“Beauty fades. Dumb is forever.” — Judge Judy
I’ve always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the daytime program, Judge Judy. When I was a kid, my father tuned in to watch it every day, four p.m. on the dot. It was, for me, a terrifying experience to watch her rip apart every poor soul who dared step foot in her courtroom. She was (and is) the embodiment of every angry parent and suspicious school administrator I’ve ever encountered.
Unlike other courtroom TV shows like The People’s Court or Judge Mathis, Judge Judy doesn’t hire actors to re-enact cases. As the passionate male narrator exclaims in the intro, Judge Judy is all about “real people” with “real cases”.
Of course, she isn’t technically working in a legal courtroom. The individuals who agree to be on the show are actually going through arbitration — a legal method used to resolve conflicts outside of the court. Judge Judy’s decisions, however, are still binding because both the plaintiff and the defendant sign a contract beforehand that prevents them from renegotiating the ruling afterward. Being an arbitrator allows Judge Judy to operate without as many regulations of a legal courtroom.
If you have, by some chance, never managed to see an episode of this long-running show, I’ll give you a run-down of how each case typically goes:
