|
Reader question: Please explain this sentence: “There is no justice in a kangaroo court.” Kangaroo court? My comments: There is no justice in a kangaroo court because you can’t expect to get a fair trial there. A kangaroo court is a mock court that functions like a court but isn’t in fact the standard court where all manners of law and rules are followed. In a kangaroo court, rules regarding what we know as due process are not strictly followed, or at least not followed in their entirety. All you need to do is look into the origin of kangaroo courts to understand the concept perfectly. First of all, “kangaroo court” is an idiom that’s American in origin, not Australian, even though kangaroos are found hopping around only in Australasia, or Down Under. There are many explanations as to its origin, as a matter of fact, but the most plausible is that the kangaroo court refers to the roaming lawyers and judges presiding over legal disputes in the Gold Rush era of mid-19th century in the American Wild West. The lawyers moved from place to place looking for business as the gold diggers went from place to place looking for gold. Hence, they’re called kangaroos, the pouched animals who hop from place to place using their hind legs. According to Phrase.org, the earliest known citation of the term is American, not Australian. It appears in a collection of magazine articles by Philip Paxton (the pen name of Samuel Adams Hammett), which were published in 1853 under the title of A stray Yankee in Texas: | 
