ARTHUR BRANCH

'Arthur Branch' is a fictional attorney and a regular character on the TV crime dramas ''Law & Order'' and ''. Branch has also appeared on '', '', and ''Conviction'', making him the only ''Law & Order'' character to appear in all five fiction series of the Law & Order franchise.

Contents

Actor

Character background

Trivia

References

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.

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. They have at least one child, a son named Bobby (episode "Sheltered"). They also have a grandson and a granddaughter.
Branch is elected the District Attorney of New York County in the 2002 episode "American Jihad", replacing Nora Lewin. His administration is a sharp contrast to that of Lewin, as he has little difficulty in accepting capital punishment in certain cases, 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, 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 '' episode, 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.
He fires Southerlyn in the episode "Ain't No Love" because he feels she is inappropriately sympathetic toward the defendant she is prosecuting. Despite her parting fears, Branch says he is not firing her because she's a lesbian.
In May 2007 it was announced that Thompson was leaving ''Law & Order'' following the conclusion of the 2006-2007 season in order to explore the possibility of running for the Presidency.^[1]. How Branch will be written out of the show has yet to be confirmed. According to MSNBC, McCoy will succeed Branch.^[2]

Trivia

★ Branch, if real, would be the first Republican to serve as New York County District Attorney since Thomas Dewey in the 1930s.

References

1. http://www.fox28.com/News/index.php?ID=19323
2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19102106/