A question that many debaters have is are negative teams allowed to bring up new arguments in the 2NC(negative construction). The answer is yes. Remember new arguments can be brought up in constructives but not in the rebuttals. The reason for the controversy is that affirmative teams complain that this is abusive because the negative team has the negative block (2nc and the first rebuttal which means the negative teams has 12 minutes to use with the only interruption of 1 cross-x) and the affirmative team just does not have the time to give a proper response in there 5 minute rebuttal. Now if you are affirmative team I might try to make a complaint depending on the judge. If you are the negative team then you just found one of the few perks of being neg. If the affirmative does complain just say that the affirmative has had time to work on their case for as long as they wanted too while as the negative you must research hundreds of topics hoping the affirmative doesn’t come up with something you never even thought of. If you do bring in new arguments do it to enhance your earlier ones. You want to go over all your past arguments that worked so that they don’t get dropped and then bring up a few more. Also avoid hurting yourself by contradiction and dropping arguments that you won’t be able to use in the rebuttals. In some areas judges won’t even listen to new evidence in the 2NC so it is a good idea to have a file or 2 that says that they are legal and that they bring the neg to equal ground with the affirmative team. So don’t be afraid of using them just make sure you use them correctly and be prepare to here the affirmative team complain of your injustices to them.
