A value judgment is a judgment

Judgment

A judgment , in a legal context, is synonymous with the formal decision made by a court following a lawsuit. At the same time the court may also make a range of court orders, such as imposing a sentence upon a guilty defendant in a criminal matter, or providing a remedy for the plaintiff in a civil...

 of the rightness or wrong

Wrong

A wrong or being wrong is a concept in law, ethics, epistemology, and science. In a colloquial sense, wrongness usually refers to a state of incorrectness, inaccuracy, error, or miscalculation in any number of contexts...

ness of something, or of the usefulness of something, based on a comparison

Comparison

Comparison may refer to:-Language:* Comparison , a feature of many languages* Degree of comparison, an English language grammatical feature* Mass comparison, a test for the relatedness of languages-Mathematics:...

 or other relativity

Relativism

Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration....

. As a generalization, a value judgment can refer to a judgment based upon a particular set of values or on a particular value system

Value system

A value system is a set of consistent ethic values and measures used for the purpose of ethical or ideological integrity. A well defined value system is a moral code.-Personal and communal:...

. A related meaning of value judgment is an expedient evaluation based upon limited information at hand, an evaluation undertaken because a decision must be made on short notice.
The term value judgment can be used objectively to refer to any injunction that implies an obligation to carry out an act, implicitly involving the terms "ought" or "should"; both in a positive sense, signifying that a judgment must be made taking a value system into account, or in a disparaging sense, signifying a judgment made by personal whim rather than objective

Objectivity (philosophy)

Objectivity is a central philosophical concept which has been variously defined by sources. A proposition is generally considered to be objectively true when its truth conditions are met and are "mind-independent"—that is, not met by the judgment of a conscious entity or subject.- Objectivism...

 thought or evidence.

In its positive sense,a recommendation to make a value judgment is an admonition to consider carefully, to avoid whim and impetuousness, and search for consonance with one's deeper convictions, and to search for an objective, verifiable, public, and consensual set of evidence for the opinon.

In its disparaging sense the term value judgment implies a conclusion is insular, one-sided, and not objective — contrasting with judgments based upon deliberation, balance and public evidence.

Value judgment also can refer to a tentative judgment based on a considered appraisal of the information at hand, taken to be incomplete and evolving, for example, a value judgment on whether to launch a military attack, or as to procedure in a medical emergency.