Name: English Tutor Nick P Noun Phrase (94) Kangaroo Court
Uploaded: 2019-05-28T15:03:39.000Z
Duration: 3 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Noun Phrase 94. The noun phrase today is

Adverbs of degree

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