The Open Case File

Warning: the following paragraphs will only make sense to the sadly debate-besotted individuals among us.

It's round 3, your team has taken a second and a third, it's a tough competition, so you must win this round to have a fighting chance at getting to that illusive break. The draw comes up and you're in opening government. 'Okay,' you think 'it's not perfect, but we can do this!' Up comes the motion... 'This House believes that the USA should launch drone strikes against the Houthi in Yemen.' Your heart sinks, you have no clue what Yemen is, it sounds kind of Middle Eastish right? Panic sets in as you hopelessly prepare for 45 minutes of all the teams in the round gleefully and systematically tearing your paper thin case apart. Oh well, maybe we'll break at the next IV?

Most of the time in debate, you don't need facts, but sometimes having a few to make your case more specific and plausible can make the difference between a 4th and a win. This is particularly true in debates with international actors, where knowing some facts about the geopolitics, society and economy of the places you're talking about go a long way to making your arguments sound credible.

The rules of debate expressly prohibit the use of electronic devices to find out such useful information, however, there is no prohibition on the printed materials you bring to a debate. This is why many world-class debaters (as well as some average ones like myself) bring 'case-files' to debate competitions. These documents contain useful facts and arguments on a wide range of topics. They are however very time-consuming to produce, and invariably incomplete; you cannot write notes on every topic that's going to come up in a debate.

LSESU Debate however, provides a solution to this problem by tapping into the wisdom of LSE debaters. The Open Case File is a collaborative effort of a few members of the Debating Society committee, which we are expanding. The document is already 40 pages in length, with a contents page, covering a variety of topics from the arguments for and against academic tenure, to the aforementioned conflict in Yemen. The Open Case File can be printed for debates and referred to, or used as a skeleton for creating your own case file. We want you to add your contributions to the case-file to make it a powerful weapon for any LSE debater to take to their competitions.

Being the quick thinkers that you surely are, you might recognise a free-rider problem: why would anyone contribute to the file when they can just download it and benefit without making any contribution? Additionally you might worry that with everyone contributing the Open Case File, the result will so disorganised that you will have to spend the entire 15 minutes of preparation time just to find the relevant page.

In light of this there are two additional features of the Open Case File to be aware of:

1. The file has an alphabetical structure with a regularly updated contents page, which is managed by the 3 admins of the page, so if someone writes a contribution, they send it to us, and we put it in the Open Case File in the correct format. 
2. You only get access to the Open Case File if you write a contribution for it and send it to one of our admins. We will review and add your contribution to the file, then grant you access to the entire thing. You are of course encouraged to submit more entries afterwards.

The admins are myself (Billy Wildi), Julia Slupska, and Jamie Capp. Feel free to message any of us on Facebook, or you can email us:

Billy - w.wildi@lse.ac.uk 

Julia - j.slupska@lse.ac.uk

Jamie - J.capp@lse.ac.uk

Three tips on submissions:

1. Try and make your entry relevant to debating in some way. A good way to do this is to choose a topic where there is a debate (for instance quotas in parliament) then researching arguments for both sides. Facts and context however can still be very useful.
2. If you don't know what to write your entry on, feel free to ask us, we can give you lots of suggestions, which you can hopefully do a little research on and write an entry.
3. Try to keep your entries around 200-400 words, definitely no longer than 500 words (about one side of paper).

Here is a list of topics already covered so you don't double up:

Academia: research, teaching and tenure

Al-Nusra Front

Al-Qaeda

Austerity Debates

Body Cameras

Boko Haram Insurgency

Breaking up banks

Britain in Sierra Leone, 2000

Court/law debates

Hate crime legislation

Previous Convictions: Disclosure in Court

Naming of Sex Offenders

Three strikes

Double Jeopardy Rule

Cameras in the Courtroom

DNA Database

Developing World Economics

The Difference between Growth and Development.

The need for more than a free market

The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh

Trade Liberalisation

Protectionist Growth

Equality

Funding political parties

Voting with dollars

Hamas

Hezbollah

Homelessness

Immigration (Into Europe)

Economics of immigration

IR debates - JLM’s advice

How to use facts:

State rights

Military interventions

Three common problems faced by intervention:

Consequences of International actions

ISIS/ISIL/IS

Israel-Palestine

Prisoners

Difficulties of Reintegration

Parole

Raising Children in Prison

Prostitution

Radicalisation

Refugees (expand)

Syrian (and general) Refugee crisis

Dublin Regulation

EU Quota Plan

Germany

USA

Soft power

Examples

Syrian Civil War (Requires Expansion)

The Taliban

War in Afganistan

War in North-West Pakistan (requires expansion)

Yemeni Crisis

I hope to see some of your contributions very soon!

Love,
Billy