Artigo Revisado por pares

“What a Glorious Moment in Jurisprudence”: Rhetoric, Law, and Battlestar Galactica

2012; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 12; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1743872112466720

ISSN

1743-9752

Autores

Steven S. Kapica,

Tópico(s)

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

Resumo

This article is an inquiry into the legal rhetoric and jurisprudential tensions presented in television series Battlestar Galactica ( BSG) (2003–2009). Gaius Baltar’s trial for treason, which closes the series’ third season, serves as a compelling rumination on collective guilt, vengeance, and injustice, succinctly encapsulating BSG ethos. This study, drawing on rhetorical scholarship, explores the trial’s performative features and through rhetorical analysis illustrates how the legal actors in Baltar’s trial frame justice, set legal precedent, and re-establish community-based order in a tenuous Galactica universe – a universe particularly revealing of post-9/11 anxieties and American jurisprudence in crisis.

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