In this final chapter, we consider how history might judge these years of Conservative governments. Our focus, as laid out in the Introduction, is: what were the achievements of these years? Were there mitigating factors? What is the overall verdict?

Analyzes the acquittal of Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, detailing the reasons given by senators who voted to convict and acquit, and advances lessons from the acquittal.

Chapter 6 investigates the debate about the freedom of enslaved Africans in the light of the tussle between Mendonça, his family and the Portuguese Overseas Council. The chapter examines the Crown’s slave legislation of 18 March 1684, seeing it as a direct response to Mendonça’s court case in the Vatican. It looks at the sphere of the Overseas Council’s jurisdiction in relation to the internal affairs of the kingdom, that is, Portugal, and its attempt to overturn Mendonça’s court case verdict in the Vatican via a discreet anonymous letter. It examines how Mendonça marshalled his legal arguments to uphold the Vatican’s verdict . The chapter argues that the court case was a tussle between Philipe Hari I and João Hari II of the House of Ndongo and the Overseas Council, which vetoed a decision that Philipe Hari I would continue payment of baculamento, that is, make tax payments in enslaved people. I contend that Mendonça, in taking his criminal court case to the Vatican, sought not only the abolition of African slavery and liberty for Indigenous Americans and New Christians, but also to shake off the burden of his own family’s involvement in the slave trade.

This chapter explores the political aspect of the legal metaphors. The main question is how epistemic authority can be both individual and shared. The key metaphors in this chapter are the political community and the distinction between valid laws and arbitrary decrees. To understand this relationship, Møller considers the way we can conceive of the thinking self as a critical authority. On the political nature of pure reason, Onora O’Neill has provided a groundbreaking analysis, which Møller discusses in detail. The thought-provoking accounts of the legal structure of reason by Susan Meld Shell and Friedrich Kaulbach are also considered. Building on this discussion, Møller shows that the lawful nature of reason is a presupposition of its political use in debates and an enlightened community.

This chapter shows that the antinomies of pure reason present an analogy between the critique and a civil trial in which reason in the narrow sense is challenged to prove that it can legitimately possess and use its ideas. In reconstructing the different parts of this image, Møller suggests reading the tribunal image as a second-order model of evaluation of judgements. In order to achieve this aim, Møller inspects the different roles and procedures mentioned in the juridical metaphors to see how they fit the different procedures in the antinomies. The chapter untangles the notions of the tribunal itself, the trial, the witnesses, the audience and the verdict. The image of the reader as judge is considered in its intellectual historical context, which shows an affinity between Kant’s use of this image and the project of enlightenment.