Arthur Branch

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Arthur Branch
Law & Order character

Time on show	2002-
Preceded by	Nora Lewin
Succeeded by	Current
First appearance	American Jihad
Portrayed by	Fred Dalton Thompson

Arthur Branch is a fictional character on the long-running TV crime drama Law & Order, portrayed by former United States Senator Fred Dalton Thompson. Thompson was also a regular cast member as Branch on the short-lived spin-off Law & Order: Trial by Jury, making him one of the few actors to have a regular role on two TV series simultaneously as the same character.

[edit] Character background

Branch graduated from Yale University and later was a professor at Yale Law School. He and his wife, Maggie, have lived in New York City since the early 1980s. They have at least one child, a son named Bobby (episode "Sheltered").

Branch was elected the District Attorney of New York County in 2002, replacing Nora Lewin. His administration was a sharp contrast to that of Lewin, as he had little difficulty in accepting capital punishment in certain cases, and condemned what he perceived to be any outlandish interpretations of the US Constitution, including the existence of a right to privacy. This often put him in conflict with Jack McCoy, a relatively liberal centrist, and his previous assistant Serena Southerlyn, a liberal idealist and feminist. He had few quarrels with Alexandra Borgia, who was more conservative in her viewpoints than Southerlyn, in the mold of Southerlyn's predecessor, Abbie Carmichael. His relationship with Connie Rubirosa, who is not quite so liberal as Southerlyn, remains to be fully seen.

While his legal philosophy is decidedly conservative, he is not blindly partisan; he ascribes cynical, political motives to drug prohibition and is not averse to seeking alternatives to the death penalty when he thinks it appropriate. While he personally opposes abortion rights, in an SVU episode, he ordered Olivia Benson and Casey Novak to immediately arrest a doctor who deliberately misled a young pregnant woman to ensure her pregnancy would develop past the legal time limit for the procedure, thus prompting her to desperately ask her boyfriend to assault her to induce a still birth. He fired Southerlyn because he felt she was inappropriately sympathetic toward the defendant she was prosecuting ("Ain't No Love"). Despite her parting fears, Branch said it was not because Southerlyn was a lesbian.

[edit] Trivia

Branch, a Republican, would be the first member of that party to serve as New York County District Attorney since Thomas Dewey in the 1930s.

When Thompson first accepted the role, he was still a sitting member of the Senate (his term would not expire for several more weeks), thus making Thompson the first sitting US Senator to accept an acting position - although he had already been an actor for many years before being elected.