How to judge a high school debate round

You have one job: decide which side debated better. Not which side is right. Not which side you agree with. Not which side you would vote for in an election. Which side did the better job of arguing, in this room, in the last forty-five minutes.

Everything else here is detail.

What you do not need to know

Four things reliably worry first-time judges, and none of them should.

• The topic. You will be handed a resolution you have never thought about. That is normal and expected. It is the debaters' job to explain it to you.
• The jargon. If you did not understand a word a debater used, that is information about their speech, not about you. Speaking to the judge in the room is a skill they are being tested on.
• Debate theory. You are not expected to know the conventions. Judge what you can follow.
• The right answer. There isn't one. Both sides were assigned their position.

The speech order

Three formats dominate American high school debate, and they run differently.

Lincoln-Douglas: one student against one student

• Affirmative constructive, 6 minutes. They read their case.
• Cross-examination, 3 minutes. The negative asks questions.
• Negative constructive, 7 minutes. They answer and read their own case.
• Cross-examination, 3 minutes. The affirmative asks.
• First affirmative rebuttal, 4 minutes. The hardest speech in the format.
• Negative rebuttal, 6 minutes.
• Second affirmative rebuttal, 3 minutes. The last word.

Each debater also has 4 minutes of preparation time to spend between speeches as they choose.

Public Forum: two students against two students

Shorter speeches, a coin flip that decides which side goes first, and a crossfire format where both debaters question each other at once. The final speeches are two minutes and are usually where the round is actually decided.

Policy: two against two, and much faster

If you find yourself in a Policy round and the debaters are speaking very quickly, that is deliberate and normal at the national level. Tell them before the round if you cannot follow it at that speed. Saying so is not an imposition. It is the single most useful thing you can do.

What to write down

Judges keep a running record called a flow, in columns, one per speech, so an argument can be tracked across the round. You do not need to do this perfectly. But try to write down each main argument, and then note what the other side said about it.

The thing you are looking for is whether an argument was answered. An argument nobody responded to is one the other side effectively conceded, and that matters more than whether it was a good argument.

How to decide

Work through it in this order.

1. What did each side say the round should be decided on? Debaters usually tell you explicitly. If one side gives you a clear standard and the other does not, that is a strong signal.
2. Which arguments survived to the end? Ignore arguments that were dropped by the side that made them.
3. Of the surviving arguments, which side's are more important, and did they tell you why? Comparison is the skill being tested. "My argument outweighs theirs because it affects more people, sooner" beats simply repeating a claim.
4. Vote. You must pick a winner. There are no ties.

Writing the decision

Your ballot is the most valuable thing the students get from the round, more than the win or the loss. Aim for three things.

• Say what you voted on. One sentence. "I voted negative because the affirmative never answered the argument about cost."
• Say what the loser could have done. Specific, not general. "You needed to answer the second contention" is useful. "Be more persuasive" is not.
• Say one thing each debater did well. These are teenagers who just spoke for forty-five minutes about something difficult.

The four mistakes first-time judges make

• Voting on who was right rather than who argued better. The most common one by a distance. You may personally disagree with the winning side. That is fine and normal.
• Voting on speaking style alone. Delivery matters, but a polished speaker who dropped three arguments lost the debate.
• Filling in an argument the debater did not make. If you find yourself thinking "well, what they meant was," stop. If they did not say it, it does not count.
• Apologising on the ballot. You do not need to justify your inexperience. A clear, honest decision from a first-time judge is worth more than a hedged one.

A note on speed

If a debater is speaking faster than you can follow, say so before the round begins. Every format allows it, no one will think less of you, and the alternative is a decision made on half the round. Debaters would far rather adapt than lose a ballot they never understood losing.

The full version of this guide is a 17-page PDF covering all three formats, a glossary, and sample ballots. Download it here, no signup.