ABSTRACT
Judgments of merit are made by the billions each day. Most are personal and informal, such as judging the merit of a child’s request for dessert, a dog’s response to “Sit!,” a politician’s pitch for votes, a proposal of marriage or recon-
ciliation. Yet millions of others are made each day as part of organized tests and contests. Included are judgments of merit of applications for parole, loans, insurance claims, and welfare payments and in competitions for trophies, jobs, contracts, scholarships, time, space, attention, grants, and grades. In the United States alone, for example, there are about 5 million corporations (“Bizstats,” 2006), most of which routinely hire, fi re, promote, and demote their employees based on judgments of merit. In addition, there are thousands of granting agencies that incorporate judgments of merit in allocating charitable funds, scholarships, research grants, and other free money. Little wonder that judgments of merit attract considerable attention and debate. A visit to Google, for example, generates over 28 million hits for the phrase “résumé writing,” 287 million hits for “scholarship,” 399 million for “research grants,” and 188 million for “winning.”
