The legally binding unilateral application of norms holds potential for abuse. Nonetheless, self-judgment is alive and kicking. Self-judgment language commonly features in treaties and states frequently invoke their authority to ‘self-judge’ sensitive issues, such as matters related to national security, before international judicial bodies. In many of these cases, the controversy whether a norm has a self-judgment quality or not has been decisive for the outcome of the dispute. Yet, the meaning and consequences of self-judgment remain contested.

This article develops self-judgment as the authoritative application of international legal norms by states. It posits that steps towards the judicialization of self-judgment by judicial bodies have given rise to state efforts to preserve unfettered discretion. Notably, states have responded to attempts by judicial bodies to gain authority over the application of self-judgment by drafting provisions more explicitly. This dynamic continues to make self-judgment a site of judicialization and pushback. The only way to understand the meaning, limitations and development of self-judgment is by studying this process. Doing so conceptually refines self-judgment and allows for more meaningful references to the notion in practice.

In many tragic plays, the protagonist is brought down by a disaster that is a consequence of the protagonist's own error, his or her hamartia, the tragic flaw. Tragic flaws are disconcerting to the audience because they are not known or fully recognized by the protagonist—at least not until it is too late. In this essay, I take tragic flaws to be unreliable belief-forming dispositions that are unrecognized by us in some sense. I describe some different types of flaws and consider what we might do about them. Then I examine three types of policies for managing our tragic flaws: doxastic, dispositional, and methodological.

Literature has demonstrated the negative impact of body image dissatisfaction on women’s quality of life. Nonetheless, it has been suggested that the relationship between body dissatisfaction and women’s well-being is not linear, and that the processes that mediate this association remain unclear. This study aims to clarify the mediator role of self-judgment in the association between negative body image and psychological quality of life, in two groups: normal-weight and overweight women. This cross-sectional study comprised 200 normal-weight and 92 overweight female college students, aged between 18 and 24 years old, that completed self-report instruments of body dissatisfaction, self-judgment, and quality of life. Results showed that women who presented harsher self-judgment about their perceived failures tended to present lower levels in all quality of life domains. Also, results from mediation analyses indicated the relationship between body dissatisfaction and psychological quality of life was significantly mediated by the mechanisms of self-judgment in the two BMI groups (95% CI [–2.41 to –0.04]; 95% CI [–6.35 to –.89]). This mediational model accounted for 28.3% and 40.7% of psychological quality of life in the normal-weight and overweight groups, respectively. These results suggest that a lower ability to deal with one’s failures or inadequacies (e.g., negative evaluation of body image) in a kind and accepting manner may significantly increase the negative impact of body dissatisfaction on one’s psychological quality of life. In this way, it seems that, the focus of interventions should go beyond body dissatisfaction and also target the development of adaptive attitudes (opposed to self-critical attitudes) to deal with negative body-related experiences.