Value Premise - Purpose

Purpose

As Jason Baldwin explains in "Logic in LD", the value premise is "supposed to provide standards by which judges should evaluate subsequent arguments." The value structure's purpose is to provide an overarching goal for both the affirmative and the negative to achieve. The value premise is not explicitly stated in the resolution, but many debaters use terms from the Lincoln-Douglas Debate resolution as their value premise. For example, the National Forensic League's November/December 2006 resolution stated: Resolved: A victim's deliberate use of deadly force is a just response to repeated domestic violence. In the instance, some debaters may use "justice" as the value premise for the round, because the resolution clearly establishes the objective of evaluating whether or not the use of deliberate force is just when facing domestic violence. Others tend to pick more uncommon values, mainly because commonly used value premises or value premises obtained from the resolution will be prepared for by other opponents, however, due to many resolutions question the morality or justice of certain actions, the value premise is most commonly agreed to be justice or some variant. The debate then centers on the Value Criterion, or the way of achieving or best maximizing the value. The value premise is intended to be a non-biased statement, which the arguments within the affirmative or negative constructive should support.