Vigilante Justice

A classic example of Judge Milian's tendency toward strictly adhering to the law is drawn from a case recorded for analysis on March 27, 2001, that I have entitled “Vigilante Justice.” The dispute involved the vigilante-style assault of an alleged crack dealer by frustrated residents in an inner-city neighborhood. The defendants in this case—Malachi and Mathew Smith—claimed that they reacted violently toward the plaintiff—Charles Randolf—after learning that he had helped their younger brother obtain crack cocaine. Even though Judge Milian clearly empathized with the motivations of the alleged assailants in this case, she did not feel legally empowered to deny the alleged drug pusher damages as a result of the assault and vandalism to his car. In this way, we find clear evidence of Judge Milian's tendency to see the law as a set of inflexible general prescriptions to be applied rigidly in specific cases. To reiterate Judge Milian's succinct phrasing in her judgment:

This was one of the most graphic instances of Judge Milian adopting the approach of the strict adherent to the law. The image of the judge's hands being physically bound by restrictive legal doctrine is a powerful one, and as evocative as the oft-invoked image of “blind” Lady Justice. However, while the metaphor of blind justice is meant to convey the idea of a legal system that applies fairly to all, the image of the hamstrung judge conveys a vision of justice denied, foiled, and frustrated by the sometimes unreasonable regulations imposed on the powerless judge by official legal doctrine. Such a view of the law and judging calls to mind the analytical categories of Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick and Silbey (1998). Judge Milian's insistence on following the letter of the law even where it may produce substantive injustice sends the litigants in this case the message that they are squarely before the law and that the law is both powerful and impenetrable (Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick & Silbey 1998:45).

This case example also clearly illustrates the way law is conceptualized by People's Court as a sometimes negative and restrictive force rather than a positive implement of justice. People's Court draws upon a negative view of law, perhaps having its roots in the decidedly negative outlook on law and legal procedure that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in the wake of U.S. Supreme Court rulings such as Escobedo v. Illinois (1962) and Miranda v. Arizona (1966), which affirmed the rights of the accused and curtailed the powers of police and prosecutors. Commentators such as Reference RafterRafter (2000) argue that this negative view of law has been clearly reflected in American popular culture since the 1970s. Likewise, in the People's Court, law and judging are depicted as being often impotent in the face of massive injustices. While the legal process depicted in People's Court may be open to all “the people,” we nevertheless must acknowledge that the process is flawed because the law can bind the hands of Lady Justice just as easily as it can empower her to act out of fairness and equality. This is the double-edged character of the law embodied in the ideology of People's Court.

While it is tempting to read Judge Milian's decision in the above case as simply presenting the American legal system as unjust and unduly focused on the rights of the guilty over the innocent, it instead presents viewers with a paradox about the nature of the American legal process. Thus just as the former People's Court Judge Reference WapnerWapner (1987) recognizes the imperfections in the American legal system, he also forcefully argues that we ought not draw the conclusion that there is something wrong with justice. Instead, we should accept it, warts and all:

In her decision in the Vigilante Justice case, Judge Milan clarified the price that we must pay for the liberal-legal American model of law. Sometimes the innocent suffer while the guilty are able to capitalize on their misdeeds. However, viewers are also reminded that the law must still be treated with respect, even as it utterly fails to produce justice. In the present case, we see strong evidence of both Judge Milian's strict adherence to the law and an almost mystifying faith that the power of the law may someday be brought to bear upon even the most dramatic failures of the American civil court system:

Judge Milian's speech to the defendants in this case—and really to all those tempted to take the law into their own hands—presents a very simple message about the law. Obey the law, and you will be rewarded. Take the law into your own hands, and you will be punished and the guilty will be set free. Despite her own feelings about the injustice of the situation, Judge Milian did not deny the plaintiff his claim because she felt her hands were tied by the law. Put another way, judges ought to merely apply law; they should never ignore it nor get creative in its application. Judge Milian's decision in this case reaffirmed Judge Wapner's notion of imperfect justice. However, lest we think that this ruling was a signal to the audience to forget about law entirely, the last portion of Judge Milian's judgment clearly argued that law must remain central to a just and civil society—even society in the urban ghetto, where ordinary citizens may feel morally empowered to take the law into their own hands against drug dealers. Judge Milian provided a direct address to those tempted to eschew the law in favor of quick satisfaction in the form of lawless violent retribution. The consequences were clearly laid out in her decision.

Although Judge Milian seemed to be assailing the law for its inability to produce justice in this dispute, and even though she seemed to partially condone the vigilante actions of the Smith brothers, her final words to Mathew Smith once again recentered law. Law may have failed to produce justice in the present case, but we should not take this to mean that law per se did not have a potentially constructive place for the defendants in this case, or others in future disputes. In the end, it should have been clear to audiences that the law was still potentially powerful, but its efficacy had been undermined by the rash actions of the Smith brothers. Instead, if cooler and more logical heads had prevailed, Judge Milian argued, justice would have been served. In fact, law could be potentially redeployed by the Smith family to punish Randolf for causing them pain and suffering—or emotional distress, in the words of Mathew Smith. So at the end of the day, viewers of People's Court walked away with an ambiguous view of law's potential to produce justice. Significantly, the judge did not condone the vigilante actions of the Smith brothers. Thus, the program provided continued support for the justice system and law and order, while simultaneously assailing law as sometimes an obstacle to true justice.

While Judge Milian's judging style often conforms to the characteristics of the strict adherent, Judge Sheindlin exhibits aspects of Reference Conley and O'BarrConley and O'Barr's (1990) law maker and authoritative decision maker styles. According to Conley and O'Barr, the law maker style of judging “views the law not as a constraint, but as a resource” (1990:87). The law maker feels compelled toward some broader notion of justice or fairness, even if the law itself does not allow for such a decision. Unlike strict adherents, who preface their decisions by alerting the litigants that they are often forced to rule in a particular way because of legal constraints, law makers are unlikely to qualify their decisions. Furthermore, law makers may even fabricate “legal-sounding principles” that resonate with their own sense of justice (1990:87). Like the strict adherent, a lawmaking approach to judging has ideological implications. The lawmaking judge presents a conception of the law as “malleable raw material to be employed in the pursuit of objectives defined without reference to legal rules” (Reference Conley and O'BarrConley & O'Barr 1990:89). However, through the use of legal-sounding jargon, this creative use of the law is masked so as to suggest that it is instead a straightforward application of rational legal principles. In other words, litigants are not told that this is an unusual judgment or a creative solution to their case. Instead, they are left to believe that this is simply the way the law is.

Purloined Wedding Veil

The case I have entitled “Purloined Wedding Veil” (CBS, May 10, 2002) illustrates Judge Judy's creative lawmaking approach to justice. In this case, Gina Johnson was suing a casual acquaintance, Chrystal Blocker-Thomas, for the cost of a wedding veil she claimed was destroyed by the defendant. The plaintiff argued that she had only loaned her wedding veil to the defendant and expected it to be returned after the wedding. Judge Judy did not believe the defendant's story that the veil was a gift from the plaintiff. Furthermore, Judge Judy was visibly outraged that the defendant had altered the veil and had only reluctantly returned it to the plaintiff in a garbage bag with some other waste left over from the wedding. Clearly, Judge Judy's sense of justice and fairness necessitated some form of punishment or compensation far beyond what the law might allow in this case.

The opportunity for patented “Judge Judy justice” came from an odd turn of events in the case. The garbage bag in which the veil had been returned to the plaintiff also contained by mistake the defendant's wedding bouquet. In a creative attempt to punish the defendant justly for a transgression that could not properly be addressed though simple monetary redress alone, Judge Judy adopted an “eye for an eye” philosophy in rendering her decision, indirectly instructing the plaintiff to keep the defendant's wedding bouquet in a retributive attempt to inflict equal harm for the wrong done:

Judge Sheindlin's decisionmaking clearly took a creative turn to exact extralegal justice in the face of what Judge Judy believed to be a terrible injustice that could not be remedied through a simple monetary award. Judge Judy made it clear much earlier in the testimony that the plaintiff was going to be getting her money back for the value of the veil, but as an object of great sentimental value to the plaintiff, money would not be enough to produce real justice. In this way, Judge Judy incorporated a lawmaking approach that delivered a far more creative form of justice than the law might otherwise allow. Indirectly counseling the plaintiff to keep the defendant's bouquet—an object of sentimental value perhaps equal to the damaged wedding veil—as a form of punishment would naturally be viewed by many as an innovative and Solomon-like form of punishment for the defendant. However, it is clear that there is no legal basis for such an informal sentence. Moreover, in compelling the defendant to sue for the return of her bouquet, Judge Judy essentially used the very process of civil justice as a form of extralegal punishment. In this case, we see strong evidence for Reference FeeleyFeeley's (1979) notion of the legal process itself as punishment above and beyond what is meted out in any sentence. Furthermore, this case brings life to Reference Ewick and SilbeyEwick and Silbey's (1998) notion of engagement “with the law.” The legal process is viewed and “played” almost as if it were “a game, a bounded arena in which preexisting rules can be deployed and new rules invented to serve the widest range of interests” (1998:48). As a judge, Judge Sheindlin is of course highly adept at this game and in the “Purloined Wedding Veil” plays it in such a way as to ensure substantive justice.

The creative use of the law is but one part of “Judge Judy justice.” In addition to her lawmaking style, Judge Sheindlin also exhibited the traits of the authoritative decision maker. According to Reference Conley and O'BarrConley and O'Barr (1990), the authoritative approach is characterized by both a desire to follow the law and the judge's willingness to take personal responsibility for the decision that is rendered. However,

Thus litigants who experience the law through the authoritative decision maker are likely to conclude that the legal system is a powerful, arbitrary, and threatening institution (1990:101).

Premarital Vacation

Judge Sheindlin's authoritative approach to judgment can be illustrated by her decision in the case of the “Premarital Vacation” (CBS, May 29, 2002). In this case, a female student (Sarah Rosales) sued her ex-boyfriend (Sean McKean) for his share of a monthlong Mexican vacation the couple had taken together. After Judge Sheindlin questioned both parties about the nature of the agreement that they had with respect to the money that was spent on their trip, Judge Judy signaled the start of her judgment by announcing that she in fact believed the defendant owed the plaintiff money:

No particular reason was given by Judge Sheindlin for her determination in this case. One can safely assume that the truth was divined by her crystal ball or intuition. While the determination of the guilt of the defendant seemed to herald the beginning of Judge Judy's judgment, she immediately began providing moral commentary on the actions and personal choices of the plaintiff in this case. Even though Judge Judy had essentially determined that the plaintiff was in the legal right in this situation, she was less than supportive morally toward the woman's plight:

The fact that the litigants were not married or at the very least engaged seemed to be at the heart of Judge Judy's objections. Judge Judy offered blood relations or marriage as the preconditions for a man and woman taking a monthlong vacation together. This was advice that went well beyond the present dispute and could presumably be carried forward into future relationships by the plaintiff or anyone within earshot—such as the home audience. Moreover, this advice was congruent with Judge Sheindlin's traditional values, expressed in one of her best-selling books, Keep It Simple Stupid: You're Smarter Than You Look (2000a). In this prescriptive guide to proper relationships aimed directly at women—subtitled Uncomplicating Relationships in Complicated Times—Judge Judy laments the state of the modern family and seems to yearn for simpler, old-fashioned values. According to Judge Sheindlin,

Drawing from her years of experience and purported expertise as a family court judge, Judge Sheindlin forcefully argues that problems are the making of individuals, and personal responsibility and action are the only prescriptions for healthier social relations. Furthermore, by situating the responsibility for the failings of American society within the poor choices of individuals, Judge Sheindlin not so tacitly argues for a privatized model of citizenship where the individual is solely responsible for the minimization of risk and personal victimization. In her first best-selling book Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining (1996), Judge Sheindlin vehemently makes this point: “By shifting the emphasis from individual responsibility to government responsibility, we have infantalized [sic] an entire population” (1996:6). Her answer? “Self-discipline, individual accountability and responsible conduct is the answer. It has always been the answer, but America got lost. It is time to get back on course” (1996:233). The effect of this sustained attack on governmental social regulation is to situate the blame for a host of social problems—and the solution to those problems—within the individual. This ideology saturates the judgments of Judge Judy. More to the point, the actual monetary judgment is seemingly offered as a mere afterthought to the moral commentary that so frequently forms the bulk of Judge Judy's address to the litigants. Furthermore, because of the mediated power encapsulated in her role as a television judge, Judge Sheindlin's judgments are simultaneously humiliating and without grounds for appeal (Reference AsimowAsimow 1999). For litigants in Judge Judy's court, there is no question that her judgments are authoritarian as well as authoritative.

What is notable about the judgment in the “Premarital Vacation” case is that Judge Judy did not offer any explanation for her ruling. In fact, in the exchange below, Judge Judy openly admitted that she had no way to determine the exact amount of money that the defendant owed. However, Judy did eventually make a decision in this regard by simply accepting the amount of money that the plaintiff claimed was lost and then offered more commentary on the personal worth of the litigants, this time directed toward the defendant.

That the decision came almost as an afterthought and that moralizing “advice” tended to dominate in the anatomy of Judge Judy's decision should come as no surprise to anyone who has watched the program. The judgment was merely a platform for Judge Judy to express her own ideological viewpoints about good relationships and appropriate interpersonal behavior. In this case, the advice centered on the proper conditions around which a man and woman should be together in an intimate situation such as a monthlong tropical vacation. Being married or being brother and sister appear to be the only appropriate conditions under which the opposite sexes should share a credit card—and perhaps, by extension, a hotel room in Mexico. The commentary directed to the male defendant was less clearly prescriptive in that it did not set out a proper course for future behavior as much as it simply berated the man for having too high an opinion of himself.

Although men who take advantage of women may be verbally assaulted by Judge Judy, she reserves her most biting criticism for marginal women appearing on her program. The commentary offered by Judge Sheindlin on the decisionmaking of female litigants contributes to the program's normative address to its presumed female audience. Men who abuse women may be deemed “lowlifes” or without conscience, but to Judge Judy they are not usually called “stupid.” Female victims of abuse, however, are deemed by Judge Sheindlin to be stupid. According to Karno, “the invocation of foolishness and stupidity” (2004:273) is a key element of Judge Judy's lectures to women and part of the work of advancing the neoliberal project of responsibilized citizenship. Judge Judy's self-help tracts emphasize choice—not circumstance—as the underlying cause of any bad situation that a woman could find herself in. Even in the case of abusive relationships, Judge Judy forcefully argues that all women need is to pull themselves up—and out—by their bootstraps:

This excerpt underscores Judge Judy's penchant for labeling women who find themselves in poor relationships or unfortunate circumstances as simply stupid. Calling a woman in an abusive relationship “stupid” or a “dope” for not getting out is far from being helpful, but aids in the reconstruction of domestic abuse as a personal (private) problem and not a legal (public) one. In this way, Judge Judy's model of law continues the tradition of circumscribing the problems of women and children within the private realm, far from the constructive potential of legal intervention.

In an episode dealing with allegations of domestic violence (CBS, May 21, 2002), Judge Judy framed the dispute as lack of intelligence on the part of the female victim for failing to get out from a relationship marred by a history of violence:

Judge Sheindlin's insistence that any problem—no matter how systemic or rampant in society—is merely the fault of those who are caught up within it is a very powerful way of advancing a neoliberal agenda of cuts to social programs and the dismantling of the final vestiges of the welfare state. For many viewers, the powerful discourse framing human behavior contained in Judge Sheindlin's neoliberal address takes on the status of common sense. As one participant on the Judge Judy discussion board at http://TVTalkshows.com puts it:

Judge Judy's moral “advice” to litigants also serves a symbolic purpose for home viewers, demonstrating all that can go wrong with personal relations. Audience members are thus encouraged to change their behavior in order to prevent a similar disaster from occurring in their own lives. Rather than regarding Judge Judy's diatribes as nothing more than slamming the barn door after the horse has already bolted, we should instead recognize that they serve as lessons to wider audiences—particularly female audience members who have made poor choices when it comes to personal relationships. Furthermore, the tongue-lashings may also help cement the idea that personal change and responsibility are key to happier social relations.

Taken in concert, Judge Sheindlin's lawmaking and authoritative judgment tendencies fit hand in glove with her appeal to charismatic sources of authority and judicial legitimacy. Judge Sheindlin proffers a vision of law that is far removed from the liberal-legal and sometimes negative portrayal of law found on People's Court. The institution of “the law” figures in Judge Judy primarily as a backcloth for the moralizing and so-called commonsense wisdom of the figure of Judge Sheindlin herself. The robe, the gavel, the bailiff, and the courtroom setting all provide an air of legality to the proceedings, but what we are witnessing is something clearly other than the law as it is typically understood in the liberal-legal tradition. To viewers, the quasi-legal model in Judge Judy may hold a great deal more appeal than the often-flawed law of Judges Milian or Wapner. Law works because Judge Sheindlin is able to effectively employ it as a tactic, a lever, or a background for her moral judgment of those who have done wrong. In the end, Judge Judy's judgments serve less as reasoned solutions to the interpersonal problems of the litigants and more as cautionary tales for those who take the proceedings in from home. Law may be used creatively and authoritatively to punish on Judge Judy, but it is clearly not a tool that can be used constructively to order or repair human relationships. The power to prevent harm resides only in the personal choices of the individual. In this way, Judge Judy presents a cogent argument for a privatized and neoliberal form of justice that is at odds with the model of law implied in People's Court.

Debts Among Former Friends

Further evidence of People's Court's unique outlook on the functioning of the legal system can be found in the fact that solutions to disputes often lie beyond the formal purview of the law. Dispute resolution is sometimes sought outside of the courtroom in a form of mediation or reconciliation handled by court reporter Chaplin. This compassionate and indeed extralegal version of justice seeks to patch up the broken relationships that lie at the heart of many civil legal disputes on People's Court. In “Debts Among Former Friends” (UPN, January 29, 2001), plaintiff Love Priestly sued her former friends and roommates Tracy and Patrick Wilburn for unpaid debts. In this case, we can see Judge Wapner's notion of law as compassion typified in the attempt by Chaplin to restore the damaged relationship that was not addressed by law inside the courtroom. The monetary dispute reached an impasse in the courtroom when neither side could produce documents or contracts to support the claims. Outside the courtroom, however, wider notions of restoration and reconciliation replaced the narrow and technical requirements of the law necessitated by Judge Milian's strict adherent style of judgment:

At this point, Chaplin directed the microphone toward the plaintiff and she began to choke up, clearly on the verge of tears and unable to get the words out. As if to break the tension, Patrick Wilburn—invisible to home viewers and out of range of Chaplin's microphone—said something at this point that brought a slight smile to Priestly's face and nervous laughter to all the litigants.

This tearful episode in the hallway could be read as a tacit indictment of the legal system and its (in)ability to function as a dispute resolution mechanism. Inside the courtroom, the best the judge could do was to explain the evidentiary requirements of the law in cases of monetary disputes. With no legal grounds for the settlement of their dispute inside the court, the litigants might simply have gone home upset and disappointed if their case had been heard on Judge Judy. However, People's Court provided a space to open up a dialogue between the parties, clearly a dialogue that was welcomed by the plaintiff in this case. Thus while exposing the court as a place that can be inappropriate and inhospitable to the resolution of interpersonal disputes such as this, the hallway segment simultaneously asserted the possibility that true reconciliation may lay just outside the doors of the formal legal system.

This preference for extralegal and negotiated settlements to disputes is built into the underlying legal ideology of People's Court. As Judge Wapner puts it, the placing of disputes before a trusted third party outside of the formal court process is the answer to many disputes:

Clearly, this is just what People's Court—then and now—aims to do: provide ordinary people with a chance to work out their problems under the watchful gaze of the judge and other legal actors on the program.

In sum, the general outlook on the law proffered on People's Court is fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, People's Court takes a distinctly negative view of the power of the law to resolve disputes. Often the technical requirements of the law place limits on the ability of the judge to deliver a just settlement. On the other hand, the American legal system is held up as a flawed, but nonetheless sacred institution. The very legal protections that hamstring the judge in certain cases are ultimately there to protect the ordinary citizen from the potential abuses of the state. Thus, People's Court stops short of suggesting that the American legal system is broken beyond repair. Instead, its flaws are viewed as the natural price we must pay for the rule of law in a democracy.

Another contradiction bound up within People's Court is its tendency to decenter the legal system as the inevitable location of dispute resolution. As the case of “Debts Among Former Friends” illustrated, true reconciliation and resolution may at times only be found outside the formal legal process. By providing a space to consider alternative ways of remaking broken relationships, People's Court offers the public mixed messages about the necessity or role of courts in our everyday legal problems. But perhaps this is not so different from the “real” American judicial system. The contradictions and disjunctions between law and justice that play out regularly on People's Court may be just about as “real” as reality-based courtroom television can get.

The general outlook on law found within Judge Judy is far less ambiguous or contradictory than on People's Court. Law is also decentered, but in such a way that does not necessarily alert the viewers to the fact that Judge Judy is playing hard and fast with its rules. On Judge Judy, audiences are encouraged to turn away from the abstract idea of “the law” and instead pay homage to the judge herself. However, it is clear that it is not the position of judge that we are encouraged to revere, but the actual person of Judge Judy, that human “moral compass” who is uniquely able to sort through our personal troubles and dispense her own brand of “uncommon” sense. If we are to suggest that Judge Judy takes a negative view of the law, this is not to say that she sees it as an obstacle to justice. Instead, the program's general outlook on the law promotes a view of what law ought to be. In Judge Sheindlin's vision, the law ought to be swift, straightforward, and unmerciful in its treatment of legal or ethical transgressors. There is no place for technicalities or other procedural barriers that would stand in the way of justice on Judge Judy. On her program, we see law the way it might operate if left in the hands of the private sector. In this way, we might argue that Judge Judy is a form of popular cultural legal idealism in contrast to the popular legal realism of People's Court.