Moral Judgment

Everybody is familiar with the term "moral", but not "moral judgment" which seems to be novel and a bit academic.
As a matter of fact, moral judgment, as a specific manifestation of morality, is deeply rooted in any society.
Generally speaking, moral judgments may be understand as culture-bound evaluations in a society, that are the assessments or opinions formed as to whether some action or inaction, intention, motive or character is right or wrong, good or bad, beneficial or damaging. Moral judgments are naturally diversified given the cultural differences across societies.
In traditional western culture, individuals are primarily viewed as independent entities endowed with a set of natural rights, freedom and responsible for their actions. Different individual interests, however, may be at odds with each other from time to time. In resolving these conflicts, the principle of social contract is thus required to uphold interests based on consensus.
The idea of personal liberty and the notion of a social contract are therefore at the core of moral judgment in the West, where individuals are judged according to whether their actions violate the rights of others. Helping others, on the other hand, is discretionary and not a moral requirement.
As some sociologists point out, men are more likely to judge morality in terms of competing rights that can desirably be resolved through the application of reasoning and principles; whereas, women prefer to view the issue in terms of human relations that can hopefully be negotiated through communication. These differences between the genders constitute one of the paradigms of the individualistic western society.
Conversely, oriental societies are based largely on social relations, highly valuing the importance of social duties, compromise of personal requirements and sacrifices made to the nation and society as a whole. Their moral judgments are thus duty-based and interpersonal. Research has revealed that, for example, in making a moral judgment, American respondents requested information about the agent's personal background and the related consequences, whereas the Japanese requested information about the family background and the feelings of the person. It was also found that in Japanese society condemnation in social relationships is extremely hesitant and normally considered to be inappropriate and potentially destructive to the cultural system. For the Japanese, thus, rather than being ontologically-orientated, their moral judgment is essentially interpersonal and subjective, in striking contrast with that of Americans which is based on facts and principle.
Moreover, in the Japanese legal system, a sentence may be substantially reduced if the defendant sincerely regrets is or her actions, which is inconceivable in American legal system where factual details rather than the mind-set of the defendant count.
Traditional Chinese culture is quintessentially saturated with Confucianism, where relationships and hierarchy dominate moral judgment. The fact that three of the five basic ethical relationships in Confucianism are in the family (father-son, husband-wife, elder-younger) and two of them stipulate position and rank in the society (superior-inferior and colleague-colleague), attests to moral weakness intersecting the two domains. Meanwhile, moral judgments are exercised discriminatorily between in-group and out-group members.
So apart from specific cultural elements, are there any "universal" criteria for moral judgments across all cultures? Macrocosmically, the answer is yes. These may, for instance, include respecting others' rights, abiding by laws and regulations, accepting civic responsibilities, reciprocity, notions of social contract and so on. In a sense, these are in fact no longer the virtues of a particular culture or society: they are the common values of our civilized world that has been evolving up to now.