History Main / ArtisticLicenseLaw

* LoopholeAbuse: Courts do indeed hate that one weird trick, but odds are good that:
** A) Someone tried it or something similar before and you're not as clever as you think you are, and/or...
** B) The loophole was closed via case law or, barring that, an amendment to the relevant statutory law. Furthermore, trying to exploit loopholes to get away with bad behavior or evade consequences is a great way to piss off the court or the other side and ensure that they come down on you even harder (if they can) or go out of their way to get you for whatever they can (if they can't get you for that specific thing).
** Conversely, a lot of legal maneuvers get ''portrayed'' as LoopholeAbuse or "getting off on a technicality" when they in fact may be anything from a standard and normal defence to a charge or claim, to a ''constitutional right.''

* MattressTagGag: It's only illegal to rip the tag of a mattress or pillow if you are a seller or manufacturer of that mattress or pillow. For your average, everyday non-mattress-vendor person to do it, it's perfectly legal, and there are no consequences. (Even for the vendor, it's more likely to result in a fine than anything else, and certainly not a LongerThanLifeSentence or anything crazy like that.)

* NoBadgeNoProblem: In real life, the police take a very dim view of people acting like they have legal authority when their position does not give it. In this case, what varies by jurisdiction is not ''whether'' you'll get in trouble for doing it, but ''how deep'' the trouble will be. Exceptions exist (namely citizen's arrest), but those are highly situational and afford you far fewer privileges than would normally be available to law enforcement.

* ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'': The very premise revolves around the U.S. government just declaring that Gotham City is no longer part of the country and shutting it off from the rest of the country, which the government can't do in real life. However, even InUniverse, the characters know this is bullshit: Nicolas Scratch was manipulating Congress to do this so he could take control of the city once it's undone, Lex Luthor also knows this and his [[PresidentEvil ascendancy to the Oval Office]] is in part due to [[HijackedByGanon hijacking Scratch's scheme]], the Penguin spends all of his time in during this preparing for it, and the majority of those who remained are just trying to hold on until the reversal happens.

[[folder:Films – Animated]]

** Had an episode where evidence was thrown out because the team didn't wait to be sure they had a warrant before seizing it. But the "good faith" clause in the U.S. means that evidence can be presented if it was seized "in good faith" that the proper warrant was obtained.
** In the episode "Ending Happy", the [[LotsaPeopleTryToDunIt five people]] who [[WhoMurderedTheAsshole tried (but failed) to kill the titular asshole former boxer]] are let off the hook by the fact that they had not been successful -- Happy died via drowning from a chair breaking and dropping him in a pool (after [[RasputinianDeath being poisoned with snake venom, bludgeoned with a crowbar, given a nearly fatal dose of shellfish and being shot with a crossbow]] -- ironically the ImpromptuTracheotomy the arrow gave him saved his life). Stokes even snarks that a good enough AmoralAttorney would blame it all on the chair. No mention whatsoever of FelonyMurder, and the show had used this detail several times before to take down an apparent KarmaHoudini.
* ''{{Series/Bones}}''
** The "good faith" clause would have applied when the Gravedigger was having her hearing to see if she could be tried.
** The cases are frequently endangered by Brennan's interrogation antics or Booth not stopping talking after someone asked for a lawyer.
** Brennan gets sentenced to six months probation for assault in season 11, and Booth is assigned as her probation officer. Not only does Booth ''not'' have the required training to work as a probation officer, but he and Brennan have been married for several years by this point, which would create a massive conflict of interest and therefore no judge in their right mind would assign him to supervise her.
* ''Series/{{Chernobyl}}'': Despite Craig Mazin's claims to have done extensive research into the disaster and the Soviet Union of the time, he has made a number of mistakes:
** Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer of the power plant (third or fourth in the hierarchy after the director), throwing a folder at a subordinate would likely have consequences for him. Doing it once would likely have them call an ambulance to see if he was delirious. Doing it habitually would have them report it to the party committee, labor union committee, district committee, and probably one or two other committees. No bureaucracy is in need of superiors who throw folders at their subordinates.
** Dyatlov swearing at a subordinate and threatening to fire him, as well as to make sure that he never worked at another power plant again, would definitely be overstepping his authority. There would have to have been a valid, documented reason for the firing. And if it was an empty threat, then he'd be risking a complaint to his own superior about abuse of power and creating a hostile work environment at an important facility. At best, he'd be able to try to force the employee to quit of his own volition.
** The coal minister himself would never have gone to talk the miners into helping out with the disaster recovery, especially with armed soldiers. For one, no one would've given him soldiers. And two, the way it would've happened (and did happen) was for the order to be passed down through the proper channels. And three, the real coal minister was himself an ex-miner and wasn't the UpperClassTwit shown in the series. He understood the plight of the working man very well.
** Shcherbina threatening to shoot Legasov for failing to explain to him how a nuclear reactor works is complete nonsense. This wasn't Stalin's USSR. Summary executions were a rarity, and Legasov was told to report directly to Shcherbina, so simply asking for an explanation would've been simpler and had fewer consequences. Plus Legasov was an important enough individual that he wouldn't have to fear Shcherbina's threat. In addition, the soldier in the helicopter would be under no obligation to follow Scherbina's clearly illegal order.
** The idea of the KGB putting the pressure on Shcherbina is laughable. Shcherbina was number two in the Council of Ministers, while the KGB was a committee under the Council of Ministers, which means that Shcherbina was higher in the pecking order than any KGB official. It was the KGB that would have to fear Shcherbina, not the other way around.
* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': The episode "[[Recap/CSINYS01E04 Grand Master]]" deals with fugu (Japanese pufferfish served as sushi) being openly sold in a sushi bar. This is extremely illegal in the US because of how difficult it is to prepare fugu without poisoning your customers. Even in Japan there are very specific laws strictly regulating the sale and serving of fugu, and they still have several hospitalizations and deaths every year (though nearly all of them are of amateurs who tried to prepare it themselves instead of relying on a trained chef).

* ''Series/{{CSINY}}'': The episode "Grand Master" dealt with fugu (Japanese pufferfish served as sushi) being openly sold in a sushi bar. This is extremely illegal in the US because of how difficult it is to prepare fugu without poisoning your customers. Even in Japan there are very specific laws strictly regulating the sale and serving of fugu, and they still have several hospitalizations and deaths every year (though nearly all of them are of amateurs who tried to prepare it themselves instead of relying on a trained chef).

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "[[Recap/MidsomerMurdersS13E7 Not in My Back Yard]]", the tellers outside the polling station at the by-election are shown, not only with party political leaflets, but actually trying to hand them to voters. This would never be allowed under UK voting law.

* AmoralAttorney: Attorneys are supposed to be ''impartial'' and give all clients the best representation that they can possibly provide. A criminal defense attorney will tell you that providing the best possible representation to the worst people serves a twofold purpose: it keeps the police and prosecution honest and forces them to do things by the book, and it eliminates the possibility of any sort of successful appeal from the defendant. If the evidence against someone is overwhelming and there is absolutely no way they are getting off easy, it becomes a matter of sentence reduction - the attorney may try and work out a decent plea deal, or will try and go after iffy procedural elements or get flimsier charges reduced or tossed. If they absolutely cannot represent a client in good faith, they have an ethical and legal obligation to relieve themselves of their duty. The level of moral bankruptcy that is often seen in fiction would cause most attorneys to be disbarred, or even arrested, a ''long'' time ago. No attorney in their right mind is going to lie on the stand or knowingly allow a client to perjur themselves, or willfully mislead the court.

* FisticuffProvokingComment: This was originally covered under "fighting words" doctrine, and the case people often cite for this is ''Chaplinsky v New Hampshire''. At the time of that ruling, the court reasoned you didn't have a right to free speech if what you say could cause a reasonable person to retaliate with force. However, the scope of the law has been drastically narrowed in the years following. ''Terminiello v City of Chicago'' ruled seven years later that the purpose of free speech was to invite dispute, even if it incited people to anger. Cohen v California then narrowed the definition of "fighting words" to any speech that was ''inherently'' likely to invoke a violent reaction, not just words that might make a reasonable person want to hit you. ''Gooding v Wilson'' then determined that speech which was simply vulgar or offensive was protected under the first amendment (during a case which involved the defendant ''threatening to choke a police officer'' no less). Finally, ''Brandenburg v Ohio'' ruled that in order for "fighting words" to be outside first amendment protections, it has to have the intent to incite violence and that violence must be ''imminent and likely to happen.'' So no, you are not legally justified in punching someone for "hate speech" (a legal term that's already hard to define) under this doctrine -- successful uses involve extremely specific circumstances. What is much more likely to happen is that they are used to justify a reduced sentence or award. Say that someone is being sued for assault and battery after they got in a heated argument with another party, repeatedly punched them in the head, and gave them a concussion. During the discovery process, it is revealed that the argument started out fairly minor, was greatly escalated because the plaintiff was belligerent and verbally abusive and deliberately antagonized the defendant, and culminated in physical violence after the plaintiff used a racial slur. In a situation like that, there is a good chance that the plaintiff's conduct would result in a substantially reduced award or (in a criminal case) be treated as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

*** Person with powers had to register them period.

** Likewise, the final reveal of [[spoiler:Ace Swift ending up being killed by a thunderbolt discharging from a volatile thunder-cloud that Rainbow Dash had unwittingly left parked next to him could still open up Dash to charges of ''[[AccidentalMurder negligent]]'' homicide]]. This possibility is however [[NoEndorHolocaust not brought up at any point]].

* LeonineContract: Varies considerably by jurisdiction and the constract in question. But in general, contracts that have 'unconscionable' terms and conditions are considered unenforceable, and judges have the power to render such contracts null and void if they think a contract is unfair. Having said that, the legal definition of "unfair" generally means ''extremely'' unfair, Forcing the signer to become your life-long slave or trapping the signer into an egregious amount of unclear debt will just get the contract voided, and you might be looking at jail time depending on what the contract was asking the signer to do.

* MyLittlePanzer: Attempting to release an unsafe toy will likely get you in trouble with regulators and will likely result in a recall. Not to mention the class-action suits if a child is harmed.

* PayEvilUntoEvil: Courts ''hate'' vigilantes and revenge stories, and they're not going to give you a break just because [[AssholeVictim your victim really had it coming]]. At best, it ''may'' serve as a mitigating factor during sentencing depending on how good a reason you had. At worst, it will result in an even harsher sentence, especially if what you did [[DisproportionateRetribution struck beyond the pale]] or if the prosecution can establish that you were just looking for a good excuse to seriously harm or kill someone. The jury ''may'' take pity on you, but it's probably best not to bet your freedom on it unless your lawyer thinks it's an extremely good idea.

* ThereIsNoHigherCourt: Well, yes, ''eventually'' you'll get to the highest court that has jurisdiction to hear the case. Depending on the jurisdiction, that could be quite a few steps.

** [[SuicideNotMurder Arranging one's suicide to look like murder or an accident]] in order to provide one's beneficiaries with a hefty insurance payout is, uh, less necessary than fiction would make it seem. It is a common misconception that insurance companies ''never'' pay out in the case of suicide — a misconception that most insurers don't put a lot of effort into correcting, for obvious reasons. However, most term-life policies have a suicide clause of anywhere from two to five years in order to prevent people from taking out enormous policies and killing themselves immediately afterwards, both as a method of preventing fraud and as a suicide deterrent. After the clause expires, insurers are legally required to pay the full policy amount even if the insured person is known to have committed suicide. Obviously, [[UsefulNotes/{{Suicide}} suicide is never recommended]], even for the purpose of defrauding a financial institution.

* LeonineContract: Varies considerably by jurisdiction, but in general, contracts that have 'unconscionable' terms and conditions (such as forcing the signer to become a literal life-long slave of whoever owns the document) are considered unenforceable.

* MustStateIfYoureACop: Undercover officers have no obligation to inform criminals that they're police, even when asked about it point-blank. The idea that not stating they're a cop is "entrapment" is also false; entrapment is if a police officer has you commit an illegal act that you would not have done if the cop hadn't approached you. Asking this will just weaken your case should you be arrested, since it basically communicates that you knew full well what you were doing was a crime. It's also more likely the prosecutor will consider you a career criminal, rather than someone who broke the law once on a whim. The reason this trope still exists is that cops take advantage of this urban legend during their undercover sting operations. Cops aren't exactly in a hurry to correct someone if they think undercover cops "have to" say so.

* InheritanceMurder: Slayer clauses automatically prevent beneficiaries from inheriting anything if they kill the testator.

* InsanityDefense: In real life, ''if'' an insanity defense works, the defendant doesn't walk out of court a free person. They walk out of court in the company of a couple of burly orderlies from a mental institution. Whether they ever walk out of ''there'' a free person depends on the psychiatrists and psychologists. Their stay can very well be longer than what their prison sentence would have been. Also, an insanity defense is only used in less than 1% of US criminal trials and is successful ~25% of the time. That's less than one-quarter of one one-hundredth of criminal cases that it works. If it seems like it happens more often, that's because it's so rare and risky that it garners more attention when someone attempts it. Note that this has nothing to do with legal competence; being adjudicated incompetent is an entirely different matter, though it often follows that someone who is legally incompetent is likely also criminally incompetent.
** The number gets even bigger when you realize that 75% of the successful use of the defense are a result of the prosecution and the judge agreeing the person is/was insane (and thus it never actually goes to trial). A successful JURY verdict is only about 1 in 1600.

* AccidentalMarriage: If you didn't freely consent to a marriage, it's not a legal marriage, and can easily be annulled before a judge. After all, a marriage (legally speaking) is a contract between the spouses; if you didn't consent to the contract or signed it under duress, it's not legally binding. This is true for any kind of contract, let alone a marriage agreement. Not to mention, there's a few checks in the process before you can even sign a marriage agreement in the first place. If someone tried to force you into a marriage when you were drunk, high, unconscious, under the legal age to be married, with a gun to your head, or under threat of something terrible happening to you if you backed out, anybody could easily see that you weren't doing this of your own free will and refuse to issue a marriage license in the first place.

* ArtisticLicenseChildLaborLaws: When kids in fiction work despite being too young.

Laws varies from country to country and between jurisdictions. What may seem like an inaccurate portrayal of the legal process by residents of one region may actually be valid legal procedure in another, and vice versa. (This is common in historical works as most legal systems have been fine-tuned over centuries. Go back 200 years and chances are court procedures are comparatively sloppy.) As with all AcceptableBreaksFromReality, examples can become particularly egregious, especially when it's the substance of the law, not the procedure, that the creators are obfuscating.

* ''VideoGame/FableI'': The [[PlayerCharacter Hero]] automatically becomes the new rightful owner of the Darkwood Bordello when he retrieves the deed from where the original owner keeps it. Ordinarily, this wouldn't do anything to transfer the legal title from the original owner, but apparently [[MedievalEuropeanFantasy Albion]] operates under the "Possession is nine-tenths of the law" principle.

* ''Series/{{Yellowstone}}'': In season 4, there is a subplot hinging on whether a woman will "press charges" against Beth for aggravated assault. Jamie talks her out of it by reading from her police report, and the matter is dropped. However, private citizens don't determine whether someone will be prosecuted for a crime. They simply file a police report, and the district attorney makes the decision. So with the report already filed, Jamie should have had to convince the district attorney not to prosecute.

** "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS21E22TheBobNextDoor The Bob Next Door]]": Sideshow Bob intends to kill Bart at a fictional location called Five Corners where five states' borders meet, in such a way that the crime takes place in all five states (Bob stands in the first, fires the gun in the second, the bullet travels through the third, hits Bart in the fourth, who falls dead in the fifth), thus making it impossible to prosecute. In actuality, crossing state lines like this would result in Bob being charged ''federally'' with first-degree murder, with a probable death sentence given the child victim and premeditation. Also, most of the land at the real-life Four Corners is part the Native American reservation the Navajo Nation, which is a federal criminal jurisdiction by default.

* The plot of the 1991 remake of ''Film/CapeFear'' is driven by an attorney's choice not to bring up the sexual history of a rape victim, which caused his client to receive a much longer prison sentence. This ignores the fact that by the time of that film, most US states had passed "rape shield laws" which seriously limit, and very often prohibit, the victim's sexual history from being introduced in any manner at trial.

## If you've already been ''convicted'', even later-proven innocence is not a defense. You don't have a right to a pardon, a new trial (unless there was a procedural error), or any reduction of your sentence.[[note]]Depending on jurisdiction...post-conviction relief on the basis of actual innocence varies from state to state in the US. In particular, the emergence of DNA testing has lead to many new state laws allowing for challenging one's conviction based on evidence not available at the time. The Supreme Court has ruled that that's not a right, though.[[/note]]

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* In ''Film/IShotJesseJames'', the [[{{Outlaw}} outlaw]] Frank James is acquitted of charges in Colorado, and the jail immediately let him go, even though they acknowledge he's wanted in other states like Kansas and Missouri. In reality, the Colorado authorities would’ve alerted the other states (telegrams were widespread by 1892, so there wouldn’t be a long delay) and kept Frank locked up until one of the states contacted them about extradition via the U.S. Marshals.
* ''Film/TheHitmansBodyguard'': Massive liberties are taken to make Kincaid's testimony the only thing that can get Belorussian ex-dictator Dukhovich convicted at the Hague. A victim whose family was killed in front of him and was put in a work camp for three years has his ''entire'' testimony dismissed out of hand, with the implications that all of the other witnesses so far have had the same. Such testimony would not simply be declared "hearsay" (which, by the way, is when a witness is asked ''what they were told happened by somebody else'', not ''what happened to them personally'') and struck even if the defense claimed they were merely political opponents doing smear jobs. Somehow Kincaid was the only person to have [[spoiler:pictures]] as proof of Dukhovich's crimes despite this being set in the modern day and that is the only kind of evidence that seems to work. It's also entirely possible to have witnesses testify from remote locations. Kincaid could easily have testified on a video chat from his cell [[spoiler:and given the website information from there]]. This is common practice ''precisely'' when the witness might be endangered by coming to the trial. Even disregarding all this, you'd think the court would be a little more lax with the ExactTimeToFailure considering that ''someone tried to murder Kincaid en route to the Hague''.

* ''Film/Rampage2009'': In one of his political rants, Bill claims that firearms purchases do not mandate background checks, and cites this as proof of the gun industry's greed making mass murderers such as himself possible (whether or not Bill himself believes this is ambiguous, as he's a ManipulativeBastard trying to create random chaos, but the point is not refuted in-film). In truth, this gets complicated. Licensed firearms businesses (where, obviously, the overwhelming majority of gun sales take place) or "[=FFLs=]" are obligated under federal law to perform background checks on ALL their customers. No matter the location -- there is no such thing as an Internet or gun show "loophole" for any lawful purchase. ''Private'' purchases, where one person might decide to sell a gun to another person living in the same state (including at a gun show or over the Internet), do not. If it's across state lines, an FFL is supposed to act as a middle-man. "Universal background checks" effectively places an additional burden on private individuals, in addition to possibly trespassing privacy rights (although similar record-keeping and reporting measures are required for, say, selling automobiles or land between private individuals, and there are generally no concerns about privacy or the burden of reporting). In other words, Bill's statement is ''technically'' correct in an extremely forgiving ExactWords interpretation, but wildly misleading all the same.
* The writers of ''Film/HunterKiller'' seem to think that in Russia, the Minister of Defense can legally seize power in time of war if the President is incapacitated. In fact, the next in line is the Prime Minister. Also, Durov is clearly in his 50s, and yet his medals include the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_%22For_the_Victory_over_Germany_in_the_Great_Patriotic_War_1941%E2%80%931945%22 medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"]], which was only given out to [=WW2=] vets.

** The [=McGauer-Linden=] Act, which allows the government to imprison Latents without trial for refusing to join up, or execute Latents who hold particular abilities — especially as a huge number of Latents are [[ChildSoldiers teenagers]] — is extremely unconstitutional. In US law, while conscription is permitted, no Congressional act or executive order can violate the Constitution, and the [=McGrauer-Linden=] Act is among the most extreme imaginable violations of due process, which is protected by the Fifth Amendment.

* In ''Series/ThirtyRock'' when Jack and Avery’s daughter Liddy is born in Canada they’re upset that she won’t be able to be President one day. While not settled law, the general understanding of the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution is that you qualify for the presidency as long as you are a US citizen at birth, even if you aren’t born in the US. Liddy would be a US citizen by birth no matter what since both of her parents are. In 2008 when John [=McCain=], who was born in Panama to American parents while his father was stationed there in the Navy, ran for president the Senate commissioned a study that came to the conclusion that he would be eligible and passed a non-binding resolution in support of it. Ted Cruz, born in Canada to American parents (although his father wasn’t a citizen at the time), also ran for president without any serious pushback in this regard. [[note]] Although supposedly Joe Biden passed over Sen. Tammy Duckworth as his VP (who was born in Thailand under the same circumstances as [=McCain=]) in part because he didn’t want it to get dragged out in court. [[/note]] However, neither of them ended up winning so the question was never formally answered. Little Liddy would almost certainly be able to run for president but for now there is no definitive ruling.

** During the election arc in the first half of season three, President Dalton, after losing his party's primary and unable to win a majority in the electoral college while running as an independent, instead forces a three-way draw so that the election will be punted to the House of Representatives, where he ekes out a win. This part is perfectly legitimate under the quite unique UsefulNotes/AmericanPoliticalSystem (it's happened three times in real life), but after that his main rival, Governor Sam Evans, sues in Ohio, hoping to get the waiver of their sore-loser law that got Dalton on the ballot overturned under a lobbying law, thereby invalidating Dalton's win in Ohio and giving Evans the win. This idea ignores a fundamental fact about the electoral college: all the state popular vote does is ''suggest'' to the state's electors how the residents ''want'' them to vote,[[note]]although some states have passed laws awarding all Electoral College votes to the winner of the popular vote, or award the votes in the same proportion as the popular vote totals[[/note]] and all electoral college ballots are final once submitted. At most Evans might delegitimize Dalton's win and cause him political problems down the road, but he can't actually overturn the election once the electoral college and House have already voted.

** "Mr. Monk in Outer Space": When Monk proves that Brandon Lorber was already dead when he was shot, Stottlemeyer says that it's officially not their case since there's no crime. Actually, if the shooter wasn't certain that the man was dead at the time of the shooting, then this qualifies as attempted murder. And if he was certain that the man was dead, then he's guilty of desecrating the dead, which is a Class 6 felony.
** "Mr. Monk and the Captain's Wife": Captain Stottlemeyer is personally investigating the case of his wife being hit by a tow truck. Except cops are not allowed to take part in investigations involving immediate relatives, as it presents a conflict of interests.

* ''Series/MyWorldAndWelcomeToIt'': When [[TheRunaway Lydia decides to run away from home]] in "The Disenchanted," John insists on accompanying her. He claims he's required to do so because of what he calls a "very well-known case." He cites it as "Puberty vs. The Senate," which says fathers have to go with their runaway daughters to make sure they get where they're going. John even says you can look it up in the Congressional Record if you don't believe him. There is no such official law.

** It's claimed that the case Jennifer presided over in the pilot episode (which was attacked by Titania) would have been declared a mistrial, which would mean that the case is irrevocably "lost". This is not true in U.S. law -- the case would be retried due to extenuating circumstances (in this case, interference from an unrelated party), and the jury (and possibly even counsel) would have been reshuffled and the case tried again. If anything, the D.A.'s office would have simply leveled fresh charges against the accused party in the case, and would have moved Jennifer to a non-advocate role instead of active counsel. This is used as justification for the following...

** Jennifer is called in by her new boss in the second episode and told that he wants to give her a case representing a superpowered client (Abomination, a.k.a. Emil Blonsky, from ''Film/TheIncredibleHulk2008''). The character in question directly attacked her cousin in a ''very'' public incident more than a decade beforehand (and tried to kill him), and Jennifer notes that this is a clear conflict of interest because it could lead to the jury's perception that she is biased towards one of the participating parties in the incident. Her boss tells her that if she ''doesn't'' represent Blonsky, she will be let go again... which is a completely-absurd notion. Conflict of interest is a ''very'' serious deal, and the connection between one of the representing lawyers to a subject in the case likely would have been brought up in pre-trial or discovery. (The show excuses it by claiming Blonsky signed a waiver which absolves ''her'' of any conflict-of-interest concerns, which is also not how the U.S. legal system works). No attorney in their right mind would put a legal defender on a case where they have a very public connection to one of the parties and attempt to hold it over their head in order to ensure continued employment.

* ''Series/{{Suits}}'': Aside from all the considerable liberties taken with legal procedures and issues in almost every episode, there's the main premise of Harvey hiring Mike as a lawyer at his firm despite Mike having never gone to law school. The problem is that the show suggests that going to law school and passing the bar are the only requirements for getting a license to practice law. However, while it's true that most states do require applicants to the bar exam to have graduated from law school, there are several other requirements as well. Applicants must typically, among other things, take ''another'' exam on professional responsibility and submit a lengthy "character and fitness" questionnaire, before passing the bar exam itself and becoming a member of the state bar association. So, Mike's problem isn't just that he didn't go to law school - it's that he was never admitted to the state bar and, for ''that'' reason, is not licensed to practice law in New York state[[note]]Ironically, New York is actually one of the few states where qualifying for the bar doesn't require a law degree. Applicants can qualify for the New York bar exam through a legal apprenticeship (known as "reading the law"), although they must also have finished at least one year of law school[[/note]]. However, throughout the show, Mike and Harvey focus specifically on keeping everyone from finding out that he never went to law school, with no mention of all the other requirements to become a licensed attorney which Mike has presumably also not fulfilled.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S5E26IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", Jagger is [[PublicExecution publicly executed]] on May 25, 1964. The last person to be publicly executed in the United States was Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky on August 14, 1936.

* Nine times out of ten, when a non-champion in pro wrestling steals a championship belt and tries to goad the champion into putting the title itself on the line to get its physical symbol back, either the champion themselves or the resident authority figure will cave to this demand. This is often justified by the expression that "possession is nine-tenths of the law," meaning that according to professional wrestling, thievery is one of the best ways to become a #1 contender for a championship title. And even in that tenth time of ten when someone is recognized as the champion without the belt (as John Cena was when the belt was stolen by The Great Khali), it raises the question of why the wrestling company couldn't just make another belt.

* In ''Film/TheBeekeeper'', Special Agent Parker, an FBI agent brought in after her mother is wiped of her money by a group of scammers, pursues protagonist Adam Clay as he tears through said scammers. Not only should she not have been working the literal day after her mother's suicide, she shouldn't even be touching a case involving the people who scammed said mother and triggered said suicide with a [[WebVideo/ZeroPunctuation twelve-foot sterilized barge pole being held by somebody else]].