The Law & The Final Frontier
In Star Trek, where are all the lawyers?
It’s not as though they don’t exist in the future; in fact, we do encounter them throughout the run of the Trekverse. But even though starships contain all sorts of experts and scholars and professionals, lawyers never seem to show up on the docket. And when you’re encountering new species with new systems of law on a regular basis, you’d think that would be kind of important, even from a liability standpoint. As queenofmoons puts it:
Even when we do see someone execute a feat of reasonable legal cunning—Picard buying time from the Sheliak, for instance—the fact remains that on a ship of a thousand people, expected to make first contact with new governments with little support, preparing for a legal challenge should not be whatever the busy ship’s captain and its senior mental health professional can whip up on the fly, but a recurring eventuality to prepare for.
Sure, some of this is simply down to who the show wants to spotlight—Trek shows are about their crews, and unless you’re planning to make the starship lawyer a regular in the cast, fans aren’t going to be as interested in watching them argue cases. But shouldn’t there be enough for them to do? It’s amazing watching Picard and Riker go up against each other in “Measure of a Man,” but that doesn’t change the fact that the two of them should never have needed to create this spectacle in the first place. Picard and Riker are both military guys, and their outlying interests don’t have anything to do with law, though Picard’s love of anthropology and archaeology has a few ties in that regard.
I haven’t watched all that much in the way of Star Trek, and most of what I’ve watched is DS9 which is a bit of a different bird. But this is the sort of thing that leaves me finding their universe somewhat less compelling than some of the others.
What do those of you who are fans have to say?
One could simply say that the law code of the Federation is so clear and concise that it does not require a person with specialized training to navigate or argue it.Report
This seems compelling to me. The characters seem to constantly be judging and applying a kind of implied law of the Federation civilization. I would also say that it is implied that the Vulcan superiority of intellect is always hanging over officers’ actions like a moral sword of Damocles. It seems as if the officers of the Federation are pretty much boxed in by their training in Star Fleet, the dictates of which they seem to hold each other tightly accountable to, and that awareness of a higher intellect overseeing their actions. (That could just be the Kirk-Spock dynamic, but then that is replicated throughout all the iterations of the franchise.)Report
Or conversely (obversely?) every Federation officer is a lawyer the same way every Marine is a rifleman.Report
But I can imagine some prime directive absolutist saying, “what part of ‘shall not interfere’ don’t you understand?”Report
B-but, the mere act of reaching out and making contact, IS interfering!Report
We will make an intergalactic lawyer out of you yet.
I think Star Trek always defined interfering as getting involved with the goings on of a planet. Like if you arrive during a war, your not supposed to pick sides or aid refugees. Your just supposed to make contact, sit back, and relax as the slaughter goes on bellow. Likewise, if a society seems to be at the medieval level or have problematic aspects, your not supposed to guide them to enlightenment.Report
IIRC, the Prime Directive only applied to societies/peoples/planets who had not yet achieved space flight. Once they put something in a stable orbit, First Contact protocols ruled.Report
Meh. There is a long fan tradition of “why doesn’t star trek have ( some example of everything we have today)? I think it all comes down to who and what the show wants to show in very limited time. It could be interesting to look at different systems of law in various species. What little we know of Cardassian law isn’t all that pleasant. But that is a different show with writers with different interests.Report
Why doesn’t Star Trek have podiatrists?: An investigationReport
Because then there would be no Chekov’s Boots scene in the Undiscovered Country.Report
What Greg said. Most Star Trek viewers do not want to watch an episode of any series where a lawyer patiently explains to the crew why they can’t do this amazingly cool thing without some serious legal repercussions. A realistic approach to intergalactic exploration and first encounters with alien species would make for some boring television to everybody but the most nerdy members.
Most space exploration shows from Star Trek to the new Lost in Space seem to avoid dealing with issues of governance or lawyers. In the new Lost in Space, they even refer to their being no lawyers or judges even though lawyers and judges would be really important for rebuilding civilization. We are uncool as a profession.Report
Yes, goodness knows, nobody wants to watch lawyers on TV.Report
There was a show called Century City which, I thought, had a premise that could really go places: a law firm in the future. This was really great because they could do the sort of talky, exposition-heavy speculative fiction that so rarely finds its way to TV, because people love shows about lawyers just talking about shit.
Unfortunately the show was incredibly horrible (bad writing, moronic cases, terrible FX, bland and irksome characters), and was mercifully cancelled after like five episodes.Report
Right. I do think its part ideology and part plot, with the plot requirements being more deterministic.
There’s no doubt that the future Federation is utopian by design; but, even utopias could have legal scholars… the main reason, IMO, is that the plot won’t allow for the commensurate restriction on the freedom of action of Kirk and his heirs. The Prime Directive (lex communis) and Spock (lex scripta) and McCoy (lex cordis) are the legal framework that Kirk violates in almost every episode; as such they have to remain distant, confounded, and bemused or Kirk would be in the brig.Report
Judging by the sorts of things that other commanders get up to, Kirk is downright restrained.Report
Turns out the Federation code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules.Report
People like court room dramas but they don’t seem to like their court room dramas to mix with their science fiction adventures.Report
Someone should really try to marry the two: Courtroom dramas in space! Let’s call it SpacesuitsReport
or Stardocket.Report
Plaintiff 9 From Outer SpaceReport
That would be more of a movie or mini-seriesReport
I can recall a famous original series episode which was a Court Martial. There was also an episode from TNG to determine how much freedom or autonomy Data had. These are legal issues.Report
We discussed these episodes in the thread. They handled legal issues but didn’t have any lawyers doing the legal work.Report
@leeesq
That’s most likely driven by a desire to keep the focus on the main characters. They have the captain do everything so the captain gets screen time.Report
Now its in my head as canon that Leonard McCoy is the great x 7 or 8 grandson of Jack McCoy. The famous NYC district attorney’s grandson moved to Georgia for Second Reconstruction after the Eugenics Wars, married a local woman, and those McCoys had been in Atlanta ever since.Report
In the future in Star Trek, they don’t use money. Lawyers don’t work pro bono all the time, and that’s why there aren’t any lawyers.Report
The original series was supposed to be a “Wagon Train” to the stars, an update on exploring the frontier. Lawyers come after the frontier is settled.
Also early on Spock is subject to a court-martial (in the two-part Menagerie which incorporated the first pilot) and IIRC Kirk exercises the right to act both as Spock’s attorney and serve on the jury panel because there were insufficient number of officers superior to Spock available. So basically, this is a system of military justice, often employed in an ad hoc basis because of remoteness.Report
Also in the first season, the episode “Court Martial” features the trial of Captain Kirk at a starbase (the border of civilization) in which he is represented by an attorney that appears to ride a circuit.
IIRC Kirk is on trial because a discrepancy between his description of his actions he logged-in, and the computer records of what happened. This is a highly bureaucratized world, where everything is recorded and discrepancies can be the subject of military justice. High deterrence factor. But in this episode the computer had been tampered with.Report
Buh gawd PD, is that Will Truman’s music?Report
Will’s memory has been hacked by Russians that invented a girlfriend we all know never existed, but we’re all just too polite to say.Report
Another model for TOS was Horatio Hornblower. The first episode with the Romulans is a clear copy of a chapter in Hornblower and the Hotspur. The Hornblower books have the occasional court martial, but there are no formally trained lawyers involved. They are all random officers of suitable rankReport
“Sir, we’ve received a distress call from the frontier outpost Omega 13; They are asking us to send lawyers, guns, and money!
Apparently something has hit their fan.”Report
There is a highly-regarded episode of TNG called “The Measure of a Man” that revolves around a trial. I’ve actually only seen a few episodes of TNG, but some friends who are enthusiastic fans showed me this one as an example of the show at it’s best. SPOILERS AHEAD.
In the episode, Data, a lieutenant commander who is also an android, is approached by a federation scientist. Data is a uniquely advanced android and the secrets of his construction died with his creator. The scientist wants to study Data to learn more about how to build advanced androids. However, this will require disassembling and killing Data. Data and the crew object, and a local space Admiral or whatever orders a trial to determine if Data is a person with rights or a piece of equipment that can be commandeered for study by the Federation, with herself serving as the Judge.
It’s a compelling episode, lots of Picard and Riker (his XO) making empassioned speeches. But my big takeaway was that the Federation’s legal system is absurd.
First, the Admiral insists that Riker serve as the advocate for the Federation’s position. He protests, saying that he thinks Data is a person and is not comfortable doing that, and the Admiral responds by threatening to summarily find against Data if Riker won’t participate. That’s a pretty terrible legal practice.
Second, it’s just bizarre that Data has a rank (people refer to him as Lt Commander) and can apparently order red shirts around, but is still up for dissection. It’s just odd, and even the people who want to take him apart don’t seem to feel the need to comment on his actual rank and service.
Finally, there also just doesn’t seem to be much in the way of legal references, it’s just the two advocates making moral philosophy arguments, and eventually they persuade the Admiral that Data should be spared. Neither side seems to have legal background, but ultimately Patrick Stewart is the better rhetorician.
I’m not expecting great legal verisimilitude, and it’s still miles ahead of the absurd attempts to portray actual courtroom practice in so many programs. But it really did not make the Federation seem like a place that values the rule of law. That said, good Sci Fi episode, definitely enjoyed the themes of what it means to be human and all that.Report
The Federation is still a military unit and JAG officers unlike civilian DAs and Public Defenders do switch from arguing for the prosecution and defense fairly frequently IIRC.
But yeah, it would be a massive conflict of interest for Riker to argue for the Federation. Why would they even want him to do it.Report
Honestly the part that most appalled me is the judge threatening to summarily find against (and execute) Data if Riker refuses.
I actually am a big admirer of the JAG defense/prosecution switch. I’ve read some interesting proposals about applying a similar system to civilian criminal law by merging PDs and prosecutors into one office. Disrupt factional mindsets and try to solve the inadequate funding issues.Report
It amazes me that we haven’t done this, except that there are enough noisy people out there who just hate the idea of a certain class of defendants being permitted access to adequate legal representation on the taxpayer dime.Report
That’s exactly it, they don’t want to help “criminals,” regardless of whether those criminals have actually been adjudicated as such.Report
Yeah, in a post-scarcity society, the arguments over property become arguments over things that cannot be reproduced.
And how many of those things are there really? There’s Data (as mentioned above)… and… um… even the Enterprise gets blowed up and replaced periodically.
If we got rid of every legal case in the US that would be fixed by having ubiquitous replicators and transporters… how many legal cases would remain? (This is an honest question. I’m going through stuff in my head and I’m not coming up with anything that doesn’t melt away.)Report
Did we post-scarcity sex?Report
The holodeck?Report
Oh my.Report
The holodeck is a personal injury lawyer’s dream: It always seems to be malfunctioning.Report
I was always disappointed that the computers assisting in running the ship were so dumb, but the holodeck had real human-level AIs. Or better than human, judging from Moriarty.Report
On actual US nuclear powered warships at the turn of this century, the Xboxes and PlayStation 2s were more powerful computers than those used to run the nuke plant.Report
Marchmaine does get me to think that we’d probably still need divorce lawyers for issues of custody of the kids.
But transporters alleviate a lot of stuff related to custody. And replicators alleviate a lot of the issues related to money worries being the biggest reason for marriages ending in the first place.
But, yeah, we’d need divorce lawyers for custody cases.Report
Just imagine the custody battles when a transporter accident splits a kid in two and the parents fight over who gets custody of the good copy and who gets custody of the evil copy!Report
Hrm. Maybe we’d need lawyers for that sort of thing.
Presumably, we’d have to hammer out which one is the evil one in a court of law…Report
Maybe make things easier by sending the evil one to the Romulans.
Everybody’s happy.Report
I think one of the reasons that Americans have some many lawyers relative to other OECD countries is the extent to which policy is made by the administrative state versus individual circumstances. You need more lawyers if outcomes are to be optimized individually. I can see the Federation deciding that the optimal outcome for children is 50% of the time with each parent, and that is that. And it’s easier if there is a large social state that mostly raises the kids anyway.Report
And it’s easier if there is a large social state that mostly raises the kids anyway.
How many kids were on the show?
There was Wesley (God bless him) and there was Jake Sisko and his little buddy Nog.
Were there any others?
(I got the feeling that however kids were accustomed to being raised in the Federation, it’s wasn’t Kibbutz-style.)Report
I recall teacher telling Worf his son was having trouble adjusting with the other kids on possibly more than one episode, but I wasn’t really a fan of TNG.Report
OH YEAH ALEXANDER!
(Now there’s an additional point where we can argue the extent to which Life On The Enterprise mirrors Earth. I think if I felt like arguing anything, I’d want to argue that The Enterprise cannot be assumed to be representative of anything at all while DS9 probably comes closest to how Humans in the Federation do stuff these days.)Report
There is no such thing as a true, post-scarcity, you can have anything, society because many things are only valuable because supplies are limited. For example, does everyone get a genuine, original copy of the Magna Carta, or does that stay stuck in a museum? How many genuine Babe Ruth rookie cards do they get? Does everyone get a fabulous house overlooking Star Fleet Academy and the Golden Gate Bridge? Why doesn’t everyone have their own Federation star ship?
The replicator is like a Xerox machine or Adobe Acrobat. It makes it easier to copy things, but it doesn’t make scarcity go away.Report
If independent testing cannot tell the difference between a “genuine” Babe Ruth rookie card and a fresh-out-of-the-replicator one, then the difference between the two cards is pretty much spiritual.Report
A better example is real estate, which is the classic example of property that by its nature is not fungible.Report
That’s why I brought up transporters.
If you can get from here to there in seconds, why not live in North Dakota instead of San Fran? Rent’s cheap, you have the internet/holodeck, and your replicator can give you Mexican/Thai fusion that is every bit as tasty as that little place on Market Street.Report
Now I see it’s been covered (it just occured to me); there’s probably at least a half dozen episodes between TOS & TNG that are essentially Star Trek : Law & Order. The ones I can think of off hand (but have to look up the titles) are The Menagerie, Justice, Measure of a Man (as Van Owen mentions above)Report
Don’t forget about all the episodes that are about non-Federation law. How many times does a crew member break a law on a new planet, or interplanetary negotiations turn on the interpretation of a phrase? Half of the impassioned speeches delivered by the captains at the 45-minute mark are in some respect closing arguments.
ETA: For that matter, you could argue that the entire TNG was an extended trial overseen by Q.Report
By the way, “The Orville” episode, ‘About a Girl’, fits into this discussion rather nicely.Report