* This paper was presented at WSCA 2005 in San Francisco by Michael K. Middleton, a graduate student at California State University, Long Beach.

The legitimacy of claiming distinctions between resolutions of fact, value, and policy in parliamentary debate has generated expansive debate. In particular, whether differences exist in the resolutional burdens provided by a resolution of “fact” are different from those found in a resolution of policy or value. This paper will examine the characteristics of “fact” debate. Second, it will review trends in contemporary parliamentary debate that suggest type distinctions are invalid. Lastly, this paper will examine the implications of conceding to the attempts to dispense with the unique resolutional burdens claimed by “fact” debate. This paper will argue that maintaining distinctions among resolution types impacts the quality of parliamentary debate in at least three ways.

Resolutions of fact are commonly defined as resolutions that don’t contain a call to action. Nobles (1978) further illuminated the characteristics of fact resolutions and subsequent distinctions from other resolution types. He states:
Propositions of policy call for both belief and action. Propositions of judgement [fact] call only for belief; they describe or evaluate the external world. In their descriptive function they may inquire whether something was, is, or will be “so.” (p. 159) The resolution of fact imparts a different burden for the debate in calling for an observation either empirically (in the case of present or past), or prescriptively (in the future). Unlike a resolution of policy calling for an evaluation of an imperative “should” that considers outcomes in a comparative manner. The debate centers on the affirmative advocating the factuality of an observation made by the resolution, while the negative advocates its falsity (Freely, 1961). Examples of resolutions that demonstrate this call are: “Resolved: There are WMD’s in Iraq,” “Resolved: Labor unions are corrupt,” or “Resolved: Direct aid to foreign countries serves U.S. national interest.”

Practically, this distinction impacts the debate had under a resolution of fact in a number of ways. Whereas a resolution of policy calls for a discussion of what should be done, or what would be practical to do based on what benefits a plan may offer, a resolution of fact examines “the state of being of one or more persons, ideas or institutions; or they assert the occurrence of some past, present or future event” (Nobles, 159). For example, if one were debating the resolution of fact, “Resolved: Rasing tariffs will cause economic retaliation from other countries,” the resolution calls for a debate to judge whether that future outcome is a factual likelihood or invalid.

This sort of resolution imparts particular burdens on the debate (Freely, 1961). These stock issues include: Are certain specific questions available to establish the validity of the “fact” claimed in the resolution? and, Do the answers to those questions establish the “fact” as valid?. In the example of the “Resolved: There are WMD’s in Iraq,” these questions would center around what counts as a WMD, what is the threshold of proof, is that threshold met?, etc.

The unique burdens of a fact resolution are illuminated when one compares them to those in a policy resolution. Given the example of, “Resolved: The United States should eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” the burdens of the resolution are quite different (Freely, 1961). Traditionally, the burdens under this, or any policy, resolution would be is there a need, does the plan meet that need, and does the plan offer benefits. Any one of these burdens may be met without necessarily meeting the burdens of the similar resolution of fact. Only the burden of establishing need begins to speak to the burdens of the fact resolution. However, this also demonstrates the differences in the burdens of each resolution type. Proving need in the purview of a policy resolution only means proving a warrant to a proposed action; this doesn’t necessarily fulfill the same burdens that exist in the fact debate on the existence of a state of being. In other words, proving that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the state of being the fact resolution claims) does not necessarily prove a need to act (the warrant necessary to adopt the proposed action). Conversely, proving a need to act (offering a necessary warrant to adopt the proposed plan) does not necessarily prove the threshold of proof in the fact debate has been met (that the state of being has been legitimately proven to be the case).

This final distinction between debates of fact and debates of policy also illuminates the current trend towards treatment of resolutions of fact in parliamentary debate. The contemporary trend towards affirming fact resolutions is characterized as one where:

[T]eams begin a debate by offering little or no definitions, no criteria/burdens in round, and simply start issuing harms to a critic or audience...First of all teams who do this assume that there is no "is/ought" dichotomy and therefore hastily prescribe action before descriptive issues, philosophical issues, and inductive issues can be discussed. Second of all, teams who do this have no warrant for the call to action aside from an implicit belief system that every statement inherently has a call to action. (NPDA listserv, 2003)

This popular interpretive strategy relies on several tenuous claims about meeting the burdens of the resolution. The burden of describing a state of being imparted by a fact resolution under this strategy is argued to have been met by the need, or harm, analysis in the policy advocacy utilized by the affirmative. This presumes that the threshold of proof for a resolution of fact is consistent with the demonstration of need in a resolution of policy. Secondarily, this also presumes that the belief/action distinction articulated above is unimportant in the context of the debate. Despite the claims both implicit and explicit that this relationship between policy advocacy’s and advocacy’s of fact exist warrants for these claims are criticized as “simply not sufficient to fill in the blank where an explicit "call to action" can be reasonably shown to exist” in the resolution (NPDA listserv, 2003).

This trend in interpretation is further propped up by a claim of increased competitiveness. The move from observations of states of being called for by a fact to net-benefits evaluations of possible courses of action are claimed as superior because opposing negative teams may “mold their strategy within the [larger] confines of disadvantages, kritiks, counterplans, etc” (NPDA Listserv, 2003). Interestingly, this argument for the lack of distinction between resolutions tacitly acknowledges the introduction of these types of arguments that are tactics from another (policy) type of resolution. Critics of this suggested benefit to ignoring resolutional distinctions argue that ignoring such distinctions “means that many alternate or appropriate means of attack are now usurped from the negatives bag of tricks” (NPDA listserv, 2003). This shift is seen as competitively problematic because “a case that is remotely "net beneficial" for instance, might win within the context of a policy round” while the unique burdens of the resolution of fact that is being debated are ignored. Rather than establishing and meeting a threshold of proof at an existential/descriptive level, the fact is considered a given or substantiated through a spuriously normative net-benefits threshold.

Given this trend and the arguments for it in contemporary parliamentary debate, the final section of this paper will argue that fact debate as described above is both functional and has several positive implications both in and out of the competitive debate context.

First, the decline in the practice of fact debate in parliamentary debate rounds has several negative implications particularly for the negative team. The initial problem with the policy case under the fact debate is that it initiates an unfair distribution of ground. The failure to offer a fact case under such a resolution “means that many alternate or appropriate means of attack are now usurped from the negatives bag of tricks” (NPDA listserv, 2003). Among the ground loss are the most predictable positions such as counter-warrants that indict the description of reality offered by the affirming team. Moreover, as discussed above the negative is pigeonholed into traditional policy off-case strategies like kritik, disadvantage and counterplan whose effectiveness are limited by the prep time skew generated by the affirmative abandoning the confines of the resolution.

The negative team opposing the resolution is left with a fact strategy that may disprove the claim of the resolution of fact, but fail to address whether the harms have established need, a topicality debate and/or traditional policy off-case positions. The abuse of these options under a resolution of fact is readily demonstrated. The traditional fact strategy of counterwarrants that indict the affirming teams description of a state of being are neutralized by a shift to the criteria of need, plan, benefits of the policy case. The negative may choose a topicality, disadvantage, and counterplan strategy. However, this leave the opposing team to confront the notion that:

When arguments other than topitality are presented by the negative team, the jurisdictional analogy maintains that the negative has now rendered topicality illegitimate. At that point, the debate should continue on the substantive arguments advanced by the negative. (Murphy, 1990)

This reality forces the opposing team to elect either a purely policy-oriented strategy or a purely topicality strategy. Both of these choices offer distinct disadvantages. The policy-oriented strategy expands the prep time abuse by forcing opposing teams onto tenuously linked case debates. The jurisdictional strategy of purely topicality arguments forces the opposing team onto the strategically disadvantageous ground of the procedural arguments. While this tradeoff might also apply to teams debating a policy resolution when choosing an opposition strategy, its impacts on the negative team are uniquely expanded because of the loss in competitive equity during prep.

The second implication of conflating the resolutional burdens found in a fact or policy debate involve the quality of the debate itself. Beyond falling victim to criticisms of being “blatantly abusive” or ensuring “means of attack are now usurped from the negatives bag of tricks,” the conflation of resolution types and burdens in parliamentary debate has undermined the quality of debate in those rounds. The debates are often plagued by the lack of fairness that leaves critics facing either shoddily crafted negative policy strategies or uneventful topicality debates. Both of these outcomes, falls short of communicating “ideas to the end of affecting the judgement and action of an audience” (Baird, 258).

Lastly, conflating policy and fact resolutions have wholly negative implications outside the bound discourse of the debate game. The practice of considering a call to action to be implicit in any resolution and subsequently engage in an evaluation of a arguably net beneficial policy has potentially disastrous out of round affects. This reasoning suggests that rushes towards hasty action are positive alternatives to evaluation of the descriptive, existential issues implied by a resolution of fact. One can turn back to the resolution, “Resolved: There are WMD’s in Iraq,” to develop this implication. A factual interpretation of this resolution and the following fact debate ask participants to determine what counts as a WMD, what the threshold for proof is, and whether or not that threshold is met. This approach asks for the participants in the debate to arrive at a belief about the claim. The alternative calls for a possible solution to the claim that Iraq has WMD’s. Participation in this debate not only has different burdens, but rushes to a policy that leaves thousands of casualties when the factual claim never was or has been validated. The endorsement of this sort of conflation and hasty decision making in-round can’t be separated from an endorsement of the same out-of-round. As Woods (2003) notes, the increased role of advocacy in debate makes participants responsible for the real world implications of their in-round practices. The trend towards holding a debater accountable for the type of literature or ideology they introduce into the round extends to the type of decision-making and evaluation of the world they introduce into the round. The conflation of policy and fact burdens isn’t necessarily illegitimate from this perspective but must necessarily be accountable for its implications. As Woods (2003) explains, “Debate becomes a personal experience with responsibility for discourse that is not dismissed simply because one is speaking as a debater” (p. 92). In the case of conflating resolutional types, the affirmative is accountable for their discursive endorsement of hasty decision making.

This paper has argued that the separation of fact debate from debates of policy is not only a useful, but critically important aspect of debate. It has argued that the conflation of these types of debate not only is abusive in terms of the argument toolkit available to debaters who confront the scenario, but also carries with it significant out-of-round implications. The separation of types of debate encourages evaluation that is both important and not necessarily adopted by a strict policy orientation to every resolution. The engagement of “fact” resolutions as such is important to expand both the quality of debate in-round and the discursive implications of the debaters’ advocacies out-of-round.

Notes

Baird, A. C. (). Argumentation as a humanistic subject. Quarterly Journal of Speech Education, 10(3), 258-265.

Freely, A. (1961). Argumentation and debate: rational decision making. 1st ed. San Francisco: Wadsworth.

Iberri-Shea, D. (2003, 10). Opening pandora's box. Message posted to , archived at http://archive.debateaddict.com/parli/current/

Murphy, T. L. (1990). Assessing the jurisdicitonal model of topicality. Argumentation & Advocacy, 26(4), 145-151.

Nobles, W. S. (1978). Anaylzing the Proposition. In D. Ehninger, and Brockriede, W. (Eds.), Decsision by Debate (pp. 151-173). New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Woods, S. (2003). Changing the game? embracing the advocacy standard. Contemporary Argumentation & Debate, 24, 85-100.