By the Equality in Forensics Contributor Team
Although controversial and unusual in PF, counterplans (or CPs) give the negation team the opportunity to form a specific counter advocacy rather than just negate the resolution.
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Counterplans are a bit controversial in PF. While affirmative teams get to establish a position of advocacy, it is a norm for negation teams to strictly advocate against affirming the resolution.
Counterplans give negation teams the opportunity to form a counter advocacy. The reason this becomes controversial is because affirmative teams are theoretically constrained to the bounds of the resolution with their plan whereas the negation could potentially propose anything else as an alternative for their counterplan.
The justification for counterplans actually comes from the NSDA Rules:
Before you read arguments like counterplans that may border on disqualifying, you should read the full NSDA rulebook to familiarize yourself with the rules.
<aside> <img src="/icons/star-outline_red.svg" alt="/icons/star-outline_red.svg" width="40px" /> Counterplans are only relevant to policy motions because they propose a specific, often legislative change to the status quo.
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Plans and counterplans are defined as “a formalized, comprehensive proposal for implementation,” which neither side is allowed to do. However, both the aff AND the neg “should offer reasoning to support a position of advocacy [and] generalized, practical solutions.”
This means that if the aff is allowed to provide advocacies to affirm, the neg is allowed to provide active alternatives to negate.
Ex) On a topic that advocates for legalizing drugs, the neg could explain why legalizing is uniquely bad and co-opt the benefits by decriminalizing drugs. The advocacy of decriminalizing is just as “specific” of an advocacy as legalizing is.