User Reviews

This episode was directed by Georg Stanford Brown, a familiar face in the 70s and 80s (he was a regular on "The Rookies" on TV and was quite memorable in "Stir Crazy"). Brown managed to parlay his acting into opportunities to direct many times. He also was, incidentally, married to Tyne Daly for quite a few years.

A judge who is on the state supreme court has gained some notice by the folks at "Law Review" since the guy's decisions post-nomination to this high court and his previous decisions are opposed to each other. It could be that the guy has just changed over time...people do. But when the man's clerk contends that it's part of a quid pro quo and he's letting the governor influence his decisions, Hart is ready to run an article on it in the publication. But there are two problems...the clerk refuses to come forward and tell others AND Kingsfield refuses to run any article with 'an unnamed source'. What's next?

This is a decent episode and brings up a lot of issues concerning journalistic integrity and undisclosed sources. Well worth seeing.

Interesting show, certainly very good in its first season, but later one became a bit more liberal leaning (of course) and with the use of bad language. One wonders whether Hart would care so much if the Judge had gone the other way, and became more left leaning. Certainly, if the liberal script writers of Hollyweird want to write this sort of stuff, even during a more conservative era in American politics, as Hart even showed in an earlier episode with his Law Review issue on the politicising of the Supreme Court, and that in the eighties, it did become more conservative, then let them at least own up to political bias. This bias is prevalent as shows move on from say the fifties through to the eighties and beyond, although it is not always there, as sometimes there are more conservative sympathies shown every once in a while. Then they are having a hissy fit about a mother who wants the state to pay for her abortion - when she chose to do the deed, and then decide to kill her own baby. Some speak of the woman's right to choose, but by chance it is probably true that half of all babies aborted, if it is done so at random, are little girls - where are their woman's rights ? Admittedly, it is a shame that any court has become politicised, when its function is supposed to be about interpreting the law, not carrying out party policy - either liberal or conservative. If the liberal Beck had any decency, he should have stuck to his beliefs, rather than allowing the Governor to manipulate his decisions - although at least the Governor was not completely wrong in HIS beliefs. Although the same could be argued about him, that if the Governor had any decency, he would not have blackmailed a justice into selling out his convictions. What got me though was Hart's reaction that the sending of the man to the electric chair was disgusting - what is rather disgusting is that one person can take an innocent human life with malice aforethought (assuming of course that this character in the story was guilty, but nothing is said about that), and then, having shown no mercy, blubbering about not getting any himself.. Yes, society should be merciful, but to itself, and to potential innocent victims, not those who have demonstrated no compassion, and taken another human life without any moral or legal justification. The death penalty would work properly if it was given a chance to, and act as a deterrent - the reason people kill is because they see that justice is not swift and decisive., and it is not the execution of a cold blooded killer than cheapens human life (and yes they are still human, whether or not they act as such), it is not punishing the killers properly, and in doing so, they say their lives are worth more than their victims. A young woman chopped up by some crazed serial killer does not get any stay of execution like them, and these antics are brought about by liberal lawyers sabotaging the death penalty that the legislature, voted in by the public, has enacted to protect its citizens, but all these automatic appeals and some of these jokers nowadays spending decades on death row tries to undermine what the law makers intended. The only issue should be innocence or guilt - that should be the only justification for appeal, but it is more about keeping a person from being executed so that they can serve just a few years to go out and kill again. Wake Up !