Why do courts issue written opinions and explain their rulings? Explore how judicial reasoning promotes transparency, accountability, precedent, consistency, and meaningful appellate review.
Flock license-plate cameras can record millions of vehicles and make their movements searchable. Courts are now confronting a difficult Fourth Amendment question: when does observation on public roads become surveillance?
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.
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.
A hidden confession, disputed scientific testimony, a recorded police interview and thousands of cell-phone location records show how a single piece of evidence can transform a court case.
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.
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.
Phones and apps can create detailed records of where a device has traveled. In a criminal investigation, location history can place a phone near a crime scene—or help show that its owner was somewhere else.
Doorbell cameras, store surveillance systems and home security cameras record far more than crimes against their owners. When something happens nearby, privately recorded video can become important evidence in a police investigation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Digital Evidence You Create Without Knowing It | Activist Legal
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.
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.
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 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?
