History Headscratchers / JudgeDredd

** The death penalty seems to exist depending on the writer. Generally, though, killing a judge will likely earn it. Also, it seems that there's plenty of HypocriticalHumor afoot. The judges took power, as democracy proved to be not ideal. The judge system itself, relies on judges being completely by the book. Dredd is probably the only one who is ever consistent in this (and even he slips up at times). In fact, there are plenty of corrupt judges (One ''Simping Detective'' story states that Jack Point is the only honest judge in Sector 13. This being the [[SmokingIsCool chain-smoking]] [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] [[AnythingThatMoves womaniser]] who [[ObfuscatingStupidity literally dresses like a clown]]). One story even uses the phrase "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", lending credence to the theory that the judges are nowhere near as ideal as they'd like. There's a good reason for the SJS.

* For a society that is suppose to be all about following the letter of the law, the Judges (including Dredd) seems to have no problem with breaking the rules if it serves them. For example, it has been repeatedly stated that Mega-City One doesn't have the death penalty, but in the 'Judge Dredd in America' story, Dredd ordered the Judges to open fire on the Total War terrorist even though they have clearly surrendered and should have been arrested instead. Also, in the Judge Anderson story 'Satan', the Judges secretly killed a Christian minister for challenging the Judges system, even though they themselves admit that he didn't break any laws in giving public speeches, he didn't even resist when Anderson arrested him. And even if he did somehow break the law, they cannot legally kill him, and can only at most give him life in prison. Sometimes it feel like that instead of LawfulNeutral taken to the extreme, the Judges feels more like your average NeutralEvil dictatorship that will break its own laws just to stay in power.

*** the lawgiver is coded to all active judges so the dna tag prevents a corrupt judge from stealing anothers firearm to commit a crime

* How did Ricco get a giant war robot through the streets and into a high judge's office with no one noticing?

** And, [[spoiler:with the destruction of a good part of Mega-City One and the death of 87% of its population due to the Chaos Bug, ]] the welfare has been striken down, so now it remains to be seen how economy can work now.

** A good chunk of MC-1's economy is controlled directly by Justice Department. People get their welfare cheques from the Judges, and spend it on rent and food, returning the money to Justice Department's coffers.

* How does the economy of Mega-City One functions? If most of the city's population is unemployed as result of jobs being replaced by robots, then there should be not enough consumers to support the economy since large parts of the population isn't getting paid for work.

* For a society that is suppose to be all about following the letter of the law, the Judges (including Dredd) seems to have no problem with breaking the rules if it serves them. For example, it has been repeatedly stated that Mega-City One doesn't have the death penalty, but in the 'Judge Dredd in America' story, Dredd ordered the Judges to open fire on the Total War terrorist even though they have clearly surrendered and should have been arrested instead. Also, in the Judge Anderson story 'Satan', the Judges secretly killed a Christian minister for challenging the Judges system, even though they themselves admit that he he didn't break any laws in giving public speeches, he didn't even resist when Anderson arrested him. And even if he did somehow break the law, they cannot legally kill him, and can only at most give him life in prison. Sometimes it feel like that instead of LawfulNeutral taken to the extreme, the Judges feels more like your average NeutralEvil dictatorship that will break its own laws just to stay in power.

** And Judge Fear's attack doesn't always work. Dredd, for one, managed to not only over come his fears, but punched Judge Fear in the face.

** What, aliens are going to travel untold lightyears just to fix our problems? Chances are they're exploring to escape their own crapsack planets and have more then enough to worry about...

* Can't there be a happy Dredd story? Dredd saves the day and all the innocent civillains come out alive and not shot to death. Of course, being Dredd, he'd probably have half the civillains sent to the cube...

*** It's ''possible''. Dredd saves the day, the civillains in danger go back to their crapsack lives. The madcap death and mayhem inherent in many Dredd stories I've read verges on Violence Porn.

** The cursed Earth isn't as bad as people think, there's still a lot of land that can be used for farmer and a number of Mutent towns Import food to Mega-City one for Protection.

*** This has been gone into quite a bit over the years. Synthetic chemicals, fungus, artificial protein, very large farms of genetically engineered crops in the less polluted areas of Cursed Earth, nutrients reclaimed for waste and, yes, bodies (the recyc plats are very prominent in the comic), block top gardens and (for a while, poor Otto Slump) all manner of insects and such have all been used.

** The problem is that the Judge system isnt actually intended to represent Law or Justice, but to bring something resembling stability to an enormously chaotic environment. Remember, the Judges were given absolute power because the civilian authorities had failed so badly that they had basically caused the apocalypse.

** They say in the film that they're running low on resources and manpower, they even think about sending out their recruits when Rico starts killing off Judges. Maybe it was the best they could do at the time.
* The Justice Department was running out of viable street Judges even before Griffin and Rico massacred everyone, hence why Griffin was so gung ho to restart the Janus cloning project. They probably assigned the rookies to whatever full eagle Judge happened to be available at the time, experience be damned.

* Which genius decided to partner Hershey up with a [[NewMeat rookie judge]]? Dredd outright states that she's only been on the streets a year herself and is inexperienced herself.

* Rico replaces the DNA sample being used to clone new Judges with his own, declaring with scenery-chewing glee that the resulting army will be just as crazy as him. What he doesn't seem to realize is that ''he was cloned from the exact same DNA that was already there''. He and Dredd are both clones from an earlier phase of the project, and they both have the same DNA, an important plot point that explains how Rico is able to frame Dredd for murder earlier. Rico just replaced the existing DNA with an exact copy. Given the quality of the movie as a whole, the writers might have realized this and [[TheyJustDidntCare just not bothered to change it]].

* How could the huge cyborg mutant sneak up to Judge Fargo to stab him?