Antipodal Invective: A Field Gude to Kangaroos in American Courtrooms

This article discusses three other groups of opinions that use the phrase “kangaroo court.” The first section describes the various decision-making behaviors that qualify a tribunal to wear the Scarlet K. It does so by discussing opinions in which a judge or a litigant has given a definition of the term “kangaroo court” when that term is used metaphorically, as invective, to disparage the fairness of another tribunal. The second section describes the habitat of adjudicatory kangaroos by examining opinions like Silver v. Castle Memorial Hospital, in which a judge has called another tribunal a kangaroo court. The third section is devoted to unverified sightings, as reported in opinions in which a judge has disagreed with a litigant who has accused another tribunal of kangaroo-ism. Finally, by way of concluding my introduction, I should disclose that I am hardly the first to characterize the phrase “kangaroo court” as invective.