ZMT: Daily Fact: What TV judge earned $47 million per year?

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For more than two decades, Judy Sheindlin — known to her adoring audience as Judge Judy — delivered famously withering verdicts from the bench in her daytime TV show of the same name. Although Judge Judy was encased in courtroom-esque fiction, Sheindlin is a real judge (having been originally appointed to family court by NYC Mayor Ed Koch in 1982), and her sharp-tongued legal smackdowns are evidence of her genuine jurisprudence style.

While Sheindlin herself is the real deal, her cases are not decided in a real court of law. Most of the cases that appeared on the serialized juggernaut Judge Judy (which began in 1996) were real disputes sourced from small claims courts, but instead of playing out in court, they went through a process known as arbitration — a method for settling disputes outside the actual legal system. ("Arbiter Judy" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)

Even though the show didn't take place in a real courtroom, Judge Judy still earned some serious bucks. In fact, during the tail end of the show's tenure, from 2012 to 2020, Sheindlin made an estimated $47 million per year. She was also the highest-paid TV show host in 2018, after she sold the show's 5,200-episode catalog for a cool $100 million to CBS. Judge Judy wrapped its final season in 2021, but that wasn't the end for Sheindlin, who launched a brand-new show, Judy Justice, on Amazon Freevee and is currently constructing her very own "Judy-Verse" on the streaming platform. Even as an octogenarian, Sheindlin isn't ready to hang up her robe just yet.

Numbers Don't Lie

Amount of money aspiring actors receive for sitting in Judge Judy's "paid" seats

Number of seasons of "Judge Judy"

Salary of federal district judges as of 2023

$232,600

Number of episodes Judge Joseph Wapner presided over on "The People's Court," the first reality courtroom show

2,484

The Supreme Court doesn't allow video recordings of its proceedings.

While cameras in the courtroom make for good television, much of the U.S. court system, especially the highest court in the land — the U.S. Supreme Court — doesn't allow any visual recording of court proceedings. Enacted in 1946, Federal Rule 53 states that "the court must not permit the taking of photographs in the courtroom during judicial proceedings or the broadcasting of judicial proceedings from the courtroom." In 1972, the government doubled down and banned television cameras as well. (Oral arguments have been recorded since 1955.) With the Supreme Court making groundbreaking decisions on a regular basis, there has been growing pressure to allow visual recording to help inform the American public — and it seems the Supreme Court's camera shyness could soon come to an end. C-SPAN's reporting on eight of the current justices' views on the matter (excluding the latest addition, Ketanji Brown Jackson) shows that the court is open to exploring the idea. It may not have the entertainment value of The People's Court or Judge Judy, but it'd give Americans a front-row seat to some of the most consequential legal decisions in the country's history.

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Daily Fact: What TV judge earned $47 million per year?