What does equal justice under law actually require? Explore equal protection, consistent application of law, judicial neutrality, and when legally relevant differences can justify different treatment.
Operation Nightingale: Inside the South Florida Nursing Diploma Scheme That Put Thousands of Questionable Credentials Into Circulation
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?
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.
The Supreme Court follows precedent, but precedent is not unchangeable. From segregation and economic regulation to privacy and abortion, some landmark rulings exist because the Court concluded an earlier Supreme Court decision should no longer control.
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 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.
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.
A lawsuit can begin with one accident, one employee or one disputed transaction and uncover evidence of a much larger problem. Discovery can expose internal records, repeated complaints, hidden patterns and conduct nobody expected to find.
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.
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.
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.
The Digital Evidence You Create Without Knowing It | Activist Legal
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.
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.
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.
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.
