Before I give my thoughts, I'd like to clarify what we are talking about. These are the three options, and below, I have given short explanations of them, including the federal power and where they get their power.
Resolution Option 1: The U.S. Federal Government should substantially reform its policy regarding intellectual property.
Resolution Option 2: The U.S. Federal Government should substantially reform its infrastructure policy.
Resolution Option 3: The U.S. Federal Government should substantially reform its agriculture policy.
Policy regarding Intellectual Property (they should have just said IP policy)
Intellectual property is anything your mind creates that you can own, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Congress gets its authority here from two places in the Constitution: the IP Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 8), which empowers Congress to protect the work of authors and inventors, and the Commerce Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 3), which covers interstate and foreign trade. This means the question is: how should the federal government restructure that system to better balance new inventions with rapid innovations? Essentially, rewarding creators versus ensuring the public can build on ideas?
Infrastructure Policy
Infrastructure is the physical backbone of the country — roads, bridges, rail, airports, water systems, energy grids, and broadband. Congress draws its authority here from several places in the Constitution: the Commerce Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 3), the Post Roads Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 7), and the powers to fund the military and provide for the general welfare. This offers two questions: first, how should the federal government reform its role in building and maintaining these systems, and second, where does federal authority end and state authority begin?
Agriculture Policy
Agriculture policy covers how the federal government regulates and supports farming, food production, and rural America. This is done primarily through the Farm Bill, which Congress renews every five years. Congress gets its authority here from the Commerce Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 3) and the General Welfare Clause (Art. I, §8, cl. 1), which have been used to justify everything from crop subsidies and food stamps to trade agreements and land conservation programs. This drives two questions as well: first, how should the federal government restructure its role in the food system, and second, who really benefits from the way it's set up now?
Now that we all know what we are talking about, these are my thoughts from the bottom up.
I think agriculture is the weakest of the resolutions. (After reading Jonathan Helton's opinion, I am now uncertain.) It seems rather small and not innovative. There is always a lot you can do with a resolution; the problem is whether the cases are good. As we can see this year, there is an abundance of action to take in C/SA; ideas are not the problem, the issue is that all the cases are terrible. Agriculture will likely all swing to politically centered cases that just affirm a MAHA ideology and won't really be fun for students or parents. Defenders of agriculture argue this did not happen last time we used this resolution, but it seems the political tension is significantly worse now than it was before. An agriculture policy world will handle: farm subsidies, trade policy, land use regulation, and the small farm vs. agribusiness tension, which are all live political questions churning in the system. We do NOT want to have another hyper-politicized resolution like we have this year. I think Charlie's comments here also cover valid reasons against it. Also, no one wants to argue the RFS/RINs case again.
Infrastructure policy is actually incredible. If this was the first year Stoa existed, or we could somehow wipe the memory of every past competitor, then this would be the ideal resolution. Unfortunately, we can't. In reality, although this resolution is broad, it would quickly be dominated by the tried and true undefeatable cases from the last few years. Infrastructure is so broad that it includes most content within transportation, AI, energy, and healthcare — you could easily bring in cases from agriculture, military, and finance years. In reality, if you wanted, you could run DFC cases, as long as it is infrastructure; it shouldn't matter where it goes. Broad resolutions are good because you want variety, but this one does too much. If you want to argue dredging, Jones Act, RFS, Amtrak, DFC, and HTF cases all year, then vote here. Last thing I'll say here is that I would love for you to vote for this — it will be way easier for Nile to coach and prepare documents because every past debater would come back just to update their case for this year.
Intellectual property is my favorite. I kinda love it. It is an active sector, but not super political yet. It is genuinely impactful to our economy and the lives of each American. You can draw on national security impacts if you want. The learning will be focused (unlike infrastructure) and fascinating (in my opinion). Main critiques I have seen have to do with a barrier to novice debaters. I think this is simply quite dumb. A resolution being tough is in no way a reason to reject it. Debate is hard; TP is meant to be a research-based debate. It doesn't take long to learn about a few things, and it takes no time at all to ask good questions.
Intellectual property is a fairly bipartisan world right now. There are a ton of active, credible studies on every side. Impact calculus level in this resolution could be incredible. The negative position could be very strong too. I doubt it would fall to mostly cost-based negs; instead, neg teams could just argue a different worldview or understanding of the effects of protecting IP. This would be the most educational of the resolutions.
I like resolution 1 mostly because it is the most interesting to me. Cases would go crazy, ranging across so many industries. I got a little overexcited and started researching already, and with just a cursory glance you can find infinite cases by looking into these 10 ideas: patent term reductions, ending evergreening or patent thicketing reform, copyright term reductions, fair use expansions, AI-generated content and IP ownership, SEP reforms, trade secret laws, pharmaceutical licensing, trademark dilution, and international IP issues (look into TRIPS). This is just a few. I don't know everything; in fact, I know very little, but what I do know is that intellectual property policy will be the most fun of any resolution for next year.
Vote Res 1.
Mark Roose
Nile Debate Head Coach
Thank you to Jonathan Helton for reading early versions of this blog.