Arthur Branch
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article does not cite any references or sources. (May 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
| Law & Order character | |
| Arthur Branch | |
|---|---|
| Time on show | 2002—2007 |
| Preceded by | Nora Lewin |
| Succeeded by | Jack McCoy |
| First appearance | "American Jihad" |
| Last appearance | "The Family Hour" |
| Portrayed by | Fred Thompson |
Arthur Branch is a fictional attorney and a regular character on the TV crime dramas Law & Order and Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Branch has also appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Conviction.
[edit] Actor
Branch is portrayed by Fred Thompson, making Thompson one of the few actors to have a regular role on two TV series simultaneously as the same character. When Thompson first accepted the role, he was still a sitting member of the United States Senate — his term would not expire for several more weeks — thus making Thompson the first sitting U.S. Senator to accept an acting job playing someone other than himself; however, he had already been an actor for many years before being elected. Senators George Allen and Robert Byrd subsequently acted in Gods and Generals in 2003, after Thompson's debut.
Thompson was the only regular on Law & Order who actually was once a prosecutor in real life. He worked as an assistant U.S. attorney from 1969 to 1972.
[edit] Character background
Branch graduated from Yale University and later was a professor at Yale Law School. He and his wife, Lillian, have lived in New York City since the early 1980s from the state of Georgia. They have at least one child, a son named Bobby (L&O: "Sheltered"). They also have a grandson and a granddaughter (L&O: "True Crime"). He speaks with a slight southern accent and commonly uses colorful metaphors.
Branch is elected the District Attorney of New York County (L&O: "American Jihad"), replacing Nora Lewin; this would make him the first Republican to hold the position in nearly 70 years. His administration is a sharp contrast to that of Lewin, as he has little difficulty in accepting capital punishment in certain cases (L&O: "Tragedy on Rye") and does not believe in the existence of a Constitutional right to privacy.
This often puts him in conflict with Jack McCoy, a relatively liberal centrist, as well as his previous assistant Serena Southerlyn, a liberal idealist and feminist. He has few quarrels with Alexandra Borgia, who is 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 as liberal as Southerlyn, is never 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.
Although he personally opposes abortion rights, he orders Olivia Benson and Casey Novak to arrest a doctor who deliberately misleads 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 (SVU: "Rockabye").
He fires Southerlyn because he feels she is inappropriately sympathetic towards the defendant she is prosecuting. Despite her parting fears, Branch says he is not firing her because she's a lesbian.(L&O: "Ain't No Love")
In May 2007 it was announced that Thompson was leaving Law & Order in order to run for the Republican Party's 2008 nomination for President . It was also confirmed that Jack McCoy was chosen to serve out the remainder of Branch's term of office in (SVU: "Blinded"), but no reason for Branch's departure has been given on air.
[edit] References
|
|||||||||||
|
||||||||
