The Adlai Stevenson Memorial Parliamentary Debate Tournament

Tournament and Tab Rules 

Tournament Rules

Resolutions, Cases, & Outrounds General Procedure
  • Princeton runs a straight (World's style) resolution tournament. For example, "This house rejects the culture of death." 
  • Cases must embody the spirit of the resolution through an example or a logical extension of the resolution. In other words: tight link! 
  • No time/space cases will be permitted!!! 
  • Violations of the tight-link rule will be considered a voting issue by judges. 
  • The debates will feature a seven-five split for the Prime Minister. All other constructive speeches are 8 minutes. The Leader of Opposition's rebuttal is 4 minutes. 
  • Points of information are highly encouraged. 
  • The tournament will break to quarter-finals and the top 15 speakers will gavel. 
  • The speech tournament is a formal, serious oratory competition. Humor should be used tastefully only to complement an issue-oriented speech. 

Tab Constraints
(in descending order of importance)

  1. In the first round, full seeds and half seeds will be power-protected and hybrid seeds will be recognized.
  2. In the ensuing rounds, teams will be paired by record.
  3. No team may hit any other team from its own school.
  4. No team may hit any other team that it has hit before.
  5. No team may have more than four govs. in preliminary rounds.
  6. If there is an uneven number of teams in the bracket, the middle team from a lower bracket will be pulled up and paired by speaker points.
  7. If two opposing teams have the same number of govs. in Round V, a coin flip will determine sides.
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