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Men in Black (1997): No Warrants, No Oversight, No Problem
Men in Black (1997) is the rare film where the heroes might be committing more crimes than the actual villain.
In this episode, Jenny, Liz, and Diana put the entire MIB organization on trial. We start with the big one: this agency has no government oversight, no congressional accountability, and funds itself through alien tech patents (microwaves, Velcro, possibly CDs). From there we get into the neuralyzer, which is almost certainly assault, a Fourth Amendment violation, and a mass-consent nightmare given that agents are using it on every civilian who sees something weird, with no warrant, no judicial sign-off, and no long-term safety data on what repeated memory wipes actually do to a brain. We also cover Agent J's forced identity erasure and what it means to legally stop existing, mass warrantless surveillance of every human on Earth, whether Edgar the Bug faces murder and impersonation charges under intergalactic law, whether casting Sylvester Stallone as an extraterrestrial in a sci-fi comedy qualifies as defamation, and whether an alien baby delivered on US soil gets birthright citizenship.
The movie gets a 0 out of 10 for legal accuracy and a 10 out of 10 for everything else.
Follow us on Instagram @letsruinitpodcast and wherever you get your podcasts.
For entertainment only; not legal advice.
View all episodes
By Kashmann ProductionsMen in Black (1997) is the rare film where the heroes might be committing more crimes than the actual villain.
In this episode, Jenny, Liz, and Diana put the entire MIB organization on trial. We start with the big one: this agency has no government oversight, no congressional accountability, and funds itself through alien tech patents (microwaves, Velcro, possibly CDs). From there we get into the neuralyzer, which is almost certainly assault, a Fourth Amendment violation, and a mass-consent nightmare given that agents are using it on every civilian who sees something weird, with no warrant, no judicial sign-off, and no long-term safety data on what repeated memory wipes actually do to a brain. We also cover Agent J's forced identity erasure and what it means to legally stop existing, mass warrantless surveillance of every human on Earth, whether Edgar the Bug faces murder and impersonation charges under intergalactic law, whether casting Sylvester Stallone as an extraterrestrial in a sci-fi comedy qualifies as defamation, and whether an alien baby delivered on US soil gets birthright citizenship.
The movie gets a 0 out of 10 for legal accuracy and a 10 out of 10 for everything else.
Follow us on Instagram @letsruinitpodcast and wherever you get your podcasts.
For entertainment only; not legal advice.