Kangaroo court

A session of the People's Court in Nazi Germany, a kangaroo court that conducted show trials of political enemies

A kangaroo court is a court that ignores recognized standards of law or justice, carries little or no official standing in the territory within which it resides, and is typically convened ad hoc. A kangaroo court may ignore due process and come to a predetermined conclusion. The term may also apply to a court held by a legitimate judicial authority which intentionally disregards the court's legal or ethical obligations (compare show trial).

A kangaroo court could also develop when the structure and operation of the forum result in an inferior brand of adjudication. A common example of this is when institutional disputants ("repeat players") have excessive and unfair structural advantages over individual disputants ("one-shot players").

Etymology

The term kangaroo court is often erroneously believed to have its origin from the courts of Australia's penal colonies. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first published instance of the term as from an American source, A Stray Yankee in Texas by Philip Paxton, published in 1853. There are, however, earlier instances of the term, including an 1841 article in The Daily Picayune, New Orleans, that quotes another publication, the Concordia Intelligencer, reporting several lynchings instituted "on charges of the Kangaroo court". The Picayune article also asks "What is a kangaroo court?"

Some sources suggest that it may have been popularized during the California Gold Rush of 1849 to which many thousands of Australians flocked. In consequence of the Australian miners' presence, it may have come about as a description of the hastily carried-out proceedings used to deal with the issue of claim-jumping miners.

Ostensibly, the term comes from the notion of justice proceeding "by leaps", like a kangaroo – in other words, "jumping over" (intentionally ignoring) evidence that would be in favour of the defendant. An alternative theory is that as these courts are often convened quickly to deal with an immediate issue, they are called kangaroo courts since they have "jumped up" out of nowhere, like a kangaroo. Another possibility is that the phrase could refer to the pouch of a kangaroo, meaning the court is in someone's pocket.

Etymologist Philologos argues that the term arose "because a place named Kangaroo sounded comical to its hearers, just as place names like Kalamazoo, and Booger Hole, and Okefenokee Swamp, strike us as comical."

The phrase is popular in the Anglosphere and is still in common use.

As informal proceedings in sport

The term is sometimes used without any negative connotation. For example, many Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball teams have a kangaroo court to punish players for errors and other mistakes on the field, as well as for being late for a game or practice, not wearing proper attire to road games, or having a messy locker in the clubhouse. Fines are allotted, and at the end of the year, the money collected is given to charity. The organization may also use the money for a team party at the end of the season.

Historical examples

Some examples of adjudication venues described as kangaroo courts are:

See also

  • Extrajudicial killing – Intentional and unlawful killings of individuals by state actors without judicial process
  • Drumhead court-martial – Court-martial held in the field to hear urgent charges of offences committed in action
  • International arbitration – Arbitration between companies or individuals in different countries
  • Judicial misconduct – situation in which a judge acts in ways that are considered unethical
  • Lawfare – Weaponizing jurisdiction
  • Legal abuse
  • Lynching – Extrajudicial killing by a group
  • Mock trial – Simulation of court hearings
  • NKVD troika – Set of three officials of the Soviet political police issuing quick sentences
  • Presumption of guilt – Presumption that a person is guilty of a crime
  • Show trial – Public trial in which the guilt or innocence of the defendant is predetermined
  • Star Chamber – Term used for a secret court

This page was last updated at 2023-06-14 07:41 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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