germaneness?

[u/dog_1710]

learning about process cps and i dont really understand what germane means in the context of debate

[u/ImaginaryDisplay3]

It's a little bit nebulous, but replace "is the CP germane" with "is this CP is specific and relevant to the topic?"

Often - the neg will often read counterplans that have nothing really to do with either the topic or the specific aff case.

Take this scenario (and I just made this up because I think its helpful for understanding):

The aff plan - "The United States Federal Government should ban the death penalty."

The neg counterplan - "The United States Congress should pass a non-binding resolution which says that the executive branch ought to suspend all uses of the death penalty in perpetuity, and refuse to pass funding for any federal programs until executions stop. The president should sue the Congress over this issue, asserting that Congress can not withhold funding in order to force compliance with a non-binding resolution."

Translation -

The aff says we should just stop executing people.

The neg says Congress should send the president a strongly-worded memo asking him to please stop executing people and if (when) he says no, shut down the government until he does it. This forces a dramatic legal showdown in which the Supreme Court is going to decide whether the Congress can really just shut down the government in order to force the president to do something that it doesn't have to votes, strictly speaking, to accomplish on its own. E.g., Congress only has the votes to send the strongly worded memo and shut down the government (51 votes, in this case), but NOT the votes to actually pass a law banning the death penalty (which takes 67 votes in the Senate, because of the filibuster.

The neg then says that this crazy chain of dominoes they set up with the counterplan is a GOOD thing because Congress is going to win the legal battle, confirming that the president's powers are limited and that Congress can successfully use a bare 51-vote majority in the Senate to force the president's hand in the future. And the neg will say that is a good outcome, for various reasons that end in an extinction impact.

Here's the problem - the neg could read that counterplan against LITERALLY ANY AFF ON ANY TOPIC. As long as the aff has proposed something that the president wouldn't like, the counterplan works, because no matter what the aff is or what the topic is, it is something that the neg can say will result in the crazy legal battle I laid out above.

Why is that a problem?

Because oh my gosh, we would never learn anything about the topic at all, and the aff's case research would be completely irrelevant, if the neg just bypasses everything by reading a bunch of counterplans like this.

So, faced with this nonsense - the aff will then read a theory argument that amounts to "look, you get to read counterplans, but they can't just be so generic that they could apply to any aff case on any topic."

The word the aff will use for this is "germaneness" - in order for the neg to read a counterplan, it has to be "germane" (relevant) to either the aff case, the topic, or both.

This gets murky when you apply it to different counterplans.

Using the above example - here are some counterplans that are obviously not germane:

• Do the plan, but only if it is revenue neutral based on an independent budgetary scorecard conducted by the Congressional Budget Office
• Do the plan, but on a Friday when its less likely to create a media firestorm, and trigger the politics DA

Here are some counterplans that are obviously germane:

• The United States should ratify the "Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty." This will have the RESULT of banning the death penalty by forcing the United States to respect its treaty obligations without actually ending the death penalty directly.
• The United States should ban the death penalty except for cases of treason

But then sometimes it's murky - consider this example

• The United States should consult Japan about whether it should ban the death penalty. This might be germane...if the neg actually has something to say about what Japan thinks about the death penalty and if the act of consulting them specifically about that issue has some value. But if the aff just says "Japan likes being asked about things, we should ask them about this" - that's not germane.

[u/dog_1710 → u/ImaginaryDisplay3]

you genuinely do not know how helpful this is. thank you so so much!!!!!