In Policy Debate, topicality describes whether or not a policy action being debated is relevant to the resolution. For example, if the resolution or question to be debated was that "the U.S. should increase humanitarian aid," a policy action that reformed the U.S. election system would be not topical. In most judging paradigms, affirmative cases must be topical, and negative cases (also known as counter-plans) should not be topical.

If a negative team feels that the affirmative case is not topical, they can run a topicality violation on a certain word or phrase in the resolution which they feel the case violates.

Structure of a violation

• Definition - Dictionary or academic definition of the word that the violation is being run on
• Violation - Explanation why the plan does not conform to the definition
• Standards - Reasons why the definition given (above) is a superior definition to judge with
• Topicality is a Voting Issue - Reasons why the plan should be rejected if it is not topical

Definition

A definition is the starting point of a violation. It gives the judge a clear method of determining if a violation is valid. Without definitions, then topicality would simply devolve into a shouting match. Definitions can come from virtually any source (dictionary, legal dictionary, academic paper, laws, court rulings, etc.), but some sources are better than others. See standards for reasons why certain sources are superior.

Violation

The team must show why the plan does not act in the area of the resolution. While it may be blatantly obvious why a plan is not topical, it is always best to explain why a violation is being called.

Standards

The team then gives reasons why their definition is superior and should be used to determine whether or not the case is topical. Standards include:

Bright Line

The definition shows a clear separation between what is and is not topical. Definitions that claim the bright line standard are absolute and leave little room for deviation.

Common Person

Debate is considered by some to be a public activity, and a "common person" should be able to understand it. Definitions that are simple and clear can claim the common person standard.

Field Contextuality

If the definition comes from an area that the policy action is in, the definition can claim to have field contextuality. For example, a definition from the State Department on "foreign policy" would have field contextuality.

Grammar

If the definition is grammatically correct, then it can claim the grammar standard. Traditionally, grammar is used only as a counter standard; that is, it is run whenever the other definition presented is grammatically incorrect.

Precision

If the definition is accurate or exact to a degree, it can claim the precision standard.

Fairly Limits

If the definition gives the affirmative a fair amount of cases which are topical, then it can be said to limit the topic fairly. If a definition stated that humanitarian aid was food only, then it could be argued that the definition did not fairly limit the topic, as protection, medical supplies, shelter, and a number of other services may qualify as aid.

Voting Issue

Finally, the team must show that the violation is severe enough for the judge to reject the case because of it. The most common argument is that it is abusive, for a number of reasons:

Fairness

If the affirmative were able to pick any policy option in existence, the negative would have to prepare for a near-infinite number of cases. Because policy debate depends heavily on research done prior to rounds, it is unfair to allow the affirmative to be prepared for a case that the negative is not.

Jurisdiction

If the affirmative is not affirming the resolution, then they should not be voted for.

In-Round Abuse and Its Potential

The negative team can claim that the affirmative team is able to limit the the quality of strategy that can be ran in round. This comes in the form of the negative saying that the affirmative can destroy all links to disadvantages by saying that they don't do what the link specifies. This is what's called abuse and the negative usually claims it to be a voting issue. This can also be applied to actor counterplans. The negative again can claim the affirmative plan can spike out actor counterplans by saying that the certain actor cannot do it for "x" reasons.