Historical Judgement

In the face of conflict and despair, we often console ourselves by saying that history will be the judge. Today’s oppressors may escape being held responsible for their crimes, but the future will condemn them. Those who stand up for progressive values are on the right side of history. As ideas once condemned to the dustbin of history—white supremacy, hypernationalism, even fascism—return to the world, threatening democratic institutions and values, can we still hold out hope that history will render its verdict? Joan Wallach Scott critically examines the belief that history will redeem us, revealing the implicit politics of appeals to the judgment of history. She argues that the notion of a linear, ever-improving direction of history hides the persistence of power structures and hinders the pursuit of alternative futures. This vision of necessary progress perpetuates the assumption that the nation-state is the culmination of history and the ultimate source for rectifying injustice. Scott considers the Nuremberg Tribunal and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which claimed to carry out history’s judgment on Nazism and apartheid, and contrasts them with the movement for reparations for slavery in the United States. Advocates for reparations call into question a national history that has long ignored enslavement and its racist legacies. Only by this kind of critical questioning of the place of the nation-state as the final source of history’s judgment, this book shows, can we open up room for radically different conceptions of justice.

The historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do.

Renowned for his "Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy" and "Reflections on History" (published by Liberty Fund), Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) has well been described as "the most civilized historian of the nineteenth century." "Judgments on History and Historians" consists of records collected by Emil Durr from Burckhardt's lecture notes for history courses at the University of Basel from 1865 to 1885. The 149 brief sections span five eras: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, History from 1450 to 1598, the History of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and the Age of Revolution. As Walter Goetz observed of the work a generation ago, "It is impossible to imagine a more profound introduction to world history and its driving forces." Alberto R. Coll is a Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

Leading scholars re-examine political judgement, attempting to understand the relationship between political theory and political practice.

Authors Peter Seixas and Tom Morton provide a guide to bring powerful understandings of these six historical thinking concepts into the classroom through teaching strategies and model activities. Table of Contents Historical Significance Evidence Continuity and Change Cause and Consequence Historical Perspectives The Ethical Dimension The accompanying DVD-ROM includes: Modifiable Blackline Masters All graphics, photographs, and illustrations from the text Additional teaching support Order Information: All International Based Customers (School, University and Consumer): All US based customers please contact [email protected] All International customers (exception US and Asia) please contact Nelson.international@ne lson.com

This is an examination of the law's response to the crimes of the Holocaust. It studies exemplary proceedings including the Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals and the Israeli trials of Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk.

What does it mean when a judge in a court of law uses the phrase “common sense”? Is it a type of evidence or a mode of reasoning? In a world characterized by material and political inequalities, whose common sense should inform the law? Common Sense and Legal Judgment explores this rhetorically powerful phrase, arguing that common sense, when invoked in political and legal discourses without adequate reflection, poses a threat to the quality and legitimacy of legal judgment. Often operating in the service of conservatism, populism, or majoritarianism, common sense can harbour stereotypes, reproduce unjust power relations, and silence marginalized people. Nevertheless, drawing the works of theorists such as Thomas Reid, Antonio Gramsci, and Hannah Arendt into conversation with rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada, Patricia Cochran demonstrates that with careful attention, the democratic, egalitarian, and community-sustaining aspects of common sense can be brought to light. A call for critical self-reflection and the close scrutiny of power relationships and social contexts, this book is a direct response to social justice predicaments and their confounding relationships to law. Creative and interdisciplinary, Common Sense and Legal Judgment reinvigorates feminist and anti-poverty understandings of judgment, knowledge, justice, and accountability.

Taking its bearings from classic texts including Plato, Kant, Hegel and Arendt this thoughtful and intriguing book provides philosophical reflection on what it is to judge and what judgement achieves alongside, and sometimes in competition with, thinking and willing. Opening with the landmark Mabo High Court case in Australia and with detailed reference to other significant debates of judgement of the twentieth century Max Deutscher seeks to explore and explain approaches to the concepts of what is good, right and legal. Describing a connection between reason and grounds intrinsic to judgement he analyses and explores the tendency towards absolutism that displaces proper judgement. By weaving concrete instances of judgement with philosophical thought Deutscher provides a fascinating phenomenology of practices of judgement that should appeal to all readers with an interest in legal, philosophical and political thought.