Who was the first U.S. reality show courtroom judge to be seen on television?

Joseph A. Wapner, a retired California judge whose flinty-folksy style of resolving disputes on the show, The People’s Court, helped spawn an entire genre of courtroom-based reality television in 1981. Judge Wapner was the first no-nonsense jurist who helped clueless litigants received some form of justice in a court of law.

With The People’s Court, which the silver-haired Wapner hosted from 1981 to 1993, it was a syndicated half-hour show that turned private arbitration of small-claims cases into highly engrossing entertainment.

After its debut, the program regularly attracted 20 million viewers. One measure of its success was a Washington Post survey in 1989 that showed 54 percent of Americans could identify Judge Wapner compared to 9 percent who could name the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, William H. Rehnquist.

Judge Wapner so permeated the popular culture that he became a reference point in the Oscar-winning film “Rain Man” (1988). Dustin Hoffman’s autistic character in the movie is addicted to the show, The People’s Court which had Joseph A. Wapner as the presiding judge. Wapner's life lasted for 97 years from 1919 until 2017.