Most people seem to think reasonability is a gut check- the judge has to decide if the affirmative is for the most part not abusive enough for topicality to become a voting issue. I would like to try and explain what I think reasonability actually means and situations where it can be a useful argument. For more on reasonability you can read this.
Reasonability is an alternative to the offense defense paradigm. In offense/defense each side is required to advance an offensive argument for their side,and the absence of offense is a deal breaker. Imagine a car is driving toward a cliff. A defensive argument would be something like “the car isn’t driving very fast” or “the cliff is really far away”- though these defensive arguments may mitigate or delay the impact, they leave the other side still controlling the DIRECTION of the argument- even if driving slowly toward a far off cliff, the car is still moving in that direction. An offensive argument would argue the car is actually driving away from the cliff in the opposite direction. Something like “the car is in reverse”. The offense/defense paradigm gives judges an easy way to resolve a close or messy debate, if one side has failed to advance offense they lose.
Reasonability is a counter to this offense/defense paradigm. Take topicality as an example since this is where the issue most often comes up. An offense/defense paradigm on T would argue the affirmative must have a counter interpretation and offensive justifications for why it is BETTER than the negs interpretation. Lets look at a few quick examples
- The aff has reasons the neg interp is bad, but no counter interpretation. Many judges liken this to reading link turns without a uniqueness argument- even though the neg interp may have issues, since there is no counter interpretation there is no other option but to select the negatives interp, so the offense is non unique in the sense that without a counter interpretation it doesn’t matter
- The aff has a counter interp but only offers defense. So the counter interp exists, but in this case there are no link turns, the counter interpretation may be OK,but since the neg has offense there is always a “risk” that the counter interp will be inferior- so why risk it?
Now, reasonability provides a different way out of this dilemma. In the case of T, what the affirmative is arguing is that their interpretation is SUFFICIENT to provide for negative ground, and even if the negs interp is slightly better that should not be a voting issue. Lets break that into 2 parts: sufficiency, and voting issue.
Sufficiency
Here what the aff is arguing is that their interp provides adequate ground for the negative. For example, say the negative argues you need a list of 10 cases or the topic becomes unlimited. The affirmative tries to argue that their counter interpretation provides 11 cases. What the affirmative would want to do is go through the justifications for why 10 is good- it allows case specific strategies for example- and explain why 11 was close enough so as to make no difference. You could say something like “expanding the number of topical affirmatives by 10% won’t overtax the research burden- their analysis is about blowing the lid off the topic, one more case doesn’t do that. And core generics that apply to those 10- like war on terror- link to our aff as well so there is no major difference between the two interps.” You may have heard the phrase “good is good enough”, that is what this is getting at- the affirmative provides good negative ground, it shouldn’t matter if the negs interp provides slightly better negative ground
Voting issue
This gets at why is it a bad model of debate for judges to evaluate T in an offense/defense paradigm. Take a phrase like “domestic surveillance”- you can find mutually exclusive definitions of this word. You could read one definition that says domestic surveillance is law enforcement activity, and another that says it excludes law enforcement activity. Now, why would it be bad for the negative to do this? Basically in a world of offense defense a system of incentives are created that encourage the negative to go for not just T, but contrived T arguments. This is because offense/defense makes it easier for the negative to win on T, which makes them want to go for it. This makes it more likely that debates will be primarily about T and not about substantive issues related to the case. The idea here is that when in doubt judges should encourage debaters to discuss the affirmative instead of going for T (obviously you could contest that this is a good idea). Since the negative is arguing with limits that engaging the case is a good idea, reasonability link turns their arguments in favor of T- it shows that they will not debate the case more but will instead rely on technical games playing to win T.
Now, lets look this idea in some other contexts.
1.Pics
Many pics rely on a very small risk of the net benefit to be a voting issue. A good example would be most consult counterplans. These counterplans argue that consulting X will boost relations even though X likely doesn’t care about the plan. Since the whole plan is done if they say yes, the neg argues they need only have a minute chance of a net benefit to justify voting negative. Since most affirmatives won’t be link turning the net benefit the neg will always “control the direction of the link”. Since the negative can consult anyone no matter how obscure, many affirmatives won’t be ready to go for impact turns to the net benefit. Since this leaves the aff with only theory, its a pretty hard spot to win from. This is especially true when the debate comes down to a permutation. The aff is probably right that the “lie perm” leaves very small risk of the net benefit, but in an offense/defense paradigm the chance of leaks or that lying is immoral is sufficient to vote negative.
In this instance reasonability would be a reason why a minuscule risk of net benefit should not be enough to vote negative. You would use the same two step process as before, sufficiency and voting issue, to argue that the neg should not win for having a low risk of net benefit. You would want to say something like
“The net benefit vs the perm is irrelevant- the .00001 percent chance NATO finds out about the lie shouldn’t be a reason to vote negative. The risk is so low it can be practically ignored, the negative evidence is of such poor quality that you shouldn’t count it as a card. Our counter assertion that NATO would be happy we cared enough to lie to them is just as likely as their link. Voting on a minuscule risk of a net benefit is a bad model of debate- it encourages the negative to prepare for and run strategies that are obscure instead of heart of the topic trying to catch us unprepared. When combined with a plan inclusive counterplan it forces us to go for unpopular theory arguments or terrible impact turns like “good relations with other countries are bad”. This also sidesteps discussion of the case/topic as these counterplans are generic and can be run against any affirmative. This creates a crutch for the negative- why would they research specific strategies where there is a vigorous debate when they can take the easy path to victory”.
2.Neg Theory
Many debates about conditionality come down to a rather arbitrary distinction, “2 is ok, but 3 is a war crime”. In these rounds often the arguments why 3 are bad apply just as much to 2, but the arbitrary counter interpretation tries to rig the game in favor of affirmative arguments. Most negs won’t have a well thought out explanation of why they need precisely 3 and they end up losing because the CI solves their offense. For most theory arguments the aff makes the neg can also utilize an explanation of reasonability to counter them. I think 2 vs 3 is a little too arbitrary /easily defeated so lets think of a tougher example. Lets say the negative ran a pic that said “bulk data” meant ABC, and the CP only ended AB. The affirmative responds that even though legally bulk data may mean ABC, the aff only meant AB and the affirmative should get to control the interpretation of the plan. As the negative you should say something like
“Legal definitions are the most reasonable, obviously aff intent is the best standard for affirmative ground, but that shifts the scales too far in favor of the affirmative. They can withhold judgement on what bulk data means until the 2AC after we have deployed our strategy. Legal definitions are most predictable for both sides- the affirmative can research them in advance and prepare to defend ABC if they put in the leg work. Allowing aff intent theory arguments would make most PICS not competitive- pics are the best negative strategy when they are case specific because they focus research on the minutia of actual policy implementation. Literature should come before theory arguments here because otherwise you encourage substance crowd out- no bulk data pics would be runnable and the generic negative arguments like war on terror are garbage due to literature bias. In instances where there is no evidence to support the legal distinction of the counterplan aff intent makes sense because it checks back abusive counterplans but in this instance the calculus goes the other way- allowing aff intent crowds out well researched case specific arguments”
Now with this more complicated exmaple we are getting into territory where the negative has presented offensive and defensive justifications (as it should be) but the overall meta framing of reasonability is still useful for RESOLVING the arguments in the negatives favor.
HS Impact 