Atlas Obscura has an excellent piece on the title "Esquire" and its connection to the American legal profession. The writer is L.A.-based freelancer Dan Nosowitz. He writes:
One of the weirder movements in modern American political action attempted to attack a title so vigorously that it would have essentially collapsed the entire history of the American government. The movement didn’t succeed, because it was both factually wrong and wildly misguided, but it was wrong in a really interesting way. It relied on the title "Esquire," which is one of the more common but most unusual ways a person can ask to be addressed.
With the imprimatur of federal law, today is National Freedom Day, celebrating the day that President Abraham Lincoln signed the joint congressional resolution proposing the 13th Amendment in 1865. Congress passed the proposal the preceding day, and it was ratified on December 6, 1865. Today also is the first day of African-American History Month.
With my comparative law class recently, I had the occasion to visit a classic treatment of race in Star Trek's original series. We were studying "the perspective problem" in comparative research, which refers to the way a legal system (any social system) can look one way when studied by someone within it, and a different way when studied by an outside observer.
There's a scene in the 1969 episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" (s3e15) that's been talked about for half a century even by social commentators outside science fiction and entertainment communities. The theme of the episode is almost cliché insofar as it typifies the tendency of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and 1960s showrunner Gene L. Coon to employ heavy-handed metaphor to effect social comment. Still, the story is effective.
What cliché might have diminished was restored and then some by ferocious performances in Frank Gorshin (Bele) and Lou Antonio (Lokai). Gorshin, who continued acting right up until his death in 2005, was already a well known villain to TV audiences in the 1960s, as Adam West Batman's Riddler. Antonio had recently played chain-gang prisoner Koko in Cool Hand Luke (1967). He followed up Star Trek with a four-decades-long career in TV directing that ranged from The Partridge Family and Rockford Files to legal classics Picket Fences, Boston Legal, and The Guardian, not to mention one West Wing.
The first scene below sets the stage; you only need about the first two minutes. I'm sorry that CBS has labeled it inappropriate for children, so you have to open a new window to watch it. I rather disagree; I recommend the clip especially for children, especially now, part of an essential diet of dialog about race and America.
The second scene below delivers the pièce de résistance. I won't spoil it, in case it's new to you.
