The neverending parade of judge shows.

[Emu]

How much authority, if any, do these judge shows actually have?

David Young irritates me because he can't seem to get over how gay he is and references it in every episode, but I was watching him the other day when there was a case of an interracial lesbian couple who had been evicted from an apartment owned by an older white man and his wife. All the couple had to do was even insinuate that the landlord was racist and/or homophobic and the judge went off on a tirade about what a racist bigot the landlord was. And then he made it very clear that his perceived bigotry affected the sentencing, because IIRC he awarded additional emotional damages to the couple, which is something a real judge wouldn't have gotten away with.