Phil Kerpen Judge Philosophy
OK, my judging philosophy is fairly simple.
I employ least intervention style of judging. There are three situations
which are exceptions to this general perspective in which I intentionally
intervene:
1. I intervene against arguments that I consider unfair to other teams at
the tournament, such as a double win or a 30 points argument. I do this
because, although both teams in my debate are likely to agree to it, other
teams at the tournament would quite legitimately object, but cannot
represent themselves. I have not yet ever had to intervene for this
reason, but I am willing to.
2. I intervene against new arguments in the second affirmative rebuttal.
The negative has no chance in the debate to reply to these arguments, and
thus I feel a responsibility to protect the negative by intervening to
disregard such arguments. Note that I will not intervene to reject new
arguments from any other speech, so if you want me to toss out new 1AR
arguments, for example, you need to win arguments that I should.
3. I intervene against arguments that call on me to engage in political
activism in the real world. As a political and moral agent I feel
that any activism I engage in should be because I believe in it; I will
not advance a cause that I disagree with in the real world just
because of the arguments in a debate. That said, I have no problem voting
for critical arguments that are impacted in such a way that I can evaluate
them as a critic of argument.
Other than these three situations, I will attempt to resolve the debate to
the best of my ability based on the arguments made by the debaters. I
will vote on any argument which implies that I should vote on it, if it is
won. I will vote on an arbitrarily asserted voting issue if it is
conceded, so be careful to answer everything labeled as such.
I consider speech times to be a rule of debate, and thus I am inflexible
about them. This means that I will not listen to evidence that you read
after your speech has ended. I write on my flow the last word that was
read before time expired, and I will only consider the portion of the card
that was during the speech.
My subinterventionist biases are:
1. I am very politically conservative. I think Socialism Good is about
the worst arg ever.
2. I think all counterplans should always be conditional. I find
conditionality bad arguments vaguely offensive.
3. I don't like topicality.
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