My wife and I are rewatching The Next Generation and just finished Measure of a Man, the episode in season 2 in which Data’s personhood is legally debated and his life hangs in the balance.
I genuinely found this episode infuriating in its stupidity. It’s the first episode we skipped even a little bit. It was like nails on a chalkboard.
There is oodles of legal precedent that Data is a person. He was allowed to apply to Starfleet, graduated, became an officer and rose to the rank of Lt. Commander with all the responsibilities and privileges thereof.
Comparing him to a computer and the judge advocate general just shrugging and going to trial over it is completely idiotic. There are literal years and years of precedent that he’s an officer.
The problem is compounded because Picard can’t make the obvious legal argument and is therefore stuck philosophizing in a court room, which is all well and good, but it kind of comes down to whether or not Data has a soul? That’s not a legal argument.
The whole thing is so unbelievably ludicrous it just made me angrier and angrier. It wasn’t the high minded, humanistic future I’ve come to know and love, it was a kangaroo court where reason and precedent took a backseat to feeling and belief.
I genuinely hated it.
To my surprise, in looking it up, I discovered it’s considered one of the high water marks for the entire show. It feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
Hmm for the sake of discussion, it could be such that that legal tribunal was calling into question all of that history. Just because a “crime” (in this case a misclassification) occured and was propagated for many years doesn’t mean it is correct tomorrow.
The point of the episode was the kangaroo court. It was that data had served as a valid, meaningful, human-like member of the staff for years, and all that was at risk. It does the very star trek thing of highlighting real world issues, in that people all over the world suffer from kangaroo court style judicial-injustice, and Picard’s achievement is that much more impressive given the hill to climb. (Corruption)
Even in a seemingly idealistic futurist-future, injustice can arise, and minorities can be swept up in the mess. The federation is not perfect, and this episode is a crystal clear example of it’s potential faults. (Executives with opinions trump up proceedings to bring about their own goals, essentially corrupt bureaucracy wrapped in judicial procedure)
With many of the recent supreme court rulings that have ignored or outright destroyed precedent, I could easily see a situation like you described. Somewhere offscreen a ruling had been made and this is the fallout.