historical empathy essay

• Historical Knowledge
• Motives and Historical Empathy

Understanding historical empathy and motives

As you study History, you will encounter a vast array of people who thought, spoke and acted in ways that are foreign to you.

The world and culture which you're used to is unique and simply judging another's thoughts, words and actions based upon your own cultural norms shows a lack of empathy for their way of life.

Developing historical empathy is perhaps the most difficult, but one of the most important, skills you will learn as a student of History.

To begin to empathise with the people of past, you must first work out what motivated them. 

A motive is a reason a person had for thinking or acting in a certain way. Certain beliefs have motivated people to change the world for better or worse.

The study of History will require you to be able to articulate the reasons people, groups or cultures acted the way they did.  

For example:

The severe economic hardships from which Germany suffered as a result of the Treaty of Versailles motivated the German people to place their trust in Hitler's proposed solutions.

Historical empathy

When we learn about people's motivations, we naturally make decisions about whether we personally like what occurred in the past. As human beings, we have our own personal opinions about things.

However, since we naturally think like people from our own day and age, we can too quickly judge and condemn people who are not like us. If we do this, we will make the mistake of being unable to really understand people and cultures that are different from our own.

In order to understand people and cultures that are different from our own, we need to ignore our own personal opinions and try to understand that they were motivated by different things. Overcoming our own judgement and appreciating their motives is called 'Historical Empathy'.

Empathy is the ability to see and understand events from the point of view of those experienced the events firsthand. It allows us to appreciate the feelings, thoughts or attitudes of another person.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is appreciating why things occurred, whilst sympathy is placing yourself in another’s shoes and 'agreeing' with them. In History, we want to appreciate their motives, but not necessarily endorse them.

We might be able to appreciate that Adolf Hitler’s extreme and heartless actions were perhaps due to his own cruel upbringing under an alcoholic father, but that does not necessarily make us condone what he did.

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Historical Empathy: A Cognitive-Affective Theory for History Education in Canada

• Sara Karn Queen's University

Historical empathy involves a process of attempting to understand the thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, and actions of people from the past within specific historical contexts. Although historical empathy has been a rich area of study in history education for several decades, this research has largely taken place outside of Canada. In this article, I argue that greater attention should be paid to historical empathy in Canadian history education research and curriculum because it can support learning outcomes related to historical thinking and historical consciousness, citizenship, and decolonizing and anti-racist approaches to history education. Drawing from and commenting on other scholarship, I present a cognitive-affective theory of historical empathy which includes five elements: (1) evidence and contextualization, (2) informed historical imagination, (3) historical perspectives, (4) ethical judgements, and (5) caring. Through exploring each element and some pedagogical considerations for educators, I emphasize the affective dimensions of history to centre their importance for history education in Canada.

Author Biography

Sara karn, queen's university.

Sara Karn is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University. Her research explores historical empathy in Canadian history education. She is a K-12 teacher in Ontario and teaches environmental education courses for B.Ed. students. Her other research interests include experiential learning, citizenship education, environmental education, and climate change education.

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Module 13: Troubled Times — The Sectional Crisis (1850s)

Historical empathy and emotional distance, learning objectives.

• Maintain an appropriate emotional response to historical sources
• Use historical empathy to understand the perspective of historical actors

Before we can understand what historical empathy is, it may be helpful to have a clear idea about empathy itself. To begin, watch this short Brené Brown video on empathy.

In this video, Brene Brown talks about the definition of empathy and how it really comes down to feeling with other people. This means connecting with someone else, taking their perspective, staying out of judgment, recognizing their emotion, and then communicating that emotion.

You can view the  transcript for “Brene Brown on Empathy” here (opens in new window) .

You might note that empathy does not always result in agreeing with someone else or seeing every viewpoint as equally ethical. Rather, it involves the hard work of trying to understand someone’s perspective and reaction to something of importance to them.

Historian Heather L. Bennett discusses the implication for readers of history: “For Brown, empathy requires both a person’s affect [the sensory experience of an emotional response] and intellect. Resonating with another person’s emotion is a form of affect as it involves the listener tapping into a previous experience of the physical and mental sensation of that emotion. Perspective-taking is an intellectual habit in which the listener aims to comprehend what their friend or acquaintance is experiencing.” [1]

In short, empathy is both an emotional practice as well as a vigorous intellectual exercise. One may be tempted, at first glance, to write this off as “being in touch with one’s feelings,” but this is a skill that must be cultivated with practice and care to better understand historical actors.

Let’s practice historical empathy by reading these historical documents and attempting to understand the perspectives of the authors. Read these three short primary sources, and in just two or three sentences, explain how the writer experiences the issue or situation at hand. What is the author feeling, and why?

First, we have a letter from a woman who was prospecting in the West during the early part of the 1850s during the California Gold Rush.

Secondly, consider this brief letter sent by a woman whose husband and sons were killed by John Brown.

Finally, read a famous speech by Sojourner Truth.

Emotional Distance

As readers of history, one important skill is balancing empathy with the appropriate emotional distance. People who lived in the past are different from us, with different worldviews and values. As the British novelist L.P. Hartley said, “the past is a different country. They do things differently there.” So, while it is useful—even essential—to understand how historical actors saw something, we need to also cultivate a way to avoid clouding their understanding of their world with our understanding of our own. Using some of the primary sources assigned in this module, appreciating this difference is a skill that can be cultivated.

The first exchange pertains to John Brown and the raid on Harpers Ferry. First, let’s review that event.

Now with this context in mind, read the letter from Margaretta Mason to Lydia Maria Child, and let us try a worked example of empathy checked by emotional distance.

Margaretta Mason and Lydia Maria Child discuss John Brown, 1860

After John Brown was arrested for his raid on Harpers Ferry, Lydia Maria Child wrote to the governor of Virginia requesting to visit Brown. Margaretta Mason of Virginia wrote a searing letter to Child attacking her for supporting a murder. Mrs. Child responded, and the exchange of letters was published by the American Antislavery Society.

Letter from Margaretta Mason to Lydia Maria Child

Do you read your Bible, Mrs. Child? If you do, read there “Wo unto you, hypocrites,” and take to yourself with twofold damnation that terrible sentence; for rest assured, in the day of judgment it shall be more tolerable for those thus scathed by the awful denunciation of the Son of God than for you.  You  would sooth with sisterly and motherly care the hoary-headed murder of Harpers Ferry! A man whose aim and intention was to incite the horrors of a servile war—to condemn women of your own race, ere death closed there eyes on their sufferings from violence and outrage, to see their husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of their babes. The antecedents of Brown’s band prove them to have been the offspring of the earth; and what would have been our fate had they found as many sympathizers in Virginia as they seem to have in Massachusetts…

Next, read Lydia Maria Child’s reply.

Reply from Lydia Maria Child

Prolonged absence from home has prevented my answering your letter so soon as I intended. I have no disposition to retort upon you the “twofold damnation” to which you consign me. On the contrary, I sincerely wish you well, both in this world and the next. If the anathema proved a safety valve to your own boiling spirit, it did some good to you, while it fell harmless upon me. Fortunately for all of us, the Heavenly Father rules His universe by laws, which the passions or the prejudices of mortals have no power to change.

As for John Brown, his reputation may be safely trusted to the impartial pen of History; and his motives will be righteously judged by Him who knoweth the secrets of all hearts. Men, however great they may be, are of small consequence in comparison with principles; and the principle for which John Brown died is the question at issue between us.

You refer me to the Bible, from which you quote the favorite text of slaveholders: “Servants be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the forward.” 1 Peter 2:18.

Abolitionists also have favorite texts, to some of which I would call your attention. “Remember those that are in bonds, as bound with them.” Hebrews 13:3….

If the appropriateness of these texts is not apparent, I will try to make it so, by evidence drawn entirely from  Southern  sources. The Abolitionists are not such an ignorant set of fanatics as you suppose. They  know  whereof they affirm. They are familiar with the laws of the slave states, which are along sufficient to inspire abhorrence in any humane heart or reflecting mind not perverted by the prejudices of education and custom. I might fill many letters with significant extracts from your statute books; but I have space only to glance at a few, which indicate the  leading  features of this system you cherish so tenaciously.

The universal rule of the slave states is that “the child follows the condition of its  mother. ” This is an index to many things. Marriages between White and colored people are forbidden by law; yet a very large number of the slaves are brown or yellow…

Throughout the slave states, the testimony of no colored person, bond or free, can be received against a White man. You have some laws which, on the face of them, would seem to restrain inhuman men from murdering or mutilating slaves; by they are rendered nearly null by the law I have cited. Any drunken master, overseer, or patrol, may go into the negro cabin and commit whatever outrage he pleases with perfect impunity, if no White person is present who chooses to witness against him….

Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia  (Boston: 1860), 16, 18-20.

It is important to acknowledge these reactions, but your historical inquiry should not end there. The next place to proceed is to look at oneself as a historical interpreter; we are bound to our worldview, our values, and our circumstances as people in the past were bound to theirs.

Now that you’ve seen these examples, try it out for yourself. Read the Letter from Anthony Burns to the Baptist Church and weigh in on your emotional reaction to its contents. Write a few sentences expressing how you feel and react to the letter. This is an open-ended exercise, but you can use the space below to jot down your ideas.

Considering Other’s Viewpoints

An important part of developing historical empathy is to try to see the world in a way that the historical actors might have seen it. For this next activity, we need to get inside the heads of our subjects and, at least for the moment, consider their perspective in a judgment-free way. To do this, there are some questions that we might ask of the text:

• Are there things we can infer about their perspective from their background?
• What immediate circumstances surrounded the person who wrote this?
• What are been some ideas, assumptions, or beliefs that the writer may have held?
• What information or ideas did this person have access to, and what information was unavailable to them?
• Given all this, how might this historical actor have felt at this moment in time?

All of this can help you develop the writer’s point of view or perspective. For our worked example, let us return to Margaretta Mason. Can we develop her point of view with respect to the aftermath of John Brown’s raid?

Answer the following questions with regard to Margaretta Mason.

Now, let’s try this activity again, using the Letter from Anthony Burns to the Baptist Church.  This is an open-ended exercise, but you can use the spaces below to jot down your ideas.

1. Asking similar questions of Anthony Burns based on his own letter, what was Anthony Burns’ point of view? Consider the five questions above and write a few sentences about his background and circumstances.

2. Using the skills you have learned in this Historical Hack, can you similarly determine the point of view of the churchmen that Anthony Burns writes about?

3. Having worked on establishing the point of view of these churchmen, does your emotional reaction to the piece change? Why or why not?

Remember, showing historical empathy and maintaining a respectful emotional distance does not mean you have to agree with the things people did or the opinions they held! For example, one can certainly understand and articulate the perspective of an enslaver without condoning or excusing the moral evils of slavery, or viewing White planters’ and enslaved Black persons’ perspectives as equally valid. Empathizing is not the same thing as excusing. At the same time, it is perfectly okay to acknowledge your own emotional reactions to events from the past. It is normal to feel angry, sad, hurt, or mad about past events or historical figures. When we have historical empathy, we are just careful that these initial emotional reactions don’t cloud our full judgment or keep us from discovering a more complete and nuanced understanding of the past.

• Bennett, Heather L. “Hashtag History: Historical Thinking & Social Media in an Undergraduate Classroom in Singapore.” Ph.D., Drew University, 2019.  dissertation.heatherlbennett.com ↵
• Historical Hack: Historical Empathy and Emotional Distance . Authored by : Mark Lempke for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Authored by : Brenu00e9 Brown on Empathy. Provided by : RSA. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, displaying historical empathy: what impact can a writing assignment have.

Social Studies Research and Practice

ISSN : 1933-5415

Article publication date: 1 July 2008

Issue publication date: 1 July 2008

This study explored the development of historical empathy in the social studies classroom by addressing the following question: Does the manner in which students are asked to express their historical conclusions impact their ability to exhibit empathy? The results of two different types of writing assignments were examined in order to determine whether one is more likely to encourage the display of historical empathy: text written in the first person from the perspective of a historical agent or text written in the third person about the perspectives of historical agents. Data, in the form of student writing samples and interviews, was collected over a two-week period in an eighth-grade social studies classroom. The findings suggest that the way in which students are asked to articulate their historical conclusions can indeed encourage or inhibit their ability to exhibit empathetic regard.

Brooks, S. (2008), "Displaying Historical Empathy: What Impact Can a Writing Assignment Have?", Social Studies Research and Practice , Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 130-146. https://doi.org/10.1108/SSRP-02-2008-B0008

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Can Empathy Heal Democracy?

How to listen across intractable conflict..

Posted April 26, 2024 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer

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War in Gaza has been raging for six months now, the result of a long-running and deeply entrenched conflict with nuances difficult to capture. Students across the nation are protesting. Many people are shouting. But is anyone really listening? How do we listen to one another in times of intractable conflict?

At the height of the troubles in Northern Ireland, the humanistic psychotherapist Carl Rogers brought Protestants and Catholics together for what was known as an “encounter group.” The goal was to facilitate dialogue across the divide.

The first challenge was getting people from both sides into the same room—itself no small feat. Rogers worked closely with trusted community leaders on the ground to convince people that it was okay to participate in such a group. They rightly feared being ostracized by their respective communities. Even being open to hearing the other side could be seen as an act of betrayal and therefore, privacy was of the utmost importance.

Rogers then traveled to Belfast to facilitate the group’s interactions. For 16 hours, they talked. At first, there was “nothing but bitterness” and hostility. People recounted stories of family members killed by bombs. A Protestant woman said that if she saw a wounded IRA man on the street, she would step on him. The anger and hurt of a centuries-old conflict needed to be aired. Slowly, though, the barriers broke down. By the end of the session, people began to hear one another and to develop real understanding—and even care—across group lines.

Rogers and his colleagues had no money for follow-up. They thought “that was it.” A brief window of understanding had opened, but how soon would it be closed? Group members couldn’t easily share their affinity for the other side outside the safe space of the group. The danger of being shot for such sentiments was still very real.

Nonetheless—and to Rogers’ great surprise—the group continued to meet. They quietly spread the word, sharing film of their encounter with youth groups and church groups. Paramilitary forces destroyed four copies of it—itself a sign of the power of the group’s efforts at reconciliation.

Of course, it would take more than an encounter group to end the conflict. Peace-building is a slow process. But it is one that requires talking and listening, something that psychotherapists like Rogers were especially well-poised to facilitate. What made the psychotherapeutic approach so powerful? Rogers held that empathy was key.

Rogers thought of empathy as a complex, multifaceted, and dynamic way of being with another person. He writes:

“The way of being with another person which is termed empathic . . . . means entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it. . . . .It means temporarily living in his/her life, moving about in it delicately without making judgments, sensing meanings of which he/she is scarcely aware . . . . It means frequently checking with him/her as to the accuracy of your sensings, and being guided by the responses you receive. You are a confident companion to the person in his/her inner world . . . .” (Rogers 1975, p. 4).

Rogers’ description of the empathic process here is expansive and even poetic. It makes empathy a process of perceiving and experiencing, of constant checking and communication. It makes empathy dynamic, something that can move with changes in people’s perceptions and that perhaps even facilitates those changes. Through empathy, people iteratively come to understand one another and themselves.

This process of empathizing is important because it is a way of listening—of hearing not only the words that are being said but what weight they hold. This way of listening is also a way of valuing someone as a person whose perspective is worth hearing. As a facilitator working with an encounter group, Rogers saw himself as modeling empathy and creating space for it to take root in other members of the group, thereby leading them to hear and to value one another.

Watching Rogers conduct an encounter group and listening to him speak about efforts to continue the dialogue even in the face of real social, material, and physical dangers, it is difficult not to be persuaded of the power of empathy.

But there are real challenges and risks associated with empathizing. For example, some question the scalability of empathizing in the complex way Rogers had in mind. It takes time and patience. It is by its nature local, fostering interpersonal connections between individuals in small groups. It’s hard to extrapolate from those local interactions to large groups, especially when conflict is involved. While these issues are important, they are practical ones, surmountable with more resources—time, energy, humility, and care.

A more serious issue is: What do we do when people do not want to listen to one another and, relatedly, when they do not want to value one another? I think this is the real challenge that we are facing in many of our conflicts today.

When we engage with one another—and perhaps especially when we engage empathically—we risk being changed by the other person. What kind of a change do we risk?

One possibility is that we might change our minds—that we might come to agree with a perspective that we had previously disavowed. But this is a risk not only of empathic engagement but also of any effort at reasoned discussion. If we give up on empathy because it might change our minds, it would seem that we have given up on deliberation and democracy.

And isn’t a changing of minds part of the point of deliberation? I want to reclaim the phrase “change of mind” here from those who would use it to imply dichotomy and full-scale conversion—as though when I change my mind I oscillate between two mutually incompatible viewpoints. I am using it to suggest an opening of perspective so that the iterative process of changing one another so central to empathy might occur.

A second possibility is perhaps scarier—that is, that we might change our hearts and, furthermore, that this process will be painful. This is a risk specific to empathic engagement because it involves getting close to someone, sometimes a little too close for comfort. As Rogers writes, we enter the “private perceptual world of the other” and become “thoroughly at home in it” (1975). Do we lose ourselves in this process?

Rogers points out that the empathic way of being involves momentarily laying aside the self. This does not, however, mean abandoning it. Quite the contrary. One must be strong enough to recognize the distinction between self and other. Furthermore, empathizing with someone does not always, or even usually, mean agreeing with them. It does, however, require that you take them seriously as a person. It does require a commitment to listening and understanding even when you don’t agree.

But should you listen even when the other person is saying something harmful? This is, I think, the most difficult of questions about empathy, and it’s the one that becomes most pressing in cases of conflict. Engaging empathically across conflict means taking seriously those who have harmed you or those whom you love. This is painful. And it may entail its own harm.

There are no easy answers to this question. To engage empathically with someone who has hurt you requires bravery and safety as well as the right conditions, where the other person is equally open and ready to listen. These conditions do not always exist, but we can create them. This is where we must attend to the details, to the how of fostering empathic engagement. Rogers, for example, worked closely with community leaders on the ground to engender trust, to quell people’s fears, and to ready them for the hard work of empathizing. By attending to these details, perhaps we can mitigate the potential pains and harms of empathizing.

Empathy’s biggest danger is also its greatest strength. Empathy humanizes by demanding that we take the other seriously as a person. It makes it difficult to demonize and to maintain entrenched divisions and conflicts—which is perhaps why paramilitary forces in Northern Ireland wanted so urgently to destroy evidence of its effectiveness. When we see one another with empathy, there can be no monsters.

Rogers, C. R. (1975). Empathic: An Unappreciated Way of Being. The Counseling Psychologist, 5(2), 2-10 (p. 4). https://doi.org/10.1177/001100007500500202 .

Riana Betzler, Ph.D. , is an assistant professor of philosophy at San José State University.

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Literature/Film Association 2024: Recognition and Empathy

LFA 2024: RECOGNITION AND EMPATHY

LITERATURE / FILM ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE 

YORK COLLEGE OF PENNSYLVANIA, YORK, PA

SEPTEMBER 26-28, 2024 

Film screening and Conversation: Dina Amer, director of You Resemble Me (2021)

Keynote: Elsie Walker, Salisbury University, author of Life 24x A Second: Cinema, Selfhood, and Society (Oxford UP, 2023)

In many ways, our current social and political moment has been marked by the challenges of recognizing and empathizing with others: an increasingly polarized US electorate is set to (re)litigate a divisive election that never really left the news; the rapid advances in generative AI have everyone scrutinizing the differences between human and non-human intelligences; and numerous political and climate crises challenge our conceptual divisions between recognition and responsibility, action and empathy, “us” and “them.” 

Adaptations, in addition to being based in the comparative act of recognizing and reconciling one text with another time, place, or medium, may also promote empathy with unfamiliar characters and contexts. How can adaptations act as a bridge between nations, subcultures, and generations? How does the act of adapting theorize the act of (mis)recognition and the practice of empathy? Are adaptations, in other words, empathetic media?

While we welcome papers on any aspect of film and media studies, we are especially interested in papers exploring one or more of the following topics concerning otherness, recognitions, and adaptation: 

Depictions of otherness across verbal, visual, and interactive modes of art

Politically-motivated reimaginings of cultural touchstones

Uncanny resemblances and (mis)recognitions in adaptation

Reception of texts with transgenerational and/or international appeal

Adaptations of non-fiction works or legal documents

Nostalgia and empathy in film and media

Recognition of and identification with characters

Encounters with AI and nonhuman intelligences

Affect studies and adaptation

The failures of or potential for adaptations as empathetic media 

We also have significant interest in general studies of American and international cinema, film and technology, television, new media, and other cultural or political issues connected to the moving image. In addition to academic papers and pre-constituted panels, presentation proposals about pedagogy or from creative writers, artists, video essayists, and filmmakers are also welcome.

Please submit your proposal, which will consist of a title, 250-word abstract, and keywords, via this Google Form by May 15, 2024. You will receive a confirmation email within 48 hours. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Amanda Konkle at [email protected] . Accepted presenters will be notified by June 5, and a draft conference program will be available by July 15 to enable travel planning.

The conference registration fee is $200 ($150 for students and retirees) before September 1, 2024 and $225 ($175 for students and retirees) thereafter. All conference attendees must also be current members of the Literature/Film Association. Annual dues are $20. 

Presenters will be invited to submit their work to the Literature/Film Quarterly for potential publication. For details on the journal’s submission requirements, visit their website here . 

To register for the conference and pay dues following acceptance of your proposal, select your registration and click on the PayPal “Buy Now” button below that will take you to where you can sign in to your PayPal account and complete the transaction. If you aren’t registering for the conference but want to join or renew as a member, you may just pay membership dues ($20).

Disgraced judge booted from bench 6 years ago files qualifying papers to run again

Disgraced former circuit judge scott dupont, who was booted from the bench and later suspended from practicing law, has filed to run again.

Former Circuit Judge Scott DuPont, who was booted from the bench by the state Supreme Court , has qualified to run for a circuit judge seat on the 7th Judicial Circuit. DuPont said in an interview that he has matured and wants to follow his "calling" to serve as a judge.

The Florida Supreme Court in a 2018 unanimous vote removed DuPont from the bench. The state Supreme Court stated he was unfit to serve and cited egregious campaign violations as well as judicial canon violations.

The Florida Supreme Court also suspended DuPont in 2019 from practicing law for 91 days based on the violations that got him booted from the bench. And while the Supreme Court tossed DuPont from his position, its order did not bar him from running again.

And that is what DuPont is doing, filing qualifying papers Tuesday to run against incumbent Circuit Judge Rose Marie Preddy in the group 11 race for the 7th Circuit. Preddy has also qualified to run during the qualifying period which ends on Friday. Preddy filed a lawsuit Friday claiming DuPont fails to meet an eligibility requirement.

DuPont, 52, now lives in Palm Coast and said many people have been asking him to run for judge.

“The JQC (Judicial Qualifications Commission) has spoken," DuPont said in a phone interview. "The Florida Bar has spoken. Now it’s time for the people to speak.”

DuPont won a 2016 election against challenger Malcolm Anthony but some of his actions on the campaign trail led to his dismissal.

The Florida Supreme Court stated in a 2018 opinion that DuPont was unfit to serve on the bench after he "knowingly misrepresent(ed) facts about the Anthonys during his 2016 campaign," the opinion states.

DuPont posted on a website what he described as “possible matching arrest records” for Anthony’s wife and his daughter, but neither had ever been arrested.

The Supreme Court found that DuPont’s “careless” actions caused potential harm to Anthony’s family. The justices said that such carelessness is inconsistent with a judge promoting confidence in the judiciary.

The Supreme Court also found that DuPont violated judicial canons when he ordered that a man be searched and his $180 seized during a family court hearing in 2011. The Supreme Court said it has previously condemned “such unlawful, judicially ordered seizures in open court.”

The court also cited a first appearance hearing DuPont conducted during Memorial Day 2016. DuPont held the hearing without attorneys present to suit his campaign schedule, disrespecting the attorneys and the inmates, the justices found. DuPont has offered no excuse or explanation, the justices found.

The court followed the recommendations of an ethics panel which stated that DuPont showed a “reckless disregard for the truth.”

DuPont says he has gained 'humility, empathy, maturity'

In a campaign video, DuPont says some of the things he was accused of he didn’t do or didn’t do to the extent it was alleged. But in the phone interview, he declined to share specifics, saying his offenses were well-documented.

“I can tell you I won’t make the same mistakes twice,” DuPont said.

He said going through the disciplinary process has increased his empathy, humility and maturity.

“Humans aren’t perfect,” DuPont said. “Judges are human. And you know while I was not a perfect judge. I was a faithful judge. I was faithful to the people. I was faithful to my duties.”

Why should voters give him a second time when the Florida Supreme Court said in 2018 he was unfit to be a judge?

“My response is 'That was then, this is now,'” DuPont said. “And a lot has happened over the last six years. If I was unfit, then the Florida Bar would not have reinstated me to practice law.”

DuPont states in the video that he has a thriving general law practice called My DUI Guy in St. Augustine. DuPont said in a campaign video that he would have to take a pay cut to be a judge. Judges earn $191,163 per year during their six-year terms.

So why run for judge again? DuPont said it's his calling.

“I’m pursuing my purpose," he said. "I’m not angry. I’m not bitter. I’m not being vindictive. All I’m doing is pursuing my purpose in life.”

'Grueling, breaking process'

Before the interview, DuPont referred a News-Journal reporter to his campaign video. The one-hour, 18-minute-long video is in the format of an interview. For about the first 37 minutes, DuPont talks about what he says are his accomplishments as a judge. Then the woman interviewing him asks him to tell her about his removal from office. DuPont said in the phone interview that the woman was a person who wanted to help with his campaign.

“So, like I said before, I had run two successful campaigns, and unfortunately, during that time, I had made some mistakes and it ultimately led to to my removal. I can tell you, right now that it was without question, the most difficult time in my life and also in my family's life,” DuPont said in the video.

DuPont did not go into the specifics of his removal. But he referred to the situation as “the grueling, breaking process.”

He credits his wife and his adopted daughter with helping him through it.

He said his family moved to Virginia and he got a job doing lawn care. He said he did not want to practice law anymore.

“But after a year, it became evident that that's what God had for me. And so I went back to Florida; we moved back, reopened our law practice,” DuPont said.

But then he was suspended and had to shut down his law practice. He was later reinstated.

He said he applied for many jobs and could not get one except for one in a warehouse by the adoption agency where they adopted their daughter. He said with that job it took him three full days of work to make what he used to earn in one hour.

DuPont said his religious faith grew through the experience. He said as a young judge he was immature and that going through "the process" gave him empathy and life experience, which are good qualities for a judge.

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I Thought the Bragg Case Against Trump Was a Legal Embarrassment. Now I Think It’s a Historic Mistake.

By Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Mr. Shugerman is a law professor at Boston University.

About a year ago, when Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, indicted former President Donald Trump, I was critical of the case and called it an embarrassment. I thought an array of legal problems would and should lead to long delays in federal courts.

After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the district attorney has made a historic mistake. Their vague allegation about “a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election” has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.

To recap: Mr. Trump is accused in the case of falsifying business records. Those are misdemeanor charges. To elevate it to a criminal case, Mr. Bragg and his team have pointed to potential violations of federal election law and state tax fraud. They also cite state election law, but state statutory definitions of “public office” seem to limit those statutes to state and local races.

Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with “intent to defraud.” A year ago, I wondered how entirely internal business records (the daily ledger, pay stubs and invoices) could be the basis of any fraud if they are not shared with anyone outside the business. I suggested that the real fraud was Mr. Trump’s filing an (allegedly) false report to the Federal Election Commission, and that only federal prosecutors had jurisdiction over that filing.

A recent conversation with Jeffrey Cohen, a friend, Boston College law professor and former prosecutor, made me think that the case could turn out to be more legitimate than I had originally thought. The reason has to do with those allegedly falsified business records: Most of them were entered in early 2017, generally before Mr. Trump filed his Federal Election Commission report that summer. Mr. Trump may have foreseen an investigation into his campaign, leading to its financial records. He may have falsely recorded these internal records before the F.E.C. filing as consciously part of the same fraud: to create a consistent paper trail and to hide intent to violate federal election laws, or defraud the F.E.C.

In short: It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up.

Looking at the case in this way might address concerns about state jurisdiction. In this scenario, Mr. Trump arguably intended to deceive state investigators, too. State investigators could find these inconsistencies and alert federal agencies. Prosecutors could argue that New York State agencies have an interest in detecting conspiracies to defraud federal entities; they might also have a plausible answer to significant questions about whether New York State has jurisdiction or whether this stretch of a state business filing law is pre-empted by federal law.

However, this explanation is a novel interpretation with many significant legal problems. And none of the Manhattan district attorney’s filings or today’s opening statement even hint at this approach.

Instead of a theory of defrauding state regulators, Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of “election interference,” and Justice Juan Merchan described the case , in his summary of it during jury selection, as an allegation of falsifying business records “to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.”

As a reality check: It is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal. The election law scholar Richard Hasen rightly observed , “Calling it election interference actually cheapens the term and undermines the deadly serious charges in the real election interference cases.”

In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed , “It was election fraud, pure and simple.” None of the relevant state or federal statutes refer to filing violations as fraud. Calling it “election fraud” is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet.

The most accurate description of this criminal case is a federal campaign finance filing violation. Without a federal violation (which the state election statute is tethered to), Mr. Bragg cannot upgrade the misdemeanor counts into felonies. Moreover, it is unclear how this case would even fulfill the misdemeanor requirement of “intent to defraud” without the federal crime.

In stretching jurisdiction and trying a federal crime in state court, the Manhattan district attorney is now pushing untested legal interpretations and applications. I see three red flags raising concerns about selective prosecution upon appeal.

First, I could find no previous case of any state prosecutor relying on the Federal Election Campaign Act either as a direct crime or a predicate crime. Whether state prosecutors have avoided doing so as a matter of law, norms or lack of expertise, this novel attempt is a sign of overreach.

Second, Mr. Trump’s lawyers argued that the New York statute requires that the predicate (underlying) crime must also be a New York crime, not a crime in another jurisdiction. The district attorney responded with judicial precedents only about other criminal statutes, not the statute in this case. In the end, the prosecutors could not cite a single judicial interpretation of this particular statute supporting their use of the statute (a plea deal and a single jury instruction do not count).

Third, no New York precedent has allowed an interpretation of defrauding the general public. Legal experts have noted that such a broad “election interference” theory is unprecedented, and a conviction based on it may not survive a state appeal.

Mr. Trump’s legal team also undercut itself for its decisions in the past year: His lawyers essentially put all of their eggs in the meritless basket of seeking to move the trial to federal court, instead of seeking a federal injunction to stop the trial entirely. If they had raised the issues of selective or vindictive prosecution and a mix of jurisdictional, pre-emption and constitutional claims, they could have delayed the trial past Election Day, even if they lost at each federal stage.

Another reason a federal crime has wound up in state court is that President Biden’s Justice Department bent over backward not to reopen this valid case or appoint a special counsel. Mr. Trump has tried to blame Mr. Biden for this prosecution as the real “election interference.” The Biden administration’s extra restraint belies this allegation and deserves more credit.

Eight years after the alleged crime itself, it is reasonable to ask if this is more about Manhattan politics than New York law. This case should serve as a cautionary tale about broader prosecutorial abuses in America — and promote bipartisan reforms of our partisan prosecutorial system.

Nevertheless, prosecutors should have some latitude to develop their case during trial, and maybe they will be more careful and precise about the underlying crime, fraud and the jurisdictional questions. Mr. Trump has received sufficient notice of the charges, and he can raise his arguments on appeal. One important principle of “ our Federalism ,” in the Supreme Court’s terms, is abstention , that federal courts should generally allow state trials to proceed first and wait to hear challenges later.

This case is still an embarrassment, in terms of prosecutorial ethics and apparent selectivity. Nevertheless, each side should have its day in court. If convicted, Mr. Trump can fight many other days — and perhaps win — in appellate courts. But if Monday’s opening is a preview of exaggerated allegations, imprecise legal theories and persistently unaddressed problems, the prosecutors might not win a conviction at all.

Jed Handelsman Shugerman (@jedshug) is a law professor at Boston University.

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