How to Use kangaroo court in a Sentence

kangaroo court

noun
  • The opposition leader could face more than a decade in prison if convicted by the kangaroo court.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 16 Feb. 2022
  • Bunker said the ordeal felt like a kangaroo court and that the committee had made up their minds before the hearing even began.
    — Andrea Mew, National Review, 20 Dec. 2023
  • Emi is placed on trial in an outdoor kangaroo court where she is confronted by her students’ parents, their faces masked and their fangs bared.
    — Los Angeles Times, 26 Nov. 2021
  • Outside the sidewalk, Jones called the trial a kangaroo court and Bellis a tyrant.
    — Hartford Courant, 3 Oct. 2022
  • The report was simply a kangaroo court that already knew its conclusions before the first witness was called.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 31 Mar. 2024
  • But a typically brutal schedule packs a punch that Auburn’s kangaroo court didn’t land.
    — Blake Toppmeyer, USA TODAY, 21 July 2022
  • Bill’s hearing the next day is precisely the kangaroo court Ji-Yoon foretold.
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 22 Aug. 2021
  • Hunter was credited with starting the Orioles’ kangaroo court.
    — Paul McCardell, Baltimore Sun, 17 Jan. 2024
  • That culture again includes accountability and the return of the kangaroo court fine system for mistakes in spring training.
    — Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2021
  • Adames would have paid his playing-time penance (as well as a fine to the team’s kangaroo court — perhaps funding a postgame pizza party), and everyone would have moved on from the mistake.
    — Dieter Kurtenbach, Mercury News, 15 May 2026
  • Which seems an odd determination from a court of inquiry about the shipboard officers’ council, which was fairly clearly a kangaroo court.
    — Howard Schneider, National Review, 21 Dec. 2023
  • Their defenses of campus kangaroo courts are rife with transparently bad statistics.
    — David French, National Review, 8 Sep. 2017
  • Faced with this, Republicans have been left making endless arguments about an unfair process, calling it a sham, a star chamber, a kangaroo court.
    — Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker, 14 Nov. 2019
  • Failure to participate would result in a $500 fine from the club’s kangaroo court, over which, of course, Beltrán presided.
    — Ben Reiter, SI.com, 9 July 2018
  • The judge’s decision is an embarrassment to kangaroo courts, a fact that some Tech officials privately concur.
    — Mac Engel june 12, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12 June 2026
  • Eventually, Tyra graduated from kangaroo court sergeant and minigame connoisseur to the business world.
    — Jake Lourim, The Courier-Journal, 27 Mar. 2018
  • He had twice been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by kangaroo courts in Russia, The Sun reported.
    — Louis Casiano, FOXNews.com, 2 Jan. 2026
  • If POWs are allegedly culpable of war crimes, than they are entitled a fair, non-kangaroo court trial with due process to ascertain guilt or innocence.
    — Sebastien Roblin, Forbes, 1 Aug. 2022
  • Kinda like all that Canton surveillance video in 2022 that would have spared Karen Read the burden of having to go through those two trials in the kangaroo court.
    — Howie Carr, Boston Herald, 20 Aug. 2025
  • Many institutions, often small colleges with limited resources, are now engulfed in lawsuits flowing, again unsurprisingly, from these kangaroo courts.
    — The Editorial Board, WSJ, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Wochit The 1988 University of Kentucky baseball team had a kangaroo court.
    — Jake Lourim, The Courier-Journal, 27 Mar. 2018
  • The personal-conduct policy as a whole should be put into a giant drill that burrows into the Earth’s crust then left there for eternity; there is no place for a sports league’s kangaroo court in our nation’s criminal justice system.
    — Gary Gramling, SI.com, 10 Sep. 2017
  • At first glance, Objection seemed to be a kangaroo court catering to rich and infamous plaintiffs, the latest service in the lucrative sector of digital reputation management.
    — Gary Baum, HollywoodReporter, 12 June 2026
  • Following a trial described by international observers as a kangaroo court, they were sentenced to death on October 31, 1995.
    — Noo Saro-Wiwa, The Dial, 24 Mar. 2026
  • Many conservative commentators, understandably alarmed by the Obama administration’s presumption of guilt and kangaroo courts, have overstressed this aspect of the campus rape problem.
    — Mona Charen, National Review, 15 Sep. 2017
  • In a succession of bombastic press conferences on the sidewalk outside the Waterbury courthouse Jones condemned the default as a revocation of the first amendment, called the trial a kangaroo court and said Bellis is a tyrant.
    — Hartford Courant, 4 Oct. 2022
  • Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson called a parliamentary committee investigating him a kangaroo court.
    — Max Colchester, WSJ, 9 June 2023
  • The Red Goose apparently didn't fly often enough or with enough gusto to protect Williams from his propensity for writing bad checks to local eating establishments, whose complaints compounded his problems with the fraternity's kangaroo court.
    — Greg Garrison, AL.com, 26 Mar. 2018
  • Along with several other teachers, Aziz is put on administrative leave and forced to eventually defend himself in a kangaroo court, where a state attorney mounts evidence of Aziz’s supposedly seditious behavior.
    — Jordan Mintzer, HollywoodReporter, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Next week’s hearing, as currently contemplated, will be a kangaroo court, because the Republicans have done everything in their power to prevent the consideration of any outside evidence, whether corroborating or exculpatory.
    — Adam Shaw, Fox News, 2 Oct. 2018

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'kangaroo court.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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