Why do courts issue written opinions and explain their rulings? Explore how judicial reasoning promotes transparency, accountability, precedent, consistency, and meaningful appellate review.
Operation Nightingale: Inside the South Florida Nursing Diploma Scheme That Put Thousands of Questionable Credentials Into Circulation
An examination of America's mortgage default system, including nonjudicial foreclosures, loss mitigation, property valuations, HOA liens and nationwide legal services.
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.
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 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.
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.
AI systems increasingly help make decisions about employment, credit, insurance, housing and other opportunities. When an automated decision causes harm, the law still has to determine who is responsible.
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.
Modern cars can generate location, navigation and driving data long after a trip ends. When police investigate a crime, information created by the vehicle itself can become evidence.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Some cases turn on evidence that was there from the beginning but seemed unimportant at first. A receipt, photograph, timestamp or forgotten record can take on an entirely different meaning once a case reaches trial.
A doorbell camera installed to protect one home can capture a crash, theft, missing person or crime involving complete strangers. That ordinary recording can later become important evidence in someone else’s case.
