Kritikal case

A kritikal case is a case that is based on a kritik. It may merely support a philosophical position, or it may attempt to argue that the resolution itself should not be debated. In the NCFCA and Stoa, kritikal cases are much more common in Lincoln Douglas than in Team Policy.

When run by a specific side, a kritikal case is often called a "kritikal aff" or "kritikal neg".

Team Policy applications
In Team Policy debate, kritikal cases do not present a plan; they simply argue that an idea should be accepted. This idea may be related to the resolution, or it may be a general attack on the nature of the resolution itself.

An example of a kritikal case that could be seen in the 2009-2010 NCFCA Team Policy resolution was Will Malson's global warming kritikal case, which argued that the concept of catastrophic human-caused climate change should be rejected as false, without presenting any specific plan for the United States to implement.

Theoretical objections
One common objection is that kritikal cases effectively ignore the resolution. For example, suppose that the resolution is "Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should significantly reform its environmental policy." Kritikal cases don't argue that the Federal Government should do something, they argue that the people in the round should do something. Likewise, kritikal cases don't argue for reforming a policy, they argue for advocating a mindset. Thus, kritikal cases don't prove the resolution true - they argue that there are separate, kritikal reasons to vote for one team. This is arguably valid under a plancentric framework, but not under resolution-based frameworks like rezcentrism or parametrics.

Proponents of kritikal cases may respond that this goes with the territory. If you accept kritiks as theoretically valid, you accept that a team can win on philosophical grounds beyond the simple truth of the resolution. By this same logic, an Affirmative team should be able to win the round on philosophical grounds without ever proving the resolution true. (Opponents may argue that we should use different standards for Affirmative cases, however.)

Lincoln Douglas applications
In Lincoln Douglas debate, kritikal cases generally attack the nature of the resolution. Often, kritikal cases are run without much regard for what the opposition speaker presents, because they take a "big-picture" approach in undermining the resolution. If the judge votes for the kritikal case, it is argued to defeat the opponent automatically, because it proves the resolution as fundamentally undebatable.

An example of a kritikal case can be seen in the Stoa resolution for 2012-2013: "Privacy is undervalued." The Affirmative needs to prove the fact true that privacy is indeed undervalued. The Negative can, under a kritikal approach, argue that privacy is a grossly immoral concept and should not even be discussed. The Negative can also say that privacy does not exist, thus the resolution is incoherent when portrayed against the backdrop of pressing realities.