Difference between revisions of "Structure of a Shell"

The person running a shell usually wants to defend competing interps – forcing your opponent to prove that they are actively good is much harder than proving that they are sufficient enough for the round. Likewise, the person defending the shell usually wants to defend reasonability. With the earlier example of formal clothes theory, it is easy to prove that wearing formal clothing is “okay” for a round, but it is hard to prove that it is a good norm to set. For those running theory, it is important to put competing interps in the speech you are introducing the shell – it helps preempt responses to it while also preventing the round from being late-breaking. Giving the judge multiple speeches to evaluate the debate makes it easier to evaluate compared to each debater having one speech on the issue since it gives rise to new arguments and intervention. Like with competing interps/reasonability, it is important to preemptively put no RVIs in your voters section when running theory to make it harder for your opponent to justify yes RVIs.  

Competing Interps – Norms setting: it ensures we have a debate over which practice is better for the debate space as a whole rather than this round in particular. Norms setting outweighs A. longevity – it ensures the most amount of debate rounds will be fair and educational, not only this one B. the constitutive purpose of theory is to set good rules for the debate space.

Reasonability – Competing interps fails to set norms, it just shows who the best theory debater is contextually to this round and this judge. Reasonability solves – it rewards the winner who does the best job articulating they weren’t unfair in this round.

==== RVIs vs No RVIs ====

Consider the question: Under a competing interpretations model, what should happen if the person responding to theory wins that their norm is better?