Due process limits how government may act against individuals. Learn how notice, meaningful hearings, neutral decision-makers, evidence, and substantive protections help make government action fair.
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?
Court-ordered community service is supposed to require actual service. But documented schemes have sold certificates claiming defendants completed hours they never worked, turning a sentencing requirement into a piece of paper.
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.
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.
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.
Facial recognition is turning the human face into a searchable identifier used by phones, airports, businesses and law enforcement, raising lasting questions about privacy, accuracy and identity.
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
