Thank you to everyone who sent in submissions to our unbroken case contest!

There is no prize, only glory. And now we have the winners! Premier Debate co-Director John Scoggin is the sole judge.

It was difficult to pick between so many great cases. At the end of this post we’ll post a link to all of the cases people gave us permission to post so that you all will have a chance to see if we got it right. Since we had so many cool submissions, we decided to choose one winner and one honorable mention for two categories: funniest and best/most strategic. Thanks to Marcus Duquette, Christian Garcia, Whit Jack, Jack Wareham/Nina Potischman, Margaret Purcell/Oliver Sussman, John Boals, Alex Zhao, Salim Damerdji, Adam Tomasi, Henry Wu, and Chris Wang for submitting. Everyone’s submissions are linked at the bottom.

Funniest Case

Winner: “Krotz AC” submitted by Chris Wang/Kevin Krotz

Written for the September/October topic “Resolved: Adolescents ought to have the right to make autonomous medical choices,” the case I will forever know as ‘Horse Medicine’ brings a powerful intellectual and spiritual punch. After wading through a few pages about how spirituality is important and the value criterion of ‘accessing the spiritual,’ we find the true nature of the case…

All of you who merely discussed adolescents making medical choices about themselves missed this simple fact:

The contention has not one, not two, but three cards about horse whispering. It then gives us a nice sendoff with this little gem:

Download the almighty Horse Medicine / Horse Whispering affirmative here.

Honorable Mention: “Rabbits” submitted by Margaret Purcell and Oliver Sussman

The premise of the case is that one time Margaret Purcell’s father shot a rabbit in the backyard and that tragedy should lead us to pursue the following resolutional method:

The case opens with this tragic narrative told in the first person, but presumably, if Oliver Sussman is telling the narrative, he would need an answer to the argument that he is not, in fact, Margaret Purcell. Luckily, he came equipped with this excellent frontline:

Download Oliver and Margaret’s “aff” here.

Best Case

Winner: “Heller Aff – TOC” submitted by Alex Zhao

Written for the January/February topic on handgun bans, Alex Zhao brings the heat with an incredibly well frontlined plan to overturn DC v Heller along with a number of unique and unexplored advantages. The most compelling of which is a very detailed 4^th amendment advantage which explores the implications of the Heller ruling which declared the DC handgun ban unconstitutional. This topic saw a lot of pretty stale util advantages after the first few tournaments. Debaters converged to the more popular advantages, like IPV, suicide, soft power, and cartels pretty early as we saw in our Emory Metagame snapshot. This case, on the other hand, brought a fresh new spin to the util debate that no doubt would give its user a huge leg up in the util debate. Did I mention the case is an 150 page file? Hard work and creativity lead to an amazing product. Check out the navigation pane / table of contents to get a sense of the work that went into this new aff:

Download Alex’s 1AC here.

Honorable Mention: “Teddy Bear Theory AC” submitted by Marcus Duquette

Marcus Duquette gets a special shoutout and wins what I’ll call the ‘Fool me once’ award. He saw something and wouldn’t let it slip by him again. The case is very short and mostly focuses on a high-quality, in-depth theory argument about holding debaters to theory interpretations they have disclosed on their wikis. Without the background story, it may seem like a boring theory-filled aff, but the reason this aff was written is very specific, and the background story will blow you away. I’ll let Marcus explain:

“I wrote this case specifically to read against one debater that I competed against at Minneapple (Kenan Anderson) the next time I hit him.  He had an interp on his wiki saying that “Each debater must hold a Teddy Bear throughout the debate round.”  I wrote this case specifically so that if I ever hit him again I could hold a Teddy Bear and win off of him not having a Teddy Bear to hold.  After the topic ended I learned that he actually does carry two Teddy Bears to all of his rounds, so if I ever had read this against him he would have pulled out a Teddy Bear, met the interp, and then beat me on case because I only read one topical card.”

A very funny story turned into a very solid aff strategy (or perhaps I have a soft spot for clever theory arguments). Download the case here.

The Rest

All of these cases deserve a look, so click to download. They’re all great unbroken positions we should celebrate. Comment below if you agree or disagree with our awards!

Jack Wareham and Nina Potischman – Misdemeanor PIC (JF16)
John Boals – Crackle Hauntology AC (ND15)
Salim Damerdji – Corgi DA (SO13), Drones AC (JF16)
Henry Wu – Sexting Plan (ND15)
Whit Jack – Quadratic Voting (MA16)
Christian Garcia – Giroux Income Inequality (UIL – Spring)
Lucas Clarke – Nullify Juveniles Tried as Adults (JF16)
Adam Tomasi – Occupy Harvard (JF15)