Why I Like Judge Judy

Some of you may recall my story of a somewhat wretched woman I work with
who argued with me that I should reconsider my stance on a presumption
of joint physical placement in child custody cases. Her argument was
that the teenage fathers in our school, at 15 years of age or so, were
obviously unfit to be parents. At the time I agreed with her, but added
that the teenage MOTHERS were equally unfit to be parents, but what are
you going to do, that's who the unfortunate babies have for parents.

Anyway, this woman is a special ed aide, and she is assigned to my room
for two periods this trimester so I work with her on a regular basis. I
also invited the woman I usually invite from the Blackstone Valley
Advocacy Center to come and talk about domestic abuse. Unfortunately,
the usual woman (who I have a rapport with and who at least tries,
usually successfully, to be fair in her presentations) had received a
promotion that made her unable to present to my classes. So they sent a
new woman, with a bit less skill at presentation and a bit more of a
tendency to use bogus statistics, many of which were disproved by the
CDC over ten years ago (my personal favorite -- "Domestic Violence is
the leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44",
when in fact the leading cause of injury for such women -- and in fact
for all people -- is accidental falls, followed by automobile accidents,
which account for more than ten times the number of injuries to women
per year than domestic violence. Twice as many women are treated for
animal bites per year as are treated for injuries inflicted by a male
partner. But I digress). I had to do a fair amount of damage control
with the kids in the days after she presented. I gave her all of the
info I had found about her stats, which she received with a smile, and
if she presents next year we'll see what she does with it.

It was an interesting time, to be sure. Probably my favorite moment was
when one of my pregnant students approached the guest speaker at the end
of class with the "wheel of domestic abuse" that the presenter had
distributed to the class and told her, "Miss, I do these things." She
looked at the girl like she had three heads.

"What do you mean, is someone treating you like this?"

"No -- I do these things to my boyfriend. And my mother. Like, hitting
and intimidation."

"..."

It was fun watching the presenter's face as she tried hard to process
the fact that a pregnant girl was telling her that she was an abuser.
It was kind of like that episode of Star Trek when the crew are stuck on
that planet with the androids and make up some nonsensical card game to
fry their brains with indecipherable information. "You've got a half
Fizbin already!" Everyone knows that pregnant girls are ALWAYS VICTIMS.
How could this be?

In the end she mumbled something about how the girl should call the
advocacy center if she wanted to get help. The girl took a number, and
because I get along pretty well with her (enough to know that she was
almost certainly telling the presenter the truth about her anger issues)
I asked her a week later if she had called. She said she had but the
people she had talked to weren't really any help. I had to wonder if
they had spent most of the conversation trying to find a man to blame
for her bad behavior. In the end I put her in touch with the school
counselor, who hopefully can give her some guidance about controlling
herself. She's going to have a baby soon.

Again, I digress. I'll digress a bit more and say that another amusing
thing about the presentations was the play between primarily
upper-middle-class White feminism and the culture of lower class Black
females. Many times the expectations of the feminists don't quite
"click" with the realities of girls who are not also upper-middle-class
White women. The results can be entertaining. OK, enough digression.

Both of the periods that the special ed aide was assigned to my room for
were hosts to the presentation given by the woman from BVAC. I noticed
that the aide made herself scarce for every presentation. I'm still not
sure why that was. She's usually present for every class.

What she has done is add a few books to my class library, most of which
deal with "women's issues". This is fine with me, in fact I ended up
reading one of the books she brought in that was written by none other
than irascible judge Judy Scheindlin. Maybe you've seen Judge Judy on
television. I had not realized that she had served for over a decade as
a family court judge before getting her television show. This came up
once or twice in her book but wasn't the focus of it, instead she spent
a lot of time ranting about how men had it easy and women needed to
protect themselves and work twice as hard as men in a "man's world",
etc. More or less what I would expect from a book that the aide in
question would bring to my room, although to be fair Judge Judy seems to
be the kind of "feminist" that Aunt Peg was and my friend Christen is,
"prickly" and "angry" but also capable of thinking impartially and
placing blame on women sometimes.

In fact, a few of Judge Judy's throwaway lines led me to look up her
opinions about how family courts treat fathers in our country. I was
quite pleasantly surprised by what I found. In one of her other books,
"Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell Me It's Raining", she comes out and states
that there is a clear gender bias in the family courts and that fathers
have a legitimate beef with the system and need to organize and take
action against it. In 2005, during a televised interview with Larry
King, Judge Judy spoke out about the need for a presumption of joint
physical placement if the courts were to ever be fair to men and their
children. Other than Bob Geldof, champion of lost causes, I think this
is the first time I have ever heard of an easily recognizable public
figure speaking so strongly and openly about this issue on television,
or in any media outlet. And she's not just anyone -- she's a former
family court judge who has proven herself to be anything but an
apologist for men!

Take a moment to read Judge Judy's words with Larry King:

* * * * *

Judge Judy Sheindlin, a NY family court attorney and then family court
supervisory judge with 25 years experience

Larry King Live
October 4, 2005

SHEINDLIN ("Judge Judy"): I was a lawyer in the family court for ten
years. I worked for the corporation counsel's office of the City of New
York. I prosecuted juvenile delinquency cases. I did support and
paternity. So, I was in the trenches and even then, Larry, it took me time.

I remember the first day that I took the bench. It was in the Bronx and
the court officers, if was pretty formal back then, court officer said,
you know, say "All rise" and I stood up because I was accustomed to they
say "All rise." We stood and finally the court officer said "You can sit
down now, judge. They're standing for you. You can sit down." So, even
when you have experience you need time to get comfortable in your chair.

KING: I had a judge who became a federal judge told me once that the
hardest thing to decide was custody cases. First he had no experience.
Who has experience with custody cases? He's been happily married, has
children. Who gets whom? Isn't that the hardest to give a child from one
parent to another?

SHEINDLIN: Yes. Sometimes it's relatively easy because the choices are
clear but I've always thought in this country we do a terrible
disservice to fathers. You know there was a time many years ago when we
had what we called the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant children of
tender years, young children, always went to their mother.

And then all of the courts in this country said that's not fair. We have
to be equal. So, on the books there is a law that says no one parent is
favored over the other, now that's honored more in the breach than it is
honored in actuality. And, I have been a proponent for many years of
there being a presumption in this country for joint custody of children.
That's where courts should start.

KING: That's where you begin?

SHEINDLIN: That's where you begin and if you're going to deviate from
that, you have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that
there is some valid reason why you're going to deviate from that because
one parent is crazy, one parent has a drug problem, an alcohol problem,
something's wrong.

But that should be the standard joint custody because children are
entitled to be raised by two parents even if the parents don't get along
anymore. I mean I think it's horrendous when one parent picks up and
moves out of the state or moves 250 miles away and some judge in the
family court, the domestic relations court usually if it's the mother
who has moved away says, "Well, we'll have a hearing to determine
whether it was the right thing."

No, no, no, no, no. You can't say to people who you've lulled into this
sense of I'm equal, you're an equal father. You can take off paternity
leave. We expect you to participate in the rearing of your children, to
go to open school night, to be out there to play with them. Very often
there are two people working in the household. They divide authority and
you're equal except when there's a divorce.

And then, how often, Larry, I ask you the question, do you hear it
quoted in the paper "He lost custody of his children"? You don't hear
that. You hear "She lost custody. There must be something wrong with her."

Well I think that that has to change in this country because it was my
experience in the family court, and I left the family court ten years
ago, but even my experience on the television courtroom suggests to me
that there are as wonderful a group of fathers out there as a group of
mothers and it's about time that this country recognize that in not only
the letter of the law but the spirit of the law as well.

* * * * *

I literally had tears in my eyes as I read this. It was good to know
that somewhere in the sea of gender bias and corruption that are the
staples of the family courts, someone in a position of power noticed
what was going on and actually cared. Now I don't know what Judge Judy
did or what kind of decisions she made on the bench during her time
while receiving the "King's Shilling" as a family court judge, but I
like to think she at least tried to be fair. I read the entire
transcript of the interview with King and was surprised how much I
agreed with her about several other issues, from gay marriage to the
need for far more public scrutiny of our family courts (she actually
advocates camera recording every court session, and making such
recordings available to the public -- which might prove enlightening to
many people, in the same sense that turning over a rock or rotting log
in your backyard can let you know what sort of things are scuttling
about underneath).

I went to Judge Judy's website and wrote her an e-mail thanking her for
her public stance about this issue, and calling her a "light in
darkness". I hope she reads it. I may just put it in paper form and
mail it to her.

- Ron ^*^

While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't
change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a
trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one
liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry.


Werebat wrote:

Some of you may recall my story of a somewhat wretched woman I work with
who argued with me that I should reconsider my stance on a presumption
of joint physical placement in child custody cases. Her argument was
that the teenage fathers in our school, at 15 years of age or so, were
obviously unfit to be parents. At the time I agreed with her, but added
that the teenage MOTHERS were equally unfit to be parents, but what are
you going to do, that's who the unfortunate babies have for parents.

Anyway, this woman is a special ed aide, and she is assigned to my room
for two periods this trimester so I work with her on a regular basis. I
also invited the woman I usually invite from the Blackstone Valley
Advocacy Center to come and talk about domestic abuse. Unfortunately,
the usual woman (who I have a rapport with and who at least tries,
usually successfully, to be fair in her presentations) had received a
promotion that made her unable to present to my classes. So they sent a
new woman, with a bit less skill at presentation and a bit more of a
tendency to use bogus statistics, many of which were disproved by the
CDC over ten years ago (my personal favorite -- "Domestic Violence is
the leading cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44",
when in fact the leading cause of injury for such women -- and in fact
for all people -- is accidental falls, followed by automobile accidents,
which account for more than ten times the number of injuries to women
per year than domestic violence. Twice as many women are treated for
animal bites per year as are treated for injuries inflicted by a male
partner. But I digress). I had to do a fair amount of damage control
with the kids in the days after she presented. I gave her all of the
info I had found about her stats, which she received with a smile, and
if she presents next year we'll see what she does with it.

It was an interesting time, to be sure. Probably my favorite moment was
when one of my pregnant students approached the guest speaker at the end
of class with the "wheel of domestic abuse" that the presenter had
distributed to the class and told her, "Miss, I do these things." She
looked at the girl like she had three heads.

"What do you mean, is someone treating you like this?"

"No -- I do these things to my boyfriend. And my mother. Like, hitting
and intimidation."

"..."

It was fun watching the presenter's face as she tried hard to process
the fact that a pregnant girl was telling her that she was an abuser. It
was kind of like that episode of Star Trek when the crew are stuck on
that planet with the androids and make up some nonsensical card game to
fry their brains with indecipherable information. "You've got a half
Fizbin already!" Everyone knows that pregnant girls are ALWAYS VICTIMS.
How could this be?

In the end she mumbled something about how the girl should call the
advocacy center if she wanted to get help. The girl took a number, and
because I get along pretty well with her (enough to know that she was
almost certainly telling the presenter the truth about her anger issues)
I asked her a week later if she had called. She said she had but the
people she had talked to weren't really any help. I had to wonder if
they had spent most of the conversation trying to find a man to blame
for her bad behavior. In the end I put her in touch with the school
counselor, who hopefully can give her some guidance about controlling
herself. She's going to have a baby soon.

Again, I digress. I'll digress a bit more and say that another amusing
thing about the presentations was the play between primarily
upper-middle-class White feminism and the culture of lower class Black
females. Many times the expectations of the feminists don't quite
"click" with the realities of girls who are not also upper-middle-class
White women. The results can be entertaining. OK, enough digression.

Both of the periods that the special ed aide was assigned to my room for
were hosts to the presentation given by the woman from BVAC. I noticed
that the aide made herself scarce for every presentation. I'm still not
sure why that was. She's usually present for every class.

What she has done is add a few books to my class library, most of which
deal with "women's issues". This is fine with me, in fact I ended up
reading one of the books she brought in that was written by none other
than irascible judge Judy Scheindlin. Maybe you've seen Judge Judy on
television. I had not realized that she had served for over a decade as
a family court judge before getting her television show. This came up
once or twice in her book but wasn't the focus of it, instead she spent
a lot of time ranting about how men had it easy and women needed to
protect themselves and work twice as hard as men in a "man's world",
etc. More or less what I would expect from a book that the aide in
question would bring to my room, although to be fair Judge Judy seems to
be the kind of "feminist" that Aunt Peg was and my friend Christen is,
"prickly" and "angry" but also capable of thinking impartially and
placing blame on women sometimes.

In fact, a few of Judge Judy's throwaway lines led me to look up her
opinions about how family courts treat fathers in our country. I was
quite pleasantly surprised by what I found. In one of her other books,
"Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell Me It's Raining", she comes out and states
that there is a clear gender bias in the family courts and that fathers
have a legitimate beef with the system and need to organize and take
action against it. In 2005, during a televised interview with Larry
King, Judge Judy spoke out about the need for a presumption of joint
physical placement if the courts were to ever be fair to men and their
children. Other than Bob Geldof, champion of lost causes, I think this
is the first time I have ever heard of an easily recognizable public
figure speaking so strongly and openly about this issue on television,
or in any media outlet. And she's not just anyone -- she's a former
family court judge who has proven herself to be anything but an
apologist for men!

Take a moment to read Judge Judy's words with Larry King:

* * * * *

Judge Judy Sheindlin, a NY family court attorney and then family court
supervisory judge with 25 years experience

Larry King Live
October 4, 2005

SHEINDLIN ("Judge Judy"): I was a lawyer in the family court for ten
years. I worked for the corporation counsel's office of the City of New
York. I prosecuted juvenile delinquency cases. I did support and
paternity. So, I was in the trenches and even then, Larry, it took me time.

I remember the first day that I took the bench. It was in the Bronx and
the court officers, if was pretty formal back then, court officer said,
you know, say "All rise" and I stood up because I was accustomed to they
say "All rise." We stood and finally the court officer said "You can sit
down now, judge. They're standing for you. You can sit down." So, even
when you have experience you need time to get comfortable in your chair.

KING: I had a judge who became a federal judge told me once that the
hardest thing to decide was custody cases. First he had no experience.
Who has experience with custody cases? He's been happily married, has
children. Who gets whom? Isn't that the hardest to give a child from one
parent to another?

SHEINDLIN: Yes. Sometimes it's relatively easy because the choices are
clear but I've always thought in this country we do a terrible
disservice to fathers. You know there was a time many years ago when we
had what we called the Tender Years Doctrine, which meant children of
tender years, young children, always went to their mother.

And then all of the courts in this country said that's not fair. We have
to be equal. So, on the books there is a law that says no one parent is
favored over the other, now that's honored more in the breach than it is
honored in actuality. And, I have been a proponent for many years of
there being a presumption in this country for joint custody of children.
That's where courts should start.

KING: That's where you begin?

SHEINDLIN: That's where you begin and if you're going to deviate from
that, you have to demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that
there is some valid reason why you're going to deviate from that because
one parent is crazy, one parent has a drug problem, an alcohol problem,
something's wrong.

But that should be the standard joint custody because children are
entitled to be raised by two parents even if the parents don't get along
anymore. I mean I think it's horrendous when one parent picks up and
moves out of the state or moves 250 miles away and some judge in the
family court, the domestic relations court usually if it's the mother
who has moved away says, "Well, we'll have a hearing to determine
whether it was the right thing."

No, no, no, no, no. You can't say to people who you've lulled into this
sense of I'm equal, you're an equal father. You can take off paternity
leave. We expect you to participate in the rearing of your children, to
go to open school night, to be out there to play with them. Very often
there are two people working in the household. They divide authority and
you're equal except when there's a divorce.

And then, how often, Larry, I ask you the question, do you hear it
quoted in the paper "He lost custody of his children"? You don't hear
that. You hear "She lost custody. There must be something wrong with her."

Well I think that that has to change in this country because it was my
experience in the family court, and I left the family court ten years
ago, but even my experience on the television courtroom suggests to me
that there are as wonderful a group of fathers out there as a group of
mothers and it's about time that this country recognize that in not only
the letter of the law but the spirit of the law as well.

* * * * *

I literally had tears in my eyes as I read this. It was good to know
that somewhere in the sea of gender bias and corruption that are the
staples of the family courts, someone in a position of power noticed
what was going on and actually cared. Now I don't know what Judge Judy
did or what kind of decisions she made on the bench during her time
while receiving the "King's Shilling" as a family court judge, but I
like to think she at least tried to be fair. I read the entire
transcript of the interview with King and was surprised how much I
agreed with her about several other issues, from gay marriage to the
need for far more public scrutiny of our family courts (she actually
advocates camera recording every court session, and making such
recordings available to the public -- which might prove enlightening to
many people, in the same sense that turning over a rock or rotting log
in your backyard can let you know what sort of things are scuttling
about underneath).

I went to Judge Judy's website and wrote her an e-mail thanking her for
her public stance about this issue, and calling her a "light in
darkness". I hope she reads it. I may just put it in paper form and
mail it to her.

- Ron ^*^

John Meyer wrote:

While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't
change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a
trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one
liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry.

Maybe so, maybe so... But I don't think any number of one-liners would
get a family court judge "tossed" from their own courtroom. And how
much better would things be if EVERY family court judge were FORCED to
be under the spotlight, as she advocates? It would be better than the
current secrecy, I think.

- Ron ^*^

On May 19, 8:35 pm, John Meyer wrote:
While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't
change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a
trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one
liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry.

Beg to differ with you on that one. I haven't faced a CS judge
directly, but I can tell you that *criminal* court judges have been
acting like second rate Judge Judys for years. I had a judge in a self-
defense case in 1999 who did nothing but make smartass comments to
everything I said. The following year, a friend of mine faced drug and
prostitution charges (nothing violent) and the judge in her case
reeled off one-liner after one-liner. I expected the judge to say
"I'll be here all week" after the fourth time. Thanks to the
popularity of The People's Court and all its misbegotten progeny, the
appearance of solomonic wisdom is all but gone from today's judiciary
in favor of camera friendly one-liners.

Bill

Bill wrote:
On May 19, 8:35 pm, John Meyer wrote:
While that might change my tone slightly about Judge Judy, it doesn't
change my feelings regarding these court programs, which are basically a
trumped up game show with a puffed up "judge" out there spouting out one
liners that would get them tossed from any real courtroom in a hurry.

Beg to differ with you on that one. I haven't faced a CS judge
directly, but I can tell you that *criminal* court judges have been
acting like second rate Judge Judys for years. I had a judge in a self-
defense case in 1999 who did nothing but make smartass comments to
everything I said. The following year, a friend of mine faced drug and
prostitution charges (nothing violent) and the judge in her case
reeled off one-liner after one-liner. I expected the judge to say
"I'll be here all week" after the fourth time. Thanks to the
popularity of The People's Court and all its misbegotten progeny, the
appearance of solomonic wisdom is all but gone from today's judiciary
in favor of camera friendly one-liners.

Bill


There is that, and I was suddenly reminded of that judge down in Florida
who seemed to have a penchant for zingers. Cameras in the courtroom
might help (then again, they might also encourage that sort of behavior;
you can never tell with these people.)
Unfortunately, we are given a joke of a recall system in this country to
hold judges accountable for this sort of thing. Read any sort of ABA
guide to judges prior to an election. The guide may as well have the
phrase "rubber stamp" printed across the front for the number of judges
they support vs those they oppose. It seems almost like you have to
have the judge caught diddling themselves in the public square in order
to even think of getting them booted off the bench. That pretty much
makes them bulletproof.