Qualified Judging in a World of Specialization
There’s been a lot of discussion about the nature of judging vis-à-vis Michael Miller’s previous post, found here. I’m not going to talk about speed, at least not in-depth; my feelings on this were made pretty clear in my comments within the aforementioned post. But I’d like to use the discussion as a jumping off point for something that I’ve been think about for awhile. Here is the question, in all its awkwardly-worded glory: what is the minimum standard of qualification for a debate judge?
First, I think it is important to consider the role of the judge within the debate round. He or she determines who wins the round, obviously. But there’s more to it than that, I think. Every judge has his or her preferences and worldviews regarding debate. Good debaters will adapt the content of the round to match those worldviews. Like I was telling Danny the other day, if I happen to have the pleasure of debating in front of him some day, I will deliver a persuasive, rational speech advocating policy arguments that appeals to his ideal conceptualization of debate, happily and without complaint. But in front of a judge like, say, Zach Moss, I will delight in breaking out Foucault and ranting about biopower at 300 wpm. (And Zach, if you’re reading this, I promise to be clear! I promise!)
One of the common themes I noticed was the comparison of the debate judge to a member of a trial jury. But I’m not certain I like this comparison. I prefer to compare debate judges to actual law judges, practicing attorneys who are trained in their craft. They have distinct legal views, just like debate judges have debate views, and they have mastered a field that is inherently specialized. Juries, on the other hand, do not have opinions. They are semi-docile bodies who are told to evaluate facts and interpret them to the best of their ability.
Do judges cast votes? Not in jury trials, usually. But then again, when was the last time the U.S. Supreme Court handed instructions to a jury? The highest echelons of law are presided over by trained minds. And yes, Supreme Court justices do vote, and when they rule, it has ramifications everywhere.
Now, let us consider an interesting historical precedent.
Up until a few decades ago, California used to allow lay persons who were not licensed attorneys to preside over criminal trials. These lay members were typically elected by the general populace, and then assigned to what were known as the justice courts. Under this system, individuals with no experience in law and no formal training within the legal system were effectively permitted to hand out prison sentences. Just imagine taking a random juror off of a case and assigning them to preside over the trial – objection, your honor!
Fascinatingly, this system was actually used for many decades. But in Gordon v. Justice Court (1974), the California Supreme Court ruled that lay persons were not, in fact, qualified to adjudicate such trials. Burke notes in the majority opinion:
The practice of allowing a layman to be a judge in a criminal proceeding must be scrutinized in the light of modern standards and conditions. There has been a vast increase in the number of attorneys in all areas of the state…the increased complexity of criminal law and criminal procedure has greatly enhanced the probability that a layman will be unable to deal effectively with the complexities inherent in a criminal trial…
It is incongruous today for prosecutors and defense attorneys, who must be licensed attorneys, to perform advocacy roles before a judge who does not have a similar background. The [non-attorney] judge is placed in a position of either drawing upon his own experience (which may be limited) or relying upon the position taken by the prosecutor or defense attorney.
Furthermore, the use of lay judges was ruled unconstitutional in violation of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. For the same reason that persons charged with crimes must be assigned qualified lawyers to defend them, jury trials must be conducted in front of a qualified judge; i.e. an attorney who is a member of the Bar. This logic was laid out in the landmark decision Powell v. Alabama (and later reaffirmed in Gideon v. Wainwright). Justice Sutherland writes:
The right to be heard would be, in many cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel. Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law. If charged with crime, he is incapable, generally, of determining for himself whether the indictment is good or bad. He is unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. Left without the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge, and convicted upon incompetent evidence, or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible. He lacks both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he have a perfect one. He requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him. Without it, though he be not guilty, he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence.
Why does this matter?
Debate is by nature a specialized event, with its own procedures, theory, and jargon, all requiring a comprehensive understanding of debate. Is it theoretically possible to use lay judges? Yes. But as the justice courts demonstrated, this was not necessarily the fairest or most constructive manner of conducting proceedings. Would you want, for instance, a “lay judge” who does not flow or understand debate specialization determining who breaks at the national championship? No more so than we would want a “lay judge” who does not understand legal theory sentencing people to hefty prison terms. Yet while the latter has been (thankfully) banished, the former continues to occur.
So, with all that in mind, what determines a sufficient level of qualification? At what point do we draw the line between “lay” and “qualified?” After all, we don’t have a Bar exam that tests this stuff. Here are my thoughts.
I would posit that it is insufficient for a judge to have read or even memorized the rules. A qualified judge must understand what those rules actually mean in practice. This sort of understanding can be acquired first and foremost through knowledge and firsthand experience, i.e. through participation in debate.
The caveat, of course, is that not all debate formats are alike. Pure policy debate requires the highest degree of judge qualification because it has the highest degree of complexity. High school public forum requires the lowest degree of judge qualification because there is virtually no specialization, and intentionally so; members of the general public thus form the majority of the judging pool for that event.
Where does NFA-LD fall? This is interesting because LD is supposed to be a permutation of policy debate and IEs, even if it seldom works out that way in practice.
Let’s consider some examples. Is someone who is experienced in judging IEs, and has a masters in communication, qualified if they don’t understand how the stock issues work? As shocking as this might sound, I would have to say no. I would not want someone who does not understand what the stock issues are and how they function sitting in the back of the room under any circumstances.
Another example: is someone who did IEs exclusively in college, never debated, but coaches LD, has learned to flow, and understands the rules and a small amount of theory qualified? The answer here is a firm yes. This coach will probably hate speed. He or she may give some weight to communicative style in his or her decision. But while this may or may not be the ideal judge for a debater like me, he or she is definitely a qualified judge.
That distinction is very important. We all have our ideal judge. This is what MPJ facilitates (the merits of which I may or may not address at some future time). But consider this: even if I absolutely despise a particular judge’s argumentative and stylistic preferences, if he or she has met the minimum conditions I laid out, then they are very much qualified to judge debate, and I will not complain if he or she is placed in the back of the room. I consider it my responsibility to prepare for every qualified judge – and that includes those whose debate worldviews do not align with mine. Hence, my advice about keeping multiple sets of evidence for the variety of judging styles you are likely to see at every tournament.
I do not consider it a fair burden on a debater to prepare for an unqualified judge. Like members of a jury, their worldviews regarding debate are usually underdeveloped. Too often these rounds devolve into a contest to see who can talk the prettiest, with little (if any) regard given to matters of substance. Can these debates occur as such? Yes, and they often do. Does that make them good debates or fair debates? Just as in instances where lay members served as trial judges, the answer is no.
Rock on, and bring the ruckus.
- Nick
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Comments
You miss the point. My argument is not necessarily that debate should reflect the court system in its totality. Rather, I point out that debate and law are somewhat similar in that they involve technical specialization that requires training and experience to understand. (Obviously, law takes this to a much greater extent, giving the need for years of rigorous formal schooling). Specialization commensurately requires that judges be technically proficient to a certain extent such that the fairest and most educational debate possible can occur.
Outstanding argument Nick. It will take me awhile to really go through your post but here is my initial reaction and well, you asked for a ruckus so… =)
I think, however, the analogy breaks down for me here:
“scrutinized in the light of modern standards and conditions.”
While I have not read the cases in awhile, that sounds like to me the court was saying that at one time the process was probably OK – when standards and conditions were more simple. Thus, a perfectly reasonable alternative to not allowing the citizens to serve as a judge would be roll back the modern standards and conditions, right? (not that I’m saying that would be a good idea – just following the logic here).
As applicable to debate, I would understand this to mean that in the past debate was “more simple” and so “lay judges” would be OK. However, with modern practices that’s no longer the case.
Yet, if the modern practices are curtailed (say, for example, like speed) than the lay judges who would otherwise be excluded should now be allowed back in, right?
I fail to grasp the import of Nick’s post, because I consider it to be inapposite to my philosophy. Perhaps he – or someone else – can explain where he and I are in “conlict.”
I do not suggest – and never have suggested – that debate “experts” (i.e., recent alumni from college debate competition, grad assistants, etc.) should be excluded from the judging pool at debate tournaments. All I am saying is that it makes no sense to exclude – as “unqualified” – anyone from the judging pool who is “qualified” to vote in American election and/or sit on a trial jury. That’s all I said; and I do not see how that has been adressed.
(1) Debate is, indeed, a “game”; but it will be a “better” game if what it teaches has utilitarian value. (2) The more people who make up the fanbase for college LD, the stronger the event will be – especially in a financial sense.
One final point – “Why the comparison of contest debating to law?” Because trials and appeals involve real-life battles of definitions of terms, real-life battles over propositions of fact, and – perhaps the most forgotten issue in make-believe debate – real-life decisions about the credibility of evidence, especially when the evidence is in dispute. Moreover, law-making is “policy-making”; so the comparison of the legislative process to policy debate is unavoidable – except to those of limited vision.
Danny -
Using lay judges in justice courts might have been okay in the 19th century, although I’m not familiar with the history of law so I can’t comment on this.
You can’t really roll back “modern standards and conditions” without completely altering the nature of the format. I don’t think it’s possible to tamper with the natural evolution of any debate format, just as it isn’t really possible to tamper with the natural evolution of constitutional law.
If you take public forum in high school, for example – what happened was they basically stripped out all of the specialization from policy and LD and shortened the speeches to “sound-bite” length. Every month they hand out a resolution and say “go.” No fancy plans, criterions, stock issues – all of that stuff is discarded in favor of just straight-up arguments that more often or not resemble an essay you would write in an 11th grade English class. Lay judges work fine there because they don’t need special training – there’s no specific guideline to determining a winner or loser, they can just arbitrarily decide who did the better debating.
We can’t really do the same with LD because at the end of the day, it’s still a policy format with an inherent degree of specialization. Just stripping out speed, for example, won’t alter the fact that judges still need to be familiar with the nuances of policy – flowing, stock issues, counterplans, T standards, etc. Lay judges with no prior debate experience aren’t likely to understand how any of these work. In order to make lay judges qualified, you would have to eliminate everything that makes policy debate policy debate – simply turn it into a college version of public forum. If that ever happens, I’m out of here.
Michael – perhaps re-read my post? My argument is that lay persons who qualified to vote in an election or sit on a jury, but lack relevant academic debate experience, are no more qualified to judge an specialized debate round than they are to preside over a criminal trial. They understand neither the nuances of the policy format nor the technical aspects of law.
Is debate absent specialization really “better?” For general audiences maybe, but for the debaters themselves, no. Specialized debate is more educational, has a greater research burden, requires more critical thinking, and is just flat-out harder. I would say the skills it teaches are certainly useful in the real world.
Is there a trade-off with public speaking skills with all the jargon and (sometimes) speed? I guess it’s bound to be true to some extent, but doing debate isn’t mutually exclusive with doing IEs. And even then specialized debate can still give you good speaking skills – as demonstrated by every policy-debater-turned-lawyer, ever.
I’d love to add more but I need to get going somewhere.
While I appreciate your desire for the most qualified judge (whatever that may be), the problem with your argument is that you approach it from the wrong direction. Debate, as practiced in the Forensics community, is first and foremost an educational activity. To isolate the legal system as the model would be to loose it from it’s pedagogical moorings and offer no reason for educational institutions to support it.
I would ask you tolook past the short term goals of your career as a debater and step into the role of a teacher/coach who must justify the existence of the program to administrators. In this situation, the ability to adapt to audience members from all walks of life and all experience levels is paramount. As debate (first NDT, then CEDA, and perhaps now Parli is heading that direction) becomes more specialized and insular, it becomes less accessible to the uninitiated. WHile you could no doubt argue for the value provided by that type of debate, it does not negate the fact that many schools lost their programs precisely because of that insularity. When this occurs, even fewer students will get to experience the benefits that debate has to offer.
Tragically, there have been many high profile former debaters that have become the loudest opponents of academic debate for this very reason. The editorials that they have written for major newspapers have called into question many of the practices that your advocacy would reify. As a result, Directors of Forensics are having to scramble to justify their programs pedagogically.
My question to you is which is more important; that you get to debate in front of the judges you want? or that programs continue to exist?
Rolland
Great post Rolland! I would add to that the problem is also about finding judges. The further the activity moves from allowing professors at your school from judging the harder it is to have a tournament. I would also point out that if we are talking real world, many states elect their judges and having a law degree isn’t a requirement for election.
Having said that, I do think that Nick brings up a good point. We have all been in rounds where we have either suffered because a judge had no clue what was going on, or my personal favorite been a judge in an out-round where I questioned my own decision in the round because the judge who voted with me was so bad. I think this issue gets solved very “easily” if tournament directors train their hired judges to be somewhat familiar with what is going on in the round.
Rolland,
I definitely agree with you that the continued presence of the activity is absolutely key to anything else. Without it, well, nothing else matters. So, I will agree with you that pursuing destructives paths is counter-intuitive at best, and self-destructive at worst.
However, where we disagree is whether or not the specialization, as you put it, is such a destructive act.
All of the things we talk about as being representative of that insularity–jargon, speed, etc.–has come about over decades of debate. Heck, in a lot of ways, they’re representative of things that have come about over centuries of language development, through every culture and language in our history.
In life and in debate, we think of shorthand. We come up with words and phrases that represent much, much larger concepts. So instead of spending twenty minutes trying to explain those concepts, and sometimes even failing at that, we have a couple quick words that, when people hear them, they know exactly what we’re talking about. Think filibuster, cloture, etc. Or, if we’re looking strictly at the academic realm; tenure, sabbatical. Even the word “major” means more than just a single “word.”
That is, in my opinion, the really cool thing about language: the constant shifting and shaping of words and their meaning through time.
Truth be told, we see it everywhere. And with everything. So is it really that big of a surprise that it reared its head in the world of academic debate? I think not.
Granted, I’m not exactly the best when it comes to judge adaptation outside a narrow comfort zone (something I’m working on, I readily admit), but even when we’re trying to avoid things like jargon, things that add to that insular nature you fear, it still happens.
Maybe not to the degree we’d normally see it, but it still happens. Not because we’re evil elitist pricks, but because these things make our life easier. It allows us to avoid spending a minute explaining what uniqueness is (and even then, probably not covering the nuances) and get right on into the heart of the disad. In that sense, these insular crutches, if you will, help us make debate better.
Instead of reciting the same thing, trying to explain it round after round, we use specialized words to make things easier on all.
While I grant that it might create a bit of a barrier, let’s be honest; there’s a barrier to entry, a barrier affecting the uninitiated, in absolutely *everything* in life. Remember the first time you watched a hockey game, wondering just what in the world was going on?
I do. But then it all made sense, slowly but surely. The same holds true for the first time I went skiing, first time I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, and the first time I ever walked into a lecture hall on something I didn’t know everything about (and that’s still happens a lot!).
There’s always going to be a barrier to entry. The question is, should we complain about that barrier, or work to help novices climb over it?
I honestly believe anyone can become a good, solid, competitive debater, regardless of background, experience, knowledge, whatever have you. The Urban Debate League initiatives pretty much proved this.
We could come up with ways to reject the speed, reject the jargon, reject anything that might make us more “insular,” but to be honest, I’ve been there. Freshman year, I competed in a league (that I shall not name out, though it’s not terribly difficult to guess), that tried to stop all of this while still maintaining a policy format.
They said no to speed, they said no to rhetoric, they said no to anything that might hamper the ability for someone to walk off the street and jump on in. To further that, they even took pride on finding the layest of the lay judges. Janitor, bus driver, wife of the TD with no debate experience? I swear to God, I debated in front of them all.
And you know what? It was horrible, an absolute nightmare. The quality of debate was abysmal, things were a crap shoot at best, and no matter how hard you tried to adapt, it wasn’t enough.
Everything that makes debate fun and enjoyable, enticing to students, had to be rejected. Worse yet, in order to fulfill their “lofty goals,” they had to rely on violence and coercion via the ballot: the judge was the judge (no pun intended), jury, and executioner: if you violated the spirit of debate they set forth (which wasn’t even clearly articulated to the judges themselves!), the ballot was used to strike you down, to punish you for daring to stand just a little higher than the weeds around you. And, honestly, that was the only reliably predictable thing you could bank on: everything else, you might have well just rolled the dice.
There’s a reason that league is dying (last I checked, you could count the number of policy teams at their national tournament on your *fingertips*): it’s because it just wasn’t worth it. For anyone. School after school, team after team, gone. Debater after debater, some talented, struck down by the confines of the league and forced to slowly watch their passion for debate wither away.
But they’re still around, circle-jerking and fighting to find ways to stay alive. If you’re a Doctor Who fan, think to the End of Time Christmas Special. You’ll know what I mean.
But, amusingly enough, the very heart of the league is more insular than anything else around: in order to prevent evil policy wonks from entering the promised land, schools petitioning for entry need a 2/3 vote from the leadership. I mean, hell, there are some cults easier to join.
We’ve seen countless formats, multiple leagues, all start out aiming for the representation of the “best in the rhetorical tradition,” or whatever the catch phrase of the day is. Rejecting the insularity in many ways, but, at the end of the day, nearly all to a large extent have gone down or at least started, that path.
Maybe, instead of taking up arms to fight, we should stop and think about it? Trying to fight that leads towards only one path: failure. Either it sneaks on in, because it makes life easier, adds to enjoyment by debaters, or whatever have you, or you’re forced towards Herculian efforts of coercion and violence to keep it at bay. At that point, you lose the other thing you need besides support and money: the debaters themselves.
Yes, it’s no doubt tougher today to maintain budgets and support. But the idea that the big bad guy of insularity is to blame for it all, is in my opinion, a bit of a stretch, and a bit of an abstraction from reality that has us hacking away at windmills while the real problems get passed on by.
Anyhow, for myself, the idea that forcing debaters in front of judges with no or little experience will somehow solve the community’s woes is a bit tough to swallow. It’s as extreme as my getting up, proclaiming from a table that the community is going to switch over to MPJ and everyone’s going to like it. Or else.
We’re never going to get perfect judges who fit our own individual styles, every round. But just rounding up anyone off the street, professors included, isn’t going to solve that.
And creating a false dichotomy, where we’re either lovely people who will debate in front of anyone for the sake of the community, or evil bastards who want to crawl up from out of our tubs only to debate for those who are like us even if it damns debate as we know it to hell itself, is a bit insulting.
@Tom:
A few thoughts on some of your points. You say:
“[the use of jargon] allows us to avoid spending a minute explaining what uniqueness is (and even then, probably not covering the nuances) and get right on into the heart of the disad.”
But it also creates confusion for the audience and those that have a different understanding of uniqueness. Why would it be so bad to explain (even in 10-15 seconds) the purpose of introducing the uniqueness evidence?
You state: “While I grant that it might create a bit of a barrier, let’s be honest; there’s a barrier to entry, a barrier affecting the uninitiated, in absolutely *everything* in life. Remember the first time you watched a hockey game, wondering just what in the world was going on?”
Right – but watching a hockey game is different than participating in an NFA-LD debate. Again, this discussion may have reached its natural limits, but it depends on what you want to get out of the activity. Your post makes it sound like you want NFA-LD to be fun for you – OK – that’s one value. But on the other hand, there is a value of inclusion, audience participation, and “real world” communication skills. You are free to argue for your value trumping the ones I identified. You can even argue that our values are not mutually exclusive.
However, I would contend they are – especially in Southern California. NFA-LD is being adopted by programs specifically because it’s being sold as NOT what you make it out to be. Now, maybe there is a larger audience of students and coaches who would be interested in ignoring the rules of NFA-LD to make it something else – good luck making your case. However, the case that I and other coaches made over the last 5 years has been one based on the NFA-LD rules.
I don’t think we’re doomed to fail with NFA-LD adopting the practices you mentioned. If nothing else, having the rules say what they say allows us to constantly bring up this discussion and that’s a positive. In other events, like NPDA, it’s difficult to even get a discussion going about speed because “it’s not in the rules!”
In sum, it all depends on what NFA-LD “is” and what function it serves in forensics. I’m pretty sure for most of the coaches who sponsor programs in Southern California that purpose is to train students how to communicate effectively in a debate format absent the speed, jargon, and blip responses so common in other formats. If NFA-LD just becomes 1 person CEDA/NDT debate then I don’t see a future for the activity – at least in SoCal.
Thinking more about this issue – what is the harm of the non-specialized judge? 1) Random decisions? I’m pretty sure the losing debater almost always thinks the decision was “wrong” regardless of the “quality” of the judge. This seems to fall again on the “game” end of the activity – are we really doing this all just for ballots and trophies? 2) not as much fun for debaters? – this may just be a consequence but I’d note that it’s probably zero sum – as the fun level increases for some debaters (who like speed/jargon) it would decrease for debaters who dislike that element. This is what’s happening with NPDA where program after program has left the activity given the (d)evolution of that activity. Some like it better now than before but a whole bunch of programs are leaving – or at least not competing at the National Championships.
What is the benefit? 1) An activity that is potentially more open for lay audiences to participate and learn about the topic; 2) an activity that teaches students something unique from alternative debate formats available to students (NPDA, CEDA/NDT); 3) an activity that when presented to the administration does not have to completely transform itself from what happens at a tournament thus justifying the existence of the team much more easily; 4) easier tournament scheduling since judges are easier to find; 5) lower entrance barriers to new students both to forensics and to debate;
Those are a few that come to my mind. So, on a cost-benefit, my mind is made up on the second option =)
Rolland – insularity is may pose something of a problem. NDT/CEDA has lost a net of about 30 schools in the past decade, although in many instances those schools became parli schools. Is that purely because of insularity? It might play a role, but budget crunches probably have more to do with it.
I don’t think reducing community insularity is necessarily mutually exclusive with retaining qualified judging. The best way to negate the effect of insulation within the competitive setting is to promote forensics within non-competitive settings. Are admins the problem? Have public forum-style demo debates on campus. Invite everybody – admins, students, alumni, the works. Have professors judge. Many policy schools use this. Do a speech-a-thon. There are numerous ways to increase involvement on-campus that combat negative perceptions surrounding debate, yet don’t require that we “dumb down,” for lack of a better phrase, the activity as practiced at tournaments in the process.
Would I prefer to debate in front of the judges I want or ensure that programs continue to exist? That’s really a false dichotomy. Nominally ensuring a minimum quality of judging isn’t exactly going to cause the demise of debate, given that my interpretation of what “qualified” means doesn’t exactly require that one be a former national champion. And like I mentioned, there are plenty of alternative avenues to justify programs.
Matt – you raise a good point. What if qualified judging isn’t available? We’re kind of blessed in Socal to have a huge forensics pool to draw upon, but that’s not true everywhere. Training judges is certainly better than nothing at all – having a two or three hour judging seminar before the tournament explaining the essentials can probably serve as a stopgap.
Tom – good (long) post. I agree with a lot of what you say. But what Rolland is getting at is not a question of whether specialized, insular debate is superior to simplified debate or not, but rather is a question of whether or not specialized debate is viable from a administrative and budgetary standpoint. Obviously, I think it is.
Danny – taking 10-15 seconds to explain uniqueness would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that there exists an opportunity cost to doing so. If you have to waste 10-15 seconds explaining each structural element of your speech, those precious seconds add up pretty damn quickly. The time you are spending there could be better spent debating matters of actual substance. The efficiency that jargon allows enhances both the depth of clash as well as the number of positions that can be discussed. This makes for better “policy debate,” per se.
And like Danny says, somewhere down the line we reach a point beyond which we cannot reconcile competing value systems. The use of jargon has its own opportunity cost in that audiences are somewhat excluded. In my opinion, this is acceptable, since academic debate should primarily benefit debaters rather than spectators. The sizes of public, community audiences at debate tournaments have dwindled to virtually zero over the span of the last few decades. Perhaps Danny and many others feel differently. That’s fine. I think we can all still get along at the end of the day.
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I don’t understand the heavy emphasis on courts do it this way, thus we should too. This approach implicitly says: this is the best analogue for debate. But no argument is presented for why courts are the best analogue.
Instead of trying to model debate after one thing or another, isn’t it preferable to ask, “what do we want debate to teach?” and go from there?