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 “Curb Your Enthusiasm: SVU.” 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’s appellate lawyer addressed Judge Elizabeth Harris as… well, go ahead and watch
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’t give any indication of what specifically threw this off the rails:
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Bump bump bump, ba da da da, ba da da da, ba dum da da.
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… just fantastic.
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’t feel like a calculated act of condescension. There may be some backwater lawyer in 2025 who still thinks of every woman as “sweetheart,” but that’s 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.
A Freudian slip-and-fall if you will.
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How did this not come up in the Texas bankruptcy court! That judge was secretly living with the lawyer and this never happened?!? Respect.
Once during a disagreement with a woman I was dating, she wheeled around and snapped at me, “MOMMY, STOP IT!” Put aside for a moment how I became “mommy” in this equation, the point is this sort of slip happens. Or, hell, don’t put it aside, because the fact that I played the role of “mommy” in this anecdote is a good reminder that these slips don’t even necessarily carry gender politics baggage. Sometimes you’re just flustered and your brain plays the odds and defaults to the person who usually makes you flustered.
But, dude, you have to be quicker with a mistake of these proportions. “I’m so sorry, I practiced this argument with my wife and she stressed the same point you’re making now.” Or something 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’t allowed to hang there for whatever reason.
And yet, in the cringe, there’s 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’t this guy’s 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’s important.
And if you want something amusingly horrifying to end on, remember that this is an appellate lawyer for the state. This isn’t the only oral argument he’s going to have… he’s probably going to have to keep standing up in front of these judges and their colleagues again and again.
At least he seems to have some emotional support at home.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.