The Top Five Legal Stories of 2016
Forget looking back; the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin has rounded up the five legal topics we'll be focusing on in the year ahead.
- Cellphone videos: Their growing ubiquity in documenting crimes may mean they're something juries come to expect (as happened with DNA, for instance).
- Black Lives Matter: The movement is focusing on important issues like better law enforcement training and diversity. The challenge, Toobin writes, is to avoid disappearing from the public eye like the Occupy movement, another large mobilization, did. (Above, Black Lives Matter co-founder and Black Alliance for Just Immigration executive director Opal Tometi.)
3. Supreme Court conservatives: While 2015 was a good year for liberals—with the marriage equality case and ACA being upheld—cases like affirmative action, voting rights and abortion look likely to tip to the conservative side of the Court. (Here's the conservative Justice Scalia, who we photographed at Georgetown Law.)
4. Bill Cosby: Toobin predicts that Cosby will be in prison by the end of 2016. There are civil lawsuits and a criminal investigation against him.
5. NSA surveillance: It's not going to diminish next year. If anything, recent terrorism will facilitate the use of more surveillance techniques. [NYer]
