As a newbie debater, I only realised how important casebuilding was when I kept making strategic mistakes in my debates. Sometimes my team would interpret the motion wrong. Sometimes we forget to make a setup and the opponent abuses it. Sometimes we would focus on different things. Usually I’d just… Not know what I’m talking about when I do my speech.
Apparently, there are steps you shouldn’t miss during casebuilding. If your casebuild still looks like a chaotic session of throwing ideas around with your friends, and that makes you have no direction in the debate, you might be missing some of those steps. A good casebuilding session is a 7-stage ritual:
1. Have a moment of silence
At the start of casebuilding, it’s usually wise to not blurt out all your ideas. Take a moment to think about them. You might find that they’re not as persuasive as you thought when it popped up in your head. You might find that there are better approaches you can use in the debate.
From what I’ve done, it’s fair to have 5 minutes of silence in an Asian Parliamentary debate or 2-3 minutes of silencein a British Parliamentary Debate.
At the end of this process, you should ideally be able to find the room of the debate. This means you can grasp what the burdens are, what the clashes likely are, and what you’re supposed to do to win that debate. You understand what it’ll be about and how you can tip it to your advantage.
2. Define the motion, burdens, and stance
After some silence, tune back in with your team and make sure you interpret the motion in the same way. Now it’s time to answer the basic whats of the motion.
Define the motion. For example, in This House would actively instill a value of disobeying authority in children, you need to agree on who This House is—governments or parents? In This House prefers leaderless social movements, what is a leaderless social movement?
Set the burdens. For example, in This House believes that the rise of e-commerce giants has done more harm than good, you probably don’t need to defend life before e-commerce where you only had offline businesses. Instead, you defend a world where there are many e-commerce platforms that are equal in size, and they don’t go big enough to control the market share for too many lifestyle aspects.
Pick a stance. For example, in This House would ban social media companies from independently deplatforming politicians, would you rather wait for the government’s approval to deplatform politicians, or would you completely ban deplatforming?
Imagine the lack of clarity if you ran these motions without defining these basic setup points.
3. Build a model
The next step is to answer the hows of the motion. How are you going to implement a motion? What does the world you defend look like? Build a robust model for a neat debate.
For This House would, This House Believes that X should, and This House prefers motions, you explain what the proposed world looks like; distinguish it clearly from the status quo.
For This House regrets and This House opposes motions, you explain what the counterfactual world looks like. What if a certain narrative/trend/phenomenon didn’t exist? What’s the alternative then?
There are some motions that don’t require a model, but the bare minimum that you should have in your setup is what your side and what the opponent’s side needs to defend. For example, in This House prefers a world where there exists a world government with sovereign power, you defend an imaginary world where this world government is established and agreed upon by states, and the Opposition has to defend the status quo, not another imaginary world. You want to state this clearly so both benches debate the supposed debate.
4. Brainstorm argument titles
Now this is the right time to brainstorm for arguments. It’s never good to make this your first step. And I’m saying this again: make sure you don’t skip the 3 previous steps! A messy setup makes for a messy debate. Do it at your own risk.
What you have to do in this fourth step is to think of argument titles. Just the titles, make at least two that you can distribute to the substantive speakers in your team. Prioritise the first speaker though, since second speakers aren’t obligated to bring completely new arguments in most debate competitions nowadays. Further elaboration of previous arguments count as extensions!
5. Preempt
You can do this at the same time with the previous step, but I’m just putting it here as a separate step so you don’t miss it. Don’t forget that your opponent will bring counter-arguments and rebuttals to your arguments! Make sure that your argument isn’t taken down with one simple response. Build up some preemptive rebuttals and even ifs for your opponent’s likely cases and deploy them, even from the very first speech.
Some debaters even suggest having an answer to your worst case and the opponent’s best case from the very start. Good cases are cases that cover more scenarios.
6. Elaborate
Upon deciding your argument titles and what you need to preempt, you build up on elaboration. This is where it’s good to assign different people to different roles. For example, if the first speaker elaborates arguments, the second and third who have less duty to bring arguments can focus on preempting.
This is usually best done in silence so you have an uninterrupted session for developing your case, and it’s all your thoughts so you know how to deliver the speech with your own style. Spend 15-20 minutes in an Asian Parliamentary debate or spend 8-10 minutes in a British Parliamentary debate.
When elaborating, just don’t forget to be comparative. Make sure you spend equal time talking about both a positive case and a negative case. Show your opponent’s world is terrible and show that you have the solution to their problems!
7. Conclude
At the last few minutes of casebuilding, regroup with your team and summarise the ideas you’ve developed. Check on each others’ cases and point out any missing explanations. Make sure you have same team identity and prioritise the same arguments! Some teams even sync their closing lines just to make sure they deliver that bottom line that judges should remember them for.
What if you don’t have enough time for all 7?
Well. If you’re a new debater, then perhaps skipping some of these steps is something you have no choice but to do. What you have to keep in mind is you should aspire to have all these casebuilding processes done. One way you can slowly progress towards that is by making practice drills for the steps you still take too long in, and make sure that the next time you casebuild, you have enough time to complete that step.
Even then, you might sometimes still miss one of these. When you do, though, it’s not the end! You can keep in mind the steps you missed during the debate and if you think how to complete it, you can bring it in later speakers.
What this means for you
By the end of this article, I hope you realised that there are crucial steps you might need to focus on more the next time you casebuild. Remember, most debaters only do two of these steps, which are steps 4 and 6. If you can do all 7, you’re 5 steps ahead of them!