public judgment

"public decision making that allows citizens to make choices they are willing to help implement"

When I first heard the term, "public judgment", the first thought that came to my mind was that it was where the public judged other people. Which, would obviously make sense since that would be the most natural conclusion to draw from the term "public judgment", would it not? So, when I did figure out what it meant according to the textbook and whatnot, it still confused me so I decided to do some further research on the idea. I found a somewhat interesting article by typing in "public judgment" into google and skimmed it to try and better understand the concept. The title of it was "A Call to Move Beyond Public Opinion to Public Judgment".

Just thinking about that title alone, it gave me a somewhat better idea of what it means. If public judgment is a step higher than public opinion that's better than not knowing what it meant at all. But, it went on to discuss the various ways that Americans have opinions about the matter of our government. But, they rarely move beyond these opinions since a general sentiment among the American public is that one person is too small to voice their opinion in a way that it can make any difference. But, in order for a democracy to be healthy and functioning, it is important that people do voice their opinions, otherwise we more or less become an elected republic. And in many ways we currently are only an elected republic since so few "normal" people do anything in politics to change issues.

The importance of public judgment is that it moves beyond individual people just having an opinion of what is going on in a far-away land known as Washington D.C.. It is about the realization of the power that each person has and in realizing this power, grabs it and makes a difference. This is the concept of public judgment -- where the public actively decides which direction our country is going to be going. Which is exactly what was said at the beginning of our nation's formation, that we were to be a government "for the people, of the people and by the people". Our government is for our citizens and is of our citizens as well since all elected officials are citizens of the United States. But, without public judgment, our country is not by the people.

The article had at the end a call to individual citizens about how they can become involved in a way that they will be a part of the public judgment. And there were some excellent ideas were things like citizen deliberative councils and to become involved in organizations advocating deliberative democracy based on citizen dialogues. Public opinion is where citizens find themselves complaining about the government; public judgment is where citizens change what they dislike about the government. It is that difference between passive participation in democracy and active participation in democracy.