This is officially defined as ‘an improperly constituted court having no legal standing, especially one held by strikers, mutineers or prisoners.’
More broadly the notion is that in a ‘kangaroo court’ the accused will not receive justice, but that rough punishment will follow almost immediately upon accusation.
Oddly, this expression appears to be Australian influenced, but not of Australian origin.
In fact, the phrase appears to have been born in the United States.
The earliest citation is from Texas in the second half of the 19thcentury.
One suggestion is that the term ‘kangaroo court’ was born on the gold fields of California in the gold rushes that began in 1848.
The phrase may have been coined because there were Australians who’d joined the rush, and they were teaching the yanks a word or two—including the idea that ‘kangaroos’ were ‘jumpers.’
The first such ‘rough justice’ tribunals might have been aimed at punishing ‘claim jumpers’—and anyone who’s a ‘jumper’ can be nicknamed a ‘kangaroo.’
However, there is a problem with that theory.
This expression is first recorded in New Orleans in 1841, well before the Californian gold rush. It next turns up in Texas in 1853, and not (as it logically should) in California.
So, this American expression must only come from the fact that around the world the kangaroo had become famous as a ‘jumper’—and a ‘kangaroo court’ was one that ‘jumped to judgement.’
Hence. this so-called ‘court’ jumped to judgment in a single bound (with the agility of an Australian macropod).
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