Who has the burden?

Here's something that happened again to me today; I was told that I have the burden of proof to say how UFOs aren't real. I tried to explain in the Q&A session how I did not have a burden of proof, yet the opposition kept trying to make the point. Of course, the judges picked up on this, and gave me the round. Huzzah. But these kinds of things are becoming all too common. So, I will try and explain how the burden of proof and the burden of rejoinder works.

The burden of proof is on whoever is asserting a claim. The claim must be active. For example, the claim that England should have a constitution is an active claim, while the opposition would be making a passive claim. If the opposition is not asserting that we should remove a constitution, for example, they are making an active claim, but claiming that their opposition is wrong is a completely passive statement. Mathematically:

The motion affirmer states : "X (agent) should do Y (action)"

The motion negater states: "X (agent) should not do Y (action)"

The negater of the motion has what is known as the burden of rejoinder. This means they must prove that the motion's affirmer is incorrect. There are multiple ways of doing this, and I shall show them in the next post to come.