Congressional Debate (also known as Student Congress, Legislative Debate) is a competitive interscholastic high school debate event in the United States. The National Speech & Debate Association (NSDA), National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL) and many state associations and national invitational tournaments offer Congressional Debate as an event. Each organization and tournament offers its own rules, although the NSDA has championed standardization since 2007, when it began to ask its districts to use one of a number of procedures for qualification to its National Tournament.

In Congressional Debate, high school students emulate members of the United States Congress by debating pieces of legislation, including bills and resolutions. Before the event, each school submits mock legislation to each tournament. After the legislation has been compiled, it is distributed to each participating team. Each team attempts to research as many topics as possible, with each participant choosing to stand in affirmation or negation of the legislation being debated.

Unlike other debate events, students drive the topics for discussion by drafting their own legislation for submission to tournaments. The bills and resolutions must be national in scope, and must either fall within jurisdiction for lawmaking by the United States Congress as a bill, or express a specific position and/or recommendation for further action outside of Congress' jurisdiction as a resolution. There are three main legislative types: bills, resolutions, and constitutional amendments.

Tournaments may review legislation submitted before sharing the overall docket with all participating schools. Contestants from each school research and prepare arguments both in favor and against each legislation in the docket before arriving at the tournament. It is important that this happens.

Students attending each tournament are divided up into sections of 10-30 (usually 15–20, the NSDA recommendation is 18). These individual rooms are called chambers, and sometimes labeled as a "House", or "Senate," depending on the region and the tournament.

During each phase of a tournament (preliminary and elimination), there is at least one round, often referred to as a "session." The National Speech & Debate Association defines a session as having:

While larger tournaments may have preliminary rounds that precede elimination rounds (semifinals, finals, etc.), smaller tournaments may not have elimination rounds and may recognize and award students in individual chambers.

Rounds usually begin with a method for determining which bills will be debated and in which order, referred to as the docket. This most commonly happens with a nominated docket at the tournament, although some areas have a system of informal caucusing or highly organized committees, which convene to review legislation that has been subdivided by the tournament to address a specific topic area, such as is done in the National Catholic Forensic League. A common committee structure includes: "Public Welfare," "Economics," and "Foreign Affairs."