Due process limits how government may act against individuals. Learn how notice, meaningful hearings, neutral decision-makers, evidence, and substantive protections help make government action fair.
Court-ordered community service is supposed to require actual service. But documented schemes have sold certificates claiming defendants completed hours they never worked, turning a sentencing requirement into a piece of paper.
A federal jury found that an insurance executive and marketing CEO built a massive ACA enrollment fraud scheme by targeting homeless, unemployed and vulnerable people, generating at least $180 million in federal subsidies.
Federal appeals courts sometimes interpret the same federal law differently, creating a circuit split. Until the Supreme Court intervenes, the same law can effectively mean different things in different parts of the country.
Some famous lawsuits appear to be about environmental protection, marriage, government policy or constitutional rights. But before a court can decide who is right, it may have to answer a more basic question: does this person have the right to bring the case at all?
From the early web to smartphones, social media and computer databases, courts have repeatedly decided how old constitutional protections apply to technologies their authors could never have imagined.
A case can have strong evidence and still unravel because of a missed deadline, lost record, inconsistent statement or procedural mistake. Some of the most consequential failures in litigation have little to do with who was originally right.
AI can produce images, music, writing and software in seconds, but copyright law was built around human creators. Courts and the Copyright Office are defining where human authorship ends and machine generation begins.
Facial recognition and other automated systems can give police powerful investigative leads. When the technology makes a mistake, however, an innocent person can suddenly become the focus of an investigation.
A confession can seem like the strongest evidence imaginable. Yet documented wrongful convictions show that innocent people sometimes confess—and understanding why can completely change how a case is viewed.
Photos, email, social media, cloud files and online accounts can survive long after their owner dies. The law increasingly has to decide who may access, preserve or control a person's digital life.
A receipt can establish where money went, when a purchase happened and whether a story fits the records. But sometimes the most important evidence is the receipt that should exist—and doesn't.
A fence, tree, driveway, noise complaint or property line can turn two neighbors into courtroom opponents. Neighbor disputes show how small conflicts become expensive lawsuits—and why the original disagreement is often only the beginning.
A witness gives one account immediately after an event and another months later. Changed stories can reshape a case—but the reason for the change may matter as much as the inconsistency itself.
Facial recognition is turning the human face into a searchable identifier used by phones, airports, businesses and law enforcement, raising lasting questions about privacy, accuracy and identity.
Deleting a text, photo, email or file does not always destroy it. Copies, backups, cloud systems, recipients and forensic recovery can allow supposedly deleted evidence to reappear months or years later.
Witnesses can disagree about what happened, but timestamps often tell a different story. Phone records, receipts, cameras, access logs and other records can turn a confusing case into a minute-by-minute reconstruction.
AI can now create convincing photographs, recordings and voices depicting events that never happened. Deepfakes are forcing courts to reconsider how digital evidence can be authenticated and trusted.
