Theory

Theory refers to the subset of arguments that are about practices or rules that exist within debate. Good examples can be the use of paraphrased vs cut cards, disclosed vs undisclosed cases, etc. These arguments operate at a higher level than substance, as they tend to effect how substance is debated. For example, if someone didn't provide a content warning for their case, and someone was triggered or excluded from the round, the lack of a content warning clearly impacted how the substance debate would've otherwise gone. We'll break theory down into the 7 (technically 8) key concepts that you need to know.

The Parts of a Theory Shell

The main parts of a theory shell/concepts you need to understand before engaging in a theory debate are - the interpretation, the violation, the standards, the voters, and the paradigm issues. There are 3 main paradigm issues, but we'll cover an extra that isn't as important. For the sake of clarity, we'll call the team reading theory "team A" and the team responding to theory "team B". Keep in mind that this format isn't exactly a rule - judges are still willing to vote on theory arguments that are phrased in simple paragraphs in other formats, but it's good to use this format for the sake of clarity.

Interpretation

The interpretation is the rule you are proposing by reading your shell. For example, if someone paraphrases evidence instead of reading direct quotes, the interpretation could be “Debaters may only read evidence that is directly quoted” or “Debaters may not read evidence that is not directly quoted.” Both accomplish the same thing.

When writing interpretations, you want to be specific. For example, the interpretation “Debaters must disclose” is very vague. Where do debaters disclose? How do debaters disclose? What do debaters disclose? Interpretations set up the rest of the theory debate so having a specific one is very important. A better interpretation would be “Debaters must, on a page on the PF NDCA 2019-2020 wiki with their name and the school they attend, disclose the taglines, full citations, and the full text of the card of any pieces of evidence which they have read in their case in a previous round before the coinflip.” This interpretation leaves almost nothing ambiguous, which is important especially when discussing the violation of the interpretation. It's also acceptable to add in clarifying sections into your interp. For example, "to clarify - you should disclose on the openCaselist wiki as it now encompasses the NDCA wiki." might be a potential addition to the above interp.

Paradigm Issue: Spirit/Text of the shell
This paradigm issue argues about how the interpretation should be evaluated. It’s very rare to see PF teams argue about this and most judges and teams default to text.

Spirit of the shell: This is the idea that debaters should not be held to the text of the interpretation, but rather the idea behind the interpretation. Some debaters choose to add a statement at the end of the interpretation that essentially boils down the interp. For example, “Debaters may only read evidence that is directly quoted. To clarify, don’t paraphrase”. This to clarify statement is the “spirit” of the shell or the summary of the shell which is paraphrasing bad.

Common warrants to prefer the spirit of the shell:

Competing interps is about maximizing fairness and education in the long run through discussion of what happens, but the discussion doesn’t happen when theory goes away because they meet the text of the interp.
Text of the interp limits the ability of debaters to extemp shells in round, which opens a world of more abuse by limiting ability of debaters to read nuanced abuse stories against specific violations.

Text (AKA semantics) of the shell: This is the idea that interps should be treated at face value. For example, if an interp was “debaters must disclose their previously read cases on the NDCA wiki”, a literal interpretation of the interpretation would allow disclosing on the PF, LD, or CX wiki since they all fall under a wiki run by the NDCA.

Common warrants to prefer the text of the shell:

Spirit of the interp creates a moving target because they can draw different implications later in the debate by claiming it was the “spirit” of the shell
The spirit of the shell is ultimately left up to the judge which incentivizes intervention

Text versus spirit comes into play only when a debater violates one but not the other. For example, let’s say that the interpretation “Debaters should read carded evidence” is read. Then, in response, the other team pulls out notecards with their paraphrased evidence as a reason they meet the interpretation, since their evidence is pasted on notecards - it is “carded.” In this instance, the team might meet the text of the interpretation, but they clearly violate the spirit of the interpretation.

Responding - When responding to a theory shell, teams should pay close attention to the wording of the interpretation. Depending, on the wording of the interpretation, team B may be able to make a "we meet" argument. A "we meet" argument functionally states that team B "meets" the interpretation as it's written. For example, if team A's interpretation is that "Interpretation - When reading evidence in constructive, debaters must read direct quotes - to clarify, debaters may not read paraphrased cases" and team B doesn't paraphrase, team B would be able to read a "we meet", stating that because they didn't violate the interpretation, the shell is invalid. Also, be sure to consider the implications of text over spirit when going for a we meet.

Violation

The violation is how your opponent breaks the rule you are proposing in your interpretation. Violations can happen out of round such as disclosure, but the vast majority of violations occur in round. For example, a violation claim would sound like “Violation: They read evidence not directly quoted. Speech docs prove.'' This is probably the simplest part of a theory shell but also possibly the most important.

When proving the violation, you want definitive, recordable proof. It’s not enough to know that your opponent did something. You have to have a way of showing it. For example, when proving the violation of disclosure theory, it’s the norm to take screenshots of the wiki demonstrating that opponents did not disclose and then state this in round. However, other violations are much simpler. For example, if your opponent reads 4 disadvantages in 1st summary and you respond with the interpretation of “debaters may not read offense independent of opponent offense in summary - to clarify - no new contentions" , simply saying “they did” is enough for most judges.

Responding - The we meet section above for the interpretation can be considered a response to the interp or violation. Refer to that!

Standards

Standards are why your interpretation is good for debate. If the interp and violation are the “resolution” of the theory debate, then standards are the links. Standards vary and many are unique to shells but they are normally structured in the order of tag-warrant-link, although standards with an obvious link to a voter (i.e. strat skew - they made it easier for themselves to win while making it harder for me to win) don’t necessarily require debaters to “spell out” the link to a voter, since they very obviously link to one voter or the other. This is where the majority of theory clash will take place.

Common Standards tags include

Skews (Time skew, Strategy skew): Does your opponent’s practices make strategy for you harder? Does your opponent’s practices force you to spend more speech time responding than they spent making the argument even at the same assumed efficiency?
Topic Education: Does your model of debate allow for more education about the topic?
Clash: Does your model of debate foster more clash and interaction between debaters and their positions?
Ground: What ground do you have to make arguments upon? Does your opponent unfairly limit your ground or gain access to more ground than they should?
Inclusivity: Is your model of debate more inclusive?
Predictability: Does your opponent do something unfairly unpredictable?

You don’t have to tag your own standards in this way; just watch out for standards that are tagged like this so that it’s easier to respond. For example, "small schools" is a popular standard for disclosure - as long as you catch the gist of the argument, you should be able to come up with some logical responses to them.

Once you have your tag, now you have to warrant out why the interpretation links to the standard.
Then, you link the warrant to the voter. Here's an example of a clash standard for disclosure good.

First is Clash. Disclosure increases clash in two ways:
a) Engagement – disclosure allows substantive engagement through prepping out specific arguments rather than relying on sketchy tricks to avoid the discussion.
b) Specificity – debaters can see specific arguments disclosed instead of trying to respond to nuanced warranting with generic arguments.
Clash is key to fairness because it means arguments are better tested and the best argument wins which is the metric for a good debater and to education because a) it’s the only kind of education unique to debate, without clash, I could just read books.

Responding to standards is much easier than it initially seems. You can simply lay defense on them analytically, while reading your own standards for a counter-interpretation. For example, if someone has read Disclosure Bad with a standard of “Topic Education”, you can respond by saying “Research still goes into creating cases; topic education exists with or without disclosure.”, and reading your own counter-interpretation.

In most cases, it is most strategic to turn standards, since that offers offense for your counter-interpretation. For example, if their interpretation says that debaters should disclose with a standard of “Clash - disclosure creates better clash because both teams are able to prepare arguments beforehand so they have better-quality arguments against each other, creating higher quality clash,” you can say “turn - disclosure decreases quality of clash because both teams are given docs to read off by their coaches, which incentivizes reading arguments off a doc instead of engaging with your opponent’s arguments.” This proves that your counter-interpretation - the “counter-rule” you offer - is better than the original rule proposed.

Honestly, just treat it like substance debate and you should be fine.

Voters

Voters are the impacts of your interpretation. They are the terminalized reasons why your interpretation is good for debate, and mainly consist of two voters, education, and fairness.

Education and fairness are pretty self explanatory. If a debater never reads evidence for their claims, it’s probably uneducational. If a debater makes a new response in 2nd final focus, it’s probably unfair. Even if the judges, opponents, and you know why being educational and fair is important, you must still read warrants for it in round.

Common warrants for why education is good:

It’s the only portable skill we take from debate into real life
Schools wouldn’t fund debates if it wasn’t educational
People wouldn’t join debate if it wasn’t educational

Common warrants for why fairness is good:

All arguments presume fair evaluation by the judge of the arguments.
Debate is a competitive activity, so fairness is constitutive of it.
Debaters would quit if they keep unfairly losing.

Like any impact, education and fairness can be weighed against each other. If you link into fairness and your opponent links into education, it’s crucial that you do weighing for the same reasons you do it in PF.

Common warrants for why fairness outweighs education:

All the warrants for why education is good must first be adjudicated fairly by the judge
Unequal education is horrible - one group getting more education than another is the root of power structures that prevent certain students from achieving as much as others
Probability - it’s 100% certain that voting against the unfair team will be able to resolve their unfairness in round since their unfairness is aimed at achieving the ballot, but it’s not certain that voting against the less educational team will guarantee that we will gain more education in future rounds.

Common warrants for why education outweighs fairness:

Education is the only portable skill, we won’t care about how fair this round was years from now
Debate can never truly be fair, one team will always win the flip, teams have coaching disparities, etc. However, we can uphold education.

Other voters exist as well, but these are by far the most common.

Paradigm Issues

Paradigm issues guide what you want your opponents and judge to do with the theory debate. You can pretty much copy the same paradigm issues for every shell that you read, though some specific cases may warrant tweaking the warrants for the paradigm issues.

Drop the Debater/Drop the Argument
Essentially, if I win this shell, what should the judge do? Drop the debater means that the opponent should lose, while drop the argument means that the argument(s) that the shell applies to should be disregarded. Obviously, drop the argument doesn’t apply to every shell. For example, if the shell is about wearing shoes being bad, there isn’t an argument to be dropped. If the shell is about paraphrasing, then every paraphrased argument is pretty much every card that your opponent read, which if dropped means they would lose anyways. However, you still have to warrant and extend why your opponents or their arguments should be dropped.

Common warrants for why the judge should DTD

A loss sets a precedent and deters future abuse for fear of losing
Reading theory skews substance (topical debate) so we can’t effectively “return” to the substantive debate
Drop the argument incentivizes debaters to read a quick unfair argument to bait theory then drop that argument to gain a time advantage, since their opponent just wasted a minute reading a theory shell on a ten second argument which ultimately became irrelevant.

Common warrants for why the judge should DTA

DTD means people can explode one small abuse into a game over issue destroying substantive clash
There’s no impact to an abusive arg after it gets dropped, DTD is overkill

Competing Interpretations/Reasonability
These are two competing philosophies about how theory debates should be handled. Arguments can be made about which one to prefer, and most judges already know the differences between these.

Competing Interpretations is the idea that the way that we best create future norms in debate is by comparing interpretations of rules. This is somewhat similar to viewing substantive debate under a “comparative worlds” lens. Under this model, the team that is responding to theory must read an alternative “counter-interpretation”, read “counter standards” about why their standard is to be preferred, as well as respond to standards/voters/implications given by the theory initiator. For example, if the interpretation is “debaters must read evidence directly quoted”, a possible counter-interpretation would be “debaters may choose to read evidence not directly quoted as long as it is not misconstrued”. Then it becomes an offense-defense debate, similar to what we’re used to. Unlike an interpretation, counter-interpretations don’t need the other team to violate them, but the team reading a counter-interp must meet that counter-interp.

Common warrants for Competing Interpretations

Reasonability is arbitrary and invites judge intervention which isn’t fair
CI creates the best norms in the long run which makes for better debates

Reasonability is the idea that the best way to resolve theory debates is to let the judge adjudicate whether the violation has substantially affected substance in a way that makes debating it overly difficult.

Common warrants for Reasonability

CI creates a race to the top, anybody could just nitpick one thing since there’s no perfect interp
Allows judges to gut check frivolous theory which increases topic education

RVIs (Reverse Voting Issues)
RVIs are the way that teams getting theory read on them can “turn” the entire theory layer for themselves. If the team that did not initiate theory wins a RVI as well as wins key arguments on the theory shell (either offense or sufficient terminal defense), they win the round instead. Most teams initiating theory will preemptively read “No RVIs” or reasons why the RVI is bad, while teams that respond to theory will read reasons why RVIs are good. To clarify, if you are initiating theory, you should probably read “No RVIs” whereas if someone is reading theory against you and you think that it’s a good time investment, you should read reasons you should get RVIs.

Common warrants for RVIs good

Deters frivolous theory which kill substantive clash, without RVIs, theory is a no risk issue
Lack of RVIs skews time 2:1 since I need to win both the theory and substance layer while they can win on either one

Common warrants for RVIs bad

Denies the antecedent, you shouldn’t win for proving you’re fair
People wouldn’t run theory for fear of the RVI meaning abuse can’t be checked back upon