Meaning
A description of an exceptionally wise and just judge, usually a young and unexpected one. The phrase praises decisive, penetrating judgment - someone who untangles a hopeless case at a stroke - and it is often quoted with irony when a ruling turns out to be anything but wise. Usually ironical; quoting it hints the judge may be about to be outwitted, exactly as Shylock was. Regional use: General English (biblical and Shakespearean allusion).
Origin
From the Book of Daniel's Susanna story, and from Shakespeare's use of it. In the tale, the young Daniel interrupts the trial of Susanna, accused of adultery by two leering elders, and exposes them by questioning each separately: asked under what tree they saw her with a lover, one says a mastic and the other an oak, and the contradiction - reinforced in the Greek by puns on the trees' names - sends the accusers to execution instead. Daniel became proverbial for the wise young judge, and Shakespeare traded on that reputation in The Merchant of Venice (c. 1596): when Portia, disguised as a lawyer, first rules his bond lawful, Shylock exults 'A Daniel come to judgment! yea, a Daniel! / O wise young judge, how I do honour thee!' - and Gratiano flings the same words back at him once her no-blood technicality destroys his case: 'A Daniel, still say I, a second Daniel!' The phrase survives in legal journalism and general use, nearly always with that Shakespearean irony in earshot.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a Daniel come to judgement
- a second Daniel
- a very Daniel come to judgment
Usage Examples
- Handed a file every senior judge had refused to touch, the new appointee cut through eight years of procedural tangle in a single afternoon - a Daniel come to judgment, the legal blogs called her.
- The chairman hailed the tribunal's first ruling as a Daniel come to judgment, right up until the same judges dismantled his own claim on a technicality.
- Every generation rediscovers the Susanna story and finds in its young cross-examiner a Daniel come to judgment worth quoting in the leader columns.