Pre-fiat and Post-fiat Arguments
There are generally two types of negative arguments that can be made during a debate: pre-fiat and post-fiat.
Pre-fiat arguments are arguments that relate to in-round issues. Examples include: abuse Topicality arguments (the affirmative is not within the resolution, therefore preventing the negative from running an argument they would have otherwise been able to run) and language kritiks (kritiks condemning the affirmative for using inappropriate or dangerous language). The team making a pre-fiat argument will argue that the pre-fiat argument should be evaluated before any other argument in the round. This is also what makes Topicality a "voter" issue, as abuse (and other procedural arguments) are pre-fiat.
Post-fiat arguments attempt to show that the consequences of passing and enacting the affirmative plan would be in some way worse than the harms described by the affirmative. Such arguments are labelled post-fiat because they require the supposition of a world where the plan is passed and implemented.
Though this has been very popular in policy debate, some debaters have fought against this distinction arguing that the effects of the plan exist once it is "examined".
In other circles, the notion of "pre" and "post" fiat seems to make little sense, as fiat is not an event that happens, but rather a hypothetical world of plan passage. Nothing occurs before or after fiat in a linear sense; instead, these terms merely indicate whether we should observe the potential implications of the plan over the discursive implications of the debate round.
Read more about this topic: Fiat (policy Debate)
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