2AR

The 2AR, or Second Affirmative Rebuttal, is the eighth and last speech in a Team Policy debate round and the fifth and last speech in a Lincoln Douglas debate round. For Team Policy,it lasts five minutes, just like the other rebuttal speeches. There is no cross-examination following the 2AR.

A typical 2AR crystallizes the issues in the round down into voting issues, summing up the round and showing why the Affirmative team should win. It may also refute points from the negative's previous speech, including the Negative's voting issues.

Abuse of the 2AR
Because the 2AR is the last speech in the debate round, the Negative has no chance to respond. Thus, it is possible to abuse the 2AR by making arguments and responses that wouldn't otherwise stand up. This is generally considered unethical (or at least extremely annoying) and is an easy way to make enemies.

New responses are the main avenue for abuse. It is generally held that the 2AR must not bring up responses to arguments that were not addressed in the 1AR. By extension, many debaters believe it is unfair for the Affirmative team to respond to anything not previously addressed in the debate. New responses to arguments previously addressed are also often looked down upon, especially if the response in the 2AR is a better response than the ones used earlier.

Many Negative teams preemptively warn the judge about abuse in their last negative speech, especially if the judge is inexperienced.

Evidence use
Evidence use is a particularly controversial aspect of the abuse issue. Many debaters feel that reading evidence in the 2AR is unfair if it had not been brought up previously in the round, since the Negative has no chance to respond. In most scenarios, they argue, the Affirmative could have brought up the evidence earlier. Holding off until the 2AR just opens the door for the Affirmative to hide things and abuse the system.

On the other hand, many debaters believe that new evidence is fine if the evidence bolsters a previous response to an argument. They also argue that using your own logic is like evidence; evidence is often simply someone else's logic, so where does the evidence stop and the speaker's logic begin?