Structure of a Case

The purpose of a case is always the same: to establish your points of offense for the round. In a case, you aren’t focused on responding to your opponent (yet) – this will happen in rebuttals. Instead, the purpose is to make your core points that you’ll carry through the entire round, the points that you will use to establish your offense.

Many debaters wonder whether they should be using “cards” (quotes from experts) or “analytics” (their own analysis). The answer is that the case should be a combination of both. Cards are useful for establishing credibility and providing strong warrants for your points, while analytics can contextualize and explain the cards, connecting them to the topic.

A typical case will have multiple “contentions” which are separate arguments for your side. Within each contention you might have a brief analytic explaining the thesis of your contention, a card, an analytic summarizing the card, and then a new card, new analytic, and so on.

Policy cases are far lighter on analytics than Lincoln-Douglas or Public Forum. Most policy cases are just cards. The reason for this is that Policy is a more research-intensive activity, which means that the premium is more on presenting the fruits of one’s research.

Contentions in Policy are also called “advantages” and are read with “plans” – plans will be discussed in more detail in a future article.

Timing Breakdown:

Since your case is 8 minutes, you have a fair amount of time to allocate here. However, it’s always important to be thoughtful about where you’re spending your time.

Your case will typically have your plan text and then advantages. Nearly all of the time is spent on the advantages. Here, you would be well-advised to have 2-3 (more is too many and not fleshed out enough). You can roughly split your time equally between the two advantages.

Outline of Structure:

• Plan Text

• Advantage 1

• Advantage 2

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