found on Wikipedia, which should help to clarify how LD works fairly well.
In order to facilitate good debate, there is obviously some sort of topic or area which will be debated. This topic is known as the “Resolution.” All debaters must be prepared to defend both the affirmative and negative sides of the resolution. For instance, at the Grand National for the National Catholic Forensic League in 2007, debaters debated the resolution, “Resolved: That judicial activism is unjust in a democracy.” Thus, the affirmative was obligated to prove why judicial activism is an unjust practice within the context of a democratic government. Furthermore, the negative was required to argue the converse in order to win.
In order to prove the resolution true or false, debaters give multiple speeches in support of their side. The structure of one LD round is as follows:
| 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 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 |
As you can see in the chart, a debate round begins with the affirmative reading a 6 minute long speech. The affirmative case usually is structured as follows: the debater begins with a “value premise”, clarifies the value with a “value criterion”, and then supports the value and criterion with “contentions”. While that may seem complicated, it really isn’t. The value should be an unbiased overarching theme of the case (i.e. under the judicial activism case, the value was nearly always justice). That means that the goal of your criterion/contentions is to reach justice, or prove why the negative can’t achieve justice. However, the value is to some extent a relic, and usually is not highly debated, except during local circuit rounds between mediocre debaters.
