History Main / OneJudgeToRuleThemAll

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-->'''Gandledorf:''' Another session of Hoggelrynth comes to a close, and with 534 points, the House Cup is awarded to [[{{Villains}} Wunnybun]]! [[HufflepuffHouse Pooperscoop is second with 423. Poininoh is third with 253.]] And in last place: Snackewyrm at minus a billion points. Mostly due to flagrant disregard of our "No Keg Party" policy by [[IdiotHero Torg]].
-->...
-->But wait! I have some last minute points to award. My niece is a member of House Snackewyrm this year. A trillion points to her for being so gosh darn cute! Now, by my calculations, ''Snackewyrm wins the House cup! In your face! IN ... YOUR ... FACE ... WUNNYBUN! '''NYAH'''!''

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

-->Well, I say we don't bring her the torch. I say we bring her the Olympic Games! - Who is with me?
-->{{Beat}}
-->Well, I don't care. It's my decision.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* [=RuPaul=] is this on ''Series/RuPaulsDragRace'', naturally, and not only doesn't pretend otherwise but lampshades it to the point of hilarity. Ru is always [[PimpedOutDress dressed the most spectacularly]], always imperiously claps her hands and declares "I have made my decision," and in previous seasons even had [[GaussianGirl special lighting]] compared to the other judges.

A sister trope to GoldenSnitch. The difference being, this trope is about stupid judging rules rather than stupid points rules. The CrackDefeat is a victim of this, and the winner of a DarkHorseVictory is a beneficiary of it. Contrast the JokerJury, where it's openly a mockery of justice.

** Well, to his dad's credit, there was a reason. Shougo's nail artist did 3D nail art, and the judges missed that by only looking at the big picture.
*** Still, the trope applies. Judges voting, declaring a winner -- and then changing their minds, taking the title from the winner and handing it to some other guy? Right after the big boss said they should do so? Fishy, fishy -- no matter what the excuse was.
** The situation is a bit more complicated, though, since the three judges who gave Niida the win only did so because they had previously accepted bribes. Whether they were really moved to change their votes and returned the gifts because of how impressed they were with the work on the SP model or because of Narumi-papa's influence is up in the air.

Curiously, more often than not, this trope tends to favor the heroes of the story. You'd think winning a contest this way would be considered unfair at best and cheating at worst... but no: the righteous heroes are almost always the ones who, facing unbeatable competitors, or a hostile judging panel, or both, still end up the winners thanks to the DeusExMachina intervention of a providential protector. Also, the trope seems to be, for some reason, far more common in stories targeted at a female audience, to the point that this trope is sometimes known to fans of {{Shoujo}} {{Manga}} as an "Aoyama Panel" competition after [[Manga/KanonByChihoSaito a popular instance of it]].

-->-- '''The judging panel''' during the 17th Piano Competition in Memory of Aoyama -- ''Manga/{{Kanon|ByChihoSaito}}'', by Chiho Saito

* ''Manga/{{Kanon|ByChihoSaito}}'', by Chiho Saito; it's this manga that made the words "In Memory of Aoyama" a common expression among shoujo fans. Kanon Hayashi, the heroine, enters a very high-level competition for piano players named "17th Piano Competition in Memory of Aoyama." (Who this Aoyama was, we are never told.) The man sponsoring the competition is a rich playboy, Sachio Kajiwara. He is president of the judging panel as well. Kanon is not a good pianist: she started learning piano a few weeks before the competition, and can't even play Happy Birthday without making mistakes. However, she is also a very attractive young woman... and, when she is introduced to Kajiwara, she says some things that make Kajiwara misunderstand that Kanon will sleep with him if he makes her win! Come the day of the competition, Kanon plays horribly. All the judges are appalled at her poor performance. Kajiwara, however, outvotes them all with his single vote (it's one of his powers as president, as he explains himself) and makes Kanon win the Exceptional Special Prize.

-->--'''The judging panel''' during the 17th Piano Competition in Memory of Aoyama -- ''Manga/{{Kanon|ByChihoSaito}}'', by Chiho Saito

A "One Judge To Rule Them All" competition is a contest where the winner is decided by a panel of judges who vote to determine which contestant did best -- but where there's one judge whose vote outweighs the votes of all the other judges combined, thus making them completely irrelevant.

The justification for allowing this is that sometimes trial will reveal information that makes it perfectly obvious to anyone who understands the legal issues that one side or the other has won, but sometimes the jury either doesn't understand the law or is biased against the party who should win; in such circumstances, the judge should be permitted to overturn a jury verdict. In civil cases, this is usually because the judge had already decided the case as a matter of law ''after'' the trial (typically because the lawyer for that party had screwed up explaining why he/she should win on the law at the summary judgment stage before the trial), but wanted to give the jury a shot at it in case it agreed with him (trial judges love to have the support of a jury in deciding cases, because it makes their decisions much easier to defend on appeal). In criminal cases, this happens less often, as jury verdicts are much more important in criminal law, and the jury can only be overturned if it convicts the defendant,[[note]]Again, double jeopardy prevents ''any'' judge from overturning a jury acquittal except on ironclad proof that the jury was bought or otherwise had 100% made up its mind before the trial. This has ''literally'' never happened in the entire 200-plus-year history of American criminal justice. There have been cases of juries having already made their decision before the trial, namely in Jim Crow-era trials of white men lynching blacks, in which the jury acquitted regardless of the evidence, but in ''these'' cases the judges were equally biased and let the ruling stand. The only case of which we have record where a not-guilty verdict on the merits was vacated [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Aleman it was a bench trial (i.e. there was no jury and the judge made the findings of fact) and the judge had been bought]].[[/note]] but judges will intervene and overturn a conviction if they believe that the jury was biased, which is, statistically, a serious risk for certain types of crimes (*''cough''* sex crimes *''cough''*) or defendants (*''cough''* minorities *''cough''*).

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** In ''Discworld/TheWeeFreeMen'', Granny Aching is not even technically a judge at the sheepdog competitions. However, everyone knows that her acceptance is the real grand prize of the competition.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's description of the [[{{Literature/Foundation}} Second Foundation]] comes close to this -- they have a council of 12 Speakers, but the First Speaker rules unless '''all''' the other Speakers vote against him (i.e. First and one other wins versus 10; all 11 others win versus First).
* In another of Asimov's novels, ''Literature/TheRobotsOfDawn'', it turns out that the entire Auroran politics are that. While legally, the Chairman of the Legislature has no power except for a vote to break a tie, in reality, the long-lived and spoiled Aurorans have such aversion to conflict that they prefer an overwhelming majority in all votes, and the Chairman is the one to decide which way they go. So long as he's objective, he has all the strings.

The justification for allowing this is that sometimes trial will reveal information that makes it perfectly obvious to anyone who understands the legal issues that one side or the other has won, but sometimes the jury either doesn't understand the law or is biased against the party who should win; in such circumstances, the judge should be permitted to overturn a jury verdict. In civil cases, this is usually because the judge had already decided the case as a matter of law ''after'' the trial (typically because the lawyer for that party had screwed up explaining why he/she should win on the law at the summary judgment stage before the trial), but wanted to give the jury a shot at it in case it agreed with him (trial judges love to have the support of a jury in deciding cases, because it makes their decisions much easier to defend on appeal). In criminal cases, this happens less often, as jury verdicts are much more important in criminal law, and the jury can only be overturned if it convicts the defendant,[[note]]Again, double jeopardy prevents ''any'' judge from overturning a jury acquittal except on ironclad proof that the jury was bought or otherwise had 100% made up its mind before the trial. This has ''literally'' never happened in the entire 200-plus-year history of American criminal justice. There have been cases of juries having already made their decision before the trial, namely in Jim Crow-era trials of white men lynching blacks, in which the jury acquitted regardless of the evidence, but in ''these'' cases the judges were equally biased and let the ruling stand.[[/note]] but judges will intervene and overturn a conviction if they believe that the jury was biased, which is, statistically, a serious risk for certain types of crimes (*''cough''* sex crimes *''cough''*) or defendants (*''cough''* minorities *''cough''*).

->'''Random Judge''': "Oh Lord, what godawful playing! Who let her enter the competition?"\\
'''Sachio Kajiwara''': "She's magnificent. We have a winner!"\\
'''Random Judge''': "WHAT!!? Kajiwara, she SUCKS! You can't be serious!"\\
'''Sachio Kajiwara''': "I'm the president, and I say she wins, so she wins. That's it."\\
'''Random Judge''': ''(groans)''
-->--''The judging panel during the 17th Piano Competition in Memory of Aoyama'' -- '''''Manga/{{Kanon|ByChihoSaito}}''''', ''by Chiho Saito''

* The Royal Council in the ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' series has a similar rule. If the Monarch and Monarch's Own Herald vote as a block, they win, no matter how the rest of the council votes. This only comes up in one book, as the inner doings of the Royal Council are rarely a major part of the plot in those stories.