What does equal justice under law actually require? Explore equal protection, consistent application of law, judicial neutrality, and when legally relevant differences can justify different treatment.
Operation Nightingale: Inside the South Florida Nursing Diploma Scheme That Put Thousands of Questionable Credentials Into Circulation
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.
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.
From presidential orders to agency rules, some landmark cases began when government officials claimed authority the courts said they did not have. Here is what happens when judges draw that line.
Why do courts follow earlier decisions? Learn how precedent and stare decisis promote consistency, when prior decisions are binding, and why courts sometimes overturn established precedent.
Police can search many things after making a lawful arrest, but a smartphone is different. Here is why the Supreme Court generally requires a warrant before officers search the digital contents of an arrested person's phone.
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.
An ordinary photograph can preserve evidence nobody noticed when it was taken. Reflections, shadows, clocks, clothing, background objects and tiny details can later establish where someone was, when something happened, or whether a story is possible.
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.
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.
The person who knows the most about a case may never testify. Death, disappearance, privilege, the Fifth Amendment and strategic decisions can leave jurors deciding what happened without hearing from a crucial witness.
A lawsuit can begin with one accident, one employee or one disputed transaction and uncover evidence of a much larger problem. Discovery can expose internal records, repeated complaints, hidden patterns and conduct nobody expected to find.
Modern cars can record location, speed, braking, diagnostics and driving behavior. As vehicles become computers on wheels, a growing legal fight is developing over who can collect, use, share and control that data.
DNA can identify more than the person who provided it. Genetic genealogy can use biological relationships to generate investigative leads, raising lasting questions about crime solving, family privacy and genetic data.
Screenshots of texts, social media posts and websites appear in court every day. But a screenshot does not prove itself. Courts still have to determine what it shows, where it came from and whether it is authentic.
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.
A confident eyewitness can be extraordinarily persuasive to a jury. But when that confidence developed—and what happened after the witness first saw the suspect—can matter as much as how certain the witness appears in court.
