Asking lawyers about Star Trek is a bit like asking bike mechanics what their favorite beer is. Even if it’s not their area of professional expertise, they have lots of clear, well thought-out opinions on the subject. One day last month, I put out a quick call for Trek-minded attorneys, and they flooded in. Within minutes, this actual e-mail message landed in my inbox.

Sir: I suddenly had five people e-mailing me saying I had to chat with you! I aver that I am a lawyer who defines himself first and foremost as a Starfleet officer. May I help? CWW

Christian W. Waugh

Waugh Law, P.A. Sent from my Starfleet Communicator

I should add that this guy goes by the handle @AdmiralWaugh on Twitter. I knew I had hit on something great.

As a Trek fan—I'm a child of the 1980s, TNG was my first foray into the universe—and someone who reports frequently about legal issues, I wanted to honor the 50th anniversary of the series with a look at the legal issues at play across Star Trek. Sure, entire books have already been written on this subject, but this was boldly going into terra nullis for yours truly.

From copyright to civil law

After reviewing various episodes (research, I swear!), I was reminded of how many Picard-as-counsel episodes there are. Court-style procedurals are no rarity across the various series and movies.

According to a recent panel discussion at Comic Con (SDCC) entitled "Star Trek: Where Lawyers Boldly Go," there are a number of landmark legal-themed episodes ranging from TOS "Court Martial," to TNG’s "Measure of a Man," to DS9’s "Tribunal," to Enterprise’s "Judgment." This panel, I should add, included various legal luminaries such as California Supreme Court Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, and former US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal, now a vice president and lawyer for Facebook.

The point is there are many legal roads to go down in the Star Trek universe, and some even have direct parallels to our own time. The ongoing case of Naruto v. Slater (currently before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals) involves the question of whether a non-human (in this case, a macaque) can hold copyright of a photograph. Nearly this exact same question is explored in Voyager’s "Author, Author," where the Doctor, a holographic medical program, tries to assert intellectual property rights over a holonovel.

In the Star Trek universe, of course, the most important "law" is more of an overarching policy and social norm. It's called the Prime Directive, and interpreting its meaning is one of the major preoccupations of show characters and fans alike. As one of the organizers of that SDCC panel, Joshua Gilliland pointed out to me during a conversation over coffee, that in itself is quite true to life. "What is law but a civil contract as to how we’re going to behave?"

Bending the rules

In canonical Trek, the Prime Directive is never explicitly stated in its full, legalistic glory. Introduced as a concept in the 21st episode of TOS, "Return of the Archons," it is a commandment of the highest moral authority to not interfere in the natural cultural and scientific development of a civilization, particularly those that are pre-warp. That's a pretty difficult rule to follow, given how hard it is to define a concept like "natural cultural and scientific development," let alone loaded terms like "civilization" and "interfere."

So this was the precise question that I put forward to the best human legal minds I could find:

Could the Prime Directive actually work as a law? How should we, in 2016, think about United Nations law or whatever our existing equivalent is, as being precursors to an interstellar directive (should we even think of it as a law? Or merely a guidepost?) to the Prime Directive?

Here on early 21st-century Earth, the Prime Directive is probably most similar to something like the Law of the Sea—a "law" that nearly every country on Earth follows—establishing rights and norms for the usage of the world’s oceans and waterways. (Interestingly, while the United States essentially accepts the Law of the Sea, it has not formally ratified it.)

"The Prime Directive is a lot like international law in that it is often not enforced depending on who breaks it," Greg Della Posta, a tenancy lawyer in Buffalo, New York, e-mailed Ars. "Famous captains, or ones in important circumstances, are usually forgiven, much like large nations generally don't face consequences from international courts for breaking treaties."

In short, if international law doesn’t always work all that well now in the 21st century, is there any hope that an interstellar law could work in the future? Many officers of the court seemed to dismiss the idea of a truly universal law binding the members of the planet, much less something approaching the United Federation of Planets.

"The concern probably is not military takeover, but communication that violates the Prime Directive, because that doesn’t require unrealistic interstellar travel," Scott Moss, a law professor at the University of Colorado, wrote. He wondered what would happen if interplanetary communications began before Earth united under one government. "What if a highly religious regime like Iran sees a need to spread a religious message to other planets by giving a less advanced civilization the communications technology necessary to share (or impose) theological views?" Moss wondered.

Moss continued his thought experiment: