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The American-English phrase cafeteria court designates a court in which a perpetrator of a minor offence (typically a driving offence) may pay a fixed fine without having to stand trial.
This phrase refers to a system based on the principles of self-service, as opposed to being predetermined or strictly directed by an authority—especially to a system allowing a person to choose from a number of available options (cf., below, in quotation 2: “After choosing from the “bill o’ fare”—consisting of pamphlets and sets of traffic instructions”).
The phrase cafeteria court is also based on the image of a cafeteria customer who pays after serving themself (cf., below, in quotation 2: “the customers iled [sic] past the big shiny cash register, received their slips and paid their bills”).
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase cafeteria court that I have found:
1-: From The Richmond Item (Richmond, Indiana, USA) of Tuesday 14th August 1923 [page 3, column 3]—however, here, the phrases cafeteria court, and cafeteria-style justice, designate, respectively, a court, and a system, in which a perpetrator of a minor offence may sentence themself and their fellow offenders:
Cafeteria Court At Youngstown, O.
By NEA ServiceYOUNGSTOWN, O., Aug. 13—Cafeteria style justice.
Police Judge Joseph L. Heffernan has originated it here.
He permits prisoners to sentence themselves and their fellow offend- [sic]
And why?
Well, he’s said “Good morning, judge” no less than a dozen times himself. He knows how it goes with the “erring brother.”
Some folks don’t put much stock in all this talk of environment being the influencing factor in crime. Heffernan does.
That’s why he lets the men from the lineup take his place. He wants to know how they treat their fellows in misfortune.
The experiment has proved successful. These prisoner-judges have been fair to their fellow offenders. And they’ve judiciously upheld the law. When sentences are necessary, they recommend them. Then the court officially imposes them.
“We’re to [sic] much inclined to classify offenders as outcasts,” Heffernan muses. “We view them as stigmatized beings, apart from and antagonistic to society. They’re not. Society ought to have a sympathetic interest in them.
“Maybe I feel this more than some judges because I’ve been in jail 12 times myself. My offenses, thank goodness were minor ones, such as train riding. But in some sections of the country that’s a high crime.
“But did any judge ever say to me: ‘My boy, what is that hidden impulse that takes you away from a good home and a loving mother to roam over the face of the earth?’
“Not one. I was an offender, simply because I did not choose to stay in a rut a less adventurous society prescribed for me.
“When a man appears before me, I always ask him about himself, his home and his family, but above all about his work. What does he do for a living? That gives me a line on him.
“So far I have found few whose work I did not understand. I have worked in the steel mills, in railroad and construction camps, in pipe line and shovel gangs, in the galleys of Ohio River steamboats, in hotels from Atlantic City to Los Angeles. I have been a ‘rough neck’ in the oil fields of Illinois and Oklahoma, and have sweated in the Mojave Dessert and on the water front in San Francisco. I’ve been a bookkeeper and accountant, a newspaper man and a free-lance in Europe.
“Now I’m called upon to sit as judge over my fellowman. And I’m thankful for the experience that has led me to understand their problems.”
2-: From the Kansas City Post (Kansas City, Missouri, USA) of Tuesday 19th May 1925 [page 1, column 5]:
—Note: The phrase cafeteria court did not occur in the article on the same subject published the day before (i.e., Monday 18th May 1925) in the first column of the first page of the Kansas City Post (Kansas City, Missouri, USA):
The second day of Kansas City’s ne wtraffic [sic] system brought a rush of customers today at the Caeteria [sic] court on the second floor of the Nineteenth street police station.
From the moment the traffic bureau was opened at 8 o’clock, violators besieged the three clerks and moved in steady streams along a newly installed counter.
After choosing from the “bill o’ fare”—consisting of pamphlets and sets of traffic instructions—the customers iled [sic] past the big shiny cash register, received their slips and paid their bills.
Early this afternoon 120 persons, many of them women, had visited the bureau and had paid a total of $232 in fines.
This figure was one more than the total of 119 persons patronizing the Cafeteria Court yesterday, opening day, when receipts aggregated $210.
[…]
[…] None of the motorists had complained of the fines submitted to him. Not a single citizen had pleaded not guilty and asked that his case be carried into one of the municipal courts for trial. It was a well satisfied crowd of patrons.
3-: From the Kansas City Post (Kansas City, Missouri, USA) of Wednesday 20th May 1925 [page 1, column 3]:
Kansas City’s new traffic plan is so successful the half dozen dispensers in the cafeteria court literally were snowed under today by rising mountains of the small white arrest tickets.
4-: From The Sunday Oregonian (Portland, Oregon, USA) of Sunday 31st January 1926 [Section 2, page 1, column 2]:
“CAFETERIA” COURT FOR AUTOIST COMING
CHICAGO TO ADOPT SYSTEM SOON, SAYS CHIEF.
Each Offense to Be Assessed at Stated Rate, With Appeal to Judge Possible.
By Chicago Tribune Leased Wire.CHICAGO, Jan. 30.—Within 30 days, according to Chief of Police Morgan Collins, Chicago will have a new system for the handling of traffic law violators—a sort of cafeteria style—which will be entirely in the hands of the police.
Under the system a motorist who violates a traffic ordinance and receives an arrest slip will be notified to appear at headquarters within a certain time. Arriving at the “cafeteria,” he will find himself confronted by a long counter at which there will be a clerk assigned to accept fines for each kind of traffic violation. The violators will pay their fines just as they pay their gas bills. There will be no trial, no waiting around for his case to be called and no costs to pay. Moreover the policeman handing out the arrest lists will be relieved of court appearance.
For such as claim they have been unjustly accused there is always the court to resort to, but in the majority of instances, Chief Collins believes violators will pay their fines without demur and have it over with. A regular schedule of fines will be adopted.
