Here Come The Judges

By Joel Stein

There are few pleasures greater than watching somebody get yelled at. You loved it when your mom stuck it to your brother, and you love it now, rubbernecking to see a cop pull a car over. One of the best spots for catching good, stern lectures in our authority-free culture is the bench of lower-court judges. These guys can lay into punks and deadbeats like Father Knows Best on a caffeine jag.

And that may explain the success of Judy Sheindlin, a former New York City family-court judge and the resident scourge on Judge Judy, which as of this month is the eighth most popular show in syndication. The appeal of TV-judge shows is that they are little more than highly structured versions of Jerry Springer, in which the feuding idiots are silenced by a decisive moral authority instead of a bald bouncer. Judge Judy developed this formula in September 1996, and was followed a season later by a revival of the '80s show The People's Court, currently presided over by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

Now three new judge shows are opening for business. This week Judge Mills Lane debuts, starring the tough-talking Nevada judge who just happened to be the referee the night Mike Tyson masticated Evander Holyfield's ear. Next month brings Judge Joe Brown, a tough-talking Memphis, Tenn., judge who just happened to preside over the reopening of the James Earl Ray case. And even Judge Joseph Wapner, the pioneer TV judge, has been called in to fill a vacancy. Beginning next month, he'll be trying animal-related cases on cable's Animal Planet network. Meanwhile, Playboy TV has started a courtroom show, Sex Court, with one Judge Julie, whose verdict invariably involves having the disputing parties take their clothes off.

The increasingly crowded TV bench worries legal experts like University of Southern California law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, a talking head during the O.J. proceedings, who fears people will expect the law to act as quickly and superficially as Sheindlin and her colleagues do. "They want to present a case in 30 minutes, and it's difficult to do that without oversimplification," Chemerinsky says. "The judge in the courtroom is interested in following the law and creating fair procedures in the court of law. A judge on TV is only interested in the drama of the proceedings, in good television, and those are obviously different goals."

Indeed, Judge Judy dispenses her decisions with a swiftness not seen since Robespierre. And for a judge, she seems surprisingly nonchalant about the law. "The law is supposed to be based on common sense. But in the last 25 or 30 years, legislatures have grafted onto the common-law statutes that sort of fit a particular scenario," she explains. "It's something that I was frustrated with as a sitting judge in New York."

No more. Now Sheindlin, 55, is a one-woman justice machine. She says, "I may be wrong, but you're not going to misconstrue what I said. Why do I have to use polysyllabic explanations when a single syllable will do it--'No,' 'Wrong'? If I have to use two--'Stupid.'"

Sheindlin was tapped for the show by Larry Lyttle, president of Big Ticket Television, who argues that she is an antidote to America's not-so-rewarding experiences with the judicial system. "We broke the proscenium of the courtroom world with the O.J. trial, and when we pierced that proscenium we saw stuff we hated," he says. "When Judy showed the audience that she was decisive, that was the elixir for all the malaise that we'd suffered."

Lyttle must think there's a lot of pain out there, because he's also producing Judge Joe Brown. Brown is the only TV judge who continues to sit actively on the bench (he's using some of the vacation he accumulated over eight years to tape his show). Like Sheindlin, he rolls his eyes and yells at the punks in his video court ("Don't call the court 'Dude,'" he tells one youth). Brown, 51, grew up in South Central Los Angeles and has the fervor of a missionary, spouting buzz words like "com-mun-i-ty." His producers, like those for the other shows, scour court filings in search of camera-worthy cases with strong narratives, but Brown achieves extra conflict by pursuing civil actions that spring from criminal cases. "We're not really just small claims," he says. "We will be dealing with some very deep-level raw material." That does help make his show more exciting, but he personally fails to match the intensity of Sheindlin and hence comes off as an imitation.

Mills Lane tries desperately not to be an imitation. His show originally planned all kinds of innovations: one case per episode, scenes inside the judge's chambers, footage from the scene of the crime. Most of them were abandoned, however, and the slight changes actually implemented are ineffective. Instead, the show must rely on Lane, who, for an ex-Marine known in his Reno courtroom days as "Maximum Mills," is shockingly sympathetic, if in a flinty way. Lane, 60, is straight shooting without being superior and so honest that he describes his motive for doing the show this way: "If it's successful, I could make a lot of money." Lane's world feels small, rational and exceedingly earnest.

Almost as earnest is the father of judge shows, Joseph Wapner. From 1981 to 1993, his sessions of The People's Court entertained with silliness, not heated conflict. On Judge Wapner's Animal Court, the 78-year-old magistrate is back with his trusty bailiff, Rusty Burrell, only this time every case involves animals. Wapner's careful, evidence-obsessive yet laid-back style is only enhanced by a caged chow sitting in front of the defendant. "These are very serious cases, and people get very emotional about their animals," he says, "more emotional than they do about money or people."

Former Mayor Ed Koch, 73, brings his high-energy style to filling Wapner's old seat on The People's Court. Koch is a partner in a law firm, teaches at New York University, is host of a daily radio show, does another show for Bloomberg Television and is putting out his 10th book this fall. Just getting him to be quiet long enough to hear a case is impressive enough.

The show still has the same bad puns ("The Case of the Isuzu That Wasn't a Trooper"), crazed bongo music and postcase interviews as the original, but has added mid-case opinions from people in a Manhattan shopping center, Pop-Up Video-like bubbles and Web-based voting by people at home. The last is almost as much fun to watch fluctuate as the Dow or congressional voting on C-SPAN. Through it all, Koch carefully explains the law and amusedly renders evenhanded decisions. Unfortunately, the show runs for an hour, with only three cases, and no amount of cool graphics is going to make some guy's poor used-car purchase seem interesting for 20 minutes.

The show's biggest mistake, however, is its attention to the law. Koch, who as mayor appointed Sheindlin to the family-court bench in 1982, says he knows his show won't beat Judge Judy in the ratings because of his judicial diligence. "The reason she's No. 1 is her style, which is very confrontational, like a public scold," he says. "And I happen to know her. She's a very nice lady. Judge Judy has said she makes decisions on the basis of common sense. And I have said, 'That's not what the law is all about.' We do it on the law. This is not a court of compassion; this is a court of law."

Stu Billett, executive producer of both the original People's Court and Koch's version, is blunter in explaining his competitor's success: "It's because there's a humiliation factor, and maybe people like to see people humiliated." Could be. At week's end the Springer show was still ahead of its judicial competition. For some viewers, it seems, one of the few things better than seeing someone get yelled at is seeing someone get punched.

--Reported by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and William Tynan/New York

With reporting by DAN CRAY/LOS ANGELES AND WILLIAM TYNAN/NEW YORK