Laws are not always clear when applied to real disputes. Learn how courts interpret statutes, constitutions, regulations, and precedent—and why text, context, legislative structure, and prior decisions matter.
An examination of America's mortgage default system, including nonjudicial foreclosures, loss mitigation, property valuations, HOA liens and nationwide legal services.
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.
Some of the most consequential lawsuits never reach a jury. From dismissal and summary judgment to jurisdictional rulings and settlements, major cases show how litigation can be decided long before trial.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Modern investigations can use location data to identify devices near a crime scene, potentially drawing innocent bystanders into an investigation simply because their phones were nearby.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
