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List of Law & Order characters

Wikimedia list article

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ1412109 ↗
Source-derived summary

The American television police procedural and legal drama Law & Order (1990–2010 and 2022–present) follows the fictional cases of a group of police detectives and prosecutors who represent the public in the criminal justice system. Each season features a main cast of six main characters: two detectives and their supervising officer (Law), alongside two prosecuting district attorneys and the Manhattan District Attorney (& Order).

The series, with a run of more than 20 seasons to date, is known for its revolving cast, with most of its original having left the show within the first five seasons. The progression of the record for longest serving main cast members of the series is: Jerry Orbach as Det. Lennie Briscoe (1992–2004, 274 episodes), S. Epatha Merkerson as Lt. Anita Van Buren (1993–2010, 390 episodes) and Sam Waterston as EADA/DA Jack McCoy (1994–2010 and 2022–2024, 405 episodes).

Characters

Main characters

Main character summary details

Police

Sergeants

Senior detectives

Junior detectives

Supervising officers

Prosecutors

Executive Assistant District Attorneys

Assistant District Attorneys

In the 1997 season 7 episode "We Like Mike", Caleb Duff is listed as Assistant District Attorney beneath Adam Schiff as District Attorney and John J. McCoy as Executive Assistant District Attorney at the New York County District Attorney's Office, though he never appears on screen.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “List of Law & Order characters” is wikimedia list article. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through List, Order and characters, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1990, 2010, 2022, 1992—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, List, Order and characters is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “wikimedia list article” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1412109. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1990, 2010, 2022 and 1992.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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  2. Expand the search: follow List of Law & Order characters primary sources, List of Law & Order characters archive and List research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of Law & Order characters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.