"...a check he had wrote."

Your last couple of sentences at #29, stormboy, remind me that a good friend, on meeting someone for the first time, very often gets a smile and the question, "Oh, are you French?" because of her accented English. She says that the smile often melts as soon as she replies that she is Hungarian. People don't seem to know whether that is a "good" accent or not.

Except, of course, Zoltan Karpathy.

#29 Stormboy - similarly, the Birmingham accent is regularly voted as the ugliest sounding in Britain - in British polls. However, it is often ranked highly by the non-British who like its "melodic" delivery.

The teacher spoke wrongly, but I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was in court and on TV, in a very stressful situation. She may have simply mis-spoken

She was in court and on TV, in a very stressful situation. She may have simply mis-spoken

I have to admit that I hadn't thought of that possibility.

#18 -- This is a TV show, not a courtroom. The "judge" may have been a real judge at one point, but she's not a real judge now. The purpose of the exercise is to sell eyeballs to advertisers, and therefore as zashibis says to entertain, in order to keep the eyeballs on the screen. The more the judge entertains, the more likely she is to keep her job.

You could make an argument that by misleading the audience into thinking this is how judges behave, the judge is behaving unethically. I'm not sure what the canons of judicial ethics say about that kind of behavior in retirement; if they don't say anything, perhaps they should.

(And you mean partial, not impartial.)

(And I vote the same way you do on both your issues.)

Edited by: El Imparcial

Reality of Courtroom Television Shows: Should the Model Code of Judicial Conduct Apply to T.V. Judges&#63
Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, The, Summer 2007 by Lane, Erika

This article discusses how these courtroom "trials" really work. They are arbitrations, not trials. (I looked up some of them. They get people who have civil cases, usually in Small Claims Court, and get them to agree to drop the case. The parties sign an arbitration contract. Both sides are paid. The "winner" gets more; different shows use different formulas.) The author calls them "syndicated courtroom shows (also referred to as "syndi-court" shows)."

One thing the author has trouble with is that these shows
>do not take place in private settings, and they include moral messages rendered with the syndi-judges' final decisions. While an arbitrator in a private dispute resolution may voice his or her moral opinion, his or her moral judgment would only be heard by the parties to the dispute. In a syndi-court show, any harsh moral judgment rendered by a syndi-judge can be witnessed by millions of viewers. Such moral judgments are often harsh and delivered in ways that are not tolerated by the Arbitration Ethical Guidelines, yet syndi-judges are never sanctioned or reprimanded for harsh treatment of the parties.

AND (relevant to this discussion)
>Syndi-courts also risk confusing the public into believing that syndi-judges are reflective of actual judges or of arbitrators. Viewers, after seeing harsh treatment towards parties on syndi-shows, may form negative views of judges and of the judicial system as a whole. They may not realize that in typical legal proceedings, such behavior is frowned upon and even prohibited. Yet even with a negative view of judges, viewers still risk relying on that perception of judges and entering litigation or arbitration with false expectations of what the process will be like. For instance, the State of California Commission on Judicial Performance, a state organization that investigates judicial misconduct, frequently receives complaints from California citizens about disappointment that judges were entirely different than what was expected, based on viewers' perceptions from syndi-shows.

I decided to to wade through the whole paper, but skipped forward to the conclusion on page 8:
>While syndi-court judges are arbitrators, and thus subject to the Arbitrators Ethical Guidelines, these guidelines are not an effective means of establishing ethical standards for syndi-judges. Syndi-court show arbitrations have unique conflicts of interests that typical arbitrators do not face. Additionally, syndi-court shows, while viewed by millions of people, do not represent themselves as accurate arbitrations. In fact, they more closely resemble litigation proceedings through the use of props and costumes. The danger of this representation's impact on the public requires sensitive attention to the syndi-judges' behavior when on the air. Because the Judicial Model Code requires certain behaviors rather than leaving ethical standards up to the arbitrators' discretion, we should adhere to this set of guidelines when considering syndi-judge behavior.

>Furthermore, we need to establish alternative enforcement mechanisms and sanctions of the Judicial Model Code that are more appropriate to syndi-judges in order to reduce the dangers of exploiting parties on the shows, confusing the public about what is a typical arbitration proceeding and litigation proceeding, and negatively influencing the viewers' perception of the judicial system, judges and arbitrators.

Several sources call this kind of reality TV "Lexitainment."

I also looked at Kimberlianne Podlas, As Seen on TV: The Normative Influence of Syndi-Court onContemporary American Litigiousness, 11 VILL. SPORTS & ENT. L.J. 1, 18 (2004) [Only available as a Google cache; I had to type in the quotes manually, so all errors are mine]

This paper analyzes some studies done on the perceptions of courts & litigation--comparing frequent watchers of these shows with those who don't watch. Frequent viewers were more likely to feel positive about litigation (that is, litigation is "a behavior engaged in by many regular folk. It is neither reserved for the rich, not practiced by deviant 'troublemakers.')

Regular viewers were also more likely to feel that were they to be involved in a "low risk" lawsuit or criminal prosecution, they'd be likely to represent themselves (pro se) rather than use an attorney. "[P]ro se representation is both a reasonable alternative to to representation by paid counsel and something that virtually anyone can handle."

And, back on topic:
>Finally, frequent viewers entertain very different views about appropriate judge behaviors than do non-viewers. ...[F]requent viewers believe that judges should ask questions during trial and act aggresively with litigants. It appears that frequent viewers believe that real judges will and should act like their syndi-court counterparts,

Re: #23 and 24: If you want to know how a teacher handles him or herself in a professional situation, you should observe them in a professional situation. Making judgments on someone's professional behavior based on your observations at the local Wal-Mart is not sensible. If that is what you do, it is your issue, not your child's teacher's.

Furthermore, the fact that someone uses ungrammatical speech at times does not mean that they do not have a "grammatical command of English." People commonly adjust their speech based on the situation.

The rest of #22 is off track. Your examples do not apply to speaking ungrammatically, so I'm not sure what your point is in citing them. The requirements for "Good Moral Character" that I have seen refer to not having been convicted of crimes such as sexual exploitation or neglect. "Conduct unbecoming" refers to things like violating state and federal law or security procedures for standardized tests, or provoking altercations between students. Little of the "conduct unbecoming" actions that I have read apply to off-time, otherwise legal activities, and none refer to anything like going to nightclubs.

Anywho, I think this teacher's real error in judgment was to go on a court TV program. Very weird to see the focus on her speech instead.