1.1 Proposition's Path Forward

A good case doesn’t ignore those negative impacts. If we ban smoking cigarettes, it’s impossible to deny that cigarette manufacturers will go out of business and that their thousands of employees will lose their jobs. Instead, proposition needs a game plan to make us move forward with the plan despite these costs.

1.1.1 Identify the problem the motion seeks to address and prove it exists

It is dangerous to assume that the audience has the same ideas at the front of their minds. Proposition needs to explicitly tell us about the problem they think this motion will address.

Sometimes the problem is obvious to us – we all know smoking is harmful to the individual and those around them. Even in these cases, it can be useful to put the problem into perspective. If only 3% of people smoke, maybe it’s not a problem big enough for the government to get involved in. If 30% of people smoke, then we have a much bigger problem on our hands.

Proposition needs to make us feel like they’ve described a serious issue deserving of government attention and that it deserves a solution on this scale.

Opposition can approach this part of the debate in three ways:

• Prove that proposition is trying to solve something that isn’t really happening. If the problem doesn’t truly exist, then we have no justification for accepting the negative impacts of the motion.
• Argue that the problem isn’t large enough to justify government involvement. The next step is to show that the harm of allowing the problem to persist is preferable to the new harms that arise when we try to fix it in this way.
• Show that the “problem” described by proposition is actually positive.

1.1.2 Prove that the motion will address the problem

Proposition needs to show us how their policy will solve the problem. In legal scenarios this may be referred to as “rationality”.

In some cases, this is very simple. If proposition wants to eliminate the health problems that come with smoking, banning smoking solves that by taking away the cause. Opposition might argue against this by speaking about how the leading replacement for smoking – vaping – also has very serious health effects.

Sometimes the connection is more difficult to prove. Imagine we are debating making voting compulsory for all adults. Proposition has identified that low voter turnouts have hurt the legitimacy of our democracy. There’s a lot of legwork needed to show that a compelled vote makes our democracy more legitimate.

Opposition can successfully win by disproving the link between the solution and problem. They can also argue that the proposal doesn’t go far enough and leaves the issue mostly unsolved. Finally, they can argue that the policy is too easy to circumvent or unenforceable. It is vital that proposition defends this link throughout the debate. Without it, there is no justification for the negative impacts that the motion comes with.

1.1.3 Defend the reasonableness of the solution

Proving the problem-solution link doesn’t automatically make this a law worth passing. When the government acts, we expect them to act in a way that is proportionate and in line with the ethical values held by our society.

Imagine proposition wants to implement the death penalty for shoplifters. There’s no doubting it will be an effective way to stop the problem, but very few people would consider a human life to be worth as much as a trinket in a store. Perhaps we would see this weigh up differently if we were talking about serial killers instead.