Rebuttals Review

Negative Rebuttal

• Responsibilities • Organization • Time • Balancing Complexity • Review •

Responsibilities: The negative shares similar responsibilities in this rebuttal as the affirmative possessed in the first rebuttal. Since this is the negative's last speech, he must make his position impenetrable to affirmative attack and demonstrate why he should win this debate. There are three major tasks that the negative must accomplish during this six minute speech:

• Rebuild any negative Direct Refutation attacks on the affirmative's position that may have been damaged during the 1AR.
• Rebuild any Negative Position arguments that were weakened by arguments presented during the 1AR.
• Summarize the debate and weighing the issues on both sides.

Once again, a debater must avoid the temptation to spend most of his time discussing one side or the other. Debaters should strive for a balance of offensive measures - attacking an opponent's position - and defensive measures - defending the negative value and position.

Organization: The negative rebuttal should follow a pattern similar to that of the first affirmative rebuttal with the following modifications:

• Dropped Issues:

During the first affirmative rebuttal, what issues did the affirmative fail to address?
What portions of their own case did the affirmative fail to discuss?
What negative attacks did the affirmative fail to address?

• Affirmative Representativeness

In what ways did the affirmative inadequately address issues of representativeness raised during the first negative speech? What further explanation, evidence, or support is the negative required to provide in order to win the issue of representativeness?

• Counterwarrants Against the Affirmative Position

Did the affirmative provide a credible response to the counterwarrants issued during the first negative speech? What weaknesses remain and how can they be exploited?

• Value Objections Against the Affirmative Position

How did the affirmative respond to the value objections presented in the NC? What further argumentation is required to minimize the importance of their value?

• Value Implications Against the Affirmative Position

What repairs need to be effected to rebuild VI attacks weakened by the affirmative response during their 1AR? How can you further convince the judge that adopting an affirmative attitude would result in negative effects?

• Repairing Establishment of Negative Value

What additional explanation or evidence is required to ensure that my value has been firmly established?

• Repairing Establishment of Negative Criteria

Have I adequately established a foundation for my criteria and have I sufficiently linked my criteria and value.

• Repairing Application of Negative Criteria

Have I fulfilled my obligation to demonstrate the importance of accepting the value of the proposition?

In addition to the above issues, the negative debater should summarize the debate and physically weigh the opposing viewpoints:

• Point out weaknesses in the affirmative position

Briefly outline the flaws and weaknesses of the affirmative position. This is not the time for detailed evidence or explanation but a time for summarization. Your purpose should be to persuade the judge that the affirmative stands on unstable ground.

• Pointing out the strengths found in the negative's position

Again, briefly outline and explain - be persuasive.

• Explain why the issues in this round weigh in favor of the negative position - compare both positions side-by-side

• In what way does the negative position better fulfill the affirmative values?
• In what way is the negative criteria better suited to judge the proposition?
• How has the negative fulfilled its responsibility of meeting its criteria? and,
• How has the affirmative failed to meet its criteria?
• In what ways is the negative value superior to the affirmative value?
• Why should the judge adopt the negative position or attitude?

Optimizing Time: Although this speech is longer than the 1AR, the negative has more to accomplish. Therefore, time remains a vital concern. Not all issues are vital to the proposition nor should a debater distribute his time equally between every issue raised during the debate. At this point in the debate, the negative should collapse issues. Collapsing means to de-emphasize issues that have lost their importance to the outcome of the debate and to stress those issues that will be primarily responsible for winning the round. Collapsing issues in value debate is slightly different than policy debate:

1. The negative should not completely drop any single issue. An experienced affirmative debater will use issues dropped by the negative to show the judge that the negative is not convinced that its principles are correct and true.
2. Negative issues that have become severely weakened by the affirmative rebuttal must be strengthened. Negative debaters who shift their emphasis away from issues weakened by the affirmative are admitting that the affirmative has beaten them at those issues and portrays a "Since that didn't work, let me try something else." approach.
3. Issues that are irrelevant should be dismissed from the debate. Occasionally, an issue will sneak into a round that has no bearing on the proposition, e.g. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? A negative debater should simply state, "The issue of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is irrelevant to the outcome of this debate."
4. Issues that have become unimportant to the outcome of the debate should be de-emphasized. De-emphasizing an issue simply means to spend less time explaining and supporting that issue. It does not mean failing to discuss or dropping it altogether.
5. The debater should then stress the remaining issues by pointing out why they are important to the proposition and how they will affect the outcome of the round.

Balancing the Complexity: As a debater becomes more experienced, he will realize that debate is more difficult than he imagined at first - there is so much to do, so many issues to address, and so many things to think about. This debate handbook contains over eighty pages of debate junk - all of which is important to remember. A debater may be tempted to conveniently "forget" to complete certain chores within a round. In order to help a debater balance the complexity of debate, I suggest that debater work from shell outlines. During a debate round, the debater can glance at the outline, check off those items that they have already accomplished, score those tasks he has yet to accomplish, and mark those that require emphasis. Shell outlines should become a part of case construction and developed for each affirmative and negative case.

1. Negative Advantage: Most debate judges believe that the affirmative has a burden of proof - the affirmative has a burden to solidly prove that the resolution is true while the negative must only demonstrate that the affirmative has failed to meet this requirement. While burden of proof carries much more weight in policy than in value debate, it remains an advantage to the negative position. During the closing moments of his rebuttal, a negative debater may find it advantageous to point out any failure of the affirmative to meet this burden.
2. Other Concerns: Dropped issues, new issues and new evidence, and the use of evidence in a rebuttal remain a concern for the negative debater during his final speech. The affirmative speaker has one more speech remaining and may use that time to emphasize flaws in the negative's approach and method. Additionally, the importance of building a solid negative construction and completing pre-tournament work cannot be emphasized enough.

Negative Rebuttal Review: Please review the differences between the 1AR and the NC by answering the following questions:

1. What additional responsibilities must a debater fulfill during this rebuttal?
2. What does it mean to collapse issues? What does it not include?
3. What is one method a debater can use to balance the complexity of debate?
4. What is one advantage the negative side possesses?

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