As the 21st century advances, and the rapid proliferation of technology such as smartphones continues to revolutionize everyday life, courtrooms and legal experts must prepare to deal with ever-changing social and legal landscapes. Certain technological advances represent more challenging obstacles than others, and the judicial system must remain both principled and flexible in order to adequately tackle the legal issues of tomorrow.
The advent and ensuing rapid spreading of smartphones throughout the developed world poses a series of worrying questions for legal experts. Political activist, defendants in criminal and civil cases, and legal scholars and actors have all made use of smartphones to further their agendas. Now more than ever, more efficient methods of communication and data-gathering stand to outperform more dated methods, potentially leaving the unprepared legal actor behind, and, worse, seriously disadvantaged in a court of law.
Smartphones have allowed both everyday actors and legal specialist to force conversations about previously uncomfortable topics, and permit extraordinarily intrusive methods of gathering data. Consider eyewitness testimony, which has long served as a bastion of evidence in both civil and criminal litigation. Once unreliable testimony, given from a witness present at or near the scene of a crime, is now often backed up with videos and pictures taken by said witness with their phone, often during or moments after a crime or dispute has taken place. Gone are the days of he-said she-said testimony, where one witness’ word is set against another, as more likely than not every word of, say, a domestic dispute can be recorded by the next-door neighbor.
Police departments throughout the United States in particular have come to experience this change firsthand, as instances of fatal shootings are recorded on smartphones, before being uploaded to social media within minutes of their occurrence. Officers under investigation who could once claim in a court of law that they acted under a potential threat to their livelihood may now be contested by video footage of fatal events. Not all of technology’s impacts are negative, however; those same law enforcement officials may be legally exonerated by footage recorded by their bodycams or dashcams, which are enjoying a renaissance of cost reduction and quality enhancement.
Politicians, too, now live in a world where their every action is under surveillance, and where each word they’ve spoken, or message they’ve sent, can be documented and presented in a court of law against them.
The implications of this phenomenon reach the greatest heights of American government; the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals recently noted that the 45th president of the United States’ online tweets, sent from his smartphone, were used as evidence to rule against him in his administration’s appeal to lift an injunction on an executive order. As more and more political and judicial actors turn to their trusted digital devices to voice their opinions on the web, judges and lawyers will be waiting to pounce on potentially damning statements.
In preparing themselves for the digital renaissance which is already well underway, legal actors will need to formulate new statutes and strategies for dealing with data and potentially incriminating evidence posted in droves online.
Law firms would be wise to invest heavily in technological training for aged executives who may be unfamiliar with new advancements, while lawyers must be prepared to interfere with their client’s digital habits, should they have the potential to derail a case. With or without the consent of judicial experts, the digital revolution will continue to shake the foundations of our legal system for years to come.
source http://www.winterwoodlodge.com/the-impact-of-smartphones-on-the-judiciary/
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