Don’t let our title fool you. Jane Bambauer and Brandon Garrett are friends of an open society, not its enemies. In distinct and distinctly important ways, they have engaged and expounded upon our concept of digital innocence, and in so doing, they have emboldened us to find the courage of our convictions and indeed to […]

Today, electronic footprints may follow us wherever we go. Electronic traces, left through a smartphone or other device, can be tracked to the scene of a crime, or they can place a person far from a crime scene. Those traces can sometimes be tracked far more reliably than the types of trace evidence traditionally examined […]

DNA is not the only path to exoneration. Some of the wrongfully accused exculpate themselves using video recordings, transaction records, and other digital information. Given the gluttonous data collection practices of our government, these exoneration stories should be much more frequent than they are. Digital Innocence by Joshua A.T. Fairfield and Erik Luna puts forward […]

Richard Fallon exposes a myth of textualism.  Textualists like to criticize other interpretive methods for giving judges too much leeway to impose their values on society.  As Fallon explains, however, textualist and nontextualist interpreters alike must inevitably consider values in giving meaning to legal texts.  While recognizing that the choice among different interpretive methods has […]

In their recent article, Congress’s (Limited) Power to Represent Itself in Court, Tara Leigh Grove and Neal Devins make the case against congressional litigation in defense of the constitutionality of federal statutes. They conclude that Congress, or a single House of Congress, may not defend the constitutionality of federal statutes in court even when the […]