The Tube court

Posted: March 3, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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The NY Times note another change is how things are done:

The Supreme Court is entering the YouTube era.

The first citation in a petition filed with the court last month, for instance, was not to an affidavit or a legal precedent but rather to a YouTube video link. The video shows what is either appalling police brutality or a measured response to an arrested man’s intransigence — you be the judge.

Such evidence vérité has the potential to unsettle the way appellate judges do their work, according to a new study in The Harvard Law Review. If Supreme Court justices can see for themselves what happened in a case, the study suggests, they may be less inclined to defer to the factual findings of jurors and to the conclusions of lower-court judges.

Like every other change of this nature, when it first happens it is interesting, the time will come with it is the norm, but its worth noting.

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