What makes a court proceeding fair? Explore the principles of impartiality, notice, meaningful hearings, evidence, reasoned decisions, consistent law, and judicial review.
An examination of America's mortgage default system, including nonjudicial foreclosures, loss mitigation, property valuations, HOA liens and nationwide legal services.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A forgotten recording, newly found document, DNA result or unexpected witness can surface after a verdict and challenge what everyone thought was settled. But new evidence does not automatically reopen a closed case.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
