Meaning
A metaphorical tribunal in which reputation and conduct are judged by the press and by popular sentiment rather than by a court of law. It hands down verdicts through publicity, scandal and public pressure, with no rules of evidence, no due process and no appeal. Almost always figurative; frequently invoked defensively by publicists, politicians and defendants when the legal fight is unwinnable or irrelevant. Pairs naturally with courtroom verbs - tried, acquitted, condemned, rendered a verdict. Regional use: Coined in the young United States, current in Britain from the early 1800s; now global English.
Origin
Far older than the age of mass media suggests. The earliest use traced by researcher Barry Popik is American: on 9 October 1794 the Hartford Gazette, reprinting the Connecticut Courant, carried an address 'To the Honorable the Court of Public Opinion in the State of Connecticut', before which William Edmond pleaded not guilty - verified verbatim on Popik's site, which notes that many early-1800s citations are British. The phrase grew out of Enlightenment talk of the tribunal of public opinion and was already routine in nineteenth-century Anglo-American journalism. Merriam-Webster enters it as the court of public/world opinion. Any trial-by-media twentieth-century origin story is thus debunked by more than a century of record.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- the court of world opinion
- the high court of public opinion
- the tribunal of public opinion
Usage Examples
- The jury acquitted him, but the court of public opinion had already found him guilty.
- Her lawyers fought the libel suit in court while her publicists battled away in the court of public opinion.
- In the court of public opinion a swift apology often counts for more than a technical legal defense.