During the 2002-2003 debate season, a number of Affirmative cases have surfaced that fail to deal directly with the resolution. These cases take many trivial forms and usually attempt to interpret the resolution as narrowly as possible and deal exclusively with the interests of a subgroup or a particular illness. Examples of these cases have appeared in the nation's leading debate case books and are popular because they allow debaters to present plans that - due to their nontopicality - are difficult for Negative teams to anticipate and answer.

While this has long been a feature of policy debate, the increasing use of these types of plans prevents high school debaters from addressing the very real public policy problems presented in the resolution. This distorts the purpose of policy debate by allowing teams to win rounds using spurious cases - that is, achieve victory through interpretive ingenuity rather than advancing ideas for meaningful reform.

For Negative teams, these cases present considerable disadvantages. But if properly understood and anticipated, their nontopicality presents Negative teams with advantages as well. Listed below are a couple of the most common of these trivial Affirmative cases. For each, we have presented some ideas for ways to expose their nontopicality.

A Note on Topicality

Negative teams cannot be prepared for every conceivable Affirmative case that will appear, so they should be prepared with a general Negative response that will make even the most outlandish Affirmative case a manageable threat. Fortunately, policy debate is structured in a way that discourages trivial Affirmative cases. In order to respond to them, Negative debaters simply need to be aware of the parameters of debate and remain focused on satisfying the stock voting issues. The most important of these, when facing a critique or any other spurious case, is Topicality. Topicality refers to the requirement that the Affirmative team present a case that "affirms" the stated topic of the debate. The Affirmative is bound to the topic and is restrained by its limiting terms.

The key for the Negative is to focus on the intended meaning of each term in the resolution so that the topic is sufficiently limited in scope to expose trivial Affirmative cases. In recent years, there has been a growing tendency for Affirmative team to try to circumvent Topicality. Some teams, and even debate camps, have argued that Topicality is only a "Reserve" voting issue, and that it can be overcome by critique. However, Topicality remains of central importance in debate for three reasons.

1. Topicality is a necessary, a priori requirement.

Every Affirmative team must meet certain requirements in addition to explaining the intrinsic virtues of their case. Topicality is not an issue that can be debated away by rhetoric, evidence, or any other device. It is a rule of the game

2. Topicality is the most critical requirement for Affirmative teams.

Among the requirements that an Affirmative team must meet in order to win a debate round, Topicality is the most important. Even if the Affirmative presents a critique that offers some advantage or benefit, those benefits are insufficient to remove the Affirmative's dependence upon the resolution itself.

3. Topicality is the organizing concept for the whole debate round.

All arguments, including critiques, are only valid insofar as they bolster the Affirmative team's responsibility to affirm the resolution. No argument can remove or supersede the Topicality requirement.

(Source: Ryan Galloway, Baylor Briefs, The Negative: Casebook on Changing U.S. Mental Health Policy, Volume III).

Bearing these points in mind, Negative teams should focus on the resolution itself, and strive to adhere to a narrow, manageable interpretation of its terms. Clearly, this year's resolution says some things and not others. It was written with a specific goal in mind: a substantial, policy-based reform of the nation's mental health care system. Affirmative teams that attempt to circumvent the resolution's intended meaning are not responding to its goal.

The General Negative

Before beginning the First Negative Constructive speech, the Negative team should write out the resolution on the chalkboard.

First Negative Constructive

In response to the Affirmative team's failure to present a plan affirming the resolution, my partner and I acknowledge the need for substantial changes to U.S. mental health policy and will present a plan that affirms the resolution's original intent. Clearly, the mental health topic was chosen because the nation's mental health policy is in need of meaningful reform, and the needs of the American mentally ill population as a whole are far greater than the needs of the group whose interests the Affirmative claims to represent.

1. The resolution was intended to address the needs of one specific social group: the mentally ill. When the National Federation of High Schools met last year to choose a topic for the 2002 - 2003 debate season, they intentionally selected the topic of mental health because of its considerable economic and social importance, as well as its relevance to current political discourse and ongoing policy reform efforts.

2. Within the field of mental illness, the needs of the group that the Affirmative team is concerned with are unimportant compared to the needs of the mentally ill population as a whole. Fifty six million people - one in five Americans - are diagnosed each year with some form of mental illness. Altogether, the mentally ill cost the country's economy about $170 billion a year. Clearly, it was the needs of this segment of society that the authors of the resolution intended to address and not a particular social group. Other groups may be important, but they were not chosen for the nationwide debate topic. Nowhere in the resolution are any of the following groups mentioned (Negative team: fill in the blank.): the homeless, homosexuals, foster children, Native Americans, battered women or unwed mothers.

3. 3. By focusing on the mentally ill population as a whole, the authors of the resolution sought to provoke debate about the mental health care system as a whole. The resolution is worded so that only cases that set out to drastically change the system are topical. The resolution's authors explicitly call for a "substantial" increase in services for mental health care. Incremental changes or "tinkering" do not constitute substantial change. The resolution acknowledges a significant problem with the status quo, and thereby requires teams to focus on the shortcomings of existing government policies. Changing the system by increasing funding to existing government programs or by changing the authority for a program from one government department to another are insufficient measures.

Affirmative teams should observe the resolution in its entirety. Having failed to do so by presenting a case that deals with ____, it is the responsibility of the Negative team to present a plan that meets the requirements of the resolution, which we will now do.

Negative Counter Plan

In conjunction with the above observations, Negative teams should be prepared to present a case that acknowledges the sanctity of the resolution if the Affirmative fails to do so. Given the wide range of outlandish cases that have surfaced this year, Negative teams face an opportunity-rich environment for presenting counterplans. Rather than responding to each piece of supporting evidence that the spurious Affirmative case uses, the Negative should notify the Affirmative team and the judge of the violation that has occurred and then present a counterplan that appeals to the resolution's true intent. While some teams may wish to present the case material that they use for their own Affirmative as a counterplan, others should consider using elements of the NCPA's General Negative. This case provides a framework for responding to spurious cases with a topical, policy-based alternative that directly addresses the resolution.

As an alternative to the affirmative approach, the negative will propose a counter plan designed to:

• Spend no more on health care than what we are now spending, but reform the way those dollars are spent.

• Encourage patients to receive care in the context of integrated, comprehensive health care plans.

• Rely primarily on the efficiencies and entrepreneurial strengths of the private sector.

• Subject questionable therapies to monitoring by patients and their families and to the discipline of the competitive marketplace.

Foster children. A number of cases are being used that focus on foster children. One popular plan proposes to amend the Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA) so that abused children who enter government custody will (a) have better access to public health services both before and after adoption and (b) be more likely to be returned to their original parents. This plan calls for the removal of time limits on public health services for foster children and an increase in public health spending (through AFSA). The result? Violence against foster children would be reduced, treatment centers would have the money necessary to continue providing services, and children would be rehabilitated. The case works on the assumption that the government profits from moving foster children through the system as quickly as possible.

One of the most obvious problems with this case is that the government profits, not from processing children as quickly as possible, but from keeping them in the system as long as possible. According to an NCPA study (The State of the Children: An Examination of Government-Run Foster Care), the more foster children there are, the more government bureaucracies get paid. So the government actually has a strong incentive to keep kids in limbo.

This report card on the states reveals another important problem with the foster children case: states vary widely, both in their respective adoption programs and in rates of success at adoption. Even though the federal government has been involved for several decades, the fact remains that states, not the federal government, provide most of the money for foster programs. So, one of the strongest Negative responses to this case would be that changes to adoption policies would be better addressed at the state level. Teams should consider responding to this plan with a counterplan that acknowledges the states' role in adoption and uses state governments as the primary enforcement agent.

Domestic violence. Another popular case deals with victims of rape and domestic abuse. These cases appear in different forms, but all of them operate on the notion that women who are abused are mentally ill. These cases suggest that rape and domestic abuse are prevalent, widespread societal problems; that the majority of the victims are vulnerable to mental health problems, and that the current system does not provide the quality or quantity of care needed to address their problems. One common domestic violence plan calls for the establishment of non-traditional mental health treatment programs that are tailored to the needs of battered women, to be administered through Medicaid. As a result of these programs, the case claims not only that the sufferings of a significant number of women will be assuaged, but hat women will have a support network allowing them to avoid future violence before it occurs and have their abusive husbands incarcerated.

This plan is narrow in its focus and amazingly ambitious in its Solvency claims. It is not Topical. The most obvious Topicality problem faced by the plan is that it addresses the needs of a very small segment of society. According to the case the problem is significant enough to merit attention because:

• Between 18 and 30 percent of all women in the U.S. are abused each year.

• According to the Surgeon General, every five years domestic violence claims as many lives as did the Vietnam War.

• The incidence of rape and domestic violence is increasing.

In each case, the impact of domestic violence is overstated and misleading.

• The idea that 30 percent of American women are abused was based on a very small survey of one emergency room. The actual number is significantly lower.

• Domestic violence does not kill more women than the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam. There were 55,000 Americans killed in the Vietnam War. According to the FBI, 1,500 women are killed annually by their male companions, bringing the average five-year total to between 7,000 and 8,000 women.

• The incidence of domestic violence is decreasing at a rapid pace. According to the Justice Department, rape is down in the U.S. by 30 percent and assault is down by 14 percent.

Because of its narrow focus, the Affirmative is implicitly arguing that some people's mental health problems - those of battered women - are more important than others'. The resolution calls for a substantial increase in services for mental health care. Each year, an estimated 56 million Americans - one in five people - experience diagnosable mental disorders. Why should we believe that the mental problems of 1,500 battered women are more important than the very real problems faced by the rest of the mentally ill population?