What makes a court proceeding fair? Explore the principles of impartiality, notice, meaningful hearings, evidence, reasoned decisions, consistent law, and judicial review.
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.
An examination of America's mortgage default system, including nonjudicial foreclosures, loss mitigation, property valuations, HOA liens and nationwide legal services.
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.
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.
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.
Social media posts can survive for years through screenshots, account records and other copies. When a lawsuit, criminal case or other dispute begins, an old post can become evidence with consequences its author never anticipated.
A few recorded words can transform a lawsuit or criminal case. Phone calls, voicemails, body cameras and other recordings can expose contradictions, preserve admissions and reveal what witnesses said before they knew a courtroom was coming.
Some cases have no eyewitness, confession or video of the critical event. Instead, lawyers build the story from timing, records, behavior, physical evidence and dozens of facts that may look insignificant until they are put together.
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 locked phone can contain years of private information. Whether the government can force someone to unlock it may depend on how it is locked, what investigators already know and which court is deciding the issue.
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.
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.
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.
A witness can look directly at a defendant and sincerely say, “That's the person I saw,” yet still be mistaken. Decades of wrongful-conviction cases have changed what courts know about eyewitness memory and certainty.
Two cameras can record the same event and make it look completely different. Angle, timing, sound, missing seconds and perspective can turn video evidence into the beginning of a courtroom dispute rather than the end of one.
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.
A mistaken identification, shared name, bad database entry or flawed investigation can put an innocent person in handcuffs. What happens when police arrest the wrong person—and the mistake is not discovered immediately?
