Legal advice in TNG

[Shatnertage]

So in Ensigns of Command, there's a bit of dialog between Picard and Troi: the original Sheliak treaty was 500,000 pages and took thousands of Federation "legal experts" to draft, and all the Big E has to spare to look for a loophole is, according to Picard, "Me and thee."

Wouldn't you think a ship with more than 1,000 people would have some kind of legal expert on board? You'd need someone to handle registering things like marriages, births, deaths, divorces, and it would be handy to have a legal expert around when dealing with trade agreements, which the E's crew seems to do quite a bit.

I know from a practical standpoint, you're paying Stewart and Sirtis to star in the show, and casual viewer won't want to watch Lt. Whatshisname, esquire, figure a way out of the crisis. But would it have made sense to expect some kind of specialized "legal expert" on board the ship?

Plus, with several different legal traditions within the Federation, in addition to its neighbors, I figure having even a basic understanding of them all would be close to a full-time job, and not something a ship's captain or counselor would be expected to do.

 

[tharpdevenport]

There is subspace communication -- you can have access to any legal expert in the Federation, when avaiable, also ones that helped write the treaty.


Also, there can be ones programmed for holodeck representations.

 

[Snaploud]

Picard definitely showed a stunning lack of delegation skills in that episode.

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Even though they were looking for a loophole, Picard is still thinking like a diplomat and the Sheliak are lawyers. Diplomats are supposed to look for a compromise. Lawyers are supposed to do what it takes to get the job done to the satisfaction of their clients. That's why he doesn't look up a lawyer. Sure, they're looking over it for loopholes, but he thinks of it as a written agreement. To the Sheliak, it's a contract.

 

[Timo]

I guess we can cut Picard some slack and assume that he had a large team of people and AIs working on the problem - he just didn't invite any of them into his office.

Really, I'd expect the treaty in the databanks to carry a classified Starfleet attachment, listing all sorts of loophole scenarios carefully prepared in advance by UFP legal experts just in case something like "Ensigns of Command" did happen. That'd be as elementary as having the "how to" manual of some piece of engineering be adjoined by a troubleshooting manual, a "how not to" attachment, and a series of contact numbers for "when nevertheless" situations.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Praxius]

So in Ensigns of Command, there's a bit of dialog between Picard and Troi: the original Sheliak treaty was 500,000 pages and took thousands of Federation "legal experts" to draft, and all the Big E has to spare to look for a loophole is, according to Picard, "Me and thee."

Wouldn't you think a ship with more than 1,000 people would have some kind of legal expert on board? You'd need someone to handle registering things like marriages, births, deaths, divorces, and it would be handy to have a legal expert around when dealing with trade agreements, which the E's crew seems to do quite a bit.

I know from a practical standpoint, you're paying Stewart and Sirtis to star in the show, and casual viewer won't want to watch Lt. Whatshisname, esquire, figure a way out of the crisis. But would it have made sense to expect some kind of specialized "legal expert" on board the ship?

Plus, with several different legal traditions within the Federation, in addition to its neighbors, I figure having even a basic understanding of them all would be close to a full-time job, and not something a ship's captain or counselor would be expected to do.

Actually I watched that episode just last night.

The thing is, is that that Treaty was written a century or so ago, and while it took that many people to work it out originally, technology has developed a lot since then, and if you notice in the episode when they're just about to find the Arbitration loophole, they show on the computer screen what appears to be a general word search in progress, which eventually highlighted several words in a paragraph, found relation to what they were looking for and highlighted the entire paragraph for Picard's review.

So it's not like they literally had to go through it page by page..... it'd be like a Google search, in that sometimes you just have to know how to word yourself to find the right results.

No lawyer or legal expert would be required. Perhaps one is needed in making up such a treaty, but anybody who knows how to read and comprehend should be able to look up such a treaty, read it and understand what it entails.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, Picard wouldn't be looking for something that holds legal water. He would be looking for some place he can poke holes in, and see if water starts leaking out. He had nothing to lose, so he could suggest all sorts of things he considered helpful to his cause, quite regardless of whether these ideas were legally valid or not. Getting expert help might only have helped him eliminate those ideas the Sheliak would shoot down at once - but Picard didn't need that sort of help, because getting shot down twenty times would be no loss provided one of the ideas got through. The Sheliak sounded like the sort of guys who'd yield to the reality of there being a loophole, even if this was preceded by irrelevancies such as twenty silly and futile claims for other loopholes, or a string of insults, or Picard doing a lap dance with nothing but a sombrero on.

But I can't believe legal experts couldn't also have been innovative enough to come up with loophole ideas of their own, based on experience. After all, a major part of legal work today consists specifically of finding such loopholes!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shatnertage]

IThe Sheliak sounded like the sort of guys who'd yield to the reality of there being a loophole, even if this was preceded by irrelevancies such as twenty silly and futile claims for other loopholes, or a string of insults, or Picard doing a lap dance with nothing but a sombrero on.

Timo Saloniemi

What if Picard had taken off his shirt and carved up a tree with a chainsaw?

 

[Praxius]

What if Picard had taken off his shirt and carved up a tree with a chainsaw?

A Chainsaw?

Real men use a rabid beaver on leash.

I named mine "Chompy McFuzzball"

 

[22 Stars]

Let the new wave of avatars begin with rabid beavers wearing sombreroes

 

[indolover]

starfleet command must have a legal section/department, or a JAG office, that deals in Federation law and the laws of neighouring species.

 

[Snaploud]

starfleet command must have a legal section/department, or a JAG office, that deals in Federation law and the laws of neighouring species.

Well, we know there's a JAG office from "The Measure of a Man," but we also learned (from that episode) that they use the captain and first officer (in lawyer-like roles) when an outpost is understaffed.

 

[Myasishchev]

So in Ensigns of Command, there's a bit of dialog between Picard and Troi: the original Sheliak treaty was 500,000 pages and took thousands of Federation "legal experts" to draft, and all the Big E has to spare to look for a loophole is, according to Picard, "Me and thee."

Wouldn't you think a ship with more than 1,000 people would have some kind of legal expert on board? You'd need someone to handle registering things like marriages, births, deaths, divorces, and it would be handy to have a legal expert around when dealing with trade agreements, which the E's crew seems to do quite a bit.

I know from a practical standpoint, you're paying Stewart and Sirtis to star in the show, and casual viewer won't want to watch Lt. Whatshisname, esquire, figure a way out of the crisis. But would it have made sense to expect some kind of specialized "legal expert" on board the ship?

Plus, with several different legal traditions within the Federation, in addition to its neighbors, I figure having even a basic understanding of them all would be close to a full-time job, and not something a ship's captain or counselor would be expected to do.

Hell, yeah. Although they use him in the role often enough you'd think Riker had been admitted to the bar.

You think Ensigns of Command is bad, try Measure of a Man, the most unrealistic depiction of a legal system I've ever seen (and written, ironically, by a lawyer).

The biggest lesson from Measure is this: in the Federation, all your opponent has to do, in order to have a summary judgment levied against you, is to not show up. That's correct, the best strategy after filing a lawsuit is to fire your lawyers and walk into court without any preparation.

At least, that's how we got the bizarre, laughable situation of Riker as the enforced attorney for the government In re Data.* Conflict of interest? Legal training? Mere competence? All 21st century notions, I'm afraid. Their objection method is hilarious as well. Picard: "Objection!" JAG: "Grounds?" Picard: "I don't like it!" JAG: "Sustained." The theatrics are generally ridiculous too, including long speeches by the attorneys and a fundamental confusion of the entire premise by having Data called as a witness at all (witnesses generally have to be human, Data by contrast is evidence, although I understood why this was avoided, since a witness competency hearing would by default decide the case). There's also the issue in the alternative which no one raised, that even if Data were property, he ain't Starfleet property. He's property of the estate of Noonien Soong! That's governed by takings law and property law on abandonment.

*In re is as good a descriptor as any. It's actually impossible to determine what kind of proceeding this is, in part because it lacks no ready analogue in modern American law. It is clearly adversarial, with a plaintiff and defendant, but I can't tell which is which; its primary issue is whether there is a defendant, so the question is really a threshold one of standing. If standing is found, there's no point to any further proceedings, it's an automatic SJ in Data's favor. I suppose there might be slave-era cases with similar questions raised, and probably stamped down because pre-1865 America was a terrible, hellish place.

 

[Zaku]

They don't have a linguist, too (see Darmok).

 

[Hober Mallow]

There was no room on the ship for a linguist or a legal expert.. But they have a ship's counselor, an earth historian (WTF is he doing there in "The Big Goodbye?") and lots of children.

 

[A beaker full of death]

Oy.
Early episode, from when Star Trek was still inspired by 18th century sailing ships. Captains then were often called on to negotiate treaties.
Why do people take the space stuff so literally?

 

[CaptainStoner]

It's an example of where one line of dialog would have helped. As Picard is going over the treaty, and Troi comes in, she might say "You've assigned a team to go over this. Maybe you should get some rest." And then she starts rubbing his shoulders, and...
But honestly this lack of explanation doesn't take me out of that story. Picard is a hands-on type leader. He's not the type to sit in his chair and let others do the work when he himself can be of use. One of the aspects of him as a Captain that I admire.

 

[Snaploud]

It's an example of where one line of dialog would have helped. As Picard is going over the treaty, and Troi comes in, she might say "You've assigned a team to go over this. Maybe you should get some rest." And then she starts rubbing his shoulders, and...
But honestly this lack of explanation doesn't take me out of that story. Picard is a hands-on type leader. He's not the type to sit in his chair and let others do the work when he himself can be of use. One of the aspects of him as a Captain that I admire.

Well, it's not so much the lack of a sentence as the inclusion of the sentence about Picard having basically no support ("Me and Thee").

 

[Timo]

You think Ensigns of Command is bad, try Measure of a Man, the most unrealistic depiction of a legal system I've ever seen (and written, ironically, by a lawyer).

You do realize that you completely lost more than half your target audience by sentence four?

That's probably not a desirable characteristic of a TV show episode script. Although scifi or other such speculative fiction might be a valid exception...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Myasishchev]

You think Ensigns of Command is bad, try Measure of a Man, the most unrealistic depiction of a legal system I've ever seen (and written, ironically, by a lawyer).

You do realize that you completely lost more than half your target audience by sentence four?

That's probably not a desirable characteristic of a TV show episode script. Although scifi or other such speculative fiction might be a valid exception...

Timo Saloniemi

Well, take "Court Martial," which has some serious problems, but at least it had actual lawyers on either side, a semblance of courtroom procedure, and not quite as much conflict of interest.

Edit: actually, I take that back--"Court Martial" is terrible. The look of shock on Cogley's face when the Hot Lawyer shows the damning video of Kirk pressing the eject pod button (which is hilariously bad design in itself--Finney's kid's lawyer should be thinking about suing the starship manufacturer) suggests one of three things: 1)Hot Lawyer never responded to any discovery requests; 2)Cogley never actually bothered to make any or review the materials received after he did; or 3)discovery? what's discovery?

I could live with the lack of evidentiary foundational requirements, which are of questionable necessity, but discovery is fundamental to the preparation of a lawyer's case and, indeed, any system claiming to give fair trials.

Then there's the weird back-and-forth between the prosecution's and defendant's cases-in-chief, with Hot Lawyer calling witnesses, then Cogley calling Kirk, then Hot Lawyer presenting evidence, then...

I wonder if Vulcan Princess' student note ever included the words "ridiculous and hilarious."