Judge (policy debate)

A judge refers to the individual responsible for determining the winner and loser of a policy debate round as well as assessing the relative merit of the participant speakers. Judges must resolve the complex issues presented in short time while, ideally, avoiding inserting their own personal beliefs that might cloud impartiality.

The judge has the responsibility of not only voting for the side that he or she thinks won the round, but also giving each speaker "speaker points." This standard speaker points comprise a numerical evaluation of the debater's speaking skills ranging from 1–30. The standard variation on this basic scale is 25–29.5, with 30s often reserved for near-perfect speakers. Half points are allowed, such as 26.5, and at the end of some debate tournaments the best speakers are often recognized. At most tournaments, the teams who "break" into elimination rounds - where the winner of the entire tournament will be decided by single-round elimination - are selected primarily by win-loss record, with ties broken and match-ups determined by speaker points.

Some circuits see lay or inexperienced judges recruited from the community as an important "part of the game." Debaters in these circuits must be able to adapt from presentations to individuals with no debate experience at all, to judges who have themselves been debaters. This use of lay judges significantly impacts delivery and argumentation as the rapid-fire style and complex debate-theory arguments are frequently incomprehensible to lay judges. For this reason, other circuits restrict policy debate judging to qualified judges, generally ex-debaters. The use of lay judges, and its impact in speed, presentation and argumentation is a source of great controversy in the US high school debate community.

Experienced debate judges (who were generally debaters in High School and/or College) generally carry a mindset that favors certain arguments and styles over others. Throughout time, the criterion upon which judges decide debates has changed. Currently increasingly popular within college debate, and trickling down into high school debate, is examining debate from an "offense-defense" paradigm. Because of this, it is customary for debaters to ask a judge what their experience and paradigm is for judging. Judging paradigms include:

A stock issues judge believes that the affirmative plan must fulfill all their burdens (see under Theory). If the negative proves that the affirmative is lacking in any one of the issues, it is grounds for the plan to be rejected. Stock issue judges generally prefer a clear, eloquent presentation of issues in round, and dislike arguments that seem to not relate to the topic on the surface.

Policymaker judges tend to take the theoretical viewpoint that they are the "policymaker," and as such, they vote for the side that presents the best policy option. Typically, Policymakers vote heavily on disadvantages and counter-plans, and may not vote on critiquess or topicality arguments. However, more and more policymakers are beginning to incorporate parts of the gamer (see below) paradigm into their views, making them more open to critical arguments. The basic policy of this paradigm is the weighing of the affirmative's advantages versus the negative's disadvantages.

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