Back to Basics: Case Writing—Part 1 by Lawrence Zhou

Lawrence Zhou is currently a Fulbright Taiwan Debate Coach and Trainer and an assistant coach at Apple Valley High School. He was formerly the Director of Lincoln-Douglas Debate at the Victory Briefs Institute and the 2014 NSDA National Champion in Lincoln-Douglas Debate. 

In this article, Lawrence talks about his favorite phrase when discussing case writing—think backwards; think forwards—and how this advice can fundamentally change the way that debaters write their cases.

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Continuing with my previous post in my new Back to Basics series, I want to return now to an important skill—case writing. As the September/October topic was recently released (shameless plug for the Victory Briefs packet available now), students are now in the process of writing or revising their cases for and against single-payer. (While I obviously aim most of my writing at LD, this one contains advice that PF debaters might also find useful!) 

However, casing (the process of writing cases) is not as easy as slapping some evidence together—it requires more thought and planning than initially meets the eye. I find that many JV or newer varsity debaters still find it challenging to craft a strong case on both sides. 

This article is not intended to serve as a comprehensive guide to casing.¹ Instead, this essay is the first part in a series of essays that illustrate core principles to follow when you are putting together your case. 

This first entry into this miniseries will focus on the phrase: Think backwards; think forwards. The rest of this essay will expound upon what this means and how to apply it to your case writing. 

Before we get into the specifics, I want to present this excellent quote from Anthony Trufanov in Part 3 of his (excellent) series Elevating the AFF (which I shouted out in the previous entry in this series): “While the 1AC is one of the first things I think about, it is also one of the last things I finish.” Why might this be the case? Read on to find out! 

Think Backwards; Think Forwards

Amazon is a company that (rightfully) receives lots of criticism (from abusing workers to destroying the environment to destroying competition in the market to so much else), but one thing that can’t be denied is how successful they’ve been at dominating the entire economy. How did they get to be so dominant? Part of it is certainly engaging in unethical business practices, but part of it is explained in Colin Bryar and Bill Carr’s new book Working Backwards: Insights, Stories and Secrets from Inside Amazon. As the name implies, one of the key lessons that Amazon followed was to work backwards—they would start with what they envisioned the finished product would look like before moving onto anything else. As Jonathan Knee writes, “The idea is to start with the desired customer experience when designing new products, going so far as to draft ‘a press release that literally announces the product as if it were ready to launch and an FAQ anticipating the tough questions.’” 

Why would Amazon follow this strategy of working backwards? How did that advantage them relative to their competitors? Because Amazon knew what they wanted and ruthlessly carried out whatever plan that got them where they wanted to be. No more wasted time fiddling around on projects that would be nothing more than distractions or diverted resources. No more second-guessing about whether they could accomplish what they set out to do. They had a vision and did whatever it took to achieve it (for better or worse). 

Again, Amazon is not a company that I would frequently champion, but at least the underlying part of the strategy—to work backwards—is undeniably effective and something we can learn something from. 

I think this is the single most common piece of advice that I give to students trying to write cases. In fact, you can hear me talk about it as far back as 2017, when I talk about this exact idea in my Debating Traditionally series (and, as always, I would strongly suggest watching that series as it summarizes the vast majority of my core thoughts on traditional and lay debate in one easy series). 

So, what does this phrase—think backwards; think forwards—mean? While I have yet to settle on any precise definition, the core idea can be summarized as follows: 

• Thinking backwards: What does the winning final rebuttal speech sound like? 
• Thinking forwards: What does it take to get there? 

In other words, I tend to think backwards from the final rebuttal speech and I tend to think forwards to the first rebuttal speech. I have found that this heuristic is among the better ways that I’ve discovered for beginning to introduce the idea of strategic thinking for most debaters. 

Let’s start with considering this advice from the affirmative side and what this advice would look like practically before looking at it from the perspective of the negative. 

Thinking Backwards

First, what is the most important affirmative speech? It clearly can’t be the affirmative constructive speech. No one wins for reading a good case—you can only win if you successfully prove the resolution is true throughout the debate. The fact that novices can read the same cases as varsity debaters and consistently lose (and that varsity debaters can read cases written by novices and consistently win) should make this abundantly clear. 

Yet, despite the fact that the affirmative constructive speech is obviously not the most important speech in the debate, so many debaters invest disproportionate time into casing and not nearly enough time into other important skills and content areas needed to win tougher debates. In other words, what is the value of writing a good case if you can’t successfully extend or defend it in the subsequent rebuttal speeches? True, a good case is what sets up subsequent speeches for success, but that hardly demonstrates anything beyond the fact that the affirmative constructive speech can rarely win or lose the debate on its own. 

Ok, if the most important affirmative speech isn’t the affirmative constructive speech, then surely it’s the dreaded first affirmative rebuttal or 1AR. This, I think, is a far more reasonable answer and I could see a case for it being the most important. It is, after all, an incredibly difficult speech (and is a speech that should definitely be lengthened to five minutes instead of the paltry four nowadays) to give and many debates are lost after the 1AR—if the 1AR improperly answers an entire negative contention or drops a takeout to the whole affirmative case, it’s pretty difficult to recover from that tactical blunder. If the 1AR is the speech that most often is the most proximate cause for lost affirmative rounds (and, in Part 3 of my Debating Traditionally series, I make the case for why I think the affirmative should lose the vast majority of rounds against otherwise equally matched opponents solely due to the difficulty of the 1AR), then I think it could reasonably be considered the most important affirmative speech. 

However, even the 1AR—scary as it might be—isn’t the most important speech, at least not in my view. Why not? While this blog post from Debate Drills explains does describe the 1AR as the most important speech (a view I obviously lightly disagree with), I think it does a good job of summarizing what I would take to be a set of strong reasons: 

First, it should always think from the 2AR backwards. The debate is never won in the 1AR; what matters is delivering a killer 2AR. The 1AR, although the most important speech (by nature of how hard it is), does not win the debate – it just sets up the 2AR. As a result, every argument in the 1AR should be purposive – don’t just make arguments to make them. An argument needs to contribute to a winning 2AR (whether by being an argument you’ll directly go for in the 2AR or by being an argument that you won’t extend but that wastes the opponent’s time) (emphasis mine).

This strikes me as one of the more succinct summaries of what the purpose of the 1AR is—it is just about setting up a winning 2AR. 

So, which speech, in my view, is ultimately the most important? The second affirmative rebuttal or 2AR! It’s the only speech that can win the debate—every other speech can really only lose you debates. You don’t win for reading a cool case; you don’t win for giving a solid 1AR. You win if you persuade the judge that the resolution is more likely true than false in the 2AR. 

Of course, that is easier done if the other speeches are good (hence why we’ll discuss them shortly), but I think it’s important to recognize that the value of the other two speeches lies primarily in how well they set up a winning 2AR. It doesn’t matter how good the pass was if you miss the dunk; it doesn’t matter how good the throw was if you trip before the touchdown (insert other strained sports analogy here).  

What I generally recommend debaters do is think about the “truest” feeling argument on the topic. By this, I don’t necessarily mean picking the argument that necessarily has the most academic support or the most plausible syllogism (since those are sometimes too convoluted to effectively sell to a lay audience). 

What I mean is that you should find the argument that resonates well with audiences because they feel that it’s a true argument. It’s the argument that someone hears and goes, “Yeah, that just makes sense,” or, “Oh, yeah, that’s obviously true.” That’s the type of argument we’re generally after—the one that feels true at a gut level. Obviously, there are limitations on this approach—don’t pick arguments that the negative is very likely to turn or that are blatantly false upon after just a brief examination. But instead pick the argument that you think stands the best chance of winning a debate in front of a wide variety of judges. 

Here are some of the questions I might ask a student as they were picking their “winning” 2AR argument: 

• Is the argument intuitive enough that most judges won’t immediately reject it out of hand? If not, I would consider a different argument. 
• Does the argument have adequate support in the scholarly literature? If not, it is likely because the chosen argument isn’t taken seriously by experts due to some obvious flaw with it. 
• Is the argument easily explainable in the context of time-crunched debate speech? If not, then the argument may not be worth making because you won’t have time to do anything other than extend your argument. 
• Is the argument easily refuted, e.g., are there obvious logical fallacies or strong negative responses? If yes, consider picking something more resistant to attack. (One caveat: Obviously, most stock affirmative arguments will be heavily criticized in the relevant literature—don’t let that deter you. The operative word is strong negative responses—not all negative responses are created equal. Just because an argument is criticized doesn’t mean it’s not a good one or that the criticisms are any good.)
• Is it strong enough to outweigh common negative arguments? If not, then winning the argument won’t matter as the negative’s offense will outweigh yours. 

Once you have selected an argument that roughly fits the criteria laid out above, I would think about how that integrates into the overall ballot story that you want to sell. As cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham notes in his book Why Don’t Students Like School: “The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories--so much so that psychologists sometimes refer to stories as "psychologically privileged," meaning that they are treated differently in memory than other types of material.” 

This should be no groundbreaking insight—we remember stories far better than isolated facts. Consequently, there should be an emphasis on telling a good ballot story when thinking backwards. The question I would ask myself when writing a case is, “Why is the ultimate story you want to tell at the end of the debate?” 

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received on this front came from my high school debate coach who would often advise me that: 

The last 30 seconds of your final rebuttal should be verbatim what the judge writes for their RFD. 

This has been among the most important lessons that has stuck with me since high school and one of the best pieces of coaching advice that I can impart. While it is obviously never going to be the case that the RFD is a transcript of your final rebuttal, I think this serves as a shining North Star—a desirable goal to work towards. 

A ballot story, here defined as what you intend to be the written reason for decision for why the judge voted for you, is so important and powerful for three reasons: 

First, as Willingham notes, “stories are easy to comprehend, because the audience knows the structure, which helps to interpret the action. For example, the audience knows that events don't happen randomly in stories. There must be a causal connection, so if the cause is not immediately apparent, the audience will think carefully about the previous action to try to connect it to present events.” In the context of writing a good ballot story, a good ballot story will help the judge understand the connection between the various arguments in the debate. This helps judges understand which arguments matter more and how you still win even in the face of counterarguments. 

Second, Willingham writes, “stories are interesting. Reading researchers have conducted experiments in which people read lots of different types of material and rate each for how interesting it is. Stories are consistently rated as more interesting than other formats (for example, expository prose), even if the same information is presented.” This works especially well if your speeches are laden with ethos, pathos, and logos, where the arguments are made more interesting by weaving them together into a ballot story that is more engaging than just hearing facts alone. 

Third, Willingham concludes, “stories are easy to remember. There are at least two contributing factors here. Because comprehending stories requires lots of medium-difficulty inferences, you must think about the story's meaning throughout.” Ballot stories help resolve so much of the messiness of rounds by providing something that the judge can easily remember. 

In my opinion, only when a good ballot story has been established should the case writing begin. 

Let’s use the current Lincoln-Douglas topic—Resolved: The United States ought to implement a single-payer universal healthcare system—as an example. 

Imagine you are affirmative on this topic, defending the value of single-payer. After having done copious amounts of research such that you are familiar with the core arguments on the topic, you realize that the affirmative is largely confined to a limited set of arguments, e.g., concerns about unequal access to healthcare, arguments about reining in the high costs of healthcare in the United States, and advantages about pandemic prevention. 

The first question I would ask myself before I put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) would be: “What do I want the first and last 30 seconds of my 2AR to sound like?” If I was strongly persuaded by the arguments about the potential of single-payer healthcare to save over 68,000 lives each year, I would want to design my case so that it set up a 2AR that could write a ballot story for why single-payer was the best way to save tens of thousands of lives each year. Only when I was satisfied with that ballot story would I begin writing my case. 

To conclude this segment, Jake Nebel summarizes this view in his essay “Positional Debating” (available here): 

Before writing your outline, ask yourself what you want your final rebuttal to sound like. Ask yourself what you don’t want your opponent’s final rebuttal to sound like. Now write the position with an eye to these final rebuttals. If you do this right, then you should have similar voting issues in every debate. This will make your final rebuttals significantly better because you’ll be practicing the same stories every round (emphasis mine). 

Personally, I found the entire essay on positional debating to be one of the more important ones that I have read in debate. It changed my entire outlook on how to approach casing and I think you’ll find it valuable as well. 

Thinking Forwards

So far, we’ve talked about what the end goal is. We’ve basically decided on the destination for our roadtrip. However, we still need to ask how we’re going to get there. This leads us nicely to the idea of thinking forwards—asking how we get to that winning 2AR that we’ve envisioned. 

In a debate, the negative is going to do their best to prevent you from reaching your final destination. They will raise objections to your arguments and present their own case for why your proposal or advocacy is bad. You need to plan out how you’re going to deal with the inevitable roadblocks the negative will try and raise. This requires thinking forwards. 

On most topics, there really aren’t that many arguments on both sides. This makes it fairly easy for debaters to anticipate the likely arguments and objections that the other side will make. For example, on this single-payer topic, there is one common negative argument you can expect to encounter in the vast majority of your rounds—wait times. Try as you might to escape it, the negative is probably going to read the wait times argument in nearly every single round. And smart negative debaters will likely not read the argument as a standalone negative contention but as a turn to the affirmative case. 

If this is likely to be an incredibly common response that directly interacts with arguments in your affirmative case, you should anticipate such a response and build-in warrants to answer this argument. 

My general rule of thumb is as follows: 

The affirmative should not need to make a single new argument in the 1AR against the three most common negative arguments against each contention. 

This means that if the negative makes the most common responses to your case, you have already anticipated this and have built-in something into your case designed to directly take out that common response. 

Returning to the wait times example, I suspect I will see many debates where the 1AR will read one, two, or even three pieces of evidence to answer the wait times argument. This is a mistake. The 1AR is a time-crunched speech that needs to maximize the value of every single second. The wait times argument is something that should be priced in (a fancy way of saying “anticipated”) because it’s something that directly interacts with many of the common affirmative arguments. 

That means at least one or two pieces of evidence in the affirmative case should have something to say about wait times, e.g., how single-payer still saves lives even assuming wait times; how wait times in the US are already high, especially for those without insurance now; or about how carefully designed and well-funded single-payer systems can avoid wait times. Given how weak the wait times argument is (at least to me), it is an argument that should be easily dispatched without having to make a single new argument in the 1AR—the 1AR merely needs to extend what was already written in the affirmative case to defeat this objection. 

Note that this does not mean that the affirmative case should be shoved full of preempts to every potential negative case. The affirmative should not, for example, read a contention called “preempts” and read one piece of evidence to answer the innovation argument, another piece of evidence to answer economic objections against single-payer, and another piece of evidence to answer a potential “public option” counterplan. This would be foolish. The negative may not read those contentions, so you would be directly preempting nothing. 

What this does mean is that when you are designing your case, you should aim to find arguments and evidence that are multi-functional. By this, I mean that you should aim to find arguments that and evidence that do more than one thing—maybe one piece of evidence is both a strong warrant for how single-payer saves lives and also a direct preempt to the wait times argument. Your case should still primarily aim to present a cogent story in favor of single-payer, not merely try and preempt everything the negative might potentially say. 

The Negative

A lot of the same advice mentioned above also applies to the negative. The negative case should be designed with a winning second negative rebuttal in mind (from here on out, I will refer to the second negative speech—the six minute one—as the second negative rebuttal or 2NR, although I think that reasonable substitutes would be negative rebuttal, NR, or 2N). 

The only major difference is that the negative only has two speeches compared to the affirmative’s three speeches. So, what is the negative thinking forwards to? 

One common error I see in many debaters is that they will excessively cross-apply arguments from the negative case as responses to the affirmative case. 

For example, one extremely common negative argument on the current LD topic is that single-payer would lead to increased rationing of medical services via longer wait times. While this is a solid negative argument (and should be made as a response to most affirmative cases), it would be a mistake to overly rely on this single argument to win (as most of the affirmative responses to this argument are quite compelling). 

Yet, so many negative debaters will read a negative case with a contention about wait times (not a mistake in and of itself) and not have a single response to the affirmative case that isn’t predicated on wait times. It was extremely common for debaters at camp to get to an affirmative contention and the only thing they would say was, “On my opponent’s first contention about access, cross-apply my negative contention about wait times—an increase in the number of insured people means nothing if people have access to equally long wait times that ensure no one, including the least well off, actually receives timely, quality care.” 

While the sentiment of the argument is nice (in more advanced terms, we might call this a turns case argument, where the truth of some offensive argument actually worsens some issue identified by the opponent) because more debaters should do turns case analysis, this is woefully insufficient to constitute a winning negative strategy. 

Why? The one advantage that the negative is guaranteed is an extreme time imbalance. The vast majority of topics slant in favor of the affirmative (and some aren’t slanted but steep cliffs like the public health emergencies topic from the 2021 NSDA National Tournament). The negative generally cannot hope to win via substantive advantage alone (although there are some topics that lean negative). Rather, the negative wins by applying copious amounts of pressure to the affirmative from a variety of angles in the hopes that the affirmative collapses underneath the onslaught of arguments. 

The very idea of “cross-applying” arguments as the negative is antithetical to this goal. It functionally forfeits speech time. It is the equivalent of unilaterally disarming yourself of the best tool available to the negative—time. 

Think about it. The 1AR is a difficult speech because it has to respond to seven minutes of diverse offense in just four minutes. Even assuming a 150% efficiency rate (being able to make six minutes worth of arguments in just four minutes), that still means that the affirmative should be dropping a whole minute of arguments after the 1AR. And given that most 1ARs are not 150% efficient, the 1AR should be dropping far more than a minute worth of arguments on average. 

But when the negative chooses to cross-apply an argument, they basically don’t make an argument at all. Does the affirmative suddenly need to respond to an argument twice just because it was cross-applied and thus appears in two places on the flow? No! If the affirmative defeats the argument, then there is simply nothing left. 

Similarly, if the negative reads a three minute negative case with two contentions—one about wait times and the other about medical innovation—but the only answer to the affirmative case is just cross-applying the wait times contention, then the negative has functionally only given a three speech speech. There goes the one thing that the negative had going for them—the time advantage. Now, the 1AR isn’t answering seven minutes of arguments in four minutes; it’s answering three minutes of arguments in four minutes, a far more manageable task. 

In debate jargon, we’re looking for a negative case that is external to common responses that could be levied against the affirmative case. Here, external means something that is not directly related to any other arguments presented in round. In other words, the truth (or falsity) of another major argument would not have much bearing on the truth (or falsity) of other arguments. 

For example, if the negative read a case with two contentions, one about the massive fiscal cost of single-payer healthcare and the other about the deleterious effects that single-payer would have on medical innovation writ large, then the negative could respond to the affirmative case with the argument about wait times and that would be external from the contentions in the negative case. In other words, the affirmative debater couldn’t defeat all the negative contentions with a single response. Just because single-payer might not increase wait times has very little bearing on whether it would decimate the economy or tank medical innovation. Here, the negative has diversified their offense—giving them multiple paths to victory in the 2NR. 

Now, how does this relate to thinking forward? One thing that you must consider when writing your negative case is whether the arguments in your negative case will heavily overlap with the responses that you will make against most common affirmative arguments. In other words, is the negative case external to the turns and other responses that you might make against common affirmative arguments? You want to think forward to see if you will accidentally duplicate or overlap in terms of arguments. The best negative cases are often the ones that are entirely external to other common negative arguments. 

Conclusion

To summarize, here are some of the practical takeaways you should leave with: 

1. The last 30 seconds of your final rebuttal should be verbatim what the judge writes for their RFD. 
2. Think backwards—know what the ideal winning 2AR or 2NR sounds like and write your case to set up that final rebuttal speech. Ask yourself whether the case sets up an argument that can win the debate. 
3. Think forwards—you shouldn’t need a single new piece of evidence in the subsequent rebuttals against the most common responses to your position. 
4. Don’t cross-apply as the negative—that squanders your time advantage. 

So, let’s return to the quote from Trufanov in Elevating the AFF: “While the 1AC is one of the first things I think about, it is also one of the last things I finish.” Why might you want to finish the case last? Because you shouldn’t finish writing the case until you have fully thought through the debate backwards and forwards. 

It’s not until you know exactly what you want to say in the final rebuttal speeches that you should put the finishing touches on your case. It’s not until you know exactly how you want to leverage your affirmative case against common negative positions that you should add the last cards or analytics into your case. 

This doesn’t mean that the case never needs revision, this doesn’t mean that the affirmative case is a finished project, and this doesn’t mean that the strategy can’t change. What it does mean is that you should be intentional with how you write your case. Don’t write it because it’s “cool” or because you like the idea—write the case because it will help you win debates. 

In Part 2 of this miniseries on case writing, I will talk about some other principles of case writing that I also find to be valuable.

Endnotes

[1] If you’re writing a case for the first time, I’d suggest looking at other resources (such as this one from the Wyoming Debate Roundup on how to write a PF case, this video from Debate Drills, the Introduction to Lincoln-Douglas Debate textbook from Victory Briefs Classroom, or the free Lincoln-Douglas Textbook provided by the NSDA written by Dr. Seth Halvorson & Cherian Koshy).

Back to Basics: The Counterplan in Traditional LD by Lawrence Zhou

Lawrence Zhou is currently a Fulbright Taiwan Debate Coach and Trainer and an assistant coach at Apple Valley High School. He was formerly the Director of Lincoln-Douglas Debate at the Victory Briefs Institute. 

In this article, Lawrence presents his case for why counterplans are legitimate in traditional Lincoln-Douglas settings. He briefly explains what a counterplan is, refutes some of the arguments against counterplans in traditional Lincoln-Douglas debate, and provides some links to resources that may help debaters learn more about counterplans and how to deploy them in more traditional settings. 

Updated: 8-19-2022—Updated section on NCFL rules

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Now that the 2022-2023 season is underway, I'm hoping to see an uptick in new participants (the trends suggesting that there were fewer competitors that competed more frequently were not healthy for long-term debate participation). While many series exist on how to improve at the novice and varsity level (for example, Raffi Piliero published a number of articles on Briefly that I think are worth a read), I find that the number of resources available to more traditional or JV level debaters is a little lacking.

In that spirit, I'm launching a monthly blog series here on Briefly called "Back to Basics" which will cover issues that I think are more advanced than what you might want to teach at the novice level but frequently ignored when instructing students at the second- or third-year level. There exists a number of basic skills and concepts that I think are easy to take for granted after years in this activity that are worth covering explicitly. This month, I'll be covering the logic of counterplans in more traditional circuits and releasing a second follow up article about principles of good case writing next month.

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In my recent topic analysis essay for the September/October 2022 Lincoln-Douglas topic, I launched into a mildly lengthy diatribe about why counterplans are obviously logical arguments that should be included in debate. This is a continuation of my similar rants in many of the topic analysis essays I write for Public Forum debate topics, especially as counterplans are also starting to find purchase in PF. In fact, camp director Chris Theis and several other Public Forum admins have repeatedly given an elective at camp called “Counterplans in PF” (available as a lecture as part of Victory Briefs Classroom) in which they argue that counterplans should be included in Public Forum (a take I wholeheartedly agree with). 

To those that have more familiarity with counterplans in debate, this conclusion seems banal, perhaps offensively obvious—clearly counterplans should be included in debate! However, every year that I teach at camp, I interact with a significant number of debaters from fairly conservative or traditional circuits who stress that counterplans are barred in their local circuits either formally (i.e., forbidden by the rules) or informally (i.e., the judges that populate that circuit are unlikely to be sympathetic to the introduction of counterplans and so unlikely to vote for them). 

Typically, I find the reasons proffered to be unpersuasive, relying on either false factual premises or specious reasoning that could be a textbook case of what a logical fallacy is. However, many coaches and competitors still hold the view that, for some reason or another, counterplans don’t belong in debate. While I doubt this essay will be the nail in the coffin against the many bad reasons barring counterplans in debate, I do want to summarize some of the more common arguments against counterplans and explain why I find them ultimately unpersuasive. Hopefully, this may sway a student or two reading this or at least provide the necessary ammunition to debate with others on this issue (as I find this “are counterplans legitimate or not” debate to be one of the more common ones I have with students from more traditional circuits). 

On the one hand, nothing that I say here should be that complicated or original; on the other hand, I do think many debaters from more local or traditional circuits haven’t been exposed to these arguments. Since I think that one of debate’s many values is exposing students to viewpoints that they haven’t heard or deeply considered before, I hope that even ardent opponents of counterplans can at least consider what I argue here and engage the argument on its merits before just discarding what I have to say. And to students reading this because you’re not sure if counterplans belong in debate, it’s my hope that you can use some of what’s written here to help develop your own thoughts as to what a counterplan is and why it’s a justified argument that ought to be included within all styles of debate, including traditional LD debate. 

I expect that many debaters from more traditional circuits will be familiar with the term “counterplan” but lack actual knowledge of the logic of a counterplan. In order to make my case for counterplans, it is unnecessary to know the nitty-gritty details of what a counterplan is (although I’ll provide resources at the end that should help explain what a counterplan is in greater detail); all that is needed is a basic idea of the logic behind a counterplan. 

In this essay, I want to briefly introduce what a counterplan is, why the arguments against counterplans in traditional Lincoln-Douglas debate are ultimately unpersuasive to me, and provide some links to resources that may help debaters learn more about counterplans and how to deploy them in more traditional settings. 

What is a Counterplan? 

There are a variety of definitions of counterplans floating around out there. Many of those definitions merely aim to capture what a counterplan is often trying to do (e.g., many definitions of counterplan revolve around the idea that they are trying to “solve the AFF case”¹). For example, the NSDA textbook on policy debate Debate 101: Everything You Need to Know About Policy Debate: You Learned Here by Bill and Will Smelko says: 

What is a COUNTERPLAN? Easy, a COUNTERPLAN is a proposal offered by the negative that solves the significant problem(s) that the affirmative claims to exist and that creates some “net benefit” making it better at the end of the debate if the judge votes negative and prefers the COUNTERPLAN to the affirmative plan. Understanding how to debate COUNTERPLANS is immensely more complicated than the simplicity of the term’s definition.

Debate 101, p. 23

Ignoring the policy-specific jargon of “plan” and “net benefit” for a second, the basic logic here is that the negative is allowed to propose a change just like the affirmative is allowed to propose a change (that change being the one indicated in the resolution). The reasoning for this? That it would be unfair for the affirmative to be able to solve some of the harms that exist now (e.g., the lack of access to healthcare on this current single-payer topic) while the negative is restricted from also solving this harm. 

This, I think, is the wrong way to think about counterplans at their core.² These definitions don’t really attempt to get at what a counterplan is (although these definitions are far better than some of the misconceptions surrounding counterplans, see here for a particularly egregious example of an article from the NCFCA that clearly doesn't understand counterplans). And I think that the only real basis for allowing or disallowing a type of argument is simply whether the argument itself is logical, not extraneous considerations of “fairness” or “education” (for what is more fair and educational than considering logical arguments in the first place?). 

So, what is a counterplan really? 

At its core, a counterplan is nothing more than an opportunity cost. The concept of an opportunity cost might be a foreign one, so it’s worth explaining what an opportunity cost is. If you Google the definition, it’s defined as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.” 

We consider opportunity costs all the time—when we decide whether to go out to eat, whether to study, whether to make that impulse shopping purchase, etc. Each and every time, we’re considering whether we’re giving up something of greater value when we make a decision. Should you go out to eat if you could stay home and cook instead? Should you study now or go hang out with your friends? Should you make that impulse shopping purchase or save for something else later? 

Each of these decisions requires you to weigh the relevant opportunity costs—is the potential gain of choosing another alternative (whether it be staying home to cook, hanging out with friends, or saving your money) greater than the gain of choosing the original option? If the answer is yes, then don’t take that course of action! If you think it’s better to stay home to cook than go out to eat, better to hang out with friends than to study, or to save your money than spend it all now, then you should not go out to eat, study, or make that impulse purchase. 

Notice how the concept of an opportunity cost—an idea central to the entire field of economics—is nothing more than a logical argument against taking one course of action. It is not some artificial debate construct, but rather a logical extension of how we ought to make decisions. 

If that still doesn’t make it super obvious what a counterplan is, maybe this example will help: 

Larry is considering what to have for lunch today. He only has an hour to get lunch before he needs to be back in the classroom teaching. There are two options nearby: a Chipotle a block to the east and an In-N-Out Burger a block to the west. While Chipotle has guac and burritos, In-N-Out has animal style fries and the double-double burger. Chipotle would be more expensive, but the In-N-Out line is also substantially longer. Where should Larry go eat lunch? Should Larry eat at the Chipotle or the In-N-Out? 

Typically, people might make a pros-and-cons list to decide where to eat. Weigh up the pros and cons for each restaurant and consider which one wins! This is similar to how a debater might propose an argument in a debate round. Suppose Debater Ashley is tasked with arguing in favor of Chipotle. They argue that Chipotle is a good option because Larry is currently hungry and needs food. 

Debater Nathan might choose to respond by arguing that Chipotle is bad because it costs money or because of the risk of getting a food borne illness from the establishment. Ashley points out that the cost of Chipotle isn’t a lot, that the risk of getting sick from Chipotle isn’t very high, and that both costs are acceptable because of how hungry Larry is. Nathan seems to be in a losing position. 

In a typical traditional LD debate round, this is Nathan’s only available strategy—because he is not allowed to advocate for alternatives, Nathan can only argue that eating at Chipotle is worse for Larry than not eating at all, a losing strategy because, in general, the importance of hunger will outweigh the loss of a few dollars or the small risk of getting food poisoning. 

However, in the real world, it seems obvious that Nathan has a better set of arguments available—the counterplan to go to In-N-Out instead! Nathan points out that Ashley has only argued that Chipotle is good because Larry is currently hungry and needs food. Nathan agrees to the fact that Larry is hungry, but correctly identifies that such a fact isn’t a strong reason to get Chipotle—why not just go eat somewhere else instead? Why does it have to be Chipotle? 

In fact, Nathan argues, we should go to In-N-Out because Larry really likes animal style fries and that’s something Chipotle doesn’t have (sidenote: the animal style fries are overrated, just like In-N-Out is). Here, Nathan has given a strong argument against going to Chipotle—Larry can only choose one option, and since both options solve the hunger problem, In-N-Out is the clear choice because it also has animal style fries. 

In other words, Nathan has pointed out an opportunity cost—if Larry had chosen to go to Chipotle, he would’ve missed out on the potential benefits of going to In-N-Out, namely missing out on those animal style fries. Here, the opportunity to eat animal style fries represents the opportunity cost to eating at Chipotle. Consequently, it should be easy to understand why a counterplan is a logical argument for the negative to advance. All it’s doing is pointing out one of the fundamental parts of economics—the consideration of opportunity costs. It should be obvious that pointing out that In-N-Out is superior is a reason to negate Ashley’s proposal of going to Chipotle. 

If you’re still a little confused about the logic of opportunity costs, I’d watch this video from Marginal Revolution, this one from Khan Academy, or this one from EconClips. There are also some explainer articles like this one from Econlib, this one from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and trusty ole Wikipedia. 

This is as real-world and logical as it gets. Take the central debate on this single-payer universal healthcare topic. It’s not enough that the affirmative demonstrates that single-payer is one way to achieve universal coverage—the affirmative should prove that single-payer is superior to the existence of alternative health systems. For example, one of the core debates in the Democratic primaries was between more “progressive” healthcare proposals like Medicare For All and more “moderate” healthcare proposals like expanding Obamacare. 

Just like it would silly to force the Nathan to negate the “go to Chipotle” AFF just with contentions about why Chipotle is bad in a vacuum (e.g., it costs money or it might make you sick)—an unwinnable strategy because those arguments probably don’t outweigh the importance of hunger, it is silly to force negative debaters in traditional LD to negate the single-payer good AFF with just reasons why single-payer is bad in a vacuum—also probably an unwinnable strategy given just how bad our current healthcare system is. Just like it would be silly to say that Nathan advocating to go to In-N-Out is somehow illogical or unfair in a debate about whether Larry should eat at Chipotle, it would be silly to say negative debaters advocating for the public option is somehow illogical or unfair in a debate about healthcare reform. 

In summary, counterplans are not some artificial debate convention, but are instead arguments that naturally follow from the logic of opportunity costs. Counterplans merely aim to demonstrate that the opportunity cost of affirming is greater than the gain of affirming. 

Why Should Counterplans Be Allowed? 

The threshold to meet to bar an argument should be pretty high. In general, I’m quite sympathetic to the view that the only legitimate constraint on what arguments can be introduced in debate is merely whether they meet some baseline standard of logical coherence. One would need to think the argument is so illogical or ridiculous that teaching it would be antithetical to the pedagogical goals of the activity or just so blatantly offensive (e.g., racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.) that barring it would be needed to protect the safety of students in the activity. I can’t really think of very many other conditions that would justify flatly barring a type of argument otherwise—that, I think, sets the threshold for barring counterplans in debate pretty high. Unless the opponent of counterplans can demonstrate that counterplans are so obviously bad for the educational value of the activity (and even that wouldn’t be particularly convincing considering the number of patently false arguments that win debates nowadays) or student safety, I think the default rests strongly with their inclusion rather than their exclusion. 

Additionally, arguments need not be ruled out on theoretical grounds—they can be dealt with merely by pointing out the absence of a warrant. For example, if one were deeply persuaded by the objection that counterplans simply don’t negate the resolution, I would not see this as a strong reason to bar counterplans generally—I would only see this as a reason why the affirmative debater should advance that objection in a rebuttal speech. For reasons elaborated upon by debate coach Jacob Nails in “Two Dogmas of Fiat,” I think it’s silly to appeal to the “rules of debate” to bar certain arguments when simply pointing out why the argument is substantively weak would suffice. Similarly, if one thought that counterplans were merely bad arguments, I wouldn’t think of that as a strong reason to prohibit counterplans wholesale—just a great response for the affirmative debater to make in the rebuttal speech. 

Consequently, I think the case for counterplans in traditional LD is fairly straightforward—they are logical arguments that negate the resolution and so they ought to be included. I would think that the opponent of counterplans in traditional LD has a high bar to clear—whatever the downside to introducing counterplans in traditional LD is, it has to be important enough to meet the threshold of barring an argument. 

Therefore, I won’t lay out a particularly active case for including counterplans—I don’t think the counterplan needs an active case for its inclusion anymore than I think that the introduction of quoted evidence in debate needs an active case for its inclusion. Rather, I turn now to deflating some of the most common objections to incorporating counterplans in traditional LD circuits. 

What are the Objections to Counterplans? 

Objection 1: Counterplans Violate NSDA Rules

One of the most common charges levied against reading counterplans in traditional settings is that they violate the rules laid out by the National Speech and Debate Association. While it is true that back when the NSDA was still the NFL (National Forensic League), there were some versions of the rules that did technically prohibit the use of counterplans in Lincoln-Douglas debate. However, this rule no longer exists, rendering this objection patently false. 

If you go to the most recent edition of the NSDA’s High School Unified Manual (I’m writing this essay on August 16, 2022, so I am utilizing the version updated on June 2, 2022) and search for the term “counterplan,” you’ll notice that it only shows up three times, all on page 25. For convenience, I’ve posted the entire paragraph in which the results appear (and feel free to check me on this): 

Plans/Counterplans: In Public Forum Debate, the Association defines a plan or counterplan as a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation. Neither the pro or con side is permitted to offer a plan or counterplan; rather, they should offer reasoning to support a position of advocacy. Debaters may offer generalized, practical solutions. 

There are a few things to note here. First, notice that this is only in the context of Public Forum Debate, not LD. Already, the idea that reading a counterplan in LD violates some “rule” is based on some antiquated understanding of the rules of LD debate. There is simply no such prohibition on reading counterplans in LD debate. 

Second, even if these rules did somehow translate over to LD, it’s not at all clear that reading a “counterplan” would violate them. Notice that it is defined as a “formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation.” Most counterplans would not meet that threshold. 

Let’s use the current LD topic (Resolved: The United States ought to implement a single-payer universal healthcare system) as an example. I fail to see how saying something such as, “Contention 2: The public option is superior” and then reading some evidence that suggests that a public option for healthcare would be a superior version of healthcare reform would violate the rule. How would this qualify as a “formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation”?

In contrast, take a look at the full text of the Medicare For All Act of 2019 proposed by Senator Bernard Sanders. That is something that would probably violate the threshold set forth by the NSDA. Saying, “Maybe we should do something like a public option instead” certainly does not! And if it does violate that threshold, then it’s clear the affirmative would violate it too since they too specify a similar level of detail relative to the counterplan! 

Simply put, there are simply no rules set forth by the NSDA that prohibits counterplans in LD, and even if the rules did apply, “counterplans” as a general category of negative argument would not violate the rules as written. 

Objection 1a: Counterplans Violate NCFL Rules

A commenter on a thread about this article noted that the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL)—the host of NCFL Grand Nationals, generally considered one of the three major national championships in LD along with the NSDA National Tournament and the Tournament of Champions (TOC)—bars counterplans in debate. I had totally overlooked this and it turns out that on page 9 of the 2022 update of their bylaws, it does indeed prohibit plans and counterplans: 

b. Lincoln-Douglas Debate:

1) The resolution is a proposition of value, not policy. Debaters are to develop argumentation on the resolution in its entirety, based on conflicting underlying principles and values to support their positions. To that end, they are not responsible for practical applications. No plan or counterplan shall be offered by either debater. 

Putting aside the fact that I think this description is mostly nonsensical (e.g., how could one not be responsible for practical applications? That is a patently absurd view that does not align with any real philosophical work), does this description, as written, actually bar counterplans? I think not. 

To illustrate, let me just list a few of the recent NCFL Grand Nationals topics (a shockingly difficult list to construct because there appears to be no actual list of previous NCFL LD topics, hence why some are missing): 

• 2021—Resolved: The U.S. presidency ought to be decided by a national popular vote instead of the electoral college.
• 2019—Resolved: Developed nations have a moral obligation to admit people fleeing oppression.
• 2018—Resolved: Bystanders have a moral obligation to act in the face of injustice.
• 2017—Resolved: The people’s right to know ought to be valued above the government’s need for secrecy.
• 2015—Resolved: When in conflict, international actions to counter terrorism ought to take priority over national interests.
• 2014—Resolved: When in conflict, national security concerns ought to be valued above personal privacy.
• 2013—Resolved: Just societies should never deliberately initiate war.
• 2012—Resolved: The United States ought not to intervene in the political processes of other sovereign nations.
• 2011—Resolved: The United States has a moral obligation to promote just governance in developing nations.
• 2010—Resolved: That the United States government has a moral obligation to afford the same Constitutional rights to all people on United States soil.

The fact that they have not defined what a counterplan is makes it quite difficult to prohibit. As written, I think it’s clear that they conceive of counterplans solely as a potential “policy” alternative. Recall the example of Ashley and Nathan considering which establishment Larry ought to eat lunch at—it’s clear that the “counterplan” of going to In-N-Out is a logical and important counterargument against going to Chipotle while also not being a policy option. Again, if counterplans are nothing more than opportunity costs, then there is nothing that requires counterplans be policy options. All choices involve opportunity costs, counterplans merely point those out, whether they be policies or not. 

Take any of the given resolutions listed above and it’s clear why counterplans should be allowed even when it comes to questions of value not policy. For example, the 2019 topic about admitting people fleeing oppression. First, horrible topic—the negative ground basically amounts to “watching the child drown in the pond is good,” hardly a balanced topic. Second, why isn’t the negative allowed to propose a variety of alternatives to admitting people fleeing from oppression? It seems totally fair and reasonable to allow the negative to say things like, “Even if developed nations don’t have to admit people fleeing oppression, they still can help in other ways such as providing humanitarian aid or coordinating with multilateral institutions to address the issue.” The moral obligation to admit people fleeing oppression may not be quite as strong in the face of other (perhaps more effective) alternatives to address the issue at hand. 

Or take the 2013 topic about never initiating war. I think the negative should obviously be allowed to propose some conditions on which war could be initiated to help avoid common affirmative criticisms of deliberating initiating war. For example, if the affirmative had a contention about deliberating initiating war against countries without a standing army being bad, I would think it’s reasonable for the negative to say, “Hey, maybe don’t do that, but that’s not a reason to affirm because I don’t think I need to prove it’s always okay to deliberating initiate war, just that it’s okay in some limited circumstances such as to stop genocide.” 

Really, take any topic debated at NCFL Grand Nationals in the last decade and you can see that they all encourage counterplans of some sort, and—most importantly—none of those counterplans are “policies” per se. Instead, they are merely pointing out an opportunity cost to affirming, a relevant consideration in both ethics and policy making! 

Objection 2: Counterplans Are Illogical 

I admit that I truly do not understand this objection, making it difficult for me to give a particularly good-faith summary of it. However, what I think people are trying to say when they make this argument is something akin to “Proving that the counterplan is good doesn’t prove the resolution is false.” 

If this is the sentiment being expressed, then I wholeheartedly agree! Demonstrating that a counterplan is good does not, by itself, demonstrate that the resolution is false (or that whatever the affirmative proposals is undesirable). For example, if the negative proposed a counterplan of “The United States should end world hunger” on this healthcare topic, I think the affirmative should (correctly) point out that the counterplan is not a persuasive reason to negate the resolution. In other words, the affirmative should point out that the counterplan isn’t a real “opportunity cost” (in debate jargon, we might say that the affirmative debater should “permute” or “perm” the counterplan, arguing that the United States could both implement single-payer and end world hunger). 

Consequently, while we agree on the problem—counterplans that aren’t competitive—we clearly disagree on the resolution. My solution is simple—the affirmative should point out that many counterplans simply are not an opportunity cost! The other solution is far more strained—barring an entire category of arguments that overlooks that many counterplans are, in fact, logical opportunity costs. 

For example, if the negative argues that a single-payer healthcare system would be too expensive and that a public option would similarly ensure universal coverage at a fraction of the cost, that would obviously be an opportunity cost to single-payer! You can’t really have a single-payer healthcare system that eliminates private insurance while simultaneously endorsing a healthcare system that largely preserves private insurance (in debate jargon, we might call this counterplan “mutually exclusive” with the affirmative). 

If the negative demonstrates that a public option is indeed superior to a single-payer system, that would seem to entail that we ought not implement a single-payer healthcare system because the opportunity cost of a public option outweighs the potential gain of a single-payer system. In the same way that proving that In-N-Out is a better place to eat lunch than Chipotle would be a good reason to not eat lunch at Chipotle, this would prove that we ought not implement single-payer. 

Consequently, it seems far more illogical to artificially bracket off considerations of alternatives, especially within the context of healthcare where the main debate is not about single-payer versus no single-payer in a vacuum, but rather about whether single-payer is the best proposed option compared to alternatives like a public option or multi-payer system. 

In summary, I think this objection rests on a conflation of substantive versus theoretical challenges to counterplans. This is the equivalent of saying that because some negative frameworks don’t really disagree with the affirmative framework, we should ban the negative from reading frameworks—this is patently absurd. Clearly, the solution is that we encourage the negative to pick better frameworks that actually disagree with the affirmative’s framework. Similarly, the solution is that we encourage negative debaters to pick counterplans that actually demonstrate a relevant opportunity cost, not to ban them wholesale. 

While many counterplans do not present actual opportunity costs to affirming, that is a reason those are bad counterplans, not a reason why counterplans are bad. 

Objection 3: Counterplans Turn LD Into Policy

It seems to me that many of the coaches and judges that seem to despise counterplans are ones that are (rightfully) concerned about devolution of LD into one-on-one policy debate. Given that the language of a “counterplan” itself already sounds suspiciously like the domain of policy debate, I can sympathize with this concern. As much as I think that policy debate has immense educational value to offer (e.g., see Becca Rothfeld’s piece here, my piece here, or this study here), I also recognize that other debate styles teach valuable skills (e.g., Lincoln-Douglas represents a particularly unique avenue to teach philosophy). I do not want to see all debate flattened into policy debate, especially because the barriers to entry for policy debate remain largely inaccessible for many students across the country. 

For now, I’ll separate out the two concerns—I’ll tackle whether the introduction of counterplans does actually trade off with other forms of education such as philosophical debate later. For now, I’ll address the more surface level concern that counterplans make LD into policy. 

Ultimately, I think this objection is nothing more than guilt by association. Policy debate also has norms of reading evidence and doing research—is it now the case that is also bad? This is simply throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is incumbent upon the critic of counterplans to demonstrate something uniquely bad with counterplans themselves rather than trying to handwave them away by saying the words “policy, scary.” I am not the biggest fan of policy-style debating myself (do students really need to know how to comprehend someone spreading at 450 wpm to gain real-world skills?). However, I am a big fan of logical arguments and this objection simply isn’t one. 

How does the introduction of counterplans lead to more “policy-style” debating? Why would this necessarily encourage debaters to start doing silly things like spreading, introducing technically complex arguments like topicality, or reading kritiks? I simply don’t see how this would be the case. It’s not like arguing about a counterplan requires immense debate jargon—it merely requires the negative to logically explain why a counterplan presents a valid opportunity cost. Most real-world debates have counterplans because most real-world discussions recognize that you can’t consider proposals in a vacuum—you have to weigh proposals against each other! Just like the public can broadly understand why politicians debate between different tax reform or health care proposals, so too can the public broadly understand why the negative is saying that some alternative course of action is preferable to the one that the affirmative proposed. 

Objection 4: Counterplans Undermine Philosophical Debating

Similar to the above objection, opponents of counterplans occasionally argue that one reason to bar counterplans is that they trade off with debating broad philosophical principles. By allowing the negative to focus on more nuanced policy questions, that undercuts the importance of developing well-justified philosophical arguments in LD. 

I am quite a fan of philosophy in LD personally (hence why fellow Apple Valley debate coach Nick Smith and I authored a course on philosophy in debate for the NSDA) and I’m also quite a fan of debating the resolution as a general principle (as it was written!). However, as much as I also bemoan the decline of philosophical debating in LD, I don’t find this argument all that persuasive even if it was afforded its full weight. 

First, I largely think that the best way to capture the educational value of debate is to simply debate the resolution. Some topics are going to privilege more principled philosophical debate while some topics will be more favorable for debates that are largely empirical in nature. So long as the community submits a decent spread of topic areas (and the topic committee continues to seek diversity in topic areas in their finalized public list), I think we’ll be fine! 

As debate coach and now Professor of Philosophy Jake Nebel argues that, “I don’t really care for clash-of-civilizations debates between policymakers and philosophers: I think it’s a mistake to privilege, without much empirical evidence, either abstract philosophical debate or concrete public policy debate as more fair or educational than the other. Some approaches are more germane to certain resolutions than they are to others. Most resolutions call for elements of both, but the balance depends on precise aspects of wording.” 

I am inclined to agree—I think it’s a mistake to artificially bracket off one type of education as somehow categorically more valuable than others. Some topics will naturally lend themselves to interesting and literature-based debates about alternatives (e.g., this topic about single-payer) while others naturally draw from a much more philosophical literature base. For example, I think something has gone horribly awry if debaters leave this topic unaware of the differences of single-payer healthcare systems compared to other models of healthcare (I would struggle to think of any philosopher writing on the issue of ethics in healthcare who thought it was fine to simply jettison such concerns from consideration). 

Second, I’m not convinced any such trade off exists. For instance, many debaters who do policy-style debating in LD are actually quite familiar with the intricacies of moral and political philosophy. I’d want to see some empirical evidence that actually validates this trade off hypothesis; otherwise, I have equally strong evidence that the trade off doesn’t exist. 

Third, I could easily see counterplans as facilitating more in-depth philosophical debating. One common affirmative case I saw on this topic was largely Rawlsian in nature. I think the best version of this affirmative case suggested that a right to healthcare emerged from a consideration of the equal liberty principle. However, many affirmative cases largely focused their contentions around the difference principle and the more egalitarian nature of Rawls’ theory, pointing out that access to healthcare is unequal and largely divided along lines of class and race. The weakness of this approach is that merely focusing on the importance of equal and universal access doesn’t provide a strong reason in favor of single-payer healthcare—it just emphasizes the importance of universal coverage which could be achieved in a myriad of ways, e.g., through a public option, regulated market system, or multi-payer system. 

However, in many traditional circuits where counterplans are banned, the affirmative doesn’t need to develop a particularly rigorous defense of the mechanism of single-payer because the negative cannot propose alternative methods to reach universal coverage via a different mechanism. Consequently, this actually worsens the quality of philosophical debating because the affirmative never had to find a good philosophical argument in favor of single-payer beyond the obvious ones about equality. However, if the negative were allowed access to counterplans, that would force the affirmative to be more detail-oriented about their philosophical arguments and encourage them to spend a little more time digging through actual philosophy texts that provide more nuanced arguments. Affirmative debaters would finally have an incentive to pick the more interesting warrants out of their philosophical theory to explain the more nuanced arguments in favor of single-payer specifically. 

Ultimately, I sympathize with this concern, but find it to be largely persuasive enough to scale up to the point of prohibiting counterplans. 

Objection 4a: “Opportunity Cost” Logic Necessarily Undermines Philosophical Debating

I think a similar sentiment is shared when people argue that the term “opportunity costs” is itself already biased in favor of utilitarian ethics and away from non-consequentialist considerations. I think this is incorrect. Even non-utilitarian philosophers consider opportunity costs all the time. How could one even debate about questions in practical ethics without considering opportunity costs? How could any philosopher debate about what “ought” to be done if they arbitrarily disregarded all considerations of opportunity costs? 

One key thing to note here is that “costs” is a broad term, not to be conflated with the more straight-forward usage of “costs” purely in monetary terms. In fact, the whole point of framework in LD is just to identify what counts as a relevant “cost” according to different ethical theories. For example, libertarians emphasize harms to liberty as more “costly” than committed egalitarians who find patterns of inequality to be more “costly.” 

This objection turns out to be nothing more than an equivocation about the term “costs.” 

Objection 4b: Counterplans Detract From General Principle Debating

Similar to the above objection, this version suggests that the introduction of counterplans will force debates into questions about nitty-gritty details at the expense of debating about the resolution as a general principle. 

I think many of the responses I laid out previously apply here. I have no reason to think that the type of thing we’re supposed to be debating is anything other than what’s determined by the topic literature, I’d like to see some empirical evidence of this, and I think that debating about counterplans is often the best way to capture meaningful debates about the general principle. 

To elaborate on the last point, given that the core point of disagreement between two sides on a topic is often not about the existence of a problem but rather about the appropriate solution, it seems odd to artificially bracket off literature-based general principle debates about the best solution to a problem. It seems to make debating about the topic as a general principle more shallow and less nuanced. 

Besides, you can debate about the topic as a general principle against counterplans because you have to debate about the general features of single-payer that make it desirable compared to different healthcare reforms. And you can debate about the topic in the realm of nitty-gritty policy details without counterplans (and many traditional rounds I’ve watched have devolved into shouting matches about the funding source for the affirmative’s proposal, all without the need for counterplans). 

Summary

As I mentioned above, I think that the threshold that one would need to clear for barring an argument is pretty high—I simply don’t see how any of the objections listed gets anywhere close. Rather, I speculate that many of the opponents of counterplans are those that are relying on a few heuristics to rationalize their prior beliefs about the evil nature of counterplans.

Believe me, I’ve seen where the logic of counterplans taken to the extreme can take you (the States CP or other silly counterplans) and I have good reason to not want to end up there. That isn’t a reason not to allow the good in. Any argument can be taken to the extremes. Arguments about the political or public backlash of passing some policy have somehow morphed into nonsensical disadvantages often termed the “politics DA” (which I find to be quite silly). That’s not a reason why arguments about political or public backlash should no longer be considered. 

Counterplans can make traditional interesting and, more importantly, logical and educational. I think it would be a shame if debaters in traditional circuits never got to learn about some of the most important parts of healthcare reform. I think we would be doing students a disservice if they never considered why single-payer healthcare is a superior reform compared to a multi-payer or regulated market system. I think we would be encouraging worse quality debating if affirmative debaters did not have to develop a defense of “single-payer” as opposed to just defending that universal healthcare is good. 

How Do I Learn More About Counterplans? 

The section introducing counterplans was heavily simplified in order to make the basic idea of a counterplan understandable enough to talk about without having to reference unnecessarily advanced jargon or concepts. However, if you wish to learn more about counterplans, there are lots of resources online that can help you learn more about what counterplans are and how to use them in traditional LD settings. I’ve listed some below: 

• Victory Briefs Virtual Classroom: https://classroom.victorybriefs.com/virtual-classroom. There are a great number of lectures and lessons on counterplans and what they entail! They even have a textbook (available here) on basic policy concepts (that I helped co-author) that I think contains a pretty comprehensive introduction to a lot of the logic of policy debate arguments. 
• Intro to Plans and CPs: https://youtu.be/D4fK6-BqCzY. This lecture, given by Jacob Nails at the Victory Briefs Institute in 2017, is a great introduction to what a counterplan is. I have given a similar elective here, but I prefer the way that Nails explains things. 
• Debating Traditionally: https://youtu.be/dhLK7zbhi7U. In this series, I discuss a lot of my core advice for how to leverage technical skills into success in more traditional circuits. In the third part of the series, I have a brief discussion about how to deploy counterplans in more traditional settings. 
• Wyoming Debate Roundup: https://wyodebateroundup.weebly.com/blog/counterplans-101-series. This series is written by my former boss and current Director of Debate at the University of Wyoming Matt Liu. It covers a lot of the issues typically associated with counterplans, e.g., more advanced issues of competition and other theoretical issues related to the counterplan. I wouldn’t read this until I felt that I had a decent understanding of the logic of counterplans more generally; however, once you’re familiar with the basic idea, I’d read this series to start gaining more insight into the more advanced ideas associated with counterplans in debate. (However, I vehemently disagree with Liu’s take that agent counterplans are competitive because it’s not an opportunity cost for another agent to take a course of action.) 
• Digital Speech and Debate: https://www.digitalspeechanddebate.com/beginnercurriculum. This project seems wildly underutilized and contains some of the best resources out there for learning policy debate (I really think that the series “Elevating the AFF” by Anthony Trufanov is one of the best I’ve watched and I felt that I learned something out of it as a coach). 
• Dartmouth Debate Institute: https://youtu.be/ubm3bunm8lQ. The lecture, given by Anthony Trufanov, is a great introduction to counterplans. As I expressed above, I think that Trufanov is incredible and while this introduction of counterplans seems like it’s introductory level on face, don’t let that fool you—there are incredibly dense thoughts about counterplans woven throughout this lecture that leave you learning something the second or third time that you watch this. 
• The HSLD Facebook Resource Directory: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w_Qrm3LUNrDDgOzc-h7i_3UDaV3OniNN29FMk5ZI-Ek/edit?fbclid=IwAR1vGQGS-jztRdDWFWoZ6Vkn4tbXE9LNP2-U3mC0UpbXJsh3yo7q7UG8Nx4#gid=0. While I can’t vouch for everything in here, this resource directory (part of the High School LD Facebook group) contains a lot of links to useful repositories of information that could help someone learn more about counterplans. 

Endnotes

[1] For an additional example, see this introduction to counterplans in the 2008 book The Policy Debate Manual by Joe Bellon and Abhi Smith Williams: 

The Negative’s Turn to Argue for Change

Sometimes the world is messed up, and there’s just no arguing about it. For the affirmative, this can be great news (well, in a totally weird kind of way). The point is that the affirmative has a great advantage when there are terrible, indisputable problems in the world that can be solved by the affirmative plan. Sometimes these problems consist of ongoing problems that are inherent in the current system (like racism, environmental destruction, poverty, disease, and so on). Other times these problems take the form of crises that are on their way but might still be prevented by timely action (global warming or imminent nuclear conflict, for example).

When the consensus of experts is that things are (or are about to be) really bad, the affirmative can have a competitive advantage that it is hard for the negative to overcome. After all, if we are sure that the current system is causing a lot of harms, then it may be a good idea to pass the affirmative plan even if it might not be completely effective — or even if it causes some disadvantages. If the harms caused by the status quo are bad enough, then the advantages of the plan can be nearly impossible for the negative to overcome.

A long time ago, some clever negative debaters thought to themselves, “hey, it isn’t fair that the affirmative is the only team that gets to propose a plan for change! And anyway, that’s not how the real world works. If someone proposes one idea for change, another person comes up with some different idea. We don’t just debate about whether or not to act; we debate about what action to take, too.” It is because of bitter, unhappy rants like this that great progress is made. Before long, it became common for negative debaters to propose their own plans for change. These negative plans are called “counterplans.” 

The Policy Debate Manual, p. 47

[2] I also think that the Smelko and Smelko definition is incorrect because it is not the case that counterplans must necessarily solve the significant problem(s) that the affirmative claims to exist. Take a debate between going to get lunch or finishing up some debate work. It is clear that the counterplan—to finish debate work—solves none of the harms that the affirmative will identify—hunger. However, it is clear that the “finish debate work” counterplan is a legitimate counterplan that the affirmative must refute.