The television show “Breaking Bad” tells the fictional story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher in New Mexico who becomes a drug kingpin after a cancer diagnosis leaves him looking for a way to support his family in the event of his death. Walter is helped in his endeavors by his lawyer, Saul Goodman, who earned his law degree from the University of American Samoa’s correspondence program. The show does not address if Saul wrote for the school’s law review. To “be on law review,” a scholarly journal focusing on legal issues, is a highly prestigious position for law students. Articles in law reviews are often written by experts in their fields and can be authoritative and persuasive in the formation of new law.
Noting “Breaking Bad” as “arguably New Mexico’s largest contribution to pop culture since the Roswell UFO incident,” a special edition New Mexico Law Review has been published which includes eight scholarly articles based on Walter, Saul, Walter’s wife, and the real legal, procedural and social issues addressed in the show’s 2008 to 2013 run on AMC. The articles consist of a review of the show as a teaching aid in criminal procedure classes, the importance of mitigation in death penalty cases, myths regarding the attorney-client privilege, women in the drug war, thinking clearly during negotiations, protecting interests while selling a product and police deception and recent findings of excessive force by some Albuquerque police officers.