Author: Benjamin Koh

Intentional and Functional Models of Judging Within academic and public spheres, government officials are often conceptualized in two different ways. On the one hand, a functional approach to these officials regards them in terms of their offices. That is, the title “Secretary of State” has a stable meaning and represents a “real” position which persists even as the person holding the office changes. On the other hand, an intentional approach to these officials focuses on the individual as an agent who makes concrete decisions with the powers she is granted by the social recognition of her title. In this...

Is Judging Good for You? JP Stuckert I have, in recent posts, been trying to take up some of the questions involved in the claim that students benefit from participating in debate. These questions are, to a certain extent, familiar to us (though I hope to have made at least marginal progress toward addressing these questions in new ways). But one question which I have not heard seriously taken up before is what benefits judges may incur from judging debate rounds. Judges, of course, might be surprised to hear anyone suggest that they benefit from judging. When word spreads...

One striking trend in debate over the last few years is the pairing of an advocacy of radical, “kritikal” politics with a post-fiat policy option. In a “previous era,” the kritik was more uniformly opposed to policy making. Now, however, not only is it common to fiat when you are advocating radical or activist politics, it is also common to castigate debaters who are not. There are a lot of arguments about how any approach to radical politics that does not fiat a state action fails to prepare us for the real world of activism and is, essentially, intellectual...