A. Introduction
Most debate resolutions concern policies[1] that donot exist in the status quo and likely will not exist in the near future, ifever. Lincoln-Douglas resolutions in recent history have included suchimprobable policies as banning handguns (Jan-Feb ’16), establishing a draft(Sep-Oct ’17), and eliminating plea bargaining (Jan-Feb ’18). Debaters seekingto bypass arguments about the likelihood of these policies passing might invokefiat. A long-standing and widely accepted tenet of competitive debate,fiat is the principle that debaters need not prove that their advocacy isprobable, only that it is desirable.
The classic argument for fiat goes as follows:
(1) Justification: If the negative were allowed to contest the likelihood of the affirmative policy, the affirmative would almost never win; therefore,
(2) Conclusion: The judge should assume for the purpose of the debate that the affirmative policy will pass if they vote affirmative.
This conception of fiat extends far back into debate’shistory. For example, take the following passage from a debate manual penned 25years ago by collegiate policy debate coach David Snowball, which explains thejustification for fiat:
“Fiat (from the Latin for ‘let it be done’) is a debate convention designed to focus attention on the substance of a resolution, rather than on questions of its political feasibility…Without the concept of fiat, all debate would come to a screeching halt as the negative team simply shrugged their shoulders, pointed to the inherency contention, and commented ‘well, it just ain’t gonna happen!’”[2]
I will refer to this view as the theoretical conception offiat, as its reasoning is grounded in debate theory, i.e. that debates would bebetter if fiat were assumed as a rule. I take this line of thought to be themain modern view and suspect that most debaters would give a rationale for fiatalong these lines, if pressed for one. Even the Wikipedia entry on policy debate terms defines fiat in a waythat mirrors the conclusion of the theoretical view:
“Fiat (Latin for 'let it be done') is a theoretical construct in policy debate – derived from the word should in the resolution – whereby the substance of the resolution is debated, rather than the political feasibility of enactment and enforcement of a given plan, allowing an affirmative team to ‘imagine’ a plan into being. (emphasis mine)”[3]
Anecdotally, I recall a very highly ranking debate teamrecently argue in a high-profile round that fiat is “extra-topical” because theadditional assumption the affirmative makes about the likelihood of planpassage is not germane to the resolution itself but added by debaters. I alsorecently judged a round where the affirmative claimed to admit that fiat was ameaningless theoretical construct and went on to argue that embracingmeaningless was good. These two examples spring to mind because explicitdiscussions of “fiat” were central to them, not because they challenged theprevailing consensus. Far from it—I believe these rounds are representative ofa broad trend of viewing fiat as being an artificial theoretical norm.
While this view is both longstanding and widely held withinthe debate community, I will argue that both its justification and conclusionare mistaken. I do not mean to claim that fiat as a principle is bankrupt,merely that it is widely misunderstood. A proper conception of fiat will notfundamentally alter debate, but it will have ramifications for a few commondebate arguments, some examples of which will be identified below.
B. The Justification for Fiat
According to the theoretical justification for fiat, ifresolutions were debated at face value, the negative would have access to anargument so devastating that the affirmative would rarely have hope of winning.Therefore, debate rounds must adopt an extra theoretical parameter to preventthis game-breaking argument. What is this response that allegedly makes everyaffirmative plan untenable? In Snowball’s words: “It just ain’t gonna happen!”
On most topics, this claim will indeed be true, or at leasthighly likely. Resolutions tend to focus on controversial changes to the statusquo, the sort of thing that hasn’t already happened and isn’t likely to happen.Exceptions exist of course, such as the Nov-Dec ’15 topic focusing on jurynullification and the Nationals ’19 topic on violent revolution, both practicesthat have occurred throughout history. By and large, though, the statement “Itjust ain’t gonna happen!” will ring true most of the time.
But why is it relevant? Why does this fact, if pointed out,make the resolution un-affirmable? The short answer is, it doesn’t. Whether aplan is likely to pass has no intrinsic bearing whatsoever on whether it oughtto pass. In fact, there’s a term for assuming a connection between the two: theis-ought fallacy. An action being likely does not prove it right, and anaction being unlikely does not prove it wrong. To take an example from aprevious article of mine concerning fiat:[4]
“Consider the following exchange among two non-debaters:
A: ‘You should stop murdering people.’
B: ‘Well, it just ain’t gonna happen!’ "
I think it should be obvious that B’s defense would notstand up in either a court of law or of public opinion. The fact that B isunwilling to end their killing spree is no defense against the claim that theyshould. The exchange did not occur in a debate round, so there’s no debatetheory considerations like ground or fairness to appeal to. On the theoreticalaccount of fiat, B should be considered correct. B has presented the knock-downargument that allegedly threatens essentially all resolutions, and A doesn’thave recourse to theory arguments to dispatch it with.
And yet, nearly everyone naturally agrees that A is correct.B’s argument doesn’t sound devastating to A’s claim or even germane to thediscussion. It’s simply not a defense at all. I’ve presented scenarios likethese to many novice debaters who haven’t even heard of the term “fiat,” andthey reach the right conclusion with ease. They are not aware of any debateconvention prohibiting B’s argument; they just don’t find it persuasive, asrightly they shouldn’t—it’s the is-ought fallacy.
What I believe this example demonstrates is that fiat is notproperly conceived of as a debate convention at all. The rationale does notcome from debate theory—that there exists some unbeatable argument that must bebracketed off for productive debates to occur—but rather from the nature of theresolution itself. Almost all resolutions express normative statements, andsuch “ought” statements can’t be affirmed or negated with claims of “will” or“won’t.”
Some affirmative debaters argue that they defend theresolution but “don’t defend implementation.” The argument is rarely clearlyexplained, but as best I can tell they mean something along the lines of “Idefend that the resolution is true, but I won’t use ‘fiat’ to cause it to pass,so the negative consequences of the resolution are irrelevant as they willnever actually occur.” Insofar as the basis for fiat flows from the nature ofthe resolution itself, the “no implementation” view almost never makes sense.Fiat is not an optional debate convention, so the affirmative cannot opt toignore it. A debater not defending a ‘fiated’ action simply is not defendingthe resolution because the large majority of resolutions are normativestatements about action.
Although I find this conclusion patently obvious, very manydebaters and coaches still talk about fiat, perhaps unintentionally, as if itwere a theory rule akin to topicality, conditionality, or disclosure theory.Fiat is more analogous to the principle that arguments need warrants, thatauthors ought to be qualified, or that studies should control for potentialconfounding variables. All are true principles that apply to debate rounds, butthey’re true by virtue of being correct principles of good argumentation in anycontext, not because they happen to make competitive debate events run moresmoothly.
To illustrate the potential confusion from the conflation ofthese two types of norms, I’ve described an example of a norm that is obviouslysubstantive in nature—the norm that disadvantages must have warranted internallinks—as if it were a theoretical norm, much like many coaches and students describefiat:
“The internal link requirement (ILR) is an important theoretical parameter. Coaches and debaters agree that the negative should be forbidden from presenting disadvantages with key internal links missing. Without this norm, all debate would come to a screeching halt. The negative could bombard the affirmative with a slew of unbeatable internal link-less disadvantages. They could cut straight to very large impacts, allowing a strategic edge in weighing. Such strategies are clearly unfair and uneducational and would become rampant without the critical norm of ILR.”
The claims in the above paragraph should strike anyone whohas participated in competitive debate as downright silly. We do not currentlyinculcate in students the idea that lacking an internal link is a rulesviolation, and we don’t need to. The reason students have no incentive to skipkey internal links is that such a disadvantage would be incredibly weak andlogically fallacious and would lose substantively on the flow, no theory required.As a community, we could impose a redundant ILR rule on top of the existingsubstantive disincentives, but why add the theoretical confusion? In anysituation where the theory norm fails to overlap with the substantive reasonsnot to skip internal links, we should be skeptical of whether it’s fulfillingits function of preserving logically sound debate. And yet that seems to beessentially what has occurred with fiat. The debate community has adopted anamorphous theoretical conception of fiat that often departs from the logicalbasis on which fiat rests.
C. The Conclusion of Fiat
The theoretical conception of fiat errs at a second level.Because the debate community has concocted a false threat of negative debaterswinning countless ballots on flagrant violations of the is-ought fallacy, ithas concocted an equally silly solution: assuming the affirmative will actuallyoccur. The negative wins, for some reason, if it is true that the affirmativeadvocacy just won’t happen. Therefore, the correct remedy, according to thetheoretical view, is to simply assume that the plan will in fact happen if theaffirmative wins, rendering the argument moot.
No such solution is needed. The discussion of the precedingsection should demonstrate the misguidedness of this way of thinking. Theappropriate solution to “it just ain’t gonna happen” is not to assume, falsely,that it is gonna happen; it’s to recognize, correctly, that whether it’s gonnahappen is irrelevant to whether it ought to happen. The affirmative has noburden to prove that their policy will actually pass, only that it ought to, somaking a counterfactual assumption that the resolution will literally come intobeing is entirely superfluous. Worse still, this assumption has led to a numberof deep-rooted and widespread misconceptions about the function of fiat indebate rounds.
Take for instance, the common refrain from negative debatersthat “fiat is illusory,” a jargon-laden way to more efficiently say “theaffirmative has falsely assumed that voting affirmative is somehow causallyconnected to plan passage, but it isn’t.” This argument is a strawperson. Noreasonable affirmative debater should assume that any single debate round hasany tangible effect on policies outside of it. Nor do they need to, as they aremerely arguing about what ought to happen. The argument gains artificialtraction because many affirmative debaters do view fiat as a license to pretendthat the plan literally passes, at which point the “fiat is illusory” argumentwould cease to be a strawperson. “No, it won’t” is indeed a correct response to“the plan will pass if you vote affirmative.” Affirmatives choosing to argue thatwe should “role-play” as policy makers who actually have control overlegislation only feed criticisms from negative debaters who find thosehypotheticals unrealistic and flawed.
Why do debaters feel the need to claim that they arerole-playing in the first place? Against the potential negative argument that“the plan will never happen, which means you should negate the resolution,”they seem to wrongly assume that it is the first clause that must be attackedrather than the second. Of course most resolutions will never pass. Arguingthat they will or that that we ought to pretend they will is unrealistic andopen to valid criticisms. But such arguments are also unnecessary because it isthe second part of the argument that is false. One doesn’t need to be apolicymaker to deem a policy desirable or undesirable, nor does one need tohave any control over that policy’s passage at all. Any informed citizen (ornon-citizen) can argue that a policy should be implemented, no matterwhether it will or not.
This year’s list of potential topics includes an examplethat illustrates this point effectively—“Resolved: Japan ought to amend Article9 of its constitution to allow for offensive military capabilities.” The claimthat we ought to role-play as policymakers looks even sillier than normal in anon-US context. Why should American high school students pretend to be Japanesepoliticians? It’s a fair wager to say that no high school Lincoln-Douglasdebater will ever grow up to be a member of the Japanese Diet. But the factthat no debaters will have any actual control over Japanese military policydoes not prevent them from debating or reaching informed conclusions about saidpolicies. Any person willing to do the research can learn about the pros andcons of article 9, formulate an opinion on it, and make arguments for oragainst it. That’s all the topic requires. If the affirmative proves that thepolicy ought to pass, they win. Whether it will is immaterial.
Somewhat related to criticisms of “role-playing” as thegovernment, another criticism negatives often levy against affirmatives is thatadvocating for a state policy in some way involves defending the legitimacy ofthe state because it assumes a propensity for the state to do the right thing.Again, this argument is a strawperson, or it would be if most affirmativedebaters did not spot the negative the faulty assumption on which itrests. On the theoretical conception offiat, the function of fiat is to allow affirmatives to suspend disbelief in thewillingness of the government to pass the correct (according to theaffirmative) policy—in the words of Wikipedia, to “imagine” it into being.Affirmative debaters seem to think that an intrinsic part of affirmative apolitical action is believing—or at least pretending to believe—that thegovernment actually will pass the policy. And here the negative criticism gainssome traction in claiming that it is unwise to make such assumptions about thegovernment.
But as we’ve seen, the assumption that the resolutional policyhas any likelihood of passing is entirely unnecessary, and the affirmative hasno strong grounds for making it. The affirmative is only rendering a shouldjudgment and taking no stance on the would. Believing that thegovernment will never pass the desired policy is entirely compatible with thebelief that it ought to. In fact, it’s hard to see how one could possiblycriticize the government without making any should claims about it. Anytime one offers an example of a harmful policy that they believe is wrong,they’re asserting a normative belief about state action, the same way that theaffirmative is when affirming the resolution. One could hold the entirelypessimistic view that the government has a 0% chance of passing some ethicalpolicy but still believe that it ought to. Believing that there are actionsthat the government ought to do but is not doing would seem to be an essentialpart of the belief that the government is an unethical institution, especiallyif those actions are ones aimed at reducing the power or scope of stateauthority. And merely claiming that those policies represent the right courseof action in no way commits one to claiming that the state is likely to passthem or otherwise defending the state in that regard.
Of course, some policies inherently seem to involve a tacitaffirmation of the existence of the government or similar institutions.Lincoln-Douglas topics have covered proposals such as universal healthcare,military conscription, and universal basic income. A helpful litmus test foridentifying such topics might be asking whether “The United States ought todissolve itself” is an advocacy that is competitive with the resolution(replacing “United States” with the relevant agent on non-US topics). Defendingthese policies probably relies on a notion that the government can and shouldplay an active role in creating and enforcing policy.
But many policies—especially most of the most recentones—point directly in the opposite direction. In the past year, topics havecalled on the affirmative to argue that the United States ought not providemilitary aid to authoritarian regimes (Jan/Feb ’19) or subsidies to fossil fuelcompanies (Nov/Dec ’19), that colleges ought not consider entrance exams(Sep/Oct ’19), and that states in general ought not possess nuclear arsenals(Jan/Feb ’20). It is hard to see how believing any of these statements commitsone to affirming the legitimacy of the institutions being described. Quite thereverse, in fact. On these topics, it is the negative making the tacitpro-government assumptions. Claiming that it is not the case that the UnitedStates ought not provide fossil fuel subsidies commits one to thinking that USprovision of subsidies is good (or at least permissible). Someone wanting to defendthe radical position that all United States policies are unethical or that theUnited States government ought not exist must surely agree with the resolutionmore than its negation on these topics. The affirmative says that at least onefederal policy is bad; the negative says at least one federal policy is notbad. Arguing that all policies are bad is clearly more consistent with theformer position. In fact, if one debater argued that the United States ought todissolve itself entirely, fossil fuel subsidies and all, that would strike meas a clearly topical affirmative advocacy, not an argument against affirming—itwould involve the affirmative eliminating fossil fuels.
Nonetheless, I have judged or observed a staggering numberof rounds where the affirmative argues against the existence of some governmentinstitution and then is accused by the negative of “defending the state.” Theaffirmative criticizes the government, and the negative also criticizes thegovernment, but somehow they do not view themselves as aggressively agreeingwith each other. The underlying confusion seems to rest on a misconception ofwhat is involved in “fiating” a policy. The affirmative in these debates oftenmakes claims about the desirability of working within oppressive structures tochange them from the inside, and the negative usually takes itself to be acriticism of this sort of claim, arguing instead that it is better not toengage them at all. If the affirmative knows that the negative’s centralargument is that state institutions are undesirable and that no part of theresolution requires endorsing this claim, it would seem strategically imprudentfor the affirmative to insert a link for the negative where none existed byclaiming that part of voting affirmative means endorsing institutions orworking within them. So why do affirmatives jump to defend this claim? My bestguess is that most debaters view this stance as being an inherent part of“fiating” a resolution. It isn’t.
Affirming a statement about the obligations of thegovernment only entails taking a stance on what the government should do, notwhat individuals should do about the government. For example, someone whostrongly believed Andrew Yang to be the best 2020 presidential candidate butalso believed that Downs’ Paradox[5] providesa rational argument against voting could simultaneously think: (A) Andrew Yangought to win the 2020 election, but (B) individuals ought not bother turning upto polls because their vote can’t swing the election, making voting a waste oftime. Of course, one could also think that Andrew Yang is the best candidateand that that belief is a strong motivation for turning out to vote. The pointis that a stance on the government doesn’t entail any specific belief about howindividuals should relate to the government.
The same is true in resolutional contexts. One could believethat military aid to authoritarian regimes is a terrible policy that ought tobe ended (the claim the affirmative was asked to make on the Jan/Feb ’19 topic)and also believe that United States military policy is unresponsive to activistdemands, making publicly lobbying against it thereby unproductive. Theaffirmative is not tied to believing that the government should be engagedwith, role-played as, or otherwise affirmed by individuals merely by arguingthat one government policy is preferable to another. Returning to the murdererexample, making the obvious claim that “murderers ought to stop murdering andturn themselves in” does not commit one to affirming murderers, role-playing asa murderer, or otherwise defending that the existence of murderers isdesirable. Likewise, I assume a topic of “Resolved: Nazi Germany was wrong toinvade Poland” would strike most as obviously correct, not obviously wrong. Butif the arguments often forwarded in debate rounds are to be believed, affirmingthe above statement somehow implies that the Nazi government was legitimate andthat individuals ought to work within it. When the agent described in the topicis more distant, I think it becomes clearer why taking a stance on therightness or wrongness of a particular course of action implies neither ofthose assumptions.
Affirmative debaters seem to view themselves as tied todefending government engagement because something about the rule of “fiat”requires them to make artificial assumptions about the likelihood of governmentpolicy passing and defending this counterfactual assumption entails defendingthe desirability of roleplaying as a policymaker or otherwise viewing oneselfas having some ability to influence state policy. And this is where the wholeargument goes awry. Fiat is nothing more than the view that the is-oughtfallacy is indeed a fallacy, i.e. that whether the resolution oughtto be passed does not hinge on whether it is likely. Fiat does notrequire the affirmative to explain why the policy is likely to pass or why theaffirmative debater has any influence over its passage; fiat is precisely thereason why the affirmative does not need to make such assumptions.
A lingering tension might remain for people see asurface-level contradiction in the affirmative standing up in a debate round toargue for a policy without at least taking an implicit stance that engaging inpolitical advocacy is worthwhile. After all, is that not what they are doing?But the tension is not any deeper than surface-level. It seems unlikely thatthe main reason why any debater is passionately arguing for the resolution intheir affirmative constructive is that they genuinely believe the resolutionand want to change the hearts and minds of the judge, opponent, and spectators.Perhaps they do believe fossil fuel subsidies ought to be eliminated, but thatdoes not explain why they are affirming the topic. After all, they will go intothe next round and passionately argue against it when they are assigned tonegate, and when the topic changes they will passionately argue for some otherpolicy. Those choices would make little sense if the main goal were togenuinely persuade others of a change in policy; they would be shootingthemselves in the foot in the half of all rounds where they argue against theirpreferred policy. When the topic is pre-assigned and the debaters argue bothsides of it, there is no reason to think a debater’s arguments for theirassigned side represent a genuine attempt at political advocacy.
A better explanation for why debaters affirm whenaffirmative and negate when negative is that they see value in debating theirassigned side of the topic (because switch-side topical debate is best forprocedural fairness, limited dialogue, research skills, or some other reason).Whether their belief that topical debate is the best model is correct is besidethe point. The point is merely that affirming the topic when asked to does notcommit one to making the assumption that the content of the topic is correct orimportant or that politically advocating for it (“working within the system”) iscorrect or worthwhile. The affirmative might just as well view the topic as aproposition that provides an equal division of ground and research fordetermining the better debater but otherwise have no investment in the subjectmatter. And if that is true (and it does seem like the most likely motivationmost of the time), then the negative is wrong to assume that the affirmative’s“advocacy” of the topic in a debate round implies anything about thedesirability of advocating for that policy outside of debate rounds any morethan checkmating the king in chess implies assumptions about the desirabilityof regicide.
When the topic happens to be a non-governmental agent (e.g.the recent topic about colleges), almost every affirmative case focuses on whatthat agent should do. Debaters abandon any attempt to focus the debate ongovernmental policy. The best explanation is that debaters are not affirmingresolutions about state action because they have any necessary investment incausing policies to pass but because they are invested in following the rule oftopicality, whatever the topic happens to say, and the topic happens to say“Resolved: The Unites States ought to…” most of the time. If the topic focusedon a non-state agent and the affirmative chose to disregard the topic and spendtheir speech on state-based political advocacy anyway, one might start to makesome strong assumptions about the affirmative’s beliefs on the importance ofpolitical advocacy, but this trend is not one I have witnessed in debaterounds.
So, “fiat” means nothing more than ignoring the likelihoodof policy passage (because it is irrelevant to the truth of the topic). Makinga counterfactual assumption that a vote for the affirmative in some way leadsto a change in policy is in no way necessary for meaningful debate on thetopic. “Fiating” a policy means nothing more than acknowledging that the topicis a normative statement, not a descriptive one. The topic generally does notposit that institutions are good, nor does defending its truth in a competitivedebate round entail the belief that working within institutions is good.Affirmative debaters who claim to “role-play” as policymakers actually changingpolicy are making more assumptions than they need to in order to affirm theresolution. It is my view that such arguments inadvertently bolster negativecriticisms of state action by filling in the link that was formerly missing:that there is some intrinsic connection between affirming the topic andaffirming the desirability of engagement with the government. Against anaffirmative debater who does not make such superfluous assumptions, suchcriticisms miss the mark as they neither disprove the topic nor any necessaryassumption the opponent makes by affirming it.
D. Conclusion
I will conclude by spelling out my view of fiat and itsrelationship to the topic more explicitly. Fiat is not a convention invented bydebaters to improve the quality of rounds in the way that “conditionality,” forexample, is an artificial assumption meant to improve the stability of negativeadvocacy for the purposes of debate despite having no innate logical basis.Fiat is merely helpful debate jargon for describing an antecedently-existingprinciple of argumentation, in the same way that “uniqueness” is nothing morethan helpful debate jargon for describing an argument that would make equalsense outside of debate rounds and without the jargon (that for an impact thatwill occur equally regardless of the course of action is not offense for or againstthe action). Fiat is purely a substantive matter and need not be anything more.In contrast to the theoretical view, I would summarize the substantive view asfollows:
(1) Justification: The debate topicis a normative statement (generally, an ought or should) ratherthan a statement of fact; therefore,
(2) Conclusion: It is not relevantwhether the affirmative policy is likely to pass, only whether it ought to.
“Imagining” the affirmative advocacy into being might be ahelpful thought experiment for debaters wanting to more clearly envision theimpacts of both sides, but it is nothing more than that. Neither the judge ordebaters needs to make any actual or counterfactual assumption that votingaffirmative makes the policy more likely to occur. Voting affirmative merelyacknowledges that the policy ought to be passed, whether likely or not, andthus that the affirmative has fulfilled their burden to prove the normativestatement of the resolution.
[1]This article in many places references “policies” and “plans” because the mainfocus of a majority of topics is on governmental actions, but the same thesiswill apply to any topic that makes a normative statement about an agent takingan action, whether that agent is a government or not. As I will argue, the onlyessential requirement for fiat to apply to a topic is that it be normative innature, usually signified by the use of a term like ought or should.
[2]David Snowball. “Theory and Practice in Academic Debate.” A Reference Guide.Third Edition, 1994.http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/jbruschke/theory_and_practice_in_academic_.htm
[3]Wikipedia. “Glossary of Policy Debate Terms.” Date Accessed: 7 November 2019.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_policy_debate_terms#Fiat
[4]Jacob Nails. “The Scope of Fiat: A Response to O’Krent by Jacob Nails.”VBriefly. 2014.https://www.vbriefly.com//2014/08/23/the-scope-of-fiat-a-response-to-okrent-by-jacob-nails/
[5]Downs’ Paradox holds that self-interested citizens have no reason to votebecause the chances of one’s own ballot being the deciding vote in a nationalelection is infinitesimally small, so essentially any drawback, howevertrivial, will outweigh the benefits, e.g. merely the value of time saved notheading to the polls would be larger. My point is not to endorse non-voting (orAndrew Yang for President, for that matter); the example merely represents ahypothetical set of arguments one could make.