Samenvatting

The tremendously popular television programme De Rijdende Rechter (The Itinerant Judge) has an uncomfortable relationship with official legal practice. Many people indeed think that the itinerant judge who arrives in their street to personally check neighbourly grievances has come as a representative of the Law with a capital L. It is not clear where reality TV stops and current legal practice begins. Things have become more complicated because the itinerant judge has become a symbol of the ‘close-to-the-people’ judge that is embraced by legal practice today. In this article the murky boundary between TV judges and official judiciary is investigated, taking into account the cult status of the itinerant judge, the effect of imagination on reality, similar phenomena in the United States and the current situation in the Netherlands.