Real Lawyer Reacts to A Few Good Men (with Real JAG!)

Welcome back to LegalEagle. The most avian legal analysis on the internets.

GOT A VIDEO IDEA? TELL ME!
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

MY COURSES
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

SOCIAL MEDIA & DISCUSSIONS
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

BUSINESS INQUIRIES
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

LEGAL-ISH DISCLAIMER
▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).

Special thanks:
Stock video and imagery provided by Getty Images and AP Archives
Music provided by Epidemic Sound
Maps provided by MapTiler/Geolayers

[mattert]

I'm liking these collaborations with lawyers from different fields

[lazysylph]

A former marine friend shared this with me: How do you know if someone is a marine? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

[jamesdyer]

“What do you call someone in the Navy?” As a Sailor I completely expected the Marine to take a jab at us LOL.

[MagiconIce]

"Just call them marines, God's Awful Little Children"

I laughed so hard on that self-description xD

[NightDocs]

Just make this dude a permanent cohost this is such a great dynamic

[fayethhanna]

I went into my law internship knowing no one would ever act that way in court…until they did. A DA ended up yelling at a witness because she was defending her credibility and rightfully so. Everyone was appalled. It ended up making the trial longer than it needed to be

[MentalAtheist]

The scene when he holds up the (Code Red Mtn Dew)
and screams "DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED" made me lose it.

[dustinschaffner]

During the table-read for Jack's scenes in rehearsal, apparently he walked in to the room in full military regalia and never broke character once. The other actors were also stunned by the fact that he delivered all his lines without the script in front of him, at the TABLE-READ! Jack is the real deal!

[StrongMed]

As a physician, I'm going to point out that the claim, "a chemical reaction called lactic acidosis caused his lung to begin bleeding", is also nonsense. Pulmonary hemorrhage might cause lactic acidosis by causing severe hypoxemia (low oxygen levels in the blood), but the reverse cause-and-effect relationship is not a thing. It's a seemingly tiny detail that has always irritated me about this movie.

[ThePirateburke]

Watching him internally scream when Devin called Marines “soldiers” was fantastic

[fadingnocturne]

His "YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID" at 10:10 killed me

[Otaku]

The scene where Pvt. Pyle is held down and beaten in Full Metal Jacket is probably the best example of what this movie refers to as 'code red' ever shown in film. In the Marine Corps at that time, this was referred to as a 'Blanket Party' and, believe it or not, is documented to have occurred at USMCRD Paris Island on several occasions. There has even been a case of a United States Army Veteran being diagnosed with PTSD in 2015 for a 'blanket party' he received during basic training in the late 1970s.

[kenhenderson]

Aaron Sorkin was a struggling playwright in New York. His sister was serving as a Navy JAG attorney in Washington. One night in a phone call, she described an interesting case where a young Marine at Guantanamo Bay was accused of assault against another Marine and the legal question was if the accused was ordered to do this and, if so, did the accused Marine have the obligation to refuse this illegal order. Sorkin found this fascinating and turned it into a "courtroom drama". He embellished a LOT for dramatic purposes, but it worked, the play got produced, was a hit and was made into a hit movie.

[juliameindl]

Fun fact: my school runs a mock trial program and we just had a case where ex police officer turned mall cop Lieutenant Toni Jessep tased a patron of the mall “in self defense” and the mall was being sued for negligence in hiring Jessep. Anyways, in Jessep’s affidavit, there is a paragraph that is a parody of the “you can’t handle the truth” speech with lines such as “you want me at that mall.” And “you NEED me at that mall”

To prep for the case, we were shown this scene and everyone playing Jessep was told to take notes.

[paulzuk]

I think Gitmo being a sleepy posting back then was pretty much the point, along with Jessup being entirely too invested in The Mission (TM) and essentially creating a cult built around himself ; It probably took root on the base *because* it was a sleepy posting in a post-cold war world where the marines were starting to feel useless.

Santiago wasn't a problem because he was incompetent, he was a problem because he didn't share the cult's values and didn't *want* to share them. Ask anyone who's ever tried to leave Scientology how that usually goes.

[Pseudowolf]

Fun fact: While this video shows a brief clip of the Villanova University drill team, the people portraying the marines in the opening were actually the Texas A&M University Fish Drill Team. Since the Marines did not authorize any participation in the film (due to the portrayal of the Corps) the filmmakers could not use an actual Marine drill team and instead asked the Fish Drill Team to perform.
Technically, these were former Fish Drill Team members ("fish" is A&M slang for freshmen) and not that year's actual drill team.

[seancstew]

The "16 hours of Silent Drill" Line nearly had me fall out of my chair.

[PavilionParty]

You just incited an actual spit take out of me with the animation of Tom Cruise holding up a bottle of Mt. Dew, yelling at whoever ordered the Code Red.

[SorFig]

One of my aunt's is my only personal experience with someone who is a lawyer. My favorite thing about her is actually how nice she is as just a human-being to talk to and hang out with. Watching you two go back and forth gave me the same good vibes. Much love from Zimbabwe.

[nathanielschwartz]

9:40 While I can’t speak for the military specifically, I DO know that in the medical field there is actually a color code for emergencies that occur in the hospital, and in the hospital setting a code red means that there is a fire in the building.

Other emergency codes include code blue (respiratory emergency or someone has stopped breathing), code silver (someone has a weapon in the hospital), and code white (someone is behaving violently).