Introduction to Lincoln-Douglas
Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate is supposed to be modeled after the debates between, well,
Abraham Lincoln and Stephan Douglas. LD is based mainly on philosophy. You
don't really need to know all the theories of Immanuel Kant or anything, but
you will need to be able to talk about morals and defend justice and stuff like
that. Some of the topics that you get are like:
Resolve: Civil disobedience is justified in a democracy
Resolve: The safety of citizens ought to be valued over the safety of convicted criminals
yeah, and stuff like that. You won't need any plan on how to solve the problem,
but instead you need to defend a side and say why it is correct, or attack
a side and say why it is incorrect. The structure of an LD round basically goes
like this:
6 min Affirmative speech
3 min Cross examination
7 min Negative speech
3 min Cross examination
4 min Affirmative speech
6 min Negative speech
3 min Affirmative speech
So basically, each side gets a grand total of 13 minutes in actual speeches. In
a tournament, you will have to debate both sides, whether you like it or not.
Also, in the entire round, each side gets 3 minutes of preparation time throughout
the round to be used however the debater would like to use it. Usually, it is
used right before each speech (except for the first affirmative of course).
back to LD stuff
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