This piece ran in today's NY Times:
Want Social Condemnation With Your Justice? Tune In Judge Judy
By ADAM COHEN
In a recent episode of her ratings-blockbuster program, Judge Judy appeared to be resolving a son's financial dispute with his father. But what she was really doing, as only she can, was making the case for what a worthless piece of humanity the son was. She got the young man to admit that he had been arrested 13 times and convicted 4 times - and told him sharply that she herself had five children, "no convictions!" The case concluded not with a lesson on the laws of interfamilial borrowing, but with the father looking into the camera and expressing Judge Judy's real verdict: "He's a punk, and he'll always be a punk."
Judge Judy, also known as Judge Judith Sheindlin, is celebrating her 10th year on television, and she has never been more popular. She has one of the top programs in syndication, earning her a reported $30 million a year.[snip] This summer, both the novelist Kurt Vonnegut and the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen made semiserious suggestions that she should be considered to fill Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court.
"Judge Judy" seems like a caricature of judging, more concerned with putting litigants in their place than with weighing evidence and legal doctrine. But many legal sociologists would argue that putting people in their place - or exerting "social control" - is to some degree what law is all about. Few real-life judges refer to litigants, as Judge Judy does, as "you idiot," inform them bluntly "there is something wrong with you," or end a legal proceeding by telling one of the parties that it would be a bad idea for her to have children. But the reason Judge Judy's show resonates so strongly is that she has an uncanny ability to act out justice-as-social-control in its rawest form.
Is this what it's come down to good citizen? That the law isn't about justice at all but rather `putting you in your place'? This one goes out to any that dismiss the idea of class war.
Don't for a second think the real life judges aren't aware of what this disrespectful loudmouth gets away with on national television. If she can do it in front of millions of citizens, they'll do it too.
It has been widely accepted, as early as the legal realism movement of the 1920's, that law is about a lot more than just the neutral application of rules to facts. In an influential 1976 book, "The Behavior of Law," Donald Black, a University of Virginia social sciences professor, argued that much of what occurs in the legal system can be explained by the relative social status of the participants. One of the universal truths he has observed is that law moves more easily down social hierarchies than up. It is far easier for a rich man to get a policeman to arrest a poor man in the street, for example, than the other way around.
Professor Black also contends that certain kinds of people "attract" law to themselves. The poor, the culturally marginal and social deviants of all types are more likely to attract bad legal outcomes - to be arrested, to be convicted, to lose civil lawsuits - when they do the same things as more socially favored people. [snip]
Once again good citizen we see that the quality of justice suffers when the `better than you' mindset comes into play.
In an interview, Professor Black could not recall having seen "Judge Judy," which is a shame, since it is the perfect text for his theories. He has written that judges are at their most unforgiving when there is a large gap in social status between them and the parties who appear before them.
Judge Judy is able to carry on the way she does because her litigants almost invariably have a multitude of low-status markers: they are unemployed, they have criminal records, they speak poorly. It would be a completely different show if the parties were wealthy. As things stand now, the lower a party's apparent status, the harsher Judge Judy is free to be. On a recent show, when a witness opened her mouth to reveal missing front teeth, it was all but inevitable that she would be yelled at to sit back down and say nothing.
Since the French Revolution, Western society has been committed to the ideal that social status should not matter in court. The American legal system, perhaps more than any other, insists that all men and women are equal before the law, but legal sociologists can show that the reality is far different. In "Sociological Justice," a book he wrote for a popular audience, Professor Black argues that the legal system would be fairer if efforts were made to hide information about the parties' social status from judges and juries. Judge Judy, of course, is an extreme example of the reverse; she is constantly asking about people's idleness and bad debts, and generally digging for what Professor Black calls the "social geometry of the case."
It is hardly surprising that "Judge Judy" is so popular. People like to see social hierarchies reinforced, and people who violate social norms "taught responsibility" or otherwise punished. Humiliation is also a traditional crowd pleaser, and an important part of virtually every reality show on television. The real problem with "Judge Judy" is not that it is worse than most reality TV, which it is not. It is that for an audience that runs well into the millions every week, it is blurring the line between justice and social bullying.
Wanting to see the creeps pay loses some of its luster when you consider that a vast majority of us, thanks to our diminutive social standing, are lumped in with the creeps in the eyes of the holier than thou.
Socially speaking water seeks it's own level. Think for a minute about who judges rub elbows with when they're not on the bench.
Certainly ain't the common riff-raff, is it.
To me the most disturbing part of this whole piece is how it shines the spotlight on something people refuse to see, much less admit that they too play this game.
It's the `better than you' game that foolishly equates wealth with social worthiness.
Water finds it's own level and when it does it belittles those perceived to be beneath them while criticizing those perceived to be above.
It's a pretty damn sad when the degrees that separate one class from the next are as insignificant as what someone does for a living or the make and model car they drive.
The acquisition of status symbols does not make you a better person. Your Cadillac driving neighbor may look down on your Toyota but you can rest assured that your bosses look down on both of you.
That said, it's been proven time and again that your social standing has less to do with skill and ambition and more to do with who your parents were and the advantages they afforded you.
There are far many more intelligent poor people than there are dumb rich people but that doesn't make the rich smart by default or smarter than average for that matter.
[Proof: look at the state of the nation where the rich make all of the `executive' decisions.]
So it is good citizen that when we stand before our `betters' it is not just the facts at hand that are being considered but our social standing relative to their own as well.
We have prisons full of poor people and rich criminals walking the street. So when you're standing before the judge, what do you think they see? Do they see one of their own or a creep?
Pretty scary putting these shoes on the other feet. What kind of justice can you expect to receive when your clothes say Wal-Mart and the other guy's are obviously Brooks Brothers?
Is the answer to shop at only upscale stores, drive the `right' car and live in the right neighborhood? Isn't there more to us than that?
Going around deciding by outward appearance who is better or beneath you is not only shallow in the extreme but subjects you to the same kind of treatment from others.
The world of entertainment holds up a mirror to society. Judge Judy may be `reality TV taken to the extreme but it speaks volumes about the kind of society we've become.
Let us all hope that when it's our turn to stand up the book won't be judged solely by it's cover because it's what's inside that matters.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner