National Speech and Debate Tournament
2025
—
Des Moines,
IA/US
Matthew McGrath Paradigm
Lincoln-Douglas
Lincoln Douglas Debate Judge Philosophy
Your experience with LD Debate (check all that apply)
Current LD coach
How many years have you judged LD debate?
7
How many LD rounds have you judged this year?
11-20
What is your preferred rate of delivery?
5/91 = Slow conversational style
9 = Rapid conversation speed
Does the rate of delivery weigh heavily in your decision?
Y
Will you vote against a student solely for exceeding your preferred speed?
Y
How important is the criterion in making your decision?
It is a major factor in my evaluation
Do you feel that a value and criterion are required elements of a case?
Y
Rebuttals and Crystallization
Voting issues should be given:
Either is acceptable
The use of jargon or technical language ("extend", "cross-apply", "turn", etc.) during rebuttals:
Should be kept to a minimum
Final rebuttals should include:
Voting issues
Voting issues are:
Not necessary
How do you decide the winner of the round?
I decide who is the person who persuaded me more of their position
How necessary do you feel the use of evidence (both analytical and empirical) is in the round?
7/91 = Not necessary
9 = Always necessary
Please describe your personal note-taking during the round
I keep a rigorous flow
Additional remarks:
I am used to traditional debate rather than cases that are run in radically "progressive" styles. In my opinion, LD should be a careful weighing of values and value criteria, based on philosophical or logical foundations and not just a contest to see how many contentions you can throw on the board in the AFF construction, hoping the neg doesn't catch 1 or 2 of them because they can't understand you.
If you do not have a reasonable basis for linking your contentions to your final impacts & outcomes, your argumentation points will not hold (i.e. your outcomes must be reasonable consequences of the contentions rather than slippery slopes and not every proposal on the AFF will lead to nuclear war, mass starvation, and other ridiculous outcomes).
If you are unintelligible and I cannot understand you, I will say "clear" once. If the rapid rate persists, I will begin to dock speaker points.
With that said, across the board, I'm looking for clarity and solid reasoning as opposed to speed reading and/or "squirrel arguments" that avoid any sense of pragmatism or real-life scenarios. In VLD, I would expect the best debaters to carefully link their contentions to their value and value criteria with arguments that are grounded in the philosophy they are using for the evaluation of the resolution. I am not as concerned with evidence (although all competitors must have SOME cards for their contentions!) in weighing the winner if both sides have cards that contradict each other. I am more concerned with pragmatic analysis, thinking on one's feet to highlight their own philosophical foundations, and QUALITY of contentions.
Attempting to misuse or abuse the wording of a resolution in an absurd fashion, such as running "squirrel" cases, misses entirely the purpose of a good faith LD clash where quality or argument and analysis should always trump quantity, "spreading," and speed.
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