He’s the host of the TV show Judge Jerry but is Jerry Springer a real judge? Media personality Jerry Springer is best known as the host of his controversial tabloid talk show The Jerry Springer Show which aired for 27 seasons, from 1991 up until its cancellation in 2018. Known for its raucous tone and outrageous guests, the show saw Springer mediate everything from cheating spouses and family dramas to weddings and full-on fistfights – all typically accompanied by the sound of the audience chanting “Jerry! Jerry!” or the frequent bleeping out of cuss words.
Trash TV it may have been but there’s no denying The Jerry Springer Show was a pop culture phenomenon. Not only did it inspire a song (“Jerry Springer” by Weird Al Yankovic) and an opera (Jerry Springer: The Opera), it’s also been parodied in countless shows and movies, including The Simpsons, Sabrina The Teenage Witch, The X-Files and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me – all of which featured Springer gamely playing himself.
These days, however, Springer is sticking to a more sedate style of daytime television with his new show Judge Jerry. Like Judge Judy or The People’s Court, the veteran TV host’s latest outing is an arbitration-based court TV show that involves Springer presiding over small claims cases brought to him by members of the American public. Judge Jerry sees him don a judicial robe and wield a gavel pretty convincingly, but is Jerry Springer a real judge qualified to preside over real legal cases?
Technically, Springer is indeed a real judge but not in the sense that he gets to preside over criminal cases or send people off to jail. Rather, he’s a civil court judge or arbitrator who has the power to make a defendant pay a sum of money to a plaintiff. However, Springer wasn’t a judge before the show and had to take a course to become a certified judge before he could take part in Judge Jerry. The process was a lot easier given Springer’s legal background though; he earned a law degree at Northwestern University back in the late 1960s and practiced law for a number of years before transitioning to a career in politics and television.
According to an interview with Springer and the New York Post, becoming a certified judge was “a day thing and if you’re a lawyer it’s almost automatic unless you’ve killed someone.” What’s more is that every judgment Springer makes on Judge Jerry is final and legally binding – hence his demeanor is a lot more serious than on the likes of The Jerry Springer Show.