Debate and Forensics

What Are Debate and Forensics?

In debate, individuals or teams argue against and compete with other teams with the goal of convincing a judge or judges that they produced the best arguments. Debaters engage with the opposing team and attempt to refute the claims presented by their opponents. The topics for debates are selected before the competition begins. For example, for one type of debate, policy debate, the topic for the entire year is decided before the competition season begins. Policy debate topics have involved nuclear weapons policy, ocean exploration, military presence in foreign countries, immigration reform, and domestic surveillance. These topics are called resolutions and are written as propositions, such as “Resolved: The United States federal government should substantially curtail its domestic surveillance.” Typically, during the debate, one team, called the affirmative team, will attempt to uphold the resolution, arguing that the resolution is correct. Then, the other team, called the negative team, will attempt to disprove the resolution, refuting the affirmative’s argument in support of the resolution.

The several types of debate include Lincoln–Douglas debate, policy debate, public forum debate, and congressional debate. In Lincoln–Douglas debate, there are two participants—one on each side. Lincoln–Douglas generally involves debates about values, such as what is more important: individual liberty or the collective good. Policy debate and public forum debate both have four participants—two on each side. Because the topic for policy debate is the same throughout the year, participants in policy debate research one topic in extreme detail as they debate that topic over the course of the season. The topic for public forum changes every month, so public forum debaters research more topic areas but generally with less depth than policy debaters. These types of debate are further differentiated by the amount of time each participant has to speak. For example, the first speech in high school policy debate is 8 minutes in length, but the first speech in high school public forum debate is 4 minutes. The first speaker in a Lincoln–Douglas debate gets 6 minutes.

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