The final stock issue is topicality, which is the question of whether the affirmative team's plan even falls within the scope of the resolution. This is oftentimes simplified by debaters to just being called T. So if you see T on a flow or you hear a debater saying T, that means topicality. Again, call it topicality in front of a judge always, but just for our own shorthand, T is a quicker way to refer to topicality.
So topicality is called an a priori issue, which is just a fancy way of saying it's considered before any other stock issue or argument in a debate round. The simple fact is if the negative team proves that the affirmative team's plan is not, does not fall under the scope of that year's resolution, then the affirmative team loses the debate. It doesn't even matter if the affirmative team has a great plan, if they have great ideas, if they are solving serious harms, if they do not fall under the scope of the resolution.
they have broken a fundamental rule of debate. Imagine, imagine if there is a debate over renewable energies, right? And then the affirmative team stands up and reads an affirmative about people eating less meat in the United States and finding a way to curb that. Now, that might solve serious issues.
It might have good positive impact. Does that have anything to do with renewable energy? No.
And so that is what topicality is trying to hedge against, is teams standing up and just reading a plan that blatantly has nothing to do with the resolution. Now, of course, there is a much bigger gray zone, right, where a plan may be somewhat topical, but maybe not all the way, and that's where the debate comes in, right? So let's look at this topic. The United States federal government should enact substantial criminal justice reform in the United States in one or more of the following areas, forensic science, policing, and sentencing. So topicality, you have to ask a couple of questions.
First, is it the United States federal government that's the actor of the plan? If the affirmative team stood up and said China should change their criminal justice system, that would not be topical. If the affirmative team stood up and said the United States or state governments across the United States should pass this plan, that would not be topical. If a team stood up and said the city of San Jose should pass this plan, that would not be topical. All right.
So the United States federal government has to be the actor of the plan. Second, is the plan a substantial reduction or just a very small and insignificant reduction? And what even constitutes that is a is a debate to be had. Right.
But clearly there is a difference between, for instance, demilitarizing the police and ending billions of dollars of funding to police programs. And, you know, changing. one little minute thing about police departments that that costs only about a thousand dollars every year out of the entire united states federal government budget one of those seems very substantial it's reducing billions of dollars and another one feels quite small a substantial could also refer to just how big of an impact it's having like if you get rid of mandatory minimum sentencing that seems very large Whereas if you're changing a law that only affects, again, a couple of hundred people across the entire United States, is that actually a substantial criminal justice reform?
Probably not. Third, does the plan enact criminal justice reform in one of the following areas above? So those are two things right there. Is it criminal justice reform?
And does it fall under one of those three categories, forensic science, policing, and sentencing? Obviously, if the affirmative team stood up and said we should give NASA more money to do space exploration, That might be a cool idea. There might be compelling reasons to do it.
Does it have anything to do with enacting criminal justice reform? Absolutely not. So hopefully that is a nice overview to topicality.
If the affirmative is clearly topical, the stock issue usually isn't brought up in a debate. In fact, many debates that you see topicality will not be brought up. Affirmative plans are in fact typically just assumed to be topical until the negative challenges the stock issue. So very similar to the disadvantage, topicality is never brought up in the 1ac.
The 1ac reads harms, they present a problem, they read inherency, explain why it's not being solved, they read a plan text, and then they read solvency and provide reasons why their plan would fix the problems they've outlined. Topicality and the disadvantage are only brought up by the negative. Of course, the negative pushes back on the other stock issues, but topicality would only be brought up in the 1nc, never in the first affirmative constructive.
Evidence can sometimes be read to help clarify in a topicality debate, but it's certainly not as necessary as other stock issues, right? Topicality is a lot about just guiding the judge through the logical reasoning of why the affirmative team either is or is not topical. But sometimes, sometimes evidence can help. Let me provide an example.
So for instance, there was a resolution which called for increased spending and or regulation for U.S. schools. So it was an education system topic, right? We should be reforming schools.
And there was an affirmative plan to make vaccines mandatory for any child entering the educational system. So the topicality of this was heavily contested. Was the plan topical because it dealt with schools and a lack of vaccines could lead to diseases shutting down schools? Or was it untopical because education reform is fundamentally about the way in which students are taught in the classroom or the way in which schools are given funding more broadly?
Wouldn't a more topical affirmative under this resolution be about improving the actual curriculum or teaching or funding that schools are receiving or that students are receiving? So these questions did not have clear answers on that. topic or with that affirmative. So debaters on both sides were required to read evidence to support their arguments. So negative teams arguing this vaccine affirmative was untopical under the resolution of education reform.
Well, they read evidence from education experts who defined education as the actual teaching of students. Using this evidence, the negative argued that the affirmative's plan to make vaccines mandatory does nothing to change the actual teaching or the curriculum or the education itself. The affirmative team, meanwhile, read a counterpiece of evidence from a legal doctrine that showed that under federal and state law, mandatory vaccine requirements are considered an education issue and often passed through local school districts or state education departments. When it comes to classifying mandatory vaccines in the United States, under government policy, it is classified as an education issue.
So they argued that since vaccine requirements are legally defined as education reform, that their plan should be considered topical. So furthermore, they made arguments that if diseases such as measles break out in schools because students are not getting vaccinated, then the actual learning that students receive is severely impacted. So schools shut down, shortening the number of days of class, and students who get sick can often miss an entire year of school.
So an important note to remember about all of this, as you can hear in this back and forth. is there are no objective rules or referees. This isn't like a game of football where the ref on the side calls whether or not there was a foul, or the ref on the side says whether or not the affirmative team went outside the bounds of the field.
The question of whether or not an affirmative is topical is up to the debaters to persuade the judge. Imagine if a football player had stepped outside of the lines of the field, and instead of just being able to play back a replay, what happened was both sides went in front of the refs and had a debate over whether or not they were over it or not. That's kind of like what topicality is.
And so it's always up for debate. Even if you win topicality in one debate, it does not mean that you will objectively win it in the next debate. It's always depends on how well the points are argued on both sides. So hopefully this is a nice overview to what topicality is. We're going to give more examples again as we get into the speeches, but I just want to provide you with a little bit of clarity of what topicality looks like.