Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 94. The noun phrase today is kangaroo court. You know, kangaroo just like the the Australian animal kangaroo. All right. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone calls a court or group that is judging another person or another group a kangaroo court, it shows that one does not believe or trust this authority because it is unofficial or clearly unfair, clearly biased or or possibly even paid off. Somebody paid them to make sure that they find this person guilty. Kangaroo courts are often set up to find someone guilty.. no matter what the evidence may show. Okay good. Let's give some examples here example. Number one , they really didn't judge the evidence of the case, they simply set up a kangaroo court just for appearances. You know just to look good with every intention of finding him guilty. So this is exactly how we may hear it used. Or number two.It doesn't matter if you believe you are right or not. They will set up a kangaroo court to find you guilty no matter whether you have evidence to prove your innocence or not. Okay, and then we have a third example. In a third world communist country you may end up being judged by a kangaroo court. So again they'll have a court.Again just for appearances, just to look good. But they have every intention no matter what the evidence shows to find you guilty. Okay. So let's let's take a look at the origin of this. The origin of this term comes from the US. frontier, when they had travelling judges. Yeah I guess at one time you know, because in the West people were so far spread out, you know, in the 1800's the judges actually used to have to travel looking for work. So the travelling judges were paid on the basis of how many trials they conducted and the number of fines they imposed or they collected. So this is not really good because clearly the judge may be biased to find people guilty because the more people he finds guilty and the more fines he gets the more money he makes. So in this sense, you feel like well you know, can you really trust this judge ?You know, he's not impartial because he benefits if he finds more people guilty and he benefits even more by giving them fines. So is he really being fair ? Is he really doing justice or is he just trying to make money ? Okay. So let's, let's continue. So the term comes from the image, the image the picture in one's mind, of them meaning the judges. Of judges hopping from place to place. So they were hopping around, So you know and of course kangaroos hop a lot. So that's where the term kangaroo court came from. Anyway I hope you got it. I hope it's clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
B1 US kangaroo court guilty evidence noun phrase judge English Tutor Nick P Noun Phrase (94) Kangaroo Court 4 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/05/28 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary