Judgment

For other uses, see Judgment (disambiguation).

The term judgment (AE) or judgement (BE) generally refers to the considered evaluation of evidence in the formation of making a decision. The term has three distinct uses:

• Informal and psychology – used in reference to the quality of cognitive faculties and adjudicational capabilities of particular individuals, typically called wisdom or discernment.
• Legal – used in the context of legal trial, to refer to a final finding, statement, or ruling, based on a considered weighing of evidence, called "adjudication".
• Religious – used in the concept of salvation to refer to the adjudication of God in determining reward or punishment for each and all human beings.

Background

Main article: Cognition

In formulating cognitive judgements, a formal process of evaluation applies. A judgment may be expressed as a statement, e.g. S1: "A is B" and is usually the outcome of an evaluation of alternatives. The formal process of evaluation can sometimes be described as a set of conditions and criteria that must be satisfied in order for a judgement to be made. What follows is a suggestive list of some conditions that are commonly required:

• there must be corroborating evidence for S1,
• there must be no true contradicting statements,
• if there are contradicting statements, these must be outweighed by the corroborating evidence for S1, or
• contradicting statements must themselves have no corroborating evidence
• S1 must also corroborate and be corroborated by the system of statements which are accepted as true.

See also

• Choice
• Decree

[Judgments.co.uk] is a new liberal online legal newspaper, providing breaking news stories from around the world on human rights, media and entertainment, business and finance, and international law.

It was launched in September 2009, and attracts readers from all over the world - including Russia, China, and Japan.

The bulk of its readership is from the U.S and United Kingdom.

External links

• Judgment or Judgement? - Choices in terminological spelling and usage