{"id":123448,"date":"2025-06-20T11:03:28","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/06\/20\/lawyer-calls-judge-honey-during-oral-argument-and-you-can-feel-the-cringe\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T11:03:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T19:03:28","slug":"lawyer-calls-judge-honey-during-oral-argument-and-you-can-feel-the-cringe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/06\/20\/lawyer-calls-judge-honey-during-oral-argument-and-you-can-feel-the-cringe\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawyer Calls Judge \u2018Honey\u2019 During Oral Argument And You Can Feel The Cringe"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a gift from the digital gods, the Colorado appellate courts film oral argument because that allows us to follow uncomfortably along with this installment of \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm: SVU.\u201d While arguing whether or not a violent sexual assault counts as a single act or can be broken into multiple acts to further ratchet up the sentence, the prosecution\u2019s appellate lawyer addressed Judge Elizabeth Harris as\u2026 well, go ahead and watch<\/p>\n

And as the post says, you will need sound because the only friend this guy had in the courtroom that day WAS the court reporter or whoever ran the subtitles because they don\u2019t give any<\/em> indication of what specifically threw this off the rails:<\/p>\n

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I need all of #lawsky to see this video from a Colorado appeals court livestream yesterday. I am in actual tears. Sound *incredibly* on, the subtitles will not help.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. (@clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social)<\/a> 2025-06-19T02:47:25.470Z<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Bump bump bump, ba da da da, ba da da da, ba dum da da<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge Terry Fox in the middle plays the role of every one of us. Watch her face break out into a laugh before immediately realizing she needs to fight it back. She cycles through so many emotions in a blink\u2026 just fantastic.<\/p>\n

While a lot of the replies to this clip focused on courtroom misogyny and the persistent tapeworm of sexism writhing within the guts of the legal profession, this really didn\u2019t feel like a calculated act of condescension. There may be some backwater lawyer in 2025 who still thinks of every woman as \u201csweetheart,\u201d but that\u2019s not likely the appellate lawyer for the state of Colorado. This reads like an instinctual verbal reflex that springs from having every one of the most challenging arguments of his life with his partner. <\/p>\n

A Freudian slip-and-fall if you will.<\/p>\n

How did this not come up in the Texas bankruptcy court<\/a>! That judge was secretly living with the lawyer and this never happened?!? Respect.<\/p>\n

Once during a disagreement with a woman I was dating, she wheeled around and snapped at me, \u201cMOMMY, STOP IT!\u201d Put aside for a moment how I became \u201cmommy\u201d in this equation, the point is this sort of slip happens. Or, hell, don\u2019t put it aside, because the fact that I played the role of \u201cmommy\u201d in this anecdote is a good reminder that these slips don\u2019t even necessarily carry gender politics baggage. Sometimes you\u2019re just flustered and your brain plays the odds and defaults to the person who usually makes you flustered.<\/p>\n

But, dude, you have to be quicker with a mistake of these proportions. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, I practiced this argument with my wife and she stressed the same point you\u2019re making now.\u201d Or something<\/em> along those lines. As the moment drags on it gets worse and worse. Which, of course, is the soul of cringe comedy: it could almost always be fixed if it wasn\u2019t allowed to hang there for whatever reason.<\/p>\n

And yet, in the cringe, there\u2019s a perverse kind of hope. Our reaction reminds us that misogyny exists and how jarring it is to encounter in court. Even if it wasn\u2019t this guy\u2019s specific intent, we recoil at this slip because we can all imagine some seersucker Matlock clone asking a judge where her boss is. Courtroom decorum is important, but it also obscures a lot of issues that boil under the surface. Sometimes a little disruption reminds us of what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

And if you want something amusingly horrifying to end on, remember that this is an appellate lawyer for the state. This isn\u2019t the only oral argument he\u2019s going to have\u2026 he\u2019s probably going to have to keep standing up in front of these judges and their colleagues again and again.<\/p>\n

At least he seems to have some emotional support at home.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Lawyer Calls Judge \u2018Honey\u2019 During Oral Argument And You Can Feel The Cringe<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a gift from the digital gods, the Colorado appellate courts film oral argument because that allows us to follow uncomfortably along with this installment of \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm: SVU.\u201d While arguing whether or not a violent sexual assault counts as a single act or can be broken into multiple acts to further ratchet up the sentence, the prosecution\u2019s appellate lawyer addressed Judge Elizabeth Harris as\u2026 well, go ahead and watch<\/p>\n

And as the post says, you will need sound because the only friend this guy had in the courtroom that day WAS the court reporter or whoever ran the subtitles because they don\u2019t give any<\/em> indication of what specifically threw this off the rails:<\/p>\n

Bump bump bump, ba da da da, ba da da da, ba dum da da<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge Terry Fox in the middle plays the role of every one of us. Watch her face break out into a laugh before immediately realizing she needs to fight it back. She cycles through so many emotions in a blink\u2026 just fantastic.<\/p>\n

While a lot of the replies to this clip focused on courtroom misogyny and the persistent tapeworm of sexism writhing within the guts of the legal profession, this really didn\u2019t feel like a calculated act of condescension. There may be some backwater lawyer in 2025 who still thinks of every woman as \u201csweetheart,\u201d but that\u2019s not likely the appellate lawyer for the state of Colorado. This reads like an instinctual verbal reflex that springs from having every one of the most challenging arguments of his life with his partner. <\/p>\n

A Freudian slip-and-fall if you will.<\/p>\n

How did this not come up in the Texas bankruptcy court<\/a>! That judge was secretly living with the lawyer and this never happened?!? Respect.<\/p>\n

Once during a disagreement with a woman I was dating, she wheeled around and snapped at me, \u201cMOMMY, STOP IT!\u201d Put aside for a moment how I became \u201cmommy\u201d in this equation, the point is this sort of slip happens. Or, hell, don\u2019t put it aside, because the fact that I played the role of \u201cmommy\u201d in this anecdote is a good reminder that these slips don\u2019t even necessarily carry gender politics baggage. Sometimes you\u2019re just flustered and your brain plays the odds and defaults to the person who usually makes you flustered.<\/p>\n

But, dude, you have to be quicker with a mistake of these proportions. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry, I practiced this argument with my wife and she stressed the same point you\u2019re making now.\u201d Or something<\/em> along those lines. As the moment drags on it gets worse and worse. Which, of course, is the soul of cringe comedy: it could almost always be fixed if it wasn\u2019t allowed to hang there for whatever reason.<\/p>\n

And yet, in the cringe, there\u2019s a perverse kind of hope. Our reaction reminds us that misogyny exists and how jarring it is to encounter in court. Even if it wasn\u2019t this guy\u2019s specific intent, we recoil at this slip because we can all imagine some seersucker Matlock clone asking a judge where her boss is. Courtroom decorum is important, but it also obscures a lot of issues that boil under the surface. Sometimes a little disruption reminds us of what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n

And if you want something amusingly horrifying to end on, remember that this is an appellate lawyer for the state. This isn\u2019t the only oral argument he\u2019s going to have\u2026 he\u2019s probably going to have to keep standing up in front of these judges and their colleagues again and again.<\/p>\n

At least he seems to have some emotional support at home.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Headshot\"Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a gift from the digital gods, the Colorado appellate courts film oral argument because that allows us to follow uncomfortably along with this installment of \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm: SVU.\u201d While arguing whether or not a violent sexual assault counts as a single act or can be broken into multiple acts to further ratchet up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Headshot-300x200-GsjcWQ.jpeg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}