Strict Nielsenism
Mikva, Abner J.
Strict Nielsenism by Abner J. Mikva Judge Joseph Wapner is not a modest man. Even in the black-robe league of judges past and present, where modesty is always in short supply, the paucity of...
...Even in the black-robe league of judges past and present, where modesty is always in short supply, the paucity of his humility is remarkable...
...A drifter is tried for stealing a car...
...Judge Wapner's idiosyncratic view of criminal law is illustrated by a war tale he recounts from his real-life days in the California court system...
...I suppose that he can point to his daytime television audience, 20 million strong, as warrant for his absolute certainty that he is worth all the selfacclaim detailed in his recent auto-vanity...
...Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...
...He recounts his early childhood in a middle-class neighborhood...
...Forget about the presumption of innocence, the obligation of the state to prove its case, or any of the other due process folderol...
...Simon & Schuster, $17.95...
...He summons the wrongfully accused to the bench and decrees: "The jury has found you not guilty...
...Woe betide a defendant accused of rape in Judge Wapner's court...
...This is a Friday, but I order you to stay in jail until Monday, and then I'll see about sending you back home with your head held high...
...It was a foolish lawyer who argued a rape case for the defense in my court and expected to prevail," he notes proudly...
...People's Court" ought to have a disclaimer running at the bottom of the screen telling the viewers that while the characters and the disputes may be real, the law proclaimed by former Judge Wapner frequently is not...
...The book is chock full of other examples of reversible error, but Judge Wapner presses on...
...His only complaint is that Governor Jerry Brown, angered at some disagreement, refused to promote him to Appellate Judge...
...He even acknowledges graduation from law school...
...Judge Wapner acclaims the jury's "not guilty" verdict...
...I have watched Judge Wapner's television show only once or twice but have been irritated far more frequently at the amount of legal disinformation that television viewers claim to have acquired from regular watching of "People's Court ." It is always possible, I tell myself, that the television viewers misinterpret what Judge Wapner says (just as lawyers sometimes misinterpret what real-life judges say...
...But nowhere in his discussion of his formative years is there the slightest clue *A View From The Bench...
...about the origin of some of the unjudgely notions that Judge Wapner regularly dispenses...
...Abner J. Mikva is a judge on the U.S...
...I was not always a judge," our author tells us, perhaps to relieve us of any suspicion that he sprang fully robed from the womb of Athena...
...On reading the book, I realize that I have been too hard on Wapner's television audience...
...After all, the man had been a real judge before leaving for the fame and fortune of the television courtroom...
...I have no further legal jurisdiction over you...
...I have always thought Jerry Brown had some redeeming qualities...
...Judge Wapner's categories of good and evil are firm and unshakable—indeed, so unshakable that mere facts or law are often beside the point...
...He does indeed have a certitude about his passions and prejudices that allows him to proclaim some very dubious rules of law when he pronounces on the cases before him, after the commercial break...
...This anecdote of unlawful imprisonment is used to prove Judge Wapner's generosity, because on Monday he gives the drifter some old clothing...
Vol. 20 • February 1988 • No. 1
