How Come WestLaw Doesn’t Have The Caprican Criminal Codes?

MINOR SPOILERS FOR BATTLESTAR GALACTICA FOLLOW:

There’s an interesting observation on federalism and Battlestar Galactica over at The Corner:

The president has her undies in a bundle over what law to try Gaius Baltar under. Caprican? Sagitarrian? I have a hard time buying that the 12 Colonies could have a strong colonial military, president, beauracracy (roslin was 43rd in line of succession), etc, without having some sort of Colonial statute against treason, or say a Colonial law system.

Of course, maybe I should just ‘lighten up, francis’ and enjoy the damned show.

We do know that the Colonies started as 12 different states, then united 52 years before the Cylon attack under the Articles of Colonization. (This took place around the time of the first war against the Cylons.) The Articles of Colonization are, unsurprisingly modeled after the American Articles of Confederation, so it is not all that surprising that there wouldn’t necessarily be a strong federal system in place.

However, it is interesting that there wouldn’t be some Colonial law out there — after all, we know that the Articles of Confederation had at least a bicameral legislature and an Executive (the Quorum of Twelve plus another lower house and a Presidency) and that there was even a Cabinet-level position for education. One would think that if the Colonial government could control educational funding, they’d certainly have punishments for things like treason and abetting the genocide of human race.

Either they haven’t quite thought these things through, or we’ll all a bunch of obsessive nerds with too much time on our hands.

I’m voting for the latter…

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