Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Legal Eagle does "The Measure of a Man"

One of the more popular episodes from Star Trek: The Next Generation was "The Measure of a Man," an episode that unfolded much like a stage play. It was essentially a philosophy-heavy courtroom drama about whether Lieutenant Commander Data was a sentient being imbued with the rights of all living beings, or merely chattel, i.e., property with no inherent rights, to be owned and used as people saw fit.

The YouTube channel LegalEagle is one of many "Ask the Expert"-style channels to have proliferated on YouTube. On this channel, a cheerful lawyer examines court cases shown in movies and on TV. He shows clips from the relevant production, throwing out commentary and analysis, and he eventually gives the production a letter grade based on his opinion of the show's legal realism. Below is the lawyer's examination of "The Measure of a Man," and below that is his analysis of the movie My Cousin Vinny which, from what I understand, many lawyers actually recommend as required viewing for students learning legal procedure, given the movie's scrupulous accuracy in depicting how things work in an actual courtroom. (The movie's not 100% accurate, but it gets most things right.)

Trek first:


Vinny next:






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