Up to this episode I was not a great fan of that franchise, though I like Pike very much, he is just the person I would have appreciated much more as the Captain of the Enterprise in TOS than Kirk, 40 years ago, when I was young.
However, this is for me the first grown-up episode, and it isn't an accident that "The Orville" had a similar intriguing episode about gender identity in its 3rd season (completing a story arc that begun in season one with a failed trial).
Here, everything is laid out in a very easy setting and, since court cases are a big part of everyday's life in the U. S., it is made with the uttermost diligence in pacing and dialogue. Not a minute was wasted as a filler or surplus backstory.
Very impressive, I must say, and the only point that I have against it, is what someone here wrote in a review. Technically, the right approach for defence would be that the violated law itself is not only against Federation's principles and "bad", but indeed unconstitutional, and therefore void.
8 Stars for a very good and mature episode.
As an afterword to all fellow reviewers who are complaining about wokeness - please change your mind or stop watching Star Trek before you can manage to progress into a sentiment that agrees with what Star Trek stands for. If anything, diversity is one of the core agreements in this universe, and Roddenberry himself introduced it with the famous Uhura kiss half a century before.
