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Writing Effective Legal Case Briefs for Law Students

How to write a case brief, complete with examples.

tl;dr - Case briefs help your understanding of legal concepts and enable you to better prepare for exams. Here are some example case briefs .

As a new law student, one of the essential skills you need to develop is the ability to write effective legal case briefs. A case brief is a concise summary of a legal case that highlights the key issues, legal principles, and holdings of the court. Writing a good case brief can help you better understand the law, prepare for class discussions and exams, and become a more effective legal professional. In this article, we'll explore the key elements of a good legal case brief and provide some tips on how to write one effectively.

Legal case briefs are an essential tool for you as a law student, as they provide a concise and organized summary of a court case. Case brief examples serve as a means for you to understand the facts, issues, and legal principles underlying a court decision, and are crucial in helping you develop analytical and critical thinking skills.

One of the primary reasons why case briefs are important for you is that they help you understand the law in a practical and applied manner. In law school, you study legal principles and concepts in a theoretical sense. However, case briefs provide a means for you to see how these principles are applied in real-world situations. By analyzing and dissecting court decisions, you are able to gain a better understanding of how legal principles and concepts are applied in practice. For example, case brief examples of landmark cases like Marbury v. Madison or Brown v. Board of Education can help you understand the historical and legal significance of these cases.

Understand the Structure of a Legal Case Brief

Before we dive into the details of how to write a good legal case brief, it's important to understand its structure. A typical legal case brief, such as the examples of case briefs available on LSD , includes the following sections:

Title and Citation: This section includes the name of the case, the court that decided the case, and the citation (i.e., the reference that identifies where the case is published).
Facts: This section provides a brief summary of the key facts of the case, including who the parties are, what they did, and how the case came to court.
Issues: This section identifies the legal issues that the court was asked to decide, and focuses on the questions that the court addressed in its decision.
Holding: This section summarizes the court's decision on the legal issues presented in the case.
Analysis: This section provides an explanation of the court's reasoning in arriving at its holding, including the legal principles and rules that the court relied on.

Focus on the Key Facts and Issues

When writing a case brief, it's important to focus on the key facts and legal issues presented in the case. You should avoid including unnecessary details or information that is not relevant to the legal issues. Instead, focus on the facts and issues that are essential to understanding the court's decision. This is evident in many examples of case briefs written by legal professionals.

Identify the Legal Principles and Rules

In addition to focusing on the key facts and issues, it's important to identify the legal principles and rules that the court relied on in arriving at its decision. This will help you understand the court's reasoning and the legal principles that are relevant to the case. Many examples of case briefs available online also highlight the legal principles and rules that were applied in a particular case.

Use Clear and Concise Language

A good legal case brief should be written in clear and concise language, as seen in examples of case briefs written by legal professionals. You should avoid using legal jargon or technical terms that may be difficult for a layperson to understand. Instead, use plain language that accurately conveys the meaning of the court's decision.

Be Organized and Structured

To make your case brief more effective, it's important to be organized and structured in your writing. Use headings and subheadings to separate different sections of your brief, and make sure that each section flows logically from one to the next. This is evident in many examples of case briefs available online, which are organized and structured in a clear and logical manner.

So, what’s the point?

Developing analytical and critical thinking skills.

Writing case briefs helps you develop analytical and critical thinking skills. By analyzing court decisions and identifying key facts, issues, and legal principles, you are practicing your ability to think critically and to identify relevant legal issues. Case briefs provide a practical way to develop these skills and apply them to real-world legal problems.

To further develop your analytical and critical thinking skills, you can practice writing your own case briefs. Take a recent court decision and write a brief that summarizes the key facts, issues, and legal principles involved. This will help you become more proficient at identifying relevant information and organizing it in a structured manner.

Preparing for Class and Exams

In addition to being a valuable tool for developing analytical skills, case briefs also help you prepare for class discussions and exams. As you read cases and write briefs, you are gaining a deeper understanding of the law and the reasoning behind court decisions. This knowledge will help you participate more effectively in class discussions and will also help you prepare for law school exams.

To get the most out of case briefs when preparing for exams, you can practice writing case briefs for cases that you studied throughout the year, or to hypotheticals from past exams. This will help you apply the analytical skills you've developed to new situations and ensure that you are able to communicate your understanding of legal principles effectively.

In conclusion, case briefs are an essential tool for law students as they provide a practical application of legal principles, help develop analytical and critical thinking skills, and aid in preparing for class discussions and exams. By studying case brief examples, practicing writing your own briefs, and developing a deep understanding of the law in context, you can become a more proficient and effective student and legal professional. For examples, check out LSD's case brief database .

Tech-focused creator of LSD.Law. I built LSD while applying to law school. I saw unequal access to knowledge and built LSD to level the playing field and help applicants make thoughtful, well-informed decisions in the application process.

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US Case Law

The United States Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States. Lower courts on the federal level include the US Courts of Appeals, US District Courts, the US Court of Claims, and the US Court of International Trade and US Bankruptcy Courts. Federal courts hear cases involving matters related to the United States Constitution, other federal laws and regulations, and certain matters that involve parties from different states or countries and large sums of money in dispute.

Each state has its own judicial system that includes trial and appellate courts. The highest court in each state is often referred to as the “supreme” court, although there are some exceptions to this rule, for example, the New York Court of Appeals or the Maryland Court of Appeals. State courts generally hear cases involving state constitutional matters, state law and regulations, although state courts may also generally hear cases involving federal laws. States also usually have courts that handle only a specific subset of legal matters, such as family law and probate.

Case law, also known as precedent or common law, is the body of prior judicial decisions that guide judges deciding issues before them. Depending on the relationship between the deciding court and the precedent, case law may be binding or merely persuasive. For example, a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is binding on all federal district courts within the Fifth Circuit, but a court sitting in California (whether a federal or state court) is not strictly bound to follow the Fifth Circuit’s prior decision. Similarly, a decision by one district court in New York is not binding on another district court, but the original court’s reasoning might help guide the second court in reaching its decision.

Decisions by the US Supreme Court are binding on all federal and state courts.

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How to write a case brief for law school: Excerpt reproduced from Introduction to the Study of Law: Cases and Materials,

Third Edition (LexisNexis 2009) by Michael Makdisi & John Makdisi

C. HOW TO BRIEF

The previous section described the parts of a case in order to make it easier to read and identify the pertinent information that you will use to create your briefs. This section will describe the parts of a brief in order to give you an idea about what a brief is, what is helpful to include in a brief, and what purpose it serves. Case briefs are a necessary study aid in law school that helps to encapsulate and analyze the mountainous mass of material that law students must digest. The case brief represents a final product after reading a case, rereading it, taking it apart, and putting it back together again. In addition to its function as a tool for self-instruction and referencing, the case brief also provides a valuable “cheat sheet” for class participation.

Who will read your brief? Most professors will espouse the value of briefing but will never ask to see that you have, in fact, briefed. As a practicing lawyer, your client doesn’t care if you brief, so long as you win the case. The judges certainly don’t care if you brief, so long as you competently practice the law. You are the person that the brief will serve! Keep this in mind when deciding what elements to include as part of your brief and when deciding what information to include under those elements.

What are the elements of a brief? Different people will tell you to include different things in your brief. Most likely, upon entering law school, this will happen with one or more of your instructors. While opinions may vary, four elements that are essential to any useful brief are the following:

(a) Facts (name of the case and its parties, what happened factually and procedurally, and the judgment)

(b) Issues (what is in dispute)

(d) Rationale (reasons for the holding)

If you include nothing but these four elements, you should have everything you need in order to recall effectively the information from the case during class or several months later when studying for exams.

Because briefs are made for yourself, you may want to include other elements that expand the four elements listed above. Depending on the case, the inclusion of additional elements may be useful. For example, a case that has a long and important section expounding dicta might call for a separate section in your brief labeled: Dicta. Whatever elements you decide to include, however, remember that the brief is a tool intended for personal use. To the extent that more elements will help with organization and use of the brief, include them. On the other hand, if you find that having more elements makes your brief cumbersome and hard to use, cut back on the number of elements. At a minimum, however, make sure you include the four elements listed above.

Elements that you may want to consider including in addition to the four basic elements are:

(e) Dicta (commentary about the decision that was not the basis for the decision)

(f) Dissent (if a valuable dissenting opinion exits, the dissent’s opinion)

(g) Party’s Arguments (each party’s opposing argument concerning the ultimate issue)

(h) Comments (personal commentary)

Personal comments can be useful if you have a thought that does not fit elsewhere. In the personal experience of one of the authors, this element was used to label cases as specific kinds (e.g., as a case of vicarious liability) or make mental notes about what he found peculiar or puzzling about cases. This element allowed him to release his thoughts (without losing them) so that he could move on to other cases.

In addition to these elements, it may help you to organize your thoughts, as some people do, by dividing Facts into separate elements:

(1) Facts of the case (what actually happened, the controversy)

(2) Procedural History (what events within the court system led to the present case)

(3) Judgment (what the court actually decided)

Procedural History is usually minimal and most of the time irrelevant to the ultimate importance of a case; however, this is not always true. One subject in which Procedure History is virtually always relevant is Civil Procedure.

When describing the Judgment of the case, distinguish it from the Holding. The Judgment is the factual determination by the court, in favor of one party, such as “affirmed,” “reversed,” or “remanded.” In contrast, the Holding is the applied rule of law that serves as the basis for the ultimate judgment.

Remember that the purpose of a brief is to remind you of the important details that make the case significant in terms of the law. It will be a reference tool when you are drilled by a professor and will be a study aid when you prepare for exams. A brief is also like a puzzle piece.

The elements of the brief create the unique shape and colors of the piece, and, when combined with other pieces, the picture of the common law takes form. A well-constructed brief will save you lots of time by removing the need to return to the case to remember the important details and also by making it easier to put together the pieces of the common law puzzle.

D. EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTING

So now that you know the basic elements of a brief, what information is important to include under each element? The simple answer is: whatever is relevant. But what parts of a case are relevant? When you read your first few cases, you may think that everything that the judge said was relevant to his ultimate conclusion. Even if this were true, what is relevant for the judge to make his decision is not always relevant for you to include in your brief. Remember, the reason to make a brief is not to persuade the world that the ultimate decision in the case is a sound one, but rather to aid in refreshing your memory concerning the most important parts of the case.

What facts are relevant to include in a brief? You should include the facts that are necessary to remind you of the story. If you forget the story, you will not remember how the law in the case was applied. You should also include the facts that are dispositive to the decision in the case. For instance, if the fact that a car is white is a determining factor in the case, the brief should note that the case involves a white car and not simply a car. To the extent that the procedural history either helps you to remember the case or plays an important role in the ultimate outcome, you should include these facts as well.

What issues and conclusions are relevant to include in a brief? There is usually one main issue on which the court rests its decision. This may seem simple, but the court may talk about multiple issues, and may discuss multiple arguments from both sides of the case. Be sure to distinguish the issues from the arguments made by the parties. The relevant issue or issues, and corresponding conclusions, are the ones for which the court made a final decision and which are binding. The court may discuss intermediate conclusions or issues, but stay focused on the main issue and conclusion which binds future courts.

What rationale is important to include in a brief? This is probably the most difficult aspect of the case to determine. Remember that everything that is discussed may have been relevant to the judge, but it is not necessarily relevant to the rationale of the decision. The goal is to remind yourself of the basic reasoning that the court used to come to its decision and the key factors that made the decision favor one side or the other.

A brief should be brief! Overly long or cumbersome briefs are not very helpful because you will not be able to skim them easily when you review your notes or when the professor drills you. On the other hand, a brief that is too short will be equally unhelpful because it lacks sufficient information to refresh your memory. Try to keep your briefs to one page in length. This will make it easy for you to organize and reference them.

Do not get discouraged. Learning to brief and figuring out exactly what to include will take time and practice. The more you brief, the easier it will become to extract the relevant information.

While a brief is an extremely helpful and important study aid, annotating and highlighting are other tools for breaking down the mass of material in your casebook. The remainder of this section will discuss these different techniques and show how they complement and enhance the briefing process.

Annotating Cases

Many of you probably already read with a pencil or pen, but if you do not, now is the time to get in the habit. Cases are so dense and full of information that you will find yourself spending considerable amounts of time rereading cases to find what you need. An effective way to reduce this time is to annotate the margins of the casebook. Your pencil (or pen) will be one of your best friends while reading a case. It will allow you to mark off the different sections (such as facts, procedural history, or conclusions), thus allowing you to clear your mind of thoughts and providing an invaluable resource when briefing and reviewing.

You might be wondering why annotating is important if you make an adequate, well-constructed brief. By their very nature briefs cannot cover everything in a case. Even with a thorough, well-constructed brief you may want to reference the original case in order to reread dicta that might not have seemed important at the time, to review the complete procedural history or set of facts, or to scour the rationale for a better understanding of the case; annotating makes these tasks easier. Whether you return to a case after a few hours or a few months, annotations will swiftly guide you to the pertinent parts of the case by providing a roadmap of the important sections. Your textual markings and margin notes will refresh your memory and restore specific thoughts you might have had about either the case in general or an individual passage.

Annotations will also remind you of forgotten thoughts and random ideas by providing a medium for personal comments.

In addition to making it easier to review an original case, annotating cases during the first review of a case makes the briefing process easier. With adequate annotations, the important details needed for your brief will be much easier to retrieve. Without annotations, you will likely have difficulty locating the information you seek even in the short cases. It might seem strange that it would be hard to reference a short case, but even a short case will likely take you at least fifteen to twenty-five minutes to read, while longer cases may take as much as thirty minutes to an hour to complete. No matter how long it takes, the dense material of all cases makes it difficult to remember all your thoughts, and trying to locate specific sections of the analysis may feel like you are trying to locate a needle in a haystack. An annotation in the margin, however, will not only swiftly guide you to a pertinent section, but will also refresh the thoughts that you had while reading that section.

When you read a case for the first time, read for the story and for a basic understanding of the dispute, the issues, the rationale, and the decision. As you hit these elements (or what you think are these elements) make a mark in the margins. Your markings can be as simple as “facts” (with a bracket that indicates the relevant part of the paragraph). When you spot an issue, you may simply mark “issue” or instead provide a synopsis in your own words. When a case sparks an idea — write that idea in the margin as well — you never know when a seemingly irrelevant idea might turn into something more.

Finally, when you spot a particularly important part of the text, underline it (or highlight it as described below).

With a basic understanding of the case, and with annotations in the margin, the second read-through of the case should be much easier. You can direct your reading to the most important sections and will have an easier time identifying what is and is not important. Continue rereading the case until you have identified all the relevant information that you need to make your brief, including the issue(s), the facts, the holding, and the relevant parts of the analysis.

Pencil or pen — which is better to use when annotating? Our recommendation is a mechanical pencil. Mechanical pencils make finer markings than regular pencils, and also than ballpoint pens. Although you might think a pencil might smear more than a pen, with its sharp point a mechanical pencil uses very little excess lead and will not smear as much as you might imagine. A mechanical pencil will also give you the freedom to make mistakes without consequences. When you first start annotating, you may think that some passages are more important than they really are, and therefore you may resist the urge to make a mark in order to preserve your book and prevent false guideposts. With a pencil, however, the ability to erase and rewrite removes this problem.

Highlighting

Why highlight? Like annotating, highlighting may seem unimportant if you create thorough, well-constructed briefs, but highlighting directly helps you to brief. It makes cases, especially the more complicated ones, easy to digest, review and use to extract information.

Highlighting takes advantage of colors to provide a uniquely effective method for reviewing and referencing a case. If you prefer a visual approach to learning, you may find highlighting to be a very effective tool.

If annotating and highlighting are so effective, why brief? Because the process of summarizing a case and putting it into your own words within a brief provides an understanding of the law and of the case that you cannot gain through the process of highlighting or annotating.

The process of putting the case into your own words forces you to digest the material, while annotating and highlighting can be accomplished in a much more passive manner.

What should you highlight? Similar to annotating, the best parts of the case to highlight are those that represent the needed information for your brief such as the facts, the issue, the holding and the rationale.

Unlike annotating, highlighting provides an effective way to color code, which makes referring to the case even easier. In addition, Highlighters are particularly useful in marking off entire sections by using brackets. These brackets will allow you to color-code the case without highlighting all the text, leaving the most important phrases untouched for a more detailed highlight marking or underlining.

Highlighting is a personal tool, and therefore should be used to the extent that highlighting helps, but should be modified in a way that makes it personally time efficient and beneficial. For instance, you might combine the use of annotations in the margins with the visual benefit of highlighting the relevant text. You may prefer to underline the relevant text with a pencil, but to use a highlighter to bracket off the different sections of a case. Whatever you choose to do, make sure that it works for you, regardless of what others recommend. The techniques in the remainder of this section will describe ways to make full use of your highlighters.

First, buy yourself a set of multi-colored highlighters, with at least four, or perhaps five or six different colors. Yellow, pink, and orange are usually the brightest. Depending on the brand, purple and green can be dark, but still work well. Although blue is a beautiful color, it tends to darken and hide the text.

Therefore we recommend that you save blue for the elements that you rarely highlight.

For each different section of the case, choose a color, and use that color only when highlighting the section of the case designated for that color. Consider using yellow for the text that you tend to highlight most frequently. Because yellow is the brightest, you may be inclined to use yellow for the Conclusions in order to make them stand out the most. If you do this, however, you will exhaust your other colors much faster than yellow and this will require that you purchase an entire set of new highlighters when a single color runs out because colors such as green are not sold separately. If instead you choose to use yellow on a more frequently highlighted section such as the Analysis, when it comes time to replace your yellow marker, you will need only to replace your yellow highlighter individually. In the personal experience on one of the authors, the sections of cases that seemed to demand the most highlighter attention were the

Facts and the Analysis, while the Issues and Holdings demanded the least. Other Considerations and

Procedural History required lots of highlighting in particular cases although not in every case.

Experiment if you must, but try to choose a color scheme early on in the semester and stick with it. That way, when you come back to the first cases of the semester, you will not be confused with multiple color schemes. The basic sections of a case for which you should consider giving a different color are:

(b) Procedural History

(d) Holding (and conclusions)

(e) Analysis (rationale)

(f) Other Considerations (such as dicta)

Not all of these sections demand a separate color. You may find that combining Facts and Procedural History or Issues and Holdings works best. Furthermore, as mentioned above, some sections may not warrant highlighting in every case (e.g., dicta probably do not need to be highlighted unless they are particularly important). If you decide that a single color is all that you need, then stick to one, but if you find yourself highlighting lots of text from many different sections, reconsider the use of at least a few different colors. Highlighters make text stand out, but only when used appropriately. The use of many colors enables you to highlight more text without reducing the highlighter’s effectiveness. Three to four colors provides decent color variation without the cumbersomeness of handling too many markers.

Once you are comfortable with your color scheme, determining exactly what to highlight still may be difficult. Similar to knowing what to annotate, experience will perfect your highlighting skills. Be careful not to highlight everything, thus ruining your highlighters’ effectiveness; at the same time, do not be afraid to make mistakes.

Now that we have covered the basics of reading, annotating, highlighting, and briefing a case, you are ready to start practicing. Keep the tips and techniques mentioned in this chapter in mind when you tackle the four topics in the remainder of this book. If you have difficultly, refer back to this chapter to help guide you as you master the case method of study and the art of using the common law.

Supreme Court Cases By Topic

Since its first decision in August 1791, the Supreme Court has heard and resolved thousands of cases spanning virtually every aspect of American life. The Court is not only the highest judicial authority in the United States but also the ultimate interpreter of the Constitution, the founding document of our democracy. Many of its decisions rest on constitutional principles, although the Court also has interpreted federal statutes, administrative regulations, treaties, and other sources of law in cases that may affect millions of people.

While each Supreme Court decision carries great weight, some decisions have resonated with particular force. Justia has selected landmark cases in the following areas:

Bankruptcy Lawyers
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Recent Cases

Kiviti v. bhatt.

Fourth Circuit Holds that Article III Mootness Doctrine Does Not Apply to Bankruptcy Proceedings.

Colindres v. United States Department of State

D.C. Circuit Defers to Consulate's Visa Denial.

K & R Contractors, LLC v. Keene

Fourth Circuit Declines to Consider Constitutionality of Removal Protections Because of Lack of Injury.

Lee ex rel. Gap, Inc. v. Fisher

Ninth Circuit Enforces Forum Selection Clause Blocking Derivative Suits.

Doe v. William Marsh Rice University

Fifth Circuit Advances Novel Theory of Liability for Anti-Male Discrimination.

Eldridge v. Howard

Ninth Circuit Holds that D.C. Superior Court is Not a "State Court" for Purposes of 28 U.S.C. § 2253.

Appalachian Voices v. United States Department of the Interior

Fourth Circuit Holds Congress Stripped Jurisdiction to Hear Pipeline Challenge.

Palmer v. Liberty University, Inc.

Fourth Circuit Schism Spotlights Unholy Consequences of Ministerial Exception Doctrine.

Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections & Public Safety

Fifth Circuit Bars Individual-Capacity Money Damages Under RLUIPA.

Pico Neighborhood Ass’n v. City of Santa Monica

California Supreme Court Interprets State Act to Expand Reach of Vote Dilution Protection.

Case Studies

Explore case studies of previous cases which Allan Rouben has represented. Find examples of case studies in all focus areas of law.

Legroulx v. Pitre: Striking Jury Notice, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Rules of Civil Procedure

Background: A complicated action was proceeding in Ottawa before Justice Denis Power and a jury. The plaintiff’s injuries, arising out of a car accident, raised difficult issues of causation and required that complex medical evidence be heard. The plaintiff’s lawyers considered the medical issues were too complex for the jury and brought a motion to …

Legroulx v. Pitre: Striking Jury Notice, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Rules of Civil Procedure Read More »

Lucia’s Case: Appeal, Civil Litigation, Jurisdiction and Forum non Conveniens

Background: Lucia resides in Ontario with her family, and was involved in a car accident in Michigan. She brought suit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against the driver and owner of the vehicle, as well as her own insurer given that the Michigan defendants claimed the accident was caused by an unknown vehicle. …

Lucia’s Case: Appeal, Civil Litigation, Jurisdiction and Forum non Conveniens Read More »

Patrizia’s Case: Appeals, Civil Litigation, Negligence and Minimum Maintenance Standards

Background: Patrizia was driving to work early on a snowy morning in April. The roads in Milton were snow covered and slippery. Weather forecasts from the day before predicted an 80% chance of snow, yet the Town of Milton had not scheduled an evening patrol to monitor the roads and clear the snow. Tragically, as …

Patrizia’s Case: Appeals, Civil Litigation, Negligence and Minimum Maintenance Standards Read More »

F.A.’s Case: Criminal Law, Appeals, Sexual Assault and Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Background: F.A. worked in a medical facility with a much younger female co-worker. There was flirting between them. They went out together one evening, meeting up in a park and later driving around in F.A.’s car. He said he had a surprise for her at the office so they parked close by. Instead of going …

F.A.’s Case: Criminal Law, Appeals, Sexual Assault and Ineffective Assistance of Counsel Read More »

Clare’s Case: Labour Law, Duty of Fair Representation and Ontario Labour Relations Board

Background: Clare had been working for General Motors for 23 years before his termination. The company claimed that he had threated a supervisor after being told that a urine sample he had given was diluted. Clare denied the allegation and asked the Union, Canadian Auto Workers Local 222, to grieve the termination. He communicated frequently …

Clare’s Case: Labour Law, Duty of Fair Representation and Ontario Labour Relations Board Read More »

Eight cases from across history which still shape the law today

Senior Teaching Fellow, School of Law, University of Surrey

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Nicholas Clapham is author of non-profit website lawcaseuk.com.

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New students are streaming into law schools across the country. But to become the next generation of lawyers, judges and activists, they’ll first need to read through a mountain of case law. In case law, judges define what acts of parliament actually mean, explain the common law and resolve disputes between citizens, organisations and sometimes state institutions.

Newspapers occasionally publish a list of the most important cases for students to be aware of. But it’s not just students who could benefit from learning about the law – after all, cases decided hundreds of years ago can set the precedent for decisions that the courts in England and Wales make today.

Here’s my pick of some of the most important cases throughout history: ones that can teach us all something about how the law mirrors social and political attitudes, while revealing the principles and patterns that make up the country’s version of justice.

1. The Case of Proclamations, 1610

Over 400 years ago, the chief justice, Sir Edward Coke, ruled that King James I could not prohibit new building in London without the support of parliament. King James believed that he had a divine right to make any laws that he wished. But the court opposed his view, and decided that the monarchy could not wield its power in this arbitrary way.

By the end of that century, the Glorious Revolution laid the foundation for today’s constitutional monarchy, whereby whoever is king or queen respects the law-making authority of the elected parliament.

2. Entick v Carrington, 1765

Author and schoolmaster John Entick was suspected of writing a libellous pamphlet against the government. In response, the secretary of state sent Nathan Carrington, along with a group of other king’s men, to search Entick’s house for evidence. Entick then sued the men for trespass.

The court decided that the secretary of state did not have the legal authority to issue a search warrant, and therefore Carrington had trespassed. This case reflects the principle that “no man is above the law” – not even the secretary of state. To this day, law enforcement agencies may only do what the law allows.

3. R v Dudley and Stephens, 1884

In this case, the survivors of a shipwreck who killed and ate the youngest and weakest crew member were prosecuted for murder . Their defence was based on “necessity” – that they needed to eat the boy, as they were unlikely to survive and the boy probably would have died anyway.

It may have been a “custom of the sea” that cannibalism was allowed under such circumstances, but the defendants were found guilty on the basis that all life is equal – the law expected them to die, rather than kill another.

But the public was sympathetic to the defendants, and their sentences were later commuted from death to six months imprisonment. The boy was named Richard Parker, as is the tiger in the Man Booker prize-winning novel Life of Pi .

4. Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co, 1893

Mrs Carlill sued the manufacturer of the carbolic smoke ball – a device for preventing colds and flu – which had promised a reward of £100 for any one catching flu following the use of its product but then refused to pay out.

The court decided that this promise, together with Mrs Carlill’s use of the product as directed, amounted to a legally binding contract and she was entitled to the reward. The case explores many of the principles that must be present in modern day contracts, such as offer and acceptance, before we can make legally enforceable agreements between each other. Yet this most famous of cases may never have been brought at all, had Mrs Carlill not been married to a solicitor.

5. Donoghue and Stevenson, 1932

In a case originating in Scotland, Mrs Donoghue was given a bottle of ginger beer which allegedly contained the decomposed remains of a snail. She claimed to have suffered shock and gastroenteritis as a result. But as she had not bought the drink herself, she had no contract on which to sue.

Nevertheless, the court extended the law of negligence to require reasonable care towards those likely to be affected by a person’s or company’s actions. Was there really a snail? We don’t know for sure, as Mr Stevenson died before the evidence could be heard.

6. Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, 1969

To be guilty of a criminal offence, there often needs to be unlawful act accompanied by a guilty state of mind, such as a criminal intent. So, having accidentally driven his car onto a policeman’s foot, did Mr Fagan commit an assault when he decided not to remove it?

Mr Fagan suggested not because he had no criminal intent at the time the car first went on to the foot, but the court held that deciding to leave the car there was a combination of act and intention, which meant he was guilty of the offence .

7. R v R, 1991

The law is constantly evolving to meet changing social attitudes. In this case, the House of Lords swept away the common law rule that a man could not be guilty of raping his wife. The previous rule was based on a 1736 pronouncement that:

By their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given herself up to her husband, consent which she cannot retract.

The House of Lords ruled that for modern times, marriage is a partnership of equals and any other suggestion was “quite unacceptable”.

8. The Belmarsh case, 2004

The Human Rights Act empowered judges to review acts of parliament, to check if they are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Using this power, the House of Lords ruled that a statute which allowed terrorist suspects to be detained indefinitely without trial breached the suspects’ human rights.

The case shows how modern courts ask not just whether government action is authorised by law, but also whether it is compatible with our rights. Parliament amended the law as a result.

In 2016, Gina Miller brought a case against the UK government, claiming that it couldn’t trigger Article 50 – and therefore Brexit – without an act of parliament. Ruling in Miller’s favour in 2017, the Supreme Court drew on the 1610 case of proclamations. So there’s no doubt that even the oldest cases still have the power to shape society today.

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The Power of Judicial Review

Article III of the U.S. Constitution describes the powers and duties of the judicial branch. Nowhere does it mention the power of the courts to review actions of the other two branches, and possibly declare these actions unconstitutional. This power, called Judicial Review , was established by the landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison , 1803.

“ It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is…If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each. So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution… the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty .” Chief Justice Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Facts about Judicial Review
Possible Subjects of Judicial Review
No law or action can contradict the U.S. Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land.
The court can only review a law that is brought before it through a law suit.
State courts also have the power to review state laws or actions based upon their state constitutions.
Legislative actions (laws made by congress)
Executive actions (treaties, executive orders issued by the president, or regulations issued by a government agency)
State and local laws

Case Studies

Marbury v. madison , 1803.

Case History

When President John Adams did not win a second term in the 1801 election, he used the final days of his presidency to make a large number of political appointments. When the new president (Thomas Jefferson) took office, he told his Secretary of State (James Madison), not to deliver the official paperwork to the government officials who had been appointed by Adams. Thus the government officials, including William Marbury, were denied their new jobs. William Marbury petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus , to force Madison to deliver the commission.

Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 (a law written by Congress), gave the Supreme Court the authority to issue writs of mandamus to settle disputes such as the one described here. This power to force actions of government officials went above and beyond anything mentioned in Article III of the Constitution.

Therefore, in addition to deciding whether or not William Marbury had a right to his job, the U.S. Supreme Court also had to decide whether or not Section 13 of the Judiciary Act was in violation of the Constitution (the birth of Judicial Review ).

This case did not reach the U.S. Supreme Court the way most issues do. Most cases reach the Supreme Court as the court of last resort, when the Justices are asked to review a decision of a lower court. In this case, William Marbury petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court directly due to the provision in Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789. Note: The power to directly accept petitions such as these is not granted to the Supreme Court in the Constitution.

What Do You Think The U.S. Supreme Court Decided?

Though the Justices agreed that William Marbury had a right to his job, they also ruled that issuing the writ of mandamus to force that to happen did not fall under their jurisdiction as stated in the Constitution. The Supreme Court opinion explained that it is within their power and authority to review acts of Congress, such as the Judiciary Act of 1789, to determine whether or not the law is unconstitutional. By declaring Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine of Judicial Review.

The Supreme Court said “ The Constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. If the (first) part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law .” by author of opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall.

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The opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court
The official version of the opinion can be found in the U.S. Reports at your local law library. Marbury v. Madison , 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

Ladue v. Gilleo, 1994

In 1990, Margaret Gilleo placed a sign in the yard of her home in Ladue, Missouri. The sign said “Say No to War in the Persian Gulf, Call Congress Now.” The city of Ladue had a law against yard signs, and told Ms. Gilleo to take her signs down. Ms. Gilleo sued the city of Ladue for violating her 1 st Amendment rights.

Was Ladue’s law against signs unconstitutional?

Margaret Gilleo sued the city of Ladue in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. The court ruled in her favor and stopped Ladue from enforcing the law. Ladue appealed the decision, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals also found in Ms. Gilleo’s favor. The city of Ladue then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the lower courts. Ladue’s law against yard signs violated the 1 st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The 1 st Amendment protects political speech, and banning yard signs takes away the main avenue by which people traditionally express their personal political views. The value of protecting personal political speech is more important than Ladue’s desire to keep the city free of clutter.

The Supreme Court said “ They may not afford the same opportunities for conveying complex ideas as do other media, but residential signs have long been an important and distinct medium of expression .” by author of opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens.

The official version of the opinion can be found in the U.S. Reports at your local law library. Ladue v. Gilleo , 512 U.S. 43 (1994)

Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 1966

Annie Harper was not allowed to register to vote in Virginia because she wasn’t able to pay the state’s poll tax. Virginia law required voters to pay $1.50 tax to register, with the money collected going to public school funding. Ms. Harper sued the Virginia Board of Elections, claiming the poll tax violated her 14 th Amendment right to equal protection. Note: The 24 th Amendment to the Constitution already banned poll taxes in federal elections, but not in state elections.

Was the Virginia law requiring a tax to vote in a state election unconstitutional?

The U.S. District Court dismissed Ms. Harper’s suit in favor of the Board of Elections. She then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

The Supreme Court declared the Virginia poll tax law unconstitutional. By making it more difficult for poor people to vote, the state was violating the 14 th Amendment guarantee of equal protection. Voting is a fundamental right, and should remain accessible to all citizens. The amount of wealth someone has should have no bearing on their ability to vote freely.

The Supreme Court said “ We conclude that a State violates the …(Constitution).. …whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this or any other tax …. Wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned. ” by author of opinion, Justice William O. Douglas

The official version of the opinion can be found in the U.S. Reports at your local law library. Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections , 383 U.S. 663 (1966)

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Criminal Law Case Studies

Real cases. real results..

We have published over 500 criminal law case studies.

All cases were handled by our expert criminal lawyers and range from contested matters, appeals, bail applications, and pleas of guilty for both indictable and summary offences. They were heard in different County Courts, Magistrates’ Courts, and Children’s Courts throughout the state of Victoria, including the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal.

All of the criminal law case studies in this site are anonymised. They are provided to give you an idea of the scope of work that we cover, as well as information on some penalties imposed for different criminal cases.

This site has plenty of case studies with interesting results. Our lawyers have defended cases wherein the Police and Prosecution were ordered by the Court to pay for all the legal costs incurred by our clients for their legal defence. Such as the case for this Dismissed Charge of Rape and Acquittal for Multiple Assault Charges .

Many cases especially highlight the court’s recognition of the need for a defendant’s rehabilitation despite the gravity and recurrence of committed offences. A young client was given a CCO without conviction for trafficking drugs and weapons charges . A woman who faces court for further offending and multiple breaching offences was ultimately deemed better by a Magistrate to continue engaging in CCO instead of a longer prison term.

It must be noted that our criminal law case studies are, naturally, generally where a lawyer has obtained a good result for a client. They should however not be used by you to think that if you are charged with the same offence, you will get the same penalty.

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Top Ten Cases Involving Ethical Issues for In-House Counsel (United States)

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Speakers on ethical issues for in-house counsel often get challenged by the audience as to the reality of the problems posed. Many in-house counsel apparently believe that the ethical rules do not apply to them, or apply with less force.

In fact, reported cases involving ethical issues in-house counsel have risen dramatically in recent years. What follows is a list of ten of the most significant cases involving in-house counsel and ethical issues.

1. Kaye v. Rosefielde , 75 A.3d 1168, 1204 (New Jersey Super. Ct. App. Div. 2013).

This is a dream case for commentators on in-house ethics because it raises two of the most common "defenses" asserted by in-house lawyers when pushing back against ethical concerns.

Mr. Rosefielde was in-house for several small companies owned by Mr. Kaye. He also represented Mr. Kaye himself and a trust for his children. As he had done many times before, Mr. Rosefielde created a small company at Mr. Kaye's direction and gave himself a small equity share. He did not hide this from Mr. Kaye, but he also did not comply with Rule of Professional Conduct 1.8 regarding business transactions with a client.

Mr. Kaye later sued Mr. Rosefielde for malpractice, and alleged among other things that Mr. Rosefielde had violated Rule 1.8 by not advising Mr. Kaye in writing to have another lawyer review the transaction, and giving him (Mr. Kaye) time to do so.

Mr. Rosefielde's first defense was that the requirements of Rule 1.8 regarding a business transaction with a client did not apply to him because he was in-house. This was rejected so soundly as to be described as being irrational:

"Independent of the particular facts of this case, we also discern no rational basis to exempt attorneys who have been hired by corporate clients to serve as in-house counsel from the ethical requirements of RPC 1.8" (Emphasis added.)

Another argument of Mr. Rosefielde was that for some conduct he was acting as officer of the company, not as its in-house lawyer, and therefore the ethical rules did not apply to his conduct. This was also squarely rejected as "fallacious."

Practice Tips: The ethical rules, including Rule 1.8 restrictions on getting an equity interest in your client, apply to you. Further, the ethical rules probably apply even when you are acting not as counsel, but as an officer of the company.

2. Yanez v. Plummer , 164 Cal. Rptr. 3d 309 (California Ct. App. 2013)

This case involved an incident at a factory. The company conducted an investigation, and Mr. Yanez, a company employee and bystander witness, told the investigator the company was not at fault. In later litigation, Mr. Yanez was identified as a witness and his deposition was to be taken.

The company agreed to provide him with counsel to defend the deposition, and it provided its in-house counsel Mr. Plummer. Literally on the way to the deposition, Mr. Yanez told Mr. Plummer that: (a) he had lied to the company investigator; and (b) that the truth was worse for the company than he had said previously. Mr. Plummer essentially said: "Just tell the truth; you'll be fine."

Mr. Yanez indeed testified differently than he had told the company investigator. The company opened a new investigation, and subsequently fired Mr. Yanez for lying during the first investigation. He sued the company for wrongful discharge and Mr. Plummer for malpractice. While the trial court granted summary judgment for Mr. Plummer, the court of appeals reversed.

Mr. Plummer's error was in not recognizing that, once Mr. Yanez told him that his testimony at deposition would be different than he had given previously and not as favorable to the company, Mr. Plummer had an irreconcilable conflict of interest between his two clients (the company and Mr. Yanez).

Practice tip: In-house counsel have to be vigilant regarding possible conflicts when representing anyone other than the company.

3. Pang v. International Document Services, 2015 WL 4724812 (Utah).

The in-house attorney reported improper business practices "up the ladder" as required by Rule 1.13. At some point, the attorney was fired and brought suit for retaliatory discharge. The attorney's claim was dismissed and the dismissal was affirmed on appeal. The Utah Supreme Court held that the attorney was an employee at will, was entitled to be fired for any reason not illegal, and the ethical requirements that he report "up the ladder" were insufficient to overcome the general public policy in favor of employees being at will.

This is contrary to other cases that have allowed lawyers to bring suit for whistle-blower terminations, seeking monetary relief but not reinstatement. In Van Asdale v. International Game Technology , 587 F.3d 989 (9th Cir. 2009), the Ninth Circuit reinstated a claim for wrongful discharge under Sarbanes Oxley brought by two terminated in-house counsel. The in-house counsel had brought suit claiming they were discharged for reporting possible stock fraud to higher-ups within the company. The District Court had granted summary judgment on the grounds that the claims were not "protected activity." The Ninth Circuit, however, reversed, holding that reporting stock fraud was a protected activity.

Practice tip: complying with your ethical obligations may not be painless. This is the life we have chosen, and it comes with some costs.

4. Anwar v. Fairfield Greenwich Ltd., 982 F. Supp. 2d 260 (Southern District of New York 2013)

This is yet another in the long line of cases out of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) involving issues of in-house counsel not being licensed in the jurisdiction where they regularly office. The court held that there was no attorney-client privilege for communications between the in-house counsel and the client because the in-house counsel was not licensed and, therefore, not an "attorney."

There is some split of authority on this issue. Some courts have held that if the attorney is licensed somewhere then the fact that the attorney is practicing law without a license in the particular state does not implicate the attorney-client privilege. Other courts have held this rule only applies where the company reasonably relies on the attorney having a license.

Crews v. Buckman Labs. Int'l , 78 S.W.3d 852 (Tenn. 2002) demonstrated the burden on counsel, co-workers, and the client that can arise from the unlicensed practice of law in-house. An associate in-house counsel discovered that the general counsel was not licensed to practice law in Tennessee where the general counsel officed. She reported this first to the general counsel and later to the company's board of directors. After considerable time, the general counsel was still not admitted, so the in-house obtained her own legal advice concerning her ethical obligations and felt compelled to report the unlicensed practice of law to appropriate State agency. The reporting counsel was later fired and brought suit for common-law retaliatory discharge. No lawyer should want to subject their client to this kind of embarrassment, and this was all driven by the general counsel's refusal to become licensed in the state where she practiced.

Practice Tip: Not being licensed in the jurisdiction where you regularly office can be a crime, an ethical violation in the state where you are licensed, can get your colleagues in trouble, and can wreck your client's claim to the attorney-client privileged. Please consider getting licensed where you regularly office.

5. Haeger v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co, 793 F. 1122 (9th Cir. 2015).

In this case, Goodyear withheld documents and otherwise gave false responses during discovery. The court entered drastic sanctions against Goodyear, and the "nail in the coffin" was the fact that Goodyear's in-house counsel had participated in reviewing the false discovery responses before they were filed.

Practice Tip: If you are practicing law, take it seriously.

6. People v. Miller, 354 P.3d 1136 (Colorado O.P.D.J. 2015).

A lawyer was helping run the family business, which was controlled by his mother and shared with his siblings. There was no engagement letter. As the mother started aging and fading, there were disputes among the children (the lawyer and his siblings) how things should be handled.

The lawyer had the mother sign documents giving lots of power and authority to the lawyer and putting him on a salary, and he hid these documents from his siblings. The lawyer was disciplined for violations of Rule 1.7 (conflicts of interest); Rule 1.8 (business transaction with a client); and Rule 8.4(c) (dishonesty, fraud, and deceit). Interestingly, disciplinary prosecutor asked for a 90-day suspension as a penalty, but the court sua sponte imposed twice that.

Practice Tip: All the ethical rules apply to in-house counsel, including prohibition on deceitful conduct.

7. Douglas v. DynMcDermott Petroleum Operations Co., 144 F.3d 364 (5th Cir. 1994)

This case involved an in-house attorney who complained to the US Department of Energy (DOE) about discrimination at her client. To further her case, she gave information to the DOE about other complaints of discrimination at the company. Even though she prevailed in her jury trial, the ruling was reversed. The Fifth Circuit held that there was no exception to the ethical rules that allowed her to disclose information regarding other wrongs without client consent, which she did not have. The verdict was reversed and the case dismissed based on the lawyer's misconduct.

Practice Tip: You cannot talk about client information with any third parties absent with some narrow exceptions. Even when an exception applies, it is no broader than is absolutely necessary to fulfill the purpose of the exception.

8. Dinger v. Allfirst Fin., Inc., 82 Fed. Appx. 261, 265 (3rd Cir. 2003)

In this case, former officers of a bank brought a claim against the bank, alleging that its in-house counsel had given them bad legal advice regarding the exercise of stock options. The company won on summary judgment on the merits of the case, with the District Court determining that the lawyer's advice had been reasonable. The issue of the lawyer giving advice to someone other than his client was not discussed. In affirming, the Third Circuit noted that "The District Court recognized that defendants owed plaintiffs a fiduciary duty based on the confidential relationship that existed between [the lawyer] and plaintiffs, but found no breach of that duty."

Practice Tip: Be careful in giving advice to anyone other than your client. You may inadvertently create an attorney-client relationship.

9. In re Teleglobe Commc'ns. Corp., 493 F.3d 345 (3rd Cir. 2007)

This case involved a dispute among related companies. The in-house counsel for one company had often performed legal work for the related companies. In the dispute, it was determined that the lawyer's notes were not privileged as to any of the companies in the dispute, as he was each company's lawyer. It was also held that the common-interest doctrine did not apply to protect the notes, because that doctrine requires the involvement of multiple lawyers.

An even more striking case arose in GSI Commerce Solutions, Inc. v. BabyCenter, L.L.C. , 618 F.3d 204 (2nd Cir. 2010). Again, this case involved the question of attorney-client relationship where a lawyer did legal work for multiple closely-related companies. When a dispute arose between a subsidiary and a third party, the subsidiary was able to disqualify the third-party's lawyer who had previously done work for the parent company. The court held that the connection between the wholly owned subsidiary and its parent corporation was sufficiently close that the two were a single client for attorney-disqualification purposes. The court noted, among other things, that the subsidiary and the parent relied on the same in-house legal department, and that the parent's legal department had been involved in the dispute between the plaintiff and subsidiary since it first arose.

Practice Tip: When you do work for related companies, you are the lawyer for all of them, owe fiduciary duties to all of them, and cannot prefer one over the other.

10. Harkabi v. SanDisk Corp., 275 F.R.D. 414 (S.D.N.Y. 2010)

In this case, the defendant was sanctioned because its in-house counsel failed to preserve evidence while litigation was pending. Although in-house counsel was involved in several steps to protect information, he did not supervise or even approve the copying and wiping of laptop hard-drives and was not involved in the transfer of email archives from servers. Thus, when that information was no longer available, the defendant was determined to have a culpable state of mind regarding the failure to preserve.

Practice Tip: If you are going to bring litigation in house, be aware of the risks. Your in-house litigators will essentially have the duties of both lawyer and client.

The ethical rules still apply to in-house counsel. Not only that, the stakes are higher because it is much more difficult for your to disengage from your client when you are in-house. If you have any questions about your ethical duties at all, contact the author.

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Case Studies

The WH-LAIR Case Studies are two-page documents that illustrate how civil legal aid supports federal efforts to serve the low-income and other vulnerable populations in various areas. They contain descriptions of common challenges faced by vulnerable populations, examples of federal responses to these challenges, and concrete examples of the ways in which civil legal aid meaningfully supports federal agencies’ efforts. The WH-LAIR continues to issue new case studies on selected topics.

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts To Help Protect Consumers

Standing up for Victims of Mortgage Fraud

A home repair contractor approached Sadie, an 85-year-old African American woman who has owned her home for forty years, promising to perform home improvements under a "free government program" for seniors. Sadie did not understand the papers she signed, and did not realize that the contractor had taken $122,000 from a reverse mortgage on her home even before any work was done. He eventually remodeled two bathrooms, but the work was sloppy and defective. No other home improvements were performed. Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago (LAF), a federally-funded Legal Services Corporation grantee, filed a lawsuit to void the loan and recover money damages from the contractor's company, ultimately settling for $110,000. LAF continues to represent other mostly elderly and minority victims of this reverse mortgage scheme.

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts To Help Keep America Working

Legal Aid gets Dad Back on Road to Work

After five years working as a delivery driver for a home improvement chain, Joe lost his job when his driver’s license was suspended because medical expenses for his prematurely-born daughter left him unable to pay outstanding traffic fines. SonomaWORKS, Sonoma County’s HHS-funded welfare-to-work program, referred Joe to what seemed like a perfect job as a delivery driver for a parts store. When the employer offered him a position contingent on securing a driver’s license, he sought help from Legal Aid of Sonoma County. With funding from California’s TANF program, Joe’s legal aid lawyer successfully arranged an affordable payment plan for a reduced bail amount so Joe could pay off his fines and get his drivers license reinstated. Thanks to the legal and employment services provided through SonomaWORKS, Joe once again became self-sufficient.

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts To Help Prevent Elder Abuse

Legal Aid Delivers Justice for Elderly Domestic Violence Victim

Cynthia was 83-years old when her controlling husband threw her out of their home and cut her off from all assets after she became too ill to care for him and their home. Cynthia’s husband was wealthy, and theirs was a second marriage that occurred late in life. During their marriage, Cynthia became isolated and was subjected to controlling and threatening behavior. After her husband Kicked her out of their home, she had no means of support other than a small Social Security benefit. Funded in part by DOJ OVW’s Legal Assistance for Victims grant, a Montana Legal Services Association attorney represented Cynthia in court. The attorney successfully obtained a property settlement that allowed Cynthia to live out her remaining years in safety and in a home close to her adult children.

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts On Behalf Of Tribes & Tribal Members

Doctor prescribes a lawyer to keep family healthy and housed

After Rose, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, lost her adult daughter in a car accident, she was left to raise five grandchildren. With no room for the children in her own house, Rose moved into her deceased daughter’s apartment. Still grieving, Rose received an eviction notice from the housing agency, because she was not named on the apartment lease. She was told that she and the children had to move. When a pediatrician at the Indian Health Service clinic learned of the situation, she referred Rose to DNA-People’s Legal Services Medical-Legal Partnership Program, funded by DOJ’s Tribal Civil Legal Assistance Program. With the help of her DNA-People’s Legal Services lawyer, Rose showed that tribal law and federal policies allowed her to assume the lease obligations. Rose continued to care for the children in their own home and, with DNA’s help, obtained legal guardianship over each grandchild.

WH-LAIR Case Study: On Behalf Of Tribes & Tribal Members

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help Prevent Domestic Violence

“Nazia,” a 37-year-old immigrant from Guyana, fled with her two young children from the physical and emotional abuse of her husband. With the assistance of Legal Services Corporation-funded Queens Legal Services (QLS), a recipient of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Family and Youth Services Bureau funding, she successfully obtained an Order of Protection and full custody of her children. However, shortly thereafter, Nazia’s abuser retaliated by filing for a modification of custody, citing frivolous allegations of inappropriate parenting. Her legal aid lawyer continued to represent her and also referred Nazia to a QLS social worker, who provided counseling to her and her children throughout the process. Again, thanks to her legal aid lawyer, after two years of litigation, Nazia settled the case and retained sole legal custody of her children.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Prevent Domestic Violence

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help People with Criminal Records Make a Successful Reentry

“Andy’s” 10-year old felony conviction prevented him from pursuing his hopes of securing a state license to become a New York Licensed Practical Nurse. The Fortune Society, a grantee of U.S. Department of Labor’s Reintegration of Ex-Offenders Program, referred Andy to MFY Legal Services in New York. His legal aid lawyer helped Andy obtain out-of state criminal court records, gather proof of rehabilitation, and represented him at the initial investigative interview. The result was a successful license application and a job.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Successful Reentry

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help Veterans & Servicemembers

When “Clyde” sought medical help from the Philadelphia U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, a social worker learned he had fallen behind on his rent and faced eviction from his apartment. The social worker and the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) caseworker recognized Clyde’s need for legal help, and assisted Clyde in getting an appointment with an attorney at the SSVF program’s legal aid partner, Homeless Advocacy Project. With the SSVF program providing some of Clyde’s back rent, the attorney negotiated an agreement to stop the eviction in exchange for a lump sum payment for most of the unpaid rent, plus a payment plan to cover the remainder. With his housing stabilized, Clyde was able to focus on his health needs.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Help Veterans and Servicemembers

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help Keep Children in School

Growing up in a community influenced by gangs, “Carl” was expelled from middle school. Later incarcerated for a juvenile offense, Carl began working with a TeamChild ® attorney – partially funded by U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevent – to plan his release and return to school. His attorney successfully advocated for his readmission. When other students threatened Carl he sought help from school administrators who responded by expelling him. His attorney successfully represented him at the hearing and Carl finished the semester. Fearful of the gangs, he left Washington state to live with relatives, and pursue a GED and Job Corps training program. Denied admission because of his juvenile record, his lawyer stepped in yet again, to appeal and document Carl’s determination to get back on track. Job Corps reversed their decision. Carl got his GED and is working hard towards his auto mechanic certificate.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Keep Children in Schools

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help People Exit Homelessness and Stay Housed

“Frank,” a disabled man living in U.S. Department of Agriculture-subsidized housing in rural Iowa, received an eviction notice from his landlord after neighbors complained that he yelled too much, especially late at night. Attempts by the property manager to talk to Frank about the problem only made it worse. Fearing that he would become homeless, Frank sought help from Legal Services Corporation-funded Iowa Legal Aid. With support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Emergency Solutions Grant, Iowa Legal Aid could assist him. Frank’s lawyer realized that his disruptive behavior flowed from untreated mental illness. She met with his property manager and reached out to other professionals to help Frank manage his mental illness. They collaborated on a plan to address the problems and involve his case manager as an intermediary if an issue arose. The property manager agreed to dismiss the eviction, and Frank remained in his home.

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help People Access Healthcare

“Alex” sought help from Legal Services Corporation-funded Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County because of medical debt that threatened his family with bankruptcy. Unable to purchase affordable insurance in the private market because of his pre-existing condition, Alex’s debt had accrued after several emergency room visits for a severe heart condition that required surgery he could not afford. In addition to helping negotiate his medical bills with the hospital and avoid bankruptcy, his legal aid attorney – thanks in part to support from the Affordable Care Act Consumer Assistance Program funds – helped identify affordable insurance options through California’s Covered CA and new adult Medicaid expansion programs that will help Alex get the surgery he desperately needs.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Access Health Care

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Assist Law Enforcement & Promote Public Safety

Police partnership with legal aid help decrease incidence of domestic violence

The High Point Police Department partnered with Legal Aid of North Carolina, Family Service of the Piedmont, and other community groups to open the High Point Center for Children and Families and Victims’ Justice as part of the COPS-funded Offender Focused Domestic Violence Initiative (OFDVI). The initiative focuses on early intervention to break the cycle of domestic violence, and helps victims with their civil legal needs, such as obtaining protective orders. Within the first two years of the OFVDI, recidivism rates – which typically range from 20-34% -- decreased to 9% across more than 1,000 offenders.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Assist Law Enforcement & Promote Public Safety

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help Americans with Disabilities

P&A Lawyer Listens to Teacher’s Tale of Denial of Services for Hearing Loss

When “Jack” realized his already limited hearing had deteriorated, he knew he needed new hearing aids to keep his teaching job. But when Jack requested a replacement device, Indiana Vocational Rehabilitation Services (VR), the state government office that helps people with disabilities get and retain employment, denied the request because VR’s policy required a hearing change of at least 10 decibels to provide replacement devices and Jack didn’t meet that requirement. Indiana Protection and Advocacy Services (IPAS), with funding from the Department of Education’s Client Assistant Program, appealed the denial. At the appeal, the administrative law judge determined that VR’s 10-decibel requirement was inconsistent with federal law, as it did not account for the individual needs of each VR client. Thanks to IPAS’s help, Jack received new hearing aids and kept his job. IPAS also used the decision to help other Hoosiers needing replacement hearing aids to retain their employment.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Help Americans with Disabilities

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Help Human Trafficking Victims

Legal aid helps restaurant workers in federal prosecution of traffickers and public benefits

“Narawit” was enticed to Colorado from Southeast Asia with a work visa and good wages as a chef. However, the restaurant owner forced him to work twelve-hour shifts without breaks, and the pay was far less than promised with numerous illegal deductions and fees. When the owner didn’t renew his visa, Narawit feared he had no options. Fortunately, DOJ prosecuted the owner, and Colorado Legal Services (CLS) helped Narawit and 8 other workers in the federal prosecution. CLS helped them meet with federal prosecutors and investigators, calculate unpaid wages, and prepare victim impact statements. CLS also helped recover restitution for nearly 60 workers. Later, when Narawit became seriously ill, CLS, with funding from OVC’s Specialized Services for Victims of Human Trafficking grant, helped him successfully appeal the denial of Medicaid and food stamps by establishing his eligibility as a human trafficking victim.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Help Human Trafficking Victims

Civil Legal Aid Supports Federal Efforts to Strengthen Families

Father and son get parenting support from legal aid

“Christopher” was a dedicated father to a young son, for whom he regularly paid child support. When his work schedule was reduced and his earnings dropped, he sought help from the Alameda County Superior Court Family Law Facilitator’s office, which is funded in part by ACF’s Child Support Enforcement Program at HHS. A staff attorney there helped him request a modified child support order that would reflect his pay cut. The lawyer then explained how Christopher could use this opportunity to request increased visitation time with his son and take on more parenting responsibility. Staff from the court’s Family Law Facilitator’s Office was present at the hearing to provide legal information and procedural guidance to Christopher. The court made the proposed changes and Christopher’s payments were reduced to an amount that he could afford. He began picking his son up from school twice a week and eating dinner together, before returning him to his mother.

WH-LAIR Case Study: Strengthen Families

All You Wanted to Know About How to Write a Case Study

What do you study in your college? If you are a psychology, sociology, or anthropology student, we bet you might be familiar with what a case study is. This research method is used to study a certain person, group, or situation. In this guide from our dissertation writing service , you will learn how to write a case study professionally, from researching to citing sources properly. Also, we will explore different types of case studies and show you examples — so that you won’t have any other questions left.

What Is a Case Study?

A case study is a subcategory of research design which investigates problems and offers solutions. Case studies can range from academic research studies to corporate promotional tools trying to sell an idea—their scope is quite vast.

What Is the Difference Between a Research Paper and a Case Study?

While research papers turn the reader’s attention to a certain problem, case studies go even further. Case study guidelines require students to pay attention to details, examining issues closely and in-depth using different research methods. For example, case studies may be used to examine court cases if you study Law, or a patient's health history if you study Medicine. Case studies are also used in Marketing, which are thorough, empirically supported analysis of a good or service's performance. Well-designed case studies can be valuable for prospective customers as they can identify and solve the potential customers pain point.

Case studies involve a lot of storytelling – they usually examine particular cases for a person or a group of people. This method of research is very helpful, as it is very practical and can give a lot of hands-on information. Most commonly, the length of the case study is about 500-900 words, which is much less than the length of an average research paper.

The structure of a case study is very similar to storytelling. It has a protagonist or main character, which in your case is actually a problem you are trying to solve. You can use the system of 3 Acts to make it a compelling story. It should have an introduction, rising action, a climax where transformation occurs, falling action, and a solution.

Here is a rough formula for you to use in your case study:

Problem (Act I): > Solution (Act II) > Result (Act III) > Conclusion.

Types of Case Studies

The purpose of a case study is to provide detailed reports on an event, an institution, a place, future customers, or pretty much anything. There are a few common types of case study, but the type depends on the topic. The following are the most common domains where case studies are needed:

Historical case studies are great to learn from. Historical events have a multitude of source info offering different perspectives. There are always modern parallels where these perspectives can be applied, compared, and thoroughly analyzed.
Problem-oriented case studies are usually used for solving problems. These are often assigned as theoretical situations where you need to immerse yourself in the situation to examine it. Imagine you’re working for a startup and you’ve just noticed a significant flaw in your product’s design. Before taking it to the senior manager, you want to do a comprehensive study on the issue and provide solutions. On a greater scale, problem-oriented case studies are a vital part of relevant socio-economic discussions.
Cumulative case studies collect information and offer comparisons. In business, case studies are often used to tell people about the value of a product.
Critical case studies explore the causes and effects of a certain case.
Illustrative case studies describe certain events, investigating outcomes and lessons learned.

Need a compelling case study? EssayPro has got you covered. Our experts are ready to provide you with detailed, insightful case studies that capture the essence of real-world scenarios. Elevate your academic work with our professional assistance.

Case Study Format

The case study format is typically made up of eight parts:

Executive Summary. Explain what you will examine in the case study. Write an overview of the field you’re researching. Make a thesis statement and sum up the results of your observation in a maximum of 2 sentences.
Background. Provide background information and the most relevant facts. Isolate the issues.
Case Evaluation. Isolate the sections of the study you want to focus on. In it, explain why something is working or is not working.
Proposed Solutions. Offer realistic ways to solve what isn’t working or how to improve its current condition. Explain why these solutions work by offering testable evidence.
Conclusion. Summarize the main points from the case evaluations and proposed solutions. 6. Recommendations. Talk about the strategy that you should choose. Explain why this choice is the most appropriate.
Implementation. Explain how to put the specific strategies into action.
References. Provide all the citations.

How to Write a Case Study

Let's discover how to write a case study.

Setting Up the Research

When writing a case study, remember that research should always come first. Reading many different sources and analyzing other points of view will help you come up with more creative solutions. You can also conduct an actual interview to thoroughly investigate the customer story that you'll need for your case study. Including all of the necessary research, writing a case study may take some time. The research process involves doing the following:

Define your objective. Explain the reason why you’re presenting your subject. Figure out where you will feature your case study; whether it is written, on video, shown as an infographic, streamed as a podcast, etc.
Determine who will be the right candidate for your case study. Get permission, quotes, and other features that will make your case study effective. Get in touch with your candidate to see if they approve of being part of your work. Study that candidate’s situation and note down what caused it.
Identify which various consequences could result from the situation. Follow these guidelines on how to start a case study: surf the net to find some general information you might find useful.
Make a list of credible sources and examine them. Seek out important facts and highlight problems. Always write down your ideas and make sure to brainstorm.
Focus on several key issues – why they exist, and how they impact your research subject. Think of several unique solutions. Draw from class discussions, readings, and personal experience. When writing a case study, focus on the best solution and explore it in depth. After having all your research in place, writing a case study will be easy. You may first want to check the rubric and criteria of your assignment for the correct case study structure.

Read Also: ' WHAT IS A CREDIBLE SOURCES ?'

Although your instructor might be looking at slightly different criteria, every case study rubric essentially has the same standards. Your professor will want you to exhibit 8 different outcomes:

Correctly identify the concepts, theories, and practices in the discipline.
Identify the relevant theories and principles associated with the particular study.
Evaluate legal and ethical principles and apply them to your decision-making.
Recognize the global importance and contribution of your case.
Construct a coherent summary and explanation of the study.
Demonstrate analytical and critical-thinking skills.
Explain the interrelationships between the environment and nature.
Integrate theory and practice of the discipline within the analysis.

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Case Study Outline

Let's look at the structure of an outline based on the issue of the alcoholic addiction of 30 people.

Introduction

Statement of the issue: Alcoholism is a disease rather than a weakness of character.
Presentation of the problem: Alcoholism is affecting more than 14 million people in the USA, which makes it the third most common mental illness there.
Explanation of the terms: In the past, alcoholism was commonly referred to as alcohol dependence or alcohol addiction. Alcoholism is now the more severe stage of this addiction in the disorder spectrum.
Hypotheses: Drinking in excess can lead to the use of other drugs.
Importance of your story: How the information you present can help people with their addictions.
Background of the story: Include an explanation of why you chose this topic.
Presentation of analysis and data: Describe the criteria for choosing 30 candidates, the structure of the interview, and the outcomes.
Strong argument 1: ex. X% of candidates dealing with anxiety and depression...
Strong argument 2: ex. X amount of people started drinking by their mid-teens.
Strong argument 3: ex. X% of respondents’ parents had issues with alcohol.
Concluding statement: I have researched if alcoholism is a disease and found out that…
Recommendations: Ways and actions for preventing alcohol use.

Writing a Case Study Draft

After you’ve done your case study research and written the outline, it’s time to focus on the draft. In a draft, you have to develop and write your case study by using: the data which you collected throughout the research, interviews, and the analysis processes that were undertaken. Follow these rules for the draft:

Your draft should contain at least 4 sections: an introduction; a body where you should include background information, an explanation of why you decided to do this case study, and a presentation of your main findings; a conclusion where you present data; and references.
In the introduction, you should set the pace very clearly. You can even raise a question or quote someone you interviewed in the research phase. It must provide adequate background information on the topic. The background may include analyses of previous studies on your topic. Include the aim of your case here as well. Think of it as a thesis statement. The aim must describe the purpose of your work—presenting the issues that you want to tackle. Include background information, such as photos or videos you used when doing the research.
Describe your unique research process, whether it was through interviews, observations, academic journals, etc. The next point includes providing the results of your research. Tell the audience what you found out. Why is this important, and what could be learned from it? Discuss the real implications of the problem and its significance in the world.
Include quotes and data (such as findings, percentages, and awards). This will add a personal touch and better credibility to the case you present. Explain what results you find during your interviews in regards to the problem and how it developed. Also, write about solutions which have already been proposed by other people who have already written about this case.
At the end of your case study, you should offer possible solutions, but don’t worry about solving them yourself.

Use Data to Illustrate Key Points in Your Case Study

Even though your case study is a story, it should be based on evidence. Use as much data as possible to illustrate your point. Without the right data, your case study may appear weak and the readers may not be able to relate to your issue as much as they should. Let's see the examples from essay writing service :

‍ With data: Alcoholism is affecting more than 14 million people in the USA, which makes it the third most common mental illness there. Without data: A lot of people suffer from alcoholism in the United States.

Try to include as many credible sources as possible. You may have terms or sources that could be hard for other cultures to understand. If this is the case, you should include them in the appendix or Notes for the Instructor or Professor.

Finalizing the Draft: Checklist

After you finish drafting your case study, polish it up by answering these ‘ask yourself’ questions and think about how to end your case study:

Check that you follow the correct case study format, also in regards to text formatting.
Check that your work is consistent with its referencing and citation style.
Micro-editing — check for grammar and spelling issues.
Macro-editing — does ‘the big picture’ come across to the reader? Is there enough raw data, such as real-life examples or personal experiences? Have you made your data collection process completely transparent? Does your analysis provide a clear conclusion, allowing for further research and practice?

Problems to avoid:

Overgeneralization – Do not go into further research that deviates from the main problem.
Failure to Document Limitations – Just as you have to clearly state the limitations of a general research study, you must describe the specific limitations inherent in the subject of analysis.
Failure to Extrapolate All Possible Implications – Just as you don't want to over-generalize from your case study findings, you also have to be thorough in the consideration of all possible outcomes or recommendations derived from your findings.

How to Create a Title Page and Cite a Case Study

Let's see how to create an awesome title page.

Your title page depends on the prescribed citation format. The title page should include:

A title that attracts some attention and describes your study
The title should have the words “case study” in it
The title should range between 5-9 words in length
Your name and contact information
Your finished paper should be only 500 to 1,500 words in length.With this type of assignment, write effectively and avoid fluff

Here is a template for the APA and MLA format title page:

There are some cases when you need to cite someone else's study in your own one – therefore, you need to master how to cite a case study. A case study is like a research paper when it comes to citations. You can cite it like you cite a book, depending on what style you need.

Citation Example in MLA ‍ Hill, Linda, Tarun Khanna, and Emily A. Stecker. HCL Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business Publishing, 2008. Print.

Citation Example in APA ‍ Hill, L., Khanna, T., & Stecker, E. A. (2008). HCL Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business Publishing.

Citation Example in Chicago Hill, Linda, Tarun Khanna, and Emily A. Stecker. HCL Technologies.

Case Study Examples

To give you an idea of a professional case study example, we gathered and linked some below.

Eastman Kodak Case Study

Case Study Example: Audi Trains Mexican Autoworkers in Germany

To conclude, a case study is one of the best methods of getting an overview of what happened to a person, a group, or a situation in practice. It allows you to have an in-depth glance at the real-life problems that businesses, healthcare industry, criminal justice, etc. may face. This insight helps us look at such situations in a different light. This is because we see scenarios that we otherwise would not, without necessarily being there. If you need custom essays , try our research paper writing services .

Get Help Form Qualified Writers

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What Is A Case Study?

How to cite a case study in apa, how to write a case study.

Daniel Parker

is a seasoned educational writer focusing on scholarship guidance, research papers, and various forms of academic essays including reflective and narrative essays. His expertise also extends to detailed case studies. A scholar with a background in English Literature and Education, Daniel’s work on EssayPro blog aims to support students in achieving academic excellence and securing scholarships. His hobbies include reading classic literature and participating in academic forums.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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All Case Examples

Hospital Implements New Minimum Necessary Polices for Telephone Messages Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Minimum Necessary; Confidential Communications

A hospital employee did not observe minimum necessary requirements when she left a telephone message with the daughter of a patient that detailed both her medical condition and treatment plan. An OCR investigation also indicated that the confidential communications requirements were not followed, as the employee left the message at the patient’s home telephone number, despite the patient’s instructions to contact her through her work number. To resolve the issues in this case, the hospital developed and implemented several new procedures. One addressed the issue of minimum necessary information in telephone message content. Employees were trained to provide only the minimum necessary information in messages, and were given specific direction as to what information could be left in a message. Employees also were trained to review registration information for patient contact directives regarding leaving messages. The new procedures were incorporated into the standard staff privacy training, both as part of a refresher series and mandatory yearly compliance training.

HMO Revises Process to Obtain Valid Authorizations Covered Entity: Health Plans / HMOs Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Authorizations

A complaint alleged that an HMO impermissibly disclosed a member’s PHI, when it sent her entire medical record to a disability insurance company without her authorization. An OCR investigation indicated that the form the HMO relied on to make the disclosure was not a valid authorization under the Privacy Rule. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, the HMO created a new HIPAA-compliant authorization form and implemented a new policy that directs staff to obtain patient signatures on these forms before responding to any disclosure requests, even if patients bring in their own “authorization” form. The new authorization specifies what records and/or portions of the files will be disclosed and the respective authorization will be kept in the patient’s record, together with the disclosed information.

Mental Health Center Corrects Process for Providing Notice of Privacy Practices Covered Entity: Outpatient Facility Issue: Notice

A mental health center did not provide a notice of privacy practices (notice) to a father or his minor daughter, a patient at the center. In response to OCR’s investigation, the mental health center acknowledged that it had not provided the complainant and his daughter with a notice prior to her mental health evaluation. To resolve this matter, the mental health center revised its intake assessment policy and procedures to specify that the notice will be provided and the clinician will attempt to obtain a signed acknowledgement of receipt of the notice prior to the intake assessment. The acknowledgement form is now included in the intake package of forms. The center also provided OCR with written assurance that all policy changes were brought to the attention of the staff involved in the daughter’s care and then disseminated to all staff affected by the policy change.

Entity Rescinds Improper Charges for Medical Record Copies to Reflect Reasonable, Cost-Based Fees Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Access

A patient alleged that a covered entity failed to provide him access to his medical records. After OCR notified the entity of the allegation, the entity released the complainant’s medical records but also billed him $100.00 for a “records review fee” as well as an administrative fee. The Privacy Rule permits the imposition of a reasonable cost-based fee that includes only the cost of copying and postage and preparing an explanation or summary if agreed to by the individual. To resolve this matter, the covered entity refunded the $100.00 “records review fee.”

Hospital Issues Guidelines Regarding Disclosures to Avert Threats to Health or Safety Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Safeguards; Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Disclosures to Avert a Serious Threat to Health or Safety

After treating a patient injured in a rather unusual sporting accident, the hospital released to the local media, without the patient’s authorization, copies of the patient’s skull x-ray as well as a description of the complainant’s medical condition. The local newspaper then featured on its front page the individual’s x-ray and an article that included the date of the accident, the location of the accident, the patient’s gender, a description of patient’s medical condition, and numerous quotes from the hospital about such unusual sporting accidents. The hospital asserted that the disclosures were made to avert a serious threat to health or safety; however, OCR’s investigation indicated that the disclosures did not meet the Privacy Rule’s standard for such actions. The investigation also indicated that the disclosures did not meet the Rule’s de-identification standard and therefore were not permissible without the individual’s authorization. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required the hospital to develop and implement a policy regarding disclosures related to serious threats to health and safety, and to train all members of the hospital staff on the new policy.

Private Practice Implements Safeguards for Waiting Rooms Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Safeguards; Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

A staff member of a medical practice discussed HIV testing procedures with a patient in the waiting room, thereby disclosing PHI to several other individuals. Also, computer screens displaying patient information were easily visible to patients. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required the provider to develop and implement policies and procedures regarding appropriate administrative and physical safeguards related to the communication of PHI. The practice trained all staff on the newly developed policies and procedures. In addition, OCR required the practice to reposition its computer monitors to prevent patients from viewing information on the screens, and the practice installed computer monitor privacy screens to prevent impermissible disclosures.

Pharmacy Chain Enters into Business Associate Agreement with Law Firm Covered Entity: Pharmacy Chain Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Business Associates

A complaint alleged that a law firm working on behalf of a pharmacy chain in an administrative proceeding impermissibly disclosed the PHI of a customer of the pharmacy chain. OCR investigated the allegation and found no evidence that the law firm had impermissibly disclosed the customer’s PHI. However, the investigation revealed that the pharmacy chain and the law firm had not entered into a Business Associate Agreement, as required by the Privacy Rule to ensure that PHI is appropriately safeguarded. Without a properly executed agreement, a covered entity may not disclose PHI to its law firm. To resolve the matter, OCR required the pharmacy chain and the law firm to enter into a business associate agreement.

Radiologist Revises Process for Workers Compensation Disclosures Covered Entity: Health Care Provider Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

A radiology practice that interpreted a hospital patient’s imaging tests submitted a worker’s compensation claim to the patient’s employer. The claim included the patient’s test results. However, the patient was not covered by worker’s compensation and had not identified worker’s compensation as responsible for payment. OCR’s investigation revealed that the radiology practice had relied upon incorrect billing information from the treating hospital in submitting the claim. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, the practice apologized to the patient and sanctioned the employee responsible for the incident; trained all billing and coding staff on appropriate insurance claims submission; and revised its policies and procedures to require a specific request from worker’s compensation carriers before submitting test results to them.

Pharmacy Chain Institutes New Safeguards for PHI in Pseudoephedrine Log Books Covered Entity: Pharmacies Issue: Safeguards

A grocery store based pharmacy chain maintained pseudoephedrine log books containing protected health information in a manner so that individual protected health information was visible to the public at the pharmacy counter. Initially, the pharmacy chain refused to acknowledge that the log books contained protected health information. OCR issued a written analysis and a demand for compliance. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required that the pharmacy chain implement national policies and procedures to safeguard the log books. Moreover, the entity was required to train of all staff on the revised policy. The chain acknowledged that log books contained protected health information and implemented the required changes.

Pharmacy Chain Revises Process for Disclosures to Law Enforcement Covered Entity: Pharmacies Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

A chain pharmacy disclosed protected health information to municipal law enforcement officials in a manner that did not conform to the provisions of the Privacy Rule. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required this chain to revise its national policy regarding law enforcement's access to patient protected health information to comply with the Privacy Rule requirements, including that disclosures of protected health information to law enforcement only be made in response to written requests from law enforcement officials, unless state law requires otherwise. The revised policy was implemented in the chains' stores nationwide.

Large Medicaid Plan Corrects Vulnerability that Resulted in Dsiclosure to Non-BA Vendors Covered Entity: Health Plans Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Safeguards

A municipal social service agency disclosed protected health information while processing Medicaid applications by sending consolidated data to computer vendors that were not business associates. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required that the social service agency develop procedures for properly disclosing protected health information only to its valid business associates and to train its staff on the new processes. The new procedures were instituted in Medicaid offices and independent health care programs under the jurisdiction of the municipal social service agency.

Health Plan Corrects Computer Flaw that Caused Mailing of EOBs to Wrong Persons Covered Entity: Health Plans Issue: Safeguards

A national health maintenance organization sent explanation of benefits (EOB) by mail to a complainant's unauthorized family member. OCR's investigation determined that a flaw in the health plan's computer system put the protected health information of approximately 2,000 families at risk of disclosure in violation of the Rule. Among the corrective actions required to resolve this case, OCR required the insurer to correct the flaw in its computer system, review all transactions for a six month period and correct all corrupted patient information.

Health Sciences Center Revises Process to Prevent Unauthorized Disclosures to Employers Covered Entity: General Hospitals Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Authorizations

A state health sciences center disclosed protected health information to a complainant's employer without authorization. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, including mitigation of harm to the complainant, OCR required the Center to revise its procedures regarding patient authorization prior to release of protected health information to an employer. All staff was trained on the revised procedures.

National Pharmacy Chain Extends Protections for PHI on Insurance Cards Covered Entity: Pharmacies Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures; Safeguards

A pharmacy employee placed a customer's insurance card in another customer's prescription bag. The pharmacy did not consider the customer's insurance card to be protected health information (PHI). OCR clarified that an individual's health insurance card meets the statutory definition of PHI and, as such, needs to be safeguarded. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, the pharmacy revised its policies regarding PHI and retrained its staff. The revised policies are applicable to all individual stores in the pharmacy chain.

Health Plan Corrects Impermissible Disclosure of PHI through Training, Mitigation, and Sanctions Covered Entity: Health Plans Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

An employee of a major health insurer impermissibly disclosed the protected health information of one of its members without following the insurer's authorization and verification procedures. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required the health insurer to train its staff on the applicable policies and procedures and to mitigate the harm to the individual. In addition, the employee who made the disclosure was counseled and given a written warning.

Private Practice Revises Process to Provide Access to Records Covered Entity: Private Practices Issue: Access

A private practice failed to honor an individual's request for a complete copy of her minor son's medical record. OCR's investigation determined that the private practice had relied on state regulations that permit a covered entity to provide a summary of the record. OCR provided technical assistance to the covered entity, explaining that the Privacy Rule permits a covered entity to provide a summary of patient records rather than the full record only if the requesting individual agrees in advance to such a summary or explanation. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required the covered entity to revise its policy. In addition, the covered entity forwarded the complainant a complete copy of the medical record.

Private Practice Revises Process to Provide Access to Records Regardless of Payment Source Covered Entity: Private Practices Issue: Access

At the direction of an insurance company that had requested an independent medical exam of an individual, a private medical practice denied the individual a copy of the medical records. OCR determined that the private practice denied the individual access to records to which she was entitled by the Privacy Rule. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required that the private practice revise its policies and procedures regarding access requests to reflect the individual's right of access regardless of payment source.

Public Hospital Corrects Impermissible Disclosure of PHI in Response to a Subpoena Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

A public hospital, in response to a subpoena (not accompanied by a court order), impermissibly disclosed the protected health information (PHI) of one of its patients. Contrary to the Privacy Rule protections for information sought for administrative or judicial proceedings, the hospital failed to determine that reasonable efforts had been made to insure that the individual whose PHI was being sought received notice of the request and/or failed to receive satisfactory assurance that the party seeking the information made reasonable efforts to secure a qualified protective order. Among other corrective actions to remedy this situation, OCR required that the hospital revise its subpoena processing procedures. Under the revised process, if a subpoena is received that does not meet the requirements of the Privacy Rule, the information is not disclosed; instead, the hospital contacts the party seeking the subpoena and the requirements of the Privacy Rule are explained. The hospital also trained relevant staff members on the new procedures.

Outpatient Surgical Facility Corrects Privacy Procedure in Research Recruitment Covered Entity: Outpatient Facility Issue: Impermissible Uses and Disclosures

An outpatient surgical facility disclosed a patient's protected health information (PHI) to a research entity for recruitment purposes without the patient's authorization or an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or privacy-board-approved waiver of authorization. The outpatient facility reportedly believed that such disclosures were permitted by the Privacy Rule. OCR provided technical assistance to the covered entity regarding the requirement that covered entities seeking to disclose PHI for research recruitment purposes must obtain either a valid patient authorization or an Institutional Review Board (IRB) or privacy-board-approved alteration to or waiver of authorization. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, OCR required the outpatient facility to: revise its written policies and procedures regarding disclosures of PHI for research recruitment purposes to require valid written authorizations; retrain its entire staff on the new policies and procedures; log the disclosure of the patient's PHI for accounting purposes; and send the patient a letter apologizing for the impermissible disclosure.

Clinic Sanctions Supervisor for Accessing Employee Medical Record Covered Entity: Outpatient Facility Issue: Impermissible Use and Disclosure

A hospital employee's supervisor accessed, examined, and disclosed an employee's medical record. OCR's investigation confirmed that the use and disclosure of protected health information by the supervisor was not authorized by the employee and was not otherwise permitted by the Privacy Rule. An employee's medical record is protected by the Privacy Rule, even though employment records held by a covered entity in its role as employer are not. Among other corrective actions to resolve the specific issues in the case, a letter of reprimand was placed in the supervisor's personnel file and the supervisor received additional training about the Privacy Rule. Further, the covered entity counseled the supervisor about appropriate use of the medical information of a subordinate.

Private Practice Provides Access to All Records, Regardless of Source Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Access

A private practice denied an individual access to his records on the basis that a portion of the individual's record was created by a physician not associated with the practice. While the amendment provisions of the Privacy Rule permit a covered entity to deny an individual's request for an amendment when the covered entity did not create that the portion of the record subject to the request for amendment, no similar provision limits individuals' rights to access their protected health information. Among other steps to resolve the specific issue in this case, OCR required the private practice to revise its access policy and procedures to affirm that, consistent with the Privacy Rule standards, patients have access to their record regardless of whether another entity created information contained within it.

State Hospital Sanctions Employees for Disclosing Patient's PHI Covered Entity: Health Care Provider / General Hospital Issue: Impermissible Disclosure

A nurse and an orderly at a state hospital discussed the HIV/AIDS status of a patient and the patient's spouse within earshot of other patients without making reasonable efforts to prevent the disclosure. Upon learning of the incident, the hospital placed both employees on leave; the orderly resigned his employment shortly thereafter. Among other actions taken to satisfactorily resolve this matter, the hospital took further disciplinary action with the nurse, which included: documenting the employee record with a memo of the incident; one year probation; referral for peer review; and further training on HIPAA Privacy. In addition to corrective action taken under the Privacy Rule, the state attorney general's office entered into a monetary settlement agreement with the patient.

Dentist Revises Process to Safeguard Medical Alert PHI Covered Entity: Health Care Provider Issue: Safeguards, Minimum Necessary

An OCR investigation confirmed allegations that a dental practice flagged some of its medical records with a red sticker with the word "AIDS" on the outside cover, and that records were handled so that other patients and staff without need to know could read the sticker. When notified of the complaint filed with OCR, the dental practice immediately removed the red AIDS sticker from the complainant's file. To resolve this matter, OCR also required the practice to revise its policies and operating procedures and to move medical alert stickers to the inside cover of the records. Further, the covered entity's Privacy Officer and other representatives met with the patient and apologized, and followed the meeting with a written apology.

Physician Revises Faxing Procedures to Safeguard PHI Covered Entity: Health Care Provider Issue: Safeguards

A doctor's office disclosed a patient's HIV status when the office mistakenly faxed medical records to the patient's place of employment instead of to the patient's new health care provider. The employee responsible for the disclosure received a written disciplinary warning, and both the employee and the physician apologized to the patient. To resolve this matter, OCR also required the practice to revise the office's fax cover page to underscore a confidential communication for the intended recipient. The office informed all its employees of the incident and counseled staff on proper faxing procedures.

Large Provider Revises Patient Contact Process to Reflect Requests for Confidential Communications Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Impermissible Disclosure; Confidential Communications

A patient alleged that a general hospital disclosed protected health information when a hospital staff person left a message on the patient’s home phone answering machine, thereby failing to accommodate the patient’s request that communications of PHI be made only through her mobile or work phones. In response, the hospital instituted a number of actions to achieve compliance with the Privacy Rule. To resolve this matter to the satisfaction of OCR, the hospital: retrained an entire Department with regard to the requirements of the Privacy Rule; provided additional specific training to staff members whose job duties included leaving messages for patients; and, revised the Department’s patient privacy policy to clarify patient rights to accommodation of reasonable requests to receive communications of PHI by alternative means or at alternative locations.

Large Health System Restricts Provider's Use of Patient Records Covered Entity: Multi-Hospital Healthcare Provider Issue: Impermissible Use

A nurse practitioner who has privileges at a multi-hospital health care system and who is part of the system’s organized health care arrangement impermissibly accessed the medical records of her ex-husband. In order to resolve this matter to OCR’s satisfaction and to prevent a recurrence, the covered entity: terminated the nurse practitioner’s access to its electronic records system; reported the nurse practitioner’s conduct to the appropriate licensing authority; and, provided the nurse practitioner with remedial Privacy Rule training.

Private Practice Revises Access Procedure to Provide Access Despite an Outstanding Balance Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Access

A complainant alleged that a private practice physician denied her access to her medical records, because the complainant had an outstanding balance for services the physician had provided. During OCR’s investigation, the physician confirmed that the complainant was not given access to her medical record because of the outstanding balance. OCR provided technical assistance to the physician, explaining that, in general, the Privacy Rule requires that a covered entity provide an individual access to their medical record within 30 days of a request, regardless of whether or not the individual has a balance due. Once the physician learned that he could not withhold access until payment was made, the physician provided the complainant a copy of her medical record.

Hospital Revises Email Distribution as a Result of a Disclosure to Persons Without a "Need to Know" Covered Entity: General Hospital Issue: Impermissible Use and Disclosure

A complainant, who was both a patient and an employee of the hospital, alleged that her protected health information (PHI) was impermissibly disclosed to her supervisor. OCR’s investigation revealed that: the hospital distributed an Operating Room (OR) schedule to employees via email; the hospital’s OR schedule contained information about the complainant’s upcoming surgery. While the Privacy Rule may permit the disclosure of an OR schedule containing PHI, in this case, a hospital employee shared the OR scheduled with the complainant’s supervisor, who was not part of the employee's treatment team, and did not need the information for payment, health care operations, or other permissible purposes. The hospital disciplined and retrained the employee who made the impermissible disclosure. Additionally, in order to prevent similar incidents, the hospital undertook a complete review of the distribution of the OR schedule. As a result of this review, the hospital revised the distribution of the OR schedule, limiting it to those who have “a need to know.”

Private Practice Ceases Conditioning of Compliance with the Privacy Rule Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Conditioning Compliance with the Privacy Rule

A physician practice requested that patients sign an agreement entitled “Consent and Mutual Agreement to Maintain Privacy.” The agreement prohibited the patient from directly or indirectly publishing or airing commentary about the physician, his expertise, and/or treatment in exchange for the physician’s compliance with the Privacy Rule. A patient’s rights under the Privacy Rule are not contingent on the patient’s agreement with a covered entity. A covered entity’s obligation to comply with all requirements of the Privacy Rule cannot be conditioned on the patient’s silence. OCR required the covered entity to cease using the patient agreement that conditioned the entity’s compliance with the Privacy Rule. Additionally, OCR required the covered entity to revise its Notice of Privacy Practices.

Mental Health Center Provides Access after Denial Covered Entity: Mental Health Center Issue: Access, Authorization

The complainant alleged that a mental health center (the "Center") improperly provided her records to her auto insurance company and refused to provide her with a copy of her medical records. The Center provided OCR with a valid authorization, signed by the complainant, permitting the release of information to the auto insurance company. OCR also determined that the Center denied the complainant's request for access because her therapists believed providing the records to her would likely cause her substantial harm. The Center did not, however, provide the complainant with the opportunity to have the denial reviewed, as required by the Privacy Rule. Among other corrective action taken to resolve this issue, the Center provided the complainant with a copy of her records.

Mental Health Center Provides Access and Revises Policies and Procedures Covered Entity: Mental Health Center Issue: Access, Restrictions

The complainant alleged that a mental health center (the "Center") refused to provide her with a copy of her medical record, including psychotherapy notes. OCR’s investigation revealed that the Center provided the complainant with an opportunity to review her medical record, including the psychotherapy notes, with her therapist, but the Center did not provide her with a copy of her records. The Privacy Rule requires covered entities to provide individuals with access to their medical records; however, the Privacy Rule exempts psychotherapy notes from this requirement. Although the Center gave the complainant the opportunity to review her medical record, this did not negate the Center’s obligation to provide the complainant with a copy of her records. Among other corrective action taken, the Center provided the complainant with a copy of her medical record and revised its policies and procedures to ensure that it provides timely access to all individuals.

Private Practice Revises Policies and Procedures Addressing Activities Preparatory to Research Covered Entity: Private Practice Issue: Impermissible Disclosure-Research

A private practice physician who was the principal investigator of a clinical research study disclosed a list of patients and diagnostic codes to a contract research organization to telephone patients for recruitment purposes. The disclosure was not consistent with documents approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). The private practice maintained that the disclosure to the contract research organization was permissible as a review preparatory to research. Activities considered “preparatory to research” include: preparing a research protocol; developing a research hypothesis; and identifying prospective research participants. Contacting individuals to participate in a research study is a use or disclosure of protected health information (PHI) for recruitment, as it is part of the research and is not an activity preparatory to research. To remedy this situation, the private practice revised its policies and procedures regarding the disclosure of PHI and trained all physicians and staff members on the new policies and procedures. Under the revised policies and procedures, the practice may use and disclose PHI for research purposes, including recruitment, only if a valid authorization is obtained from each individual or if the covered entity obtains documentation that an alteration to or a waiver of the authorization requirement has been approved by an IRB or a Privacy Board.

Case Examples

Case Examples by Covered Entity
Case Examples by Issue

Doha Declaration

Education for justice.

Agenda Day 1
Agenda Day 2
Agenda Day 3
Agenda Day 4
Registration
Breakout Sessions for Primary and Secondary Level
Breakout Sessions for Tertiary Level
E4J Youth Competition
India - Lockdown Learners
Chuka, Break the Silence
The Online Zoo
I would like a community where ...
Staying safe online
Let's be respectful online
We can all be heroes
Respect for all
We all have rights
A mosaic of differences
The right thing to do
Solving ethical dilemmas
UNODC-UNESCO Guide for Policymakers
UNODC-UNESCO Handbooks for Teachers
Justice Accelerators
Introduction
Organized Crime
Trafficking in Persons & Smuggling of Migrants
Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Reform
Crime Prevention, Criminal Justice & SDGs
UN Congress on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
Commission on Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
Conference of the Parties to UNTOC
Conference of the States Parties to UNCAC
Rules for Simulating Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice Bodies
Crime Prevention & Criminal Justice
Engage with Us
Contact Us about MUN
Conferences Supporting E4J
Cyberstrike
Play for Integrity
Running out of Time
Zorbs Reloaded
Developing a Rationale for Using the Video
Previewing the Anti-Corruption Video
Viewing the Video with a Purpose
Post-viewing Activities
Previewing the Firearms Video
Rationale for Using the Video
Previewing the Human Trafficking Video
Previewing the Organized Crime Video
Previewing the Video
Criminal Justice & Crime Prevention
Corruption & Integrity
Human Trafficking & Migrant Smuggling
Firearms Trafficking
Terrorism & Violent Extremism
Introduction & Learning Outcomes
Corruption - Baseline Definition
Effects of Corruption
Deeper Meanings of Corruption
Measuring Corruption
Possible Class Structure
Core Reading
Advanced Reading
Student Assessment
Additional Teaching Tools
Guidelines for Stand-Alone Course
Appendix: How Corruption Affects the SDGs
What is Governance?
What is Good Governance?
Corruption and Bad Governance
Governance Reforms and Anti-Corruption
Guidelines for Stand-alone Course
Corruption and Democracy
Corruption and Authoritarian Systems
Hybrid Systems and Syndromes of Corruption
The Deep Democratization Approach
Political Parties and Political Finance
Political Institution-building as a Means to Counter Corruption
Manifestations and Consequences of Public Sector Corruption
Causes of Public Sector Corruption
Theories that Explain Corruption
Corruption in Public Procurement
Corruption in State-Owned Enterprises
Responses to Public Sector Corruption
Preventing Public Sector Corruption
Forms & Manifestations of Private Sector Corruption
Consequences of Private Sector Corruption
Causes of Private Sector Corruption
Responses to Private Sector Corruption
Preventing Private Sector Corruption
Collective Action & Public-Private Partnerships against Corruption
Transparency as a Precondition
Detection Mechanisms - Auditing and Reporting
Whistle-blowing Systems and Protections
Investigation of Corruption
Introduction and Learning Outcomes
Brief background on the human rights system
Overview of the corruption-human rights nexus
Impact of corruption on specific human rights
Approaches to assessing the corruption-human rights nexus
Human-rights based approach
Defining sex, gender and gender mainstreaming
Gender differences in corruption
Theories explaining the gender–corruption nexus
Gendered impacts of corruption
Anti-corruption and gender mainstreaming
Manifestations of corruption in education
Costs of corruption in education
Causes of corruption in education
Fighting corruption in education
Core terms and concepts
The role of citizens in fighting corruption
The role, risks and challenges of CSOs fighting corruption
The role of the media in fighting corruption
Access to information: a condition for citizen participation
ICT as a tool for citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
Government obligations to ensure citizen participation in anti-corruption efforts
Teaching Guide
Brief History of Terrorism
19th Century Terrorism
League of Nations & Terrorism
United Nations & Terrorism
Terrorist Victimization
Exercises & Case Studies
Radicalization & Violent Extremism
Preventing & Countering Violent Extremism
Drivers of Violent Extremism
International Approaches to PVE &CVE
Regional & Multilateral Approaches
Defining Rule of Law
UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy
International Cooperation & UN CT Strategy
Legal Sources & UN CT Strategy
Regional & National Approaches
International Legal Frameworks
International Human Rights Law
International Humanitarian Law
International Refugee Law
Current Challenges to International Legal Framework
Defining Terrorism
Criminal Justice Responses
Treaty-based Crimes of Terrorism
Core International Crimes
International Courts and Tribunals
African Region
Inter-American Region
Asian Region
European Region
Middle East & Gulf Regions
Core Principles of IHL
Categorization of Armed Conflict
Classification of Persons
IHL, Terrorism & Counter-Terrorism
Relationship between IHL & intern. human rights law
Limitations Permitted by Human Rights Law
Derogation during Public Emergency
Examples of States of Emergency & Derogations
International Human Rights Instruments
Regional Human Rights Instruments
Extra-territorial Application of Right to Life
Arbitrary Deprivation of Life
Death Penalty
Enforced Disappearances
Armed Conflict Context
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Convention against Torture et al.
International Legal Framework
Key Contemporary Issues
Investigative Phase
Trial & Sentencing Phase
Armed Conflict
Case Studies
Special Investigative Techniques
Surveillance & Interception of Communications
Privacy & Intelligence Gathering in Armed Conflict
Accountability & Oversight of Intelligence Gathering
Principle of Non-Discrimination
Freedom of Religion
Freedom of Expression
Freedom of Assembly
Freedom of Association
Fundamental Freedoms
Definition of 'Victim'
Effects of Terrorism
Access to Justice
Recognition of the Victim
Human Rights Instruments
Criminal Justice Mechanisms
Instruments for Victims of Terrorism
National Approaches
Key Challenges in Securing Reparation
Topic 1. Contemporary issues relating to conditions conducive both to the spread of terrorism and the rule of law
Topic 2. Contemporary issues relating to the right to life
Topic 3. Contemporary issues relating to foreign terrorist fighters
Topic 4. Contemporary issues relating to non-discrimination and fundamental freedoms
Module 16: Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
Thematic Areas
Content Breakdown
Module Adaptation & Design Guidelines
Teaching Methods
Acknowledgements
1. Introducing United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ vis-à-vis International Law
2. Scope of United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ
3. United Nations Standards & Norms on CPCJ in Operation
1. Definition of Crime Prevention
2. Key Crime Prevention Typologies
2. (cont.) Tonry & Farrington’s Typology
3. Crime Problem-Solving Approaches
4. What Works
United Nations Entities
Regional Crime Prevention Councils/Institutions
Key Clearinghouses
Systematic Reviews
1. Introduction to International Standards & Norms
2. Identifying the Need for Legal Aid
3. Key Components of the Right of Access to Legal Aid
4. Access to Legal Aid for Those with Specific Needs
5. Models for Governing, Administering and Funding Legal Aid
6. Models for Delivering Legal Aid Services
7. Roles and Responsibilities of Legal Aid Providers
8. Quality Assurance and Legal Aid Services
1. Context for Use of Force by Law Enforcement Officials
2. Legal Framework
3. General Principles of Use of Force in Law Enforcement
4. Use of Firearms
5. Use of “Less-Lethal” Weapons
6. Protection of Especially Vulnerable Groups
7. Use of Force during Assemblies
1. Policing in democracies & need for accountability, integrity, oversight
2. Key mechanisms & actors in police accountability, oversight
3. Crosscutting & contemporary issues in police accountability
1. Introducing Aims of Punishment, Imprisonment & Prison Reform
2. Current Trends, Challenges & Human Rights
3. Towards Humane Prisons & Alternative Sanctions
1. Aims and Significance of Alternatives to Imprisonment
2. Justifying Punishment in the Community
3. Pretrial Alternatives
4. Post Trial Alternatives
5. Evaluating Alternatives
1. Concept, Values and Origin of Restorative Justice
2. Overview of Restorative Justice Processes
3. How Cost Effective is Restorative Justice?
4. Issues in Implementing Restorative Justice
1. Gender-Based Discrimination & Women in Conflict with the Law
2. Vulnerabilities of Girls in Conflict with the Law
3. Discrimination and Violence against LGBTI Individuals
4. Gender Diversity in Criminal Justice Workforce
1. Ending Violence against Women
2. Human Rights Approaches to Violence against Women
3. Who Has Rights in this Situation?
4. What about the Men?
5. Local, Regional & Global Solutions to Violence against Women & Girls
1. Understanding the Concept of Victims of Crime
2. Impact of Crime, including Trauma
3. Right of Victims to Adequate Response to their Needs
4. Collecting Victim Data
5. Victims and their Participation in Criminal Justice Process
6. Victim Services: Institutional and Non-Governmental Organizations
7. Outlook on Current Developments Regarding Victims
8. Victims of Crime and International Law
1. The Many Forms of Violence against Children
2. The Impact of Violence on Children
3. States' Obligations to Prevent VAC and Protect Child Victims
4. Improving the Prevention of Violence against Children
5. Improving the Criminal Justice Response to VAC
6. Addressing Violence against Children within the Justice System
1. The Role of the Justice System
2. Convention on the Rights of the Child & International Legal Framework on Children's Rights
3. Justice for Children
4. Justice for Children in Conflict with the Law
5. Realizing Justice for Children
1a. Judicial Independence as Fundamental Value of Rule of Law & of Constitutionalism
1b. Main Factors Aimed at Securing Judicial Independence
2a. Public Prosecutors as ‘Gate Keepers’ of Criminal Justice
2b. Institutional and Functional Role of Prosecutors
2c. Other Factors Affecting the Role of Prosecutors
Basics of Computing
Global Connectivity and Technology Usage Trends
Cybercrime in Brief
Cybercrime Trends
Cybercrime Prevention
Offences against computer data and systems
Computer-related offences
Content-related offences
The Role of Cybercrime Law
Harmonization of Laws
International and Regional Instruments
International Human Rights and Cybercrime Law
Digital Evidence
Digital Forensics
Standards and Best Practices for Digital Forensics
Reporting Cybercrime
Who Conducts Cybercrime Investigations?
Obstacles to Cybercrime Investigations
Knowledge Management
Legal and Ethical Obligations
Handling of Digital Evidence
Digital Evidence Admissibility
Sovereignty and Jurisdiction
Formal International Cooperation Mechanisms
Informal International Cooperation Mechanisms
Data Retention, Preservation and Access
Challenges Relating to Extraterritorial Evidence
National Capacity and International Cooperation
Internet Governance
Cybersecurity Strategies: Basic Features
National Cybersecurity Strategies
International Cooperation on Cybersecurity Matters
Cybersecurity Posture
Assets, Vulnerabilities and Threats
Vulnerability Disclosure
Cybersecurity Measures and Usability
Situational Crime Prevention
Incident Detection, Response, Recovery & Preparedness
Privacy: What it is and Why it is Important
Privacy and Security
Cybercrime that Compromises Privacy
Data Protection Legislation
Data Breach Notification Laws
Enforcement of Privacy and Data Protection Laws
Intellectual Property: What it is
Types of Intellectual Property
Causes for Cyber-Enabled Copyright & Trademark Offences
Protection & Prevention Efforts
Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Cyberstalking and Cyberharassment
Cyberbullying
Gender-Based Interpersonal Cybercrime
Interpersonal Cybercrime Prevention
Cyber Organized Crime: What is it?
Conceptualizing Organized Crime & Defining Actors Involved
Criminal Groups Engaging in Cyber Organized Crime
Cyber Organized Crime Activities
Preventing & Countering Cyber Organized Crime
Cyberespionage
Cyberterrorism
Cyberwarfare
Information Warfare, Disinformation & Electoral Fraud
Responses to Cyberinterventions
Framing the Issue of Firearms
Direct Impact of Firearms
Indirect Impacts of Firearms on States or Communities
International and National Responses
Typology and Classification of Firearms
Common Firearms Types
'Other' Types of Firearms
Parts and Components
History of the Legitimate Arms Market
Need for a Legitimate Market
Key Actors in the Legitimate Market
Authorized & Unauthorized Arms Transfers
Illegal Firearms in Social, Cultural & Political Context
Supply, Demand & Criminal Motivations
Larger Scale Firearms Trafficking Activities
Smaller Scale Trafficking Activities
Sources of Illicit Firearms
Consequences of Illicit Markets
International Public Law & Transnational Law
International Instruments with Global Outreach
Commonalities, Differences & Complementarity between Global Instruments
Tools to Support Implementation of Global Instruments
Other United Nations Processes
The Sustainable Development Goals
Multilateral & Regional Instruments
Scope of National Firearms Regulations
National Firearms Strategies & Action Plans
Harmonization of National Legislation with International Firearms Instruments
Assistance for Development of National Firearms Legislation
Firearms Trafficking as a Cross-Cutting Element
Organized Crime and Organized Criminal Groups
Criminal Gangs
Terrorist Groups
Interconnections between Organized Criminal Groups & Terrorist Groups
Gangs - Organized Crime & Terrorism: An Evolving Continuum
International Response
International and National Legal Framework
Firearms Related Offences
Role of Law Enforcement
Firearms as Evidence
Use of Special Investigative Techniques
International Cooperation and Information Exchange
Prosecution and Adjudication of Firearms Trafficking
Teaching Methods & Principles
Ethical Learning Environments
Overview of Modules
Module Adaption & Design Guidelines
Table of Exercises
Basic Terms
Forms of Gender Discrimination
Ethics of Care
Case Studies for Professional Ethics
Case Studies for Role Morality
Additional Exercises
Defining Organized Crime
Definition in Convention
Similarities & Differences
Activities, Organization, Composition
Thinking Critically Through Fiction
Excerpts of Legislation
Research & Independent Study Questions
Legal Definitions of Organized Crimes
Criminal Association
Definitions in the Organized Crime Convention
Criminal Organizations and Enterprise Laws
Enabling Offence: Obstruction of Justice
Drug Trafficking
Wildlife & Forest Crime
Counterfeit Products Trafficking
Falsified Medical Products
Trafficking in Cultural Property
Trafficking in Persons
Case Studies & Exercises
Extortion Racketeering
Loansharking
Links to Corruption
Bribery versus Extortion
Money-Laundering
Liability of Legal Persons
How much Organized Crime is there?
Alternative Ways for Measuring
Measuring Product Markets
Risk Assessment
Key Concepts of Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment of Organized Crime Groups
Risk Assessment of Product Markets
Risk Assessment in Practice
Positivism: Environmental Influences
Classical: Pain-Pleasure Decisions
Structural Factors
Ethical Perspective
Crime Causes & Facilitating Factors
Models and Structure
Hierarchical Model
Local, Cultural Model
Enterprise or Business Model
Groups vs Activities
Networked Structure
Jurisdiction
Investigators of Organized Crime
Controlled Deliveries
Physical & Electronic Surveillance
Undercover Operations
Financial Analysis
Use of Informants
Rights of Victims & Witnesses
Role of Prosecutors
Adversarial vs Inquisitorial Legal Systems
Mitigating Punishment
Granting Immunity from Prosecution
Witness Protection
Aggravating & Mitigating Factors
Sentencing Options
Alternatives to Imprisonment
Death Penalty & Organized Crime
Backgrounds of Convicted Offenders
Confiscation
Confiscation in Practice
Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA)
Extradition
Transfer of Criminal Proceedings
Transfer of Sentenced Persons
Module 12: Prevention of Organized Crime
Adoption of Organized Crime Convention
Historical Context
Features of the Convention
Related international instruments
Conference of the Parties
Roles of Participants
Structure and Flow
Recommended Topics
Background Materials
What is Sex / Gender / Intersectionality?
Knowledge about Gender in Organized Crime
Gender and Organized Crime
Gender and Different Types of Organized Crime
Definitions and Terminology
Organized crime and Terrorism - International Legal Framework
International Terrorism-related Conventions
UNSC Resolutions on Terrorism
Organized Crime Convention and its Protocols
Theoretical Frameworks on Linkages between Organized Crime and Terrorism
Typologies of Criminal Behaviour Associated with Terrorism
Terrorism and Drug Trafficking
Terrorism and Trafficking in Weapons
Terrorism, Crime and Trafficking in Cultural Property
Trafficking in Persons and Terrorism
Intellectual Property Crime and Terrorism
Kidnapping for Ransom and Terrorism
Exploitation of Natural Resources and Terrorism
Review and Assessment Questions
Research and Independent Study Questions
Criminalization of Smuggling of Migrants
UNTOC & the Protocol against Smuggling of Migrants
Offences under the Protocol
Financial & Other Material Benefits
Aggravating Circumstances
Criminal Liability
Non-Criminalization of Smuggled Migrants
Scope of the Protocol
Humanitarian Exemption
Migrant Smuggling v. Irregular Migration
Migrant Smuggling vis-a-vis Other Crime Types
Other Resources
Assistance and Protection in the Protocol
International Human Rights and Refugee Law
Vulnerable groups
Positive and Negative Obligations of the State
Identification of Smuggled Migrants
Participation in Legal Proceedings
Role of Non-Governmental Organizations
Smuggled Migrants & Other Categories of Migrants
Short-, Mid- and Long-Term Measures
Criminal Justice Reponse: Scope
Investigative & Prosecutorial Approaches
Different Relevant Actors & Their Roles
Testimonial Evidence
Financial Investigations
Non-Governmental Organizations
‘Outside the Box’ Methodologies
Intra- and Inter-Agency Coordination
Admissibility of Evidence
International Cooperation
Exchange of Information
Non-Criminal Law Relevant to Smuggling of Migrants
Administrative Approach
Complementary Activities & Role of Non-criminal Justice Actors
Macro-Perspective in Addressing Smuggling of Migrants
Human Security
International Aid and Cooperation
Migration & Migrant Smuggling
Mixed Migration Flows
Social Politics of Migrant Smuggling
Vulnerability
Profile of Smugglers
Role of Organized Criminal Groups
Humanitarianism, Security and Migrant Smuggling
Crime of Trafficking in Persons
The Issue of Consent
The Purpose of Exploitation
The abuse of a position of vulnerability
Indicators of Trafficking in Persons
Distinction between Trafficking in Persons and Other Crimes
Misconceptions Regarding Trafficking in Persons
Root Causes
Supply Side Prevention Strategies
Demand Side Prevention Strategies
Role of the Media
Safe Migration Channels
Crime Prevention Strategies
Monitoring, Evaluating & Reporting on Effectiveness of Prevention
Trafficked Persons as Victims
Protection under the Protocol against Trafficking in Persons
Broader International Framework
State Responsibility for Trafficking in Persons
Identification of Victims
Principle of Non-Criminalization of Victims
Criminal Justice Duties Imposed on States
Role of the Criminal Justice System
Current Low Levels of Prosecutions and Convictions
Challenges to an Effective Criminal Justice Response
Rights of Victims to Justice and Protection
Potential Strategies to “Turn the Tide”
State Cooperation with Civil Society
Civil Society Actors
The Private Sector
Comparing SOM and TIP
Differences and Commonalities
Vulnerability and Continuum between SOM & TIP
Labour Exploitation
Forced Marriage
Other Examples
Children on the Move
Protecting Smuggled and Trafficked Children
Protection in Practice
Children Alleged as Having Committed Smuggling or Trafficking Offences
Basic Terms - Gender and Gender Stereotypes
International Legal Frameworks and Definitions of TIP and SOM
Global Overview on TIP and SOM
Gender and Migration
Key Debates in the Scholarship on TIP and SOM
Gender and TIP and SOM Offenders
Responses to TIP and SOM
Use of Technology to Facilitate TIP and SOM
Technology Facilitating Trafficking in Persons
Technology in Smuggling of Migrants
Using Technology to Prevent and Combat TIP and SOM
Privacy and Data Concerns
Emerging Trends
Demand and Consumption
Supply and Demand
Implications of Wildlife Trafficking
Legal and Illegal Markets
Perpetrators and their Networks
Locations and Activities relating to Wildlife Trafficking
Environmental Protection & Conservation
CITES & the International Trade in Endangered Species
Organized Crime & Corruption
Animal Welfare
Criminal Justice Actors and Agencies
Criminalization of Wildlife Trafficking
Challenges for Law Enforcement
Investigation Measures and Detection Methods
Prosecution and Judiciary
Wild Flora as the Target of Illegal Trafficking
Purposes for which Wild Flora is Illegally Targeted
How is it Done and Who is Involved?
Consequences of Harms to Wild Flora
Terminology
Background: Communities and conservation: A history of disenfranchisement
Incentives for communities to get involved in illegal wildlife trafficking: the cost of conservation
Incentives to participate in illegal wildlife, logging and fishing economies
International and regional responses that fight wildlife trafficking while supporting IPLCs
Mechanisms for incentivizing community conservation and reducing wildlife trafficking
Critiques of community engagement
Other challenges posed by wildlife trafficking that affect local populations
Global Podcast Series
Apr. 2021: Call for Expressions of Interest: Online training for academics from francophone Africa
Feb. 2021: Series of Seminars for Universities of Central Asia
Dec. 2020: UNODC and TISS Conference on Access to Justice to End Violence
Nov. 2020: Expert Workshop for University Lecturers and Trainers from the Commonwealth of Independent States
Oct. 2020: E4J Webinar Series: Youth Empowerment through Education for Justice
Interview: How to use E4J's tool in teaching on TIP and SOM
E4J-Open University Online Training-of-Trainers Course
Teaching Integrity and Ethics Modules: Survey Results
Grants Programmes
E4J MUN Resource Guide
Library of Resources
Module 11: International Cooperation
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E4J University Module Series: Organized Crime

Module 11: international cooperation to combat transnational organized crime, introduction and learning outcomes.

Mutual legal assistance (MLA)
Transfer of criminal proceedings
Transfer of sentenced persons

Case studies and exercises

Thinking critically through fiction
Excerpts of legislation

Possible class structure

Core reading, advanced reading, student assessment.

Review and assessment questions
Research and independent study questions

Additional teaching tools

Published in May 2018

Regional Perspective: Pacific Islands Region - added in November 2019

This module is a resource for lecturers

Case study 1 (mutual legal assistance in a case of online child sexual exploitation).

Please note that the text below involves disturbing subject matter. A disclosure of the content of this case study may cause uncomfortable feeling or emotional distress.

The defendant is an Israeli citizen who met the complainants, a woman and her 10 years old daughter who lived in Georgia, through the internet. The defendant persisted in on-line relations with the mother, as well as later upon his arrival to Georgia, where he met her and the daughter, bought the child gifts, went out with them and wired money for them from Israel. Later, according to the indictment, the defendant arrived to a hotel in Tbilisi and asked the mother and daughter to join him. The defendant and the mother reached an agreement according to which he will pay her USD 100 per month for allowing him to use her daughter's body for the production of pornographic material and conducting sexual acts.

According to this agreement, in two cases, the defendant arrived to the hotel in Tbilisi and the mother brought the daughter there. In the hotel room, the defendant took obscene photos of the minor and sexually assaulted her, while visually recording the acts with several cameras belonging to him and the mother.

The defendant gave the mother a camera and a laptop so she could produce paedophilic photos of the minor at his will. The mother emailed the photos to the defendant and he paid her. Later on, the defendant published and sold the photos and films. Additionally, the defendant held in his possession many other obscene materials of other minors, which he also published.

The submission of the indictment was in cooperation with the Georgian authorities. The Georgian authorities arrested the mother and indicted her on charges of trafficking in persons. The evidence in the case against the defendant was based on materials that were collected in Israel as well as in Georgia. Both the mother and the daughter were interviewed and gave written statements. The indictment was submitted in Israel with the approval of the Deputy State Attorney (Criminal Matters) since some of the offenses, for example the sex offenses, are considered foreign offenses conducted in Georgia.

The Court ruled that according to the strong evidence in this case, it was proven that the minor was passed from hand to hand, from her mother to the defendant, as if she was an object, and therefore the element of "a transaction in a person," as required by the offense of trafficking in persons according to Israeli law, was met. The daughter was objectified. According to the Court, the objectification, and making use of a person, need not to be permanent and does not even require a long period of time but rather can occur for a short period of time.

Also, the transaction in a person, and the objectification of a person, do not need to involve the displacement of the victim from their place of residence, as long as they are done for one of the purposes mentioned in the offense, in this case "causing him/her to participate in an obscene publication or in an obscene performance and or subjecting him/her to a sex offense."

Additionally, the Court decided that the linkage between the money transferred to the mother by the defendant and the "usage" of the minor was proven beyond reasonable doubt, even though this is not an element of the offense that needed to be proven.

As for the consent, which is also not an element of the crime, it was proven that the minor protested several times, which only reinforced the element of objectification of her body by her mother and the defendant.

Finally, the Court accepted the State Attorney's Office' argument, according to which the crime of trafficking in persons involves a wide range of situations that are not necessarily contingent upon a place, consent nor a compensation, and that clearly the circumstances of the case shows that a transaction was made between the mother of the victim and the defendant, a transaction whose purpose was to make use of the minor's body as an object, both for the defendant's sexual desires and for trading in the minor's photos

Case-related file

UNODC SHERLOC Case Law Database UNODC No.: ISR017

Significant feature

The Georgian authorities arrested the mother and indicted her on trafficking in persons charges, the indictment was submitted in Israel and the defendants were tried by a Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court. The evidence in the case against the defendant was based on materials that were collected both in Israel and Georgia.

Discussion questions

What are the legal foundations for mutual legal assistance between Georgia and Israel?
What kind of international cooperation did the case require?
How did they facilitate the prosecution of this case?

Case Study 2 (Mutual legal assistance in a drug trafficking case)

In 2004, the defendant José, together with BB, CC and DD, decided to start introducing narcotic drugs, notably cocaine, in Spain. According to this criminal plan, BB, CC and DD, residing in Brazil, provided for the transportation of cocaine to Portugal, where the defendant José would collect and transport drugs and, subsequently, sell them in Spain.

In accordance with this plan, on 7 July 2004, the ship North Express moored in the Port of Leixões, Matosinhos, and unloaded the containers CMCU 210514.0 and GLDU 223878-7, which had been shipped in the port of Santos, Brazil, on 1 June 2004. The container CMCU 210514-0 contained 8 packages, each of them with the approximate weight of one kilogram and the container, GLDU 223878-7, contained 2,231.615 kilograms of cocaine, which were hidden inside boxes of ceramic floor tiles.

The defendant, in cooperation with BB, CC and DD, bought several companies and opened in his name, and on behalf of those companies, different bank accounts, notably in Madeira's offshore.

The defendant José, one of the partners of Company-D, with an office in Rua Estela in São Paulo, Brazil, transferred to an account held by Company-C a large sum of USA dollars. Company-C, which has never engaged in any activities, made several bank transfers of large sums of USA dollars. The defendant José had the sole and exclusive power to operate bank accounts and was ready to hold and keep available the amounts in cash held therein.

The investigation into the case was carried out by Portugal's Criminal Investigation Police (Polícia Judiciária). They made use of phone interceptions, surveillance, searches and seizures, and cooperated with the Brazilian homologues. A summary financial investigation was also carried out. During the inquiry, several phone interceptions took place according to arts. 187 et seq. of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Portugal. Searches were also carried out according to art. 174 et seq. of the same Code. These were aimed not only at collecting evidence on the perpetration of the offence but also on the seizure of instrumentalities, proceeds and advantages deriving from them.

The competent Spanish and Brazilian authorities collaborated with the investigation in Portugal. They made available all the information needed for the investigation carried out in Portugal. Police information was also requested from Italian, Swedish, Chinese, American, Swiss and British authorities, notably on the commercial activities developed in those countries by the defendant, as well as by companies directly or indirectly run by him.

During the investigation, after the seizure of the narcotic drugs, a European Arrest Warrant was issued in relation to the defendant. Such warrant eventually was executed in Spain on 9 July 2004 and the defendant was surrendered to national authorities on the 23rd of the same month.

The warrant was issued on the basis of articles 21, n.1 and 24 (b), (c) and (j) (aggravated drug trafficking) of Portugal's Decree-Law 15/93, of 22 January; article 23, n.1 (conversion, transfer or concealment of property or proceeds) and article 28, n.1 (criminal organizations) from the same legal text. In fact, although at the beginning of the inquiry the Public Prosecutor had directed the investigation towards the criminal organization offence as well, he did not use that offence because he did not find evidence of its perpetration.

Several letters of request were also sent to the Spanish, Brazilian and American authorities asking them to carry out several steps of the inquiry, notably house searches, searches in offices, collection of bank information, interrogation of suspects and witness hearing, inventory of movable and immovable property directly or indirectly held by the defendant in those countries, and seizure of bank account deposits.

The main difficulty was in making mutual legal assistance compatible with procedural deadlines, in particular the deadline for filing charges (accusation). In fact, the letters of request sent to Spain, Brazil and the USA were returned after the maximum time-limit for remand in custody during the prosecutorial phase had expired; thus, the charges were brought even before the letters of request were received back, without reflecting the information resulting therefrom.

The court of first instance sentenced the defendant to 14 years of imprisonment for aggravated drug trafficking, provided for and punished by articles 21, n. 1 and 24 (b) and (c) of Decree-Law 15/93, of 22 January. In addition, the instrumentalities of crime and the amounts deposited in accounts held either by the defendant or by companies, of which he was the main beneficiary were first seized and then confiscated. The link between these amounts and the criminal charges was not proven, but the Supreme Court of Justice considered that under Act. No. 5/2002 (Establishing Measures for the Combat against Organised Crime and Economic and Financial Crime) of 11 January, 2002, such amounts should be deemed to derive from the criminal activity.

UNODC SHERLOC Case Law Database. UNODC No.: PRTx002 .

Significant features

Application of the European Arrest Warrant
Usage of letters of request
What are the benefits of mutual legal assistance in facilitating investigation and prosecution of drug trafficking cases?
What are the functions of letters of request and how were they used in this case?
What are the grounds of the European Arrest Warrant in this case?

Case Study 3 (Extradition refusal on grounds of inhuman treatment)

In 2016, the Guardian reported a case in which British magistrates refused to extradite to France a man allegedly involved in cocaine smuggling and firearms offences on the grounds that conditions in France's overseas prisons, namely in Guadeloupe and Martinique, are inhumane and degrading. The judgement led to the release on bail of Kurtis Richards, 54, who had been in Wandsworth prison for almost a year after being arrested at Gatwick airport. Richards, a citizen of Dominica in the West Indies, was accused by France in the arrest warrant of smuggling approximately 80 kg of cocaine, shotgun, and two hunting guns into Guadeloupe.

Richard's legal representative argued that prisons of the French West Indies fail to meet the minimum requirements for detention facilities for reasons of poor sanitation and hygiene as well as prison overcrowding and unacceptable disciplinary measures used by guards against inmates.

Both Guadeloupe and Martinique have the status of overseas administrative territories of France. As argued by the defence and supported by the district judge Quentin Purdy, the application of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) is not to be automatically applied. France, including its overseas territories, must demonstrate commitment to human rights and fully comply with art. 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture or inhuman and degrading treatment.

Bowcott, Owen. (2014). UK court rejects extradition request due to French West Indies jail conditions. The Guardian , May 7, 2014.
Limits to the application of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW)

In making legislative changes and in carrying out extradition, the intention of the Organized Crime Convention is to ensure the fair treatment of those whose extradition is sought and the application to them of all existing rights and guarantees applicable in the State party from whom extradition is requested.

What are the minimum human rights standards and guarantees in international law relevant for extradition cases?
How does the Organized Crime Convention ensure human rights protection and guarantees?

Case Study 4 (Hacker "Kolypto" extradited from Norway)

Mark Vartanyan, also known as "Kolypto", a Russian national, was charged with developing and maintaining the "Citadel" malware toolkit. He was extradited to the USA from Norway and charged with computer fraud in March 2016. According to information presented in court, Citadel was a malware toolkit designed to infect computer systems and steal financial account credentials and personally identifiable information from victim computer networks. Citadel was offered for sale on invite-only through Russian-language internet forums frequented by cybercriminals. Users of Citadel targeted and exploited the computer networks of major financial and government institutions around the world. According to estimates, Citadel infected approximately 11 million computers worldwide and is responsible for over USD 500 million in losses.

Vartanyan lived first in Ukraine and then Norway. He allegedly engaged in the development and distribution of Citadel and uploaded numerous electronic files that consisted of Citadel malware, components, updates and patches, as well as customer information, all with the intent of improving Citadel's illicit functionality. The case led to Vartanyan's guilty sentence and a punishment of five years in prison.

Case-related files

U.S. Department of Justice. (2017). Press Release: Russian Hacker "Kolypto" Extradited from Norway. March 14 .
U.S. Department of Justice. (2017). Press Release: Russian Citizen who Helped Develop the "Citadel" Malware Toolkit is Sentenced. July 19 .
On what grounds did the United States made an extradition request of Mark Vartanyan from Norway?
What other countries might have reasons to make extradition requests for this suspect?
What kind of evidence needed to be collected from outside the United States? Is seizure and sharing of computer hardware and data included in mutual legal assistance agreements between the United States and Norway?

Case Study 5 (Dotcom et al. v. the United States)

In 2005, Kim Dotcom developed a business under the name "Megaupload." This business enabled users to upload files for storage in the cloud on one of the many servers leased by Megaupload. By January 2012, Megaupload claimed to have over 60 million registered users. It was said to be the thirteenth most frequently visited site on the Internet attracting an average of 50 million visits daily and more than one billion visitors in total.

Users could upload videos to Megaupload and obtain a link which would provide access to it. A user could repeatedly upload the same video and obtain multiple links. The user could then choose to share these links with others, including through third party websites, enabling them to access the video using Megavideo. Megaupload was not responsible for these linking sites and only the user could determine whether to make a link available to others. However, the United States contends that Megaupload encouraged this file sharing practice by offering financial rewards and incentives to users who uploaded files that attracted high numbers of views or downloads. Anyone gaining access to a file stored on Megaupload through a link would be limited to viewing approximately 72 minutes of content, which is less than the length of most motion pictures. The viewer was then prompted to subscribe to Megaupload as a "premium user" in order to continue watching. Premium users were also able to view Mega-hosted videos embedded on third party linking websites. Subscriptions from premium users provided the main source of revenue to the Mega group, estimated by the United States to be approximately USD 150 million. The other principal source of revenue was from online advertising shown prior to the commencement of each video. The United States contends that total advertising revenue exceeded USD 25 million.

In March 2010, the Motion Picture Association of America made a complaint of criminal copyright infringement arising out of the operations of Megaupload, leading to a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

On 5 January 2012, the Grand Jury returned an initial indictment against the appellants. The United States Court immediately issued arrest warrants and made restraining orders in respect of all of the appellants' assets worldwide, including real and personal property in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. Prosecutors sought to seize an extensive list of assets, including millions of dollars in various seized bank accounts in Hong Kong and New Zealand, multiple cars, four jet skis, the Dotcom mansion, several luxury cars, two 108-inch TVs, three 82-inch TVs, a USD 10,000 watch, and a photograph by Olaf Mueller worth over USD 100,000. On 20 January 2012, the United States took control of the website domain name and database service of Megaupload and its associated websites, effectively terminating the entire operation. The websites were replaced with an anti-piracy warning issued by the United States Department of Justice in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Centre.

At a hearing in the High Court on 28 August 2012, Justice Judith Potter allowed Dotcom to withdraw approximately NZD 6 million (USD 4.8 million) from his seized funds. He was also allowed to sell nine of his cars. The amount released was to cover USD 2.6 million in existing legal bills, USD 1 million in future costs, and another USD 1 million in rent on his New Zealand mansion. In April 2014, Megaupload launched legal action against the Hong Kong government, applying for the restraining order to be set aside while accusing the Secretary of Justice of procedural failings when the application for seizure was made.

After several years of legal wrangling, involving Supreme Court cases and multiple delays in the proceedings, extradition proceedings finally got underway in an Auckland court, New Zealand, on 21 September 2015. In February 2017, the New Zealand High Court rejected earlier defence appeals and endorsed the extradition to the United States. Justice Murray Gilbert of the High Court of New Zealand ruled that while he agreed with one of Dotcom's defence attorney's primary argument that "online communication of copyright protected works to the public was not a criminal offense in New Zealand," Dotcom and his co-defendants were still eligible for extradition based on their conduct which can be interpreted as the offense of conspiracy to defraud in terms of art II.16, referring to a particular section of the extradition treaty between New Zealand and the United States.

UNODC SHERLOC Case Law Database.No.: NZLx006
United States v. Batato et al. United States Court of Appeals .
Interview with Dotcom's Lawyer Rothken .
Kim Dotcom Exclusive Interview "I will fight this and win" (2012) .
Russia Today. (2014). Kim Dotcom: The Man Behind Megaupload .
Farivar, Cyrus. (2017). New Zealand appeals court upholds Kim Dotcom extradition ruling. Ars Technica, February 20 .
Extraterritorial jurisdiction
Application of the double (dual) criminality principle
Elements of an "extraditable offense"
What principles of extradition apply to the extradition of Kim Dotcom to the United States?
Kim Dotcom's extradition defence team argued that none of the alleged charges against the Megaupload founder were enough to extradite him to the United States. "I'm no longer getting extradited for Copyright. We won on that," Dotcom tweeted after the ruling against him. " I'm now getting extradited for a law that doesn't even apply ." What were the grounds of the defence position? On what grounds did the court in New Zealand reject the defence team's appeal?

Case Study 6 (Extradition of Ze'ev Rosenstein)

On 27 December 2004, the United States Government relayed a request to the Government of the State of Israel for the extradition of appellant Ze'ev Rosenstein to the US. The request included a detailed account of Rosenstein's alleged crime, in which-according to the prosecution authorities in the USA-he conspired in Israel to import ecstasy pills (methylenedioxymethamphetamine) into the USA and to distribute it there.

The essence of the allegations in the extradition request was that in the late 1990s Rosenstein together with Baruch Dadush and Zvi Fogel began trafficking in drugs. The extradition request claims that Rosenstein was involved in three drug deals of wide scope. The first took place in 1999, when 135,000 MDMA pills were bought in Holland and brought to their destination in the United States via Germany, hidden in motor vehicles. According to the USA prosecution authorities, Rosenstein funded the purchase of 32,000 of these pills. After Dadush and Fogel sold the drugs in the USA on Rosenstein's behalf, Fogel transferred part of the profits to Dadush, USD 90,000 of which Dadush gave Rosenstein, keeping the same amount for himself.

In the same year another drug deal was carried out. That deal led to the distribution of 305,000 pills of the drug in the US, 50,000 of which Rosenstein purchased for a total of USD 50,000, which he paid Fogel via Dadush. This time the drug was transported while hidden in copper scrap and computer parts. Dadush intended to travel to the US, accompanied by his brother Alain, in order to coordinate the distribution of the drug, but he was refused entry and returned to Israel. As for Alain, he entered the USA, and followed Dadush's instructions in order to distribute the pills in New York City. When the job was finished, the profits were transferred to Fogel in Israel. The latter transferred the relevant part of the profits to Dadush, out of which Rosenstein's share was paid to him. According to the prosecution authorities, an additional shipment of drugs was arranged in 2001.

In November 2004, as a result of an extended covert investigation efforts on the part of American law enforcement agencies the Miami police and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized about 700,000 ecstasy pills in a Manhattan apartment. Further investigation on the Israeli side led to Rosenstein's arrest. The USA wanted Rosenstein for the crime of conspiracy to import large shipments of ecstasy pills with the aim to distribute them in the country (an offense pursuant to 21 USC § 841(a)(1), 841(b)(1)(c) and 846), and conspiracy to import a controlled substance into the United States (an offense pursuant to sections 952(a), 960(b)(3) and 963 of that law). The State of Israel, in which Rosenstein was detained and in which the conspiracy was made, was being asked, on the basis of the extradition treaty between the two countries, to extradite him.

The District Court of Israel emphasized that in crimes involving a prominent international dimension, including drug offenses, the centre of gravity of the offense should not be identified as the physical place in which it was committed, since that place is likely to be random and unimportant. Instead, weight should be given to the place in which the offense was consummated. The court further stressed that in such offenses, the territorial principle should be given little weight, and the interests regarding the reciprocity of extradition between States, and the need for international cooperation to rout organized crime, should be preferred. The court concluded that Rosenstein's extradition raised no concern of violation of public policy or due process, and did not impair his ability to defend himself against the charges against him.

Rosenstein's defence appealed the decision. Rosenstein argued that the dominant link of the offenses with which he was charged was to Israel and not to the United States. Considering, further, that the offender was an Israeli citizen and resident, who was not a fugitive from justice in another country and who could be tried in Israel, Rosenstein claimed that extradition served no worthy purpose and was not proportional. He further contended that the target of the conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances and the personal link of the victims of the crime could not outweigh the principle of territorial jurisdiction.

Rosenstein further argued that his extradition would violate his procedural and substantive rights as a defendant in a criminal case. He would not have the benefit of being judged in his natural environment, and language difficulty and the difference between the Israeli and American legal systems could compromise his defence and his rights to due process. The argument referred mainly to the jury system, which was a different decision-making system than the one in Israeli law.

The Supreme Court of Israel denied the appeal in 2006, reaffirming his extradition to stand trial in the United States-a precedent-setting decision that made Rosenstein one of very few Israelis to ever be extradited for prosecution in another country. In accordance with the extradition treaty between Israel and the US, he was nevertheless returned to Israel to serve his US-imposed sentence in an Israeli prison.

Supreme Court of Israel. CrimA 4596/05 Ze'ev Rosenstein v. The State of Israel .
Extradition and return to the country of citizenship to serve a sentence
What are the key features of the transnational conspiracy and its operations in the black market for ecstasy in which Rosenstein was involved? What role did Rosenstein play in ecstasy trafficking and distribution?
How many crimes were involved in the case? How many countries could make an extradition claim to prosecute Rosenstein (and his associates)?
What principles of extradition discussed in the Module can you identify?
What grounds did the Rosenstein defence team present to claim against his extradition to the United States?
What are the benefits and disadvantages of prosecuting Rosenstein in the US? What are the reasons for the arrangement between Israel and the United States to return Rosenstein to serve his sentence in Israel?

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Case Studies UT Star Icon

Case Studies

More than 70 cases pair ethics concepts with real world situations. From journalism, performing arts, and scientific research to sports, law, and business, these case studies explore current and historic ethical dilemmas, their motivating biases, and their consequences. Each case includes discussion questions, related videos, and a bibliography.

A Million Little Pieces

James Frey’s popular memoir stirred controversy and media attention after it was revealed to contain numerous exaggerations and fabrications.

Abramoff: Lobbying Congress

Super-lobbyist Abramoff was caught in a scheme to lobby against his own clients. Was a corrupt individual or a corrupt system – or both – to blame?

Apple Suppliers & Labor Practices

Is tech company Apple, Inc. ethically obligated to oversee the questionable working conditions of other companies further down their supply chain?

Approaching the Presidency: Roosevelt & Taft

Some presidents view their responsibilities in strictly legal terms, others according to duty. Roosevelt and Taft took two extreme approaches.

Appropriating “Hope”

Fairey’s portrait of Barack Obama raised debate over the extent to which an artist can use and modify another’s artistic work, yet still call it one’s own.

Arctic Offshore Drilling

Competing groups frame the debate over oil drilling off Alaska’s coast in varying ways depending on their environmental and economic interests.

Banning Burkas: Freedom or Discrimination?

The French law banning women from wearing burkas in public sparked debate about discrimination and freedom of religion.

Birthing Vaccine Skepticism

Wakefield published an article riddled with inaccuracies and conflicts of interest that created significant vaccine hesitancy regarding the MMR vaccine.

Blurred Lines of Copyright

Marvin Gaye’s Estate won a lawsuit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams for the hit song “Blurred Lines,” which had a similar feel to one of his songs.

Bullfighting: Art or Not?

Bullfighting has been a prominent cultural and artistic event for centuries, but in recent decades it has faced increasing criticism for animal rights’ abuse.

Buying Green: Consumer Behavior

Do purchasing green products, such as organic foods and electric cars, give consumers the moral license to indulge in unethical behavior?

Cadavers in Car Safety Research

Engineers at Heidelberg University insist that the use of human cadavers in car safety research is ethical because their research can save lives.

Cardinals’ Computer Hacking

St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa hacked into the Houston Astros’ webmail system, leading to legal repercussions and a lifetime ban from MLB.

Cheating: Atlanta’s School Scandal

Teachers and administrators at Parks Middle School adjust struggling students’ test scores in an effort to save their school from closure.

Cheating: Sign-Stealing in MLB

The Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scheme rocked the baseball world, leading to a game-changing MLB investigation and fallout.

Cheating: UNC’s Academic Fraud

UNC’s academic fraud scandal uncovered an 18-year scheme of unchecked coursework and fraudulent classes that enabled student-athletes to play sports.

Cheney v. U.S. District Court

A controversial case focuses on Justice Scalia’s personal friendship with Vice President Cheney and the possible conflict of interest it poses to the case.

Christina Fallin: “Appropriate Culturation?”

After Fallin posted a picture of herself wearing a Plain’s headdress on social media, uproar emerged over cultural appropriation and Fallin’s intentions.

Climate Change & the Paris Deal

While climate change poses many abstract problems, the actions (or inactions) of today’s populations will have tangible effects on future generations.

Cover-Up on Campus

While the Baylor University football team was winning on the field, university officials failed to take action when allegations of sexual assault by student athletes emerged.

Covering Female Athletes

Sports Illustrated stirs controversy when their cover photo of an Olympic skier seems to focus more on her physical appearance than her athletic abilities.

Covering Yourself? Journalists and the Bowl Championship

Can news outlets covering the Bowl Championship Series fairly report sports news if their own polls were used to create the news?

Cyber Harassment

After a student defames a middle school teacher on social media, the teacher confronts the student in class and posts a video of the confrontation online.

Defending Freedom of Tweets?

Running back Rashard Mendenhall receives backlash from fans after criticizing the celebration of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in a tweet.

Dennis Kozlowski: Living Large

Dennis Kozlowski was an effective leader for Tyco in his first few years as CEO, but eventually faced criminal charges over his use of company assets.

Digital Downloads

File-sharing program Napster sparked debate over the legal and ethical dimensions of downloading unauthorized copies of copyrighted music.

Dr. V’s Magical Putter

Journalist Caleb Hannan outed Dr. V as a trans woman, sparking debate over the ethics of Hannan’s reporting, as well its role in Dr. V’s suicide.

East Germany’s Doping Machine

From 1968 to the late 1980s, East Germany (GDR) doped some 9,000 athletes to gain success in international athletic competitions despite being aware of the unfortunate side effects.

Ebola & American Intervention

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Edward Snowden: Traitor or Hero?

Was Edward Snowden’s release of confidential government documents ethically justifiable?

Ethical Pitfalls in Action

Why do good people do bad things? Behavioral ethics is the science of moral decision-making, which explores why and how people make the ethical (and unethical) decisions that they do.

Ethical Use of Home DNA Testing

The rising popularity of at-home DNA testing kits raises questions about privacy and consumer rights.

Flying the Confederate Flag

A heated debate ensues over whether or not the Confederate flag should be removed from the South Carolina State House grounds.

Freedom of Speech on Campus

In the wake of racially motivated offenses, student protests sparked debate over the roles of free speech, deliberation, and tolerance on campus.

Freedom vs. Duty in Clinical Social Work

What should social workers do when their personal values come in conflict with the clients they are meant to serve?

Full Disclosure: Manipulating Donors

When an intern witnesses a donor making a large gift to a non-profit organization under misleading circumstances, she struggles with what to do.

Gaming the System: The VA Scandal

The Veterans Administration’s incentives were meant to spur more efficient and productive healthcare, but not all administrators complied as intended.

German Police Battalion 101

During the Holocaust, ordinary Germans became willing killers even though they could have opted out from murdering their Jewish neighbors.

Head Injuries & American Football

Many studies have linked traumatic brain injuries and related conditions to American football, creating controversy around the safety of the sport.

Head Injuries & the NFL

American football is a rough and dangerous game and its impact on the players’ brain health has sparked a hotly contested debate.

Healthcare Obligations: Personal vs. Institutional

A medical doctor must make a difficult decision when informing patients of the effectiveness of flu shots while upholding institutional recommendations.

High Stakes Testing

In the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act, parents, teachers, and school administrators take different positions on how to assess student achievement.

In-FUR-mercials: Advertising & Adoption

When the Lied Animal Shelter faces a spike in animal intake, an advertising agency uses its moral imagination to increase pet adoptions.

Krogh & the Watergate Scandal

Egil Krogh was a young lawyer working for the Nixon Administration whose ethics faded from view when asked to play a part in the Watergate break-in.

Limbaugh on Drug Addiction

Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that drug abuse was a choice, not a disease. He later became addicted to painkillers.

U.S. Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte’s “over-exaggeration” of an incident at the 2016 Rio Olympics led to very real consequences.

Meet Me at Starbucks

Two black men were arrested after an employee called the police on them, prompting Starbucks to implement “racial-bias” training across all its stores.

Myanmar Amber

Buying amber could potentially fund an ethnic civil war, but refraining allows collectors to acquire important specimens that could be used for research.

Negotiating Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy lawyer Gellene successfully represented a mining company during a major reorganization, but failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest.

Pao & Gender Bias

Ellen Pao stirred debate in the venture capital and tech industries when she filed a lawsuit against her employer on grounds of gender discrimination.

Pardoning Nixon

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Patient Autonomy & Informed Consent

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Prenatal Diagnosis & Parental Choice

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Reporting on Robin Williams

After Robin Williams took his own life, news media covered the story in great detail, leading many to argue that such reporting violated the family’s privacy.

Responding to Child Migration

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Retracting Research: The Case of Chandok v. Klessig

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Sacking Social Media in College Sports

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Selling Enron

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Snyder v. Phelps

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Something Fishy at the Paralympics

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Deadspin pays an anonymous source for information related to NFL star Brett Favre, sparking debate over the ethics of “checkbook journalism.”

Stangl & the Holocaust

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Teaching Blackface: A Lesson on Stereotypes

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When a white actor was cast for the half-French, half-Vietnamese character in the Broadway production of Miss Saigon , debate ensued.

The Sandusky Scandal

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The Varsity Blues Scandal

A college admissions prep advisor told wealthy parents that while there were front doors into universities and back doors, he had created a side door that was worth exploring.

Providing radiation therapy to cancer patients, Therac-25 had malfunctions that resulted in 6 deaths. Who is accountable when technology causes harm?

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In a settlement with regulators, Wells Fargo Bank admitted that it had created as many as two million accounts for customers without their permission.

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AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 (or More) Benchmarking Queries

A new study reveals the need for benchmarking and public evaluations of AI tools in law.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are rapidly transforming the practice of law. Nearly three quarters of lawyers plan on using generative AI for their work, from sifting through mountains of case law to drafting contracts to reviewing documents to writing legal memoranda. But are these tools reliable enough for real-world use?

Large language models have a documented tendency to “hallucinate,” or make up false information. In one highly-publicized case, a New York lawyer faced sanctions for citing ChatGPT-invented fictional cases in a legal brief; many similar cases have since been reported. And our previous study of general-purpose chatbots found that they hallucinated between 58% and 82% of the time on legal queries, highlighting the risks of incorporating AI into legal practice. In his 2023 annual report on the judiciary , Chief Justice Roberts took note and warned lawyers of hallucinations.

Across all areas of industry, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) is seen and promoted as the solution for reducing hallucinations in domain-specific contexts. Relying on RAG, leading legal research services have released AI-powered legal research products that they claim “avoid” hallucinations and guarantee “hallucination-free” legal citations. RAG systems promise to deliver more accurate and trustworthy legal information by integrating a language model with a database of legal documents. Yet providers have not provided hard evidence for such claims or even precisely defined “hallucination,” making it difficult to assess their real-world reliability.

AI-Driven Legal Research Tools Still Hallucinate

In a new preprint study by Stanford RegLab and HAI researchers, we put the claims of two providers, LexisNexis (creator of Lexis+ AI) and Thomson Reuters (creator of Westlaw AI-Assisted Research and Ask Practical Law AI)), to the test. We show that their tools do reduce errors compared to general-purpose AI models like GPT-4. That is a substantial improvement and we document instances where these tools provide sound and detailed legal research. But even these bespoke legal AI tools still hallucinate an alarming amount of the time: the Lexis+ AI and Ask Practical Law AI systems produced incorrect information more than 17% of the time, while Westlaw’s AI-Assisted Research hallucinated more than 34% of the time.

Read the full study, Hallucination-Free? Assessing the Reliability of Leading AI Legal Research Tools

To conduct our study, we manually constructed a pre-registered dataset of over 200 open-ended legal queries, which we designed to probe various aspects of these systems’ performance.

Broadly, we investigated (1) general research questions (questions about doctrine, case holdings, or the bar exam); (2) jurisdiction or time-specific questions (questions about circuit splits and recent changes in the law); (3) false premise questions (questions that mimic a user having a mistaken understanding of the law); and (4) factual recall questions (questions about simple, objective facts that require no legal interpretation). These questions are designed to reflect a wide range of query types and to constitute a challenging real-world dataset of exactly the kinds of queries where legal research may be needed the most.

comparison of hallucinated and incomplete responses

Figure 1: Comparison of hallucinated (red) and incomplete (yellow) answers across generative legal research tools.

These systems can hallucinate in one of two ways. First, a response from an AI tool might just be incorrect —it describes the law incorrectly or makes a factual error. Second, a response might be misgrounded —the AI tool describes the law correctly, but cites a source which does not in fact support its claims.

Given the critical importance of authoritative sources in legal research and writing, the second type of hallucination may be even more pernicious than the outright invention of legal cases. A citation might be “hallucination-free” in the narrowest sense that the citation exists , but that is not the only thing that matters. The core promise of legal AI is that it can streamline the time-consuming process of identifying relevant legal sources. If a tool provides sources that seem authoritative but are in reality irrelevant or contradictory, users could be misled. They may place undue trust in the tool's output, potentially leading to erroneous legal judgments and conclusions.

Figure 2: Top left: Example of a hallucinated response by Westlaw's AI-Assisted Research product. The system makes up a statement in the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure that does not exist (and Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U.S. 443 (2004) held that a closely related bankruptcy deadline provision was not jurisdictional). Top right: Example of a hallucinated response by LexisNexis's Lexis+ AI. Casey and its undue burden standard were overruled by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022); the correct answer is rational basis review. Bottom left: Example of a hallucinated response by Thomson Reuters's Ask Practical Law AI. The system fails to correct the user’s mistaken premise—in reality, Justice Ginsburg joined the Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage—and instead provides additional false information about the case. Bottom right: Example of a hallucinated response from GPT-4, which generates a statutory provision that has not been codified.

RAG Is Not a Panacea

a chart showing an overview of the retrieval-augmentation generation (RAG) process.

Figure 3: An overview of the retrieval-augmentation generation (RAG) process. Given a user query (left), the typical process consists of two steps: (1) retrieval (middle), where the query is embedded with natural language processing and a retrieval system takes embeddings and retrieves the relevant documents (e.g., Supreme Court cases); and (2) generation (right), where the retrieved texts are fed to the language model to generate the response to the user query. Any of the subsidiary steps may introduce error and hallucinations into the generated response. (Icons are courtesy of FlatIcon.)

Under the hood, these new legal AI tools use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to produce their results, a method that many tout as a potential solution to the hallucination problem. In theory, RAG allows a system to first retrieve the relevant source material and then use it to generate the correct response. In practice, however, we show that even RAG systems are not hallucination-free.

We identify several challenges that are particularly unique to RAG-based legal AI systems, causing hallucinations.

First, legal retrieval is hard. As any lawyer knows, finding the appropriate (or best) authority can be no easy task. Unlike other domains, the law is not entirely composed of verifiable facts —instead, law is built up over time by judges writing opinions . This makes identifying the set of documents that definitively answer a query difficult, and sometimes hallucinations occur for the simple reason that the system’s retrieval mechanism fails.

Second, even when retrieval occurs, the document that is retrieved can be an inapplicable authority. In the American legal system, rules and precedents differ across jurisdictions and time periods; documents that might be relevant on their face due to semantic similarity to a query may actually be inapposite for idiosyncratic reasons that are unique to the law. Thus, we also observe hallucinations occurring when these RAG systems fail to identify the truly binding authority. This is particularly problematic as areas where the law is in flux is precisely where legal research matters the most. One system, for instance, incorrectly recited the “undue burden” standard for abortion restrictions as good law, which was overturned in Dobbs (see Figure 2).

Third, sycophancy—the tendency of AI to agree with the user's incorrect assumptions—also poses unique risks in legal settings. One system, for instance, naively agreed with the question’s premise that Justice Ginsburg dissented in Obergefell , the case establishing a right to same-sex marriage, and answered that she did so based on her views on international copyright. (Justice Ginsburg did not dissent in Obergefell and, no, the case had nothing to do with copyright.) Notwithstanding that answer, here there are optimistic results. Our tests showed that both systems generally navigated queries based on false premises effectively. But when these systems do agree with erroneous user assertions, the implications can be severe—particularly for those hoping to use these tools to increase access to justice among pro se and under-resourced litigants.

Responsible Integration of AI Into Law Requires Transparency

Ultimately, our results highlight the need for rigorous and transparent benchmarking of legal AI tools. Unlike other domains, the use of AI in law remains alarmingly opaque: the tools we study provide no systematic access, publish few details about their models, and report no evaluation results at all.

This opacity makes it exceedingly challenging for lawyers to procure and acquire AI products. The large law firm Paul Weiss spent nearly a year and a half testing a product, and did not develop “hard metrics” because checking the AI system was so involved that it “makes any efficiency gains difficult to measure.” The absence of rigorous evaluation metrics makes responsible adoption difficult, especially for practitioners that are less resourced than Paul Weiss.

The lack of transparency also threatens lawyers’ ability to comply with ethical and professional responsibility requirements. The bar associations of California , New York , and Florida have all recently released guidance on lawyers’ duty of supervision over work products created with AI tools. And as of May 2024, more than 25 federal judges have issued standing orders instructing attorneys to disclose or monitor the use of AI in their courtrooms.

Without access to evaluations of the specific tools and transparency around their design, lawyers may find it impossible to comply with these responsibilities. Alternatively, given the high rate of hallucinations, lawyers may find themselves having to verify each and every proposition and citation provided by these tools, undercutting the stated efficiency gains that legal AI tools are supposed to provide.

Our study is meant in no way to single out LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. Their products are far from the only legal AI tools that stand in need of transparency—a slew of startups offer similar products and have made similar claims , but they are available on even more restricted bases, making it even more difficult to assess how they function.

Based on what we know, legal hallucinations have not been solved.The legal profession should turn to public benchmarking and rigorous evaluations of AI tools.

This story was updated on Thursday, May 30, 2024, to include analysis of a third AI tool, Westlaw’s AI-Assisted Research.

Paper authors: Varun Magesh is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Faiz Surani is a research fellow at Stanford RegLab. Matthew Dahl is a joint JD/PhD student in political science at Yale University and graduate student affiliate of Stanford RegLab. Mirac Suzgun is a joint JD/PhD student in computer science at Stanford University and a graduate student fellow at Stanford RegLab. Christopher D. Manning is Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Machine Learning, Professor of Linguistics and Computer Science, and Senior Fellow at HAI. Daniel E. Ho is the William Benjamin Scott and Luna M. Scott Professor of Law, Professor of Political Science, Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy), Senior Fellow at HAI, Senior Fellow at SIEPR, and Director of the RegLab at Stanford University.

10 Examples of Criminal Cases Mishandled by the Courts

Posted: June 2, 2024 | Last updated: June 2, 2024

<p><span>Stenography is a challenging skill, and it may take many years to learn and reach the top speed. Although no college degree is required, most court-reporting stenographers are certified. An experienced person clarified that getting to the maximum speed is hard, the dropout rates are high, and AI advancement means that jobs might no longer exist in the future.</span></p>

Citizens are not always able to obtain justice through the public courts. Sometimes, innocent people are convicted of undo charges, and in other cases, criminals are released due to lack of evidence. Below, you will find a list of some of the most vilified cases mishandled by the courts.

<p><span>Parenting Pitfalls: 10 Red Flags That Scream ‘I’m a Bad Parent’</span></p> <p><span>Parenting is undoubtedly challenging when people are utterly concerned about their families. Parents also learn from their kids as they experience the most joyful yet panicking journey. Nobody is perfect when it comes to raising a child. Regarding this, some red flags clearly say that something’s not right. Let’s enlighten such red flags from the online reviews of people.</span></p>

1. Ken McElroy Case

According to the commenter on a trusted online platform, the rap sheet of Ken McElroy included child physical abuse, assault, animal cruelty, and burglary. But he was never punished for these crimes. Then, one day, somebody shot him in the daytime on a busy street. But no one was ready to accept that the whole public saw his murder. Even the police did not go for proper investigation.

<p>Craving respite from an increasingly disheartening society, an individual yearned for a secluded cabin nestled within the tranquil embrace of the woods. Acknowledging the potential selfishness of this desire, they stressed the importance of collective well-being, urging introspection and a deeper understanding of themselves and others. Balancing personal contemplation and active engagement, they sought harmony amidst the impending storms that beset our world.</p>

2. Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton Case

A contributor shared that the court declared Lindy Chamberlain the murderer of her daughter. Her daughter was killed during a camping in the Australian bush. Lindy stated that a dingo had killed her child, but nobody was ready to accept her statement. Because of her weird behavior after her daughter’s death, she was made more guilty of the murder. But years after, the truth unfolded, and people came to know it was actually a dingo who murdered her daughter when scraps of her daughter’s clothes were found with a dingo liar.

<p>Discover the incredible recipe for a frozen cappuccino that's taken the internet by storm. It's a simple blend of one gallon of milk, a full bottle of Monin vanilla syrup, and .6 of a pound of brewed espresso. Once frozen, this delightful concoction becomes the perfect treat to enjoy on a hot day. Since its revelation, countless people have eagerly attempted to recreate this viral recipe in their homes.</p>

3. McDonald’s Coffee Case

The case was about Stella Lieback. All the national media weirdly treated her just because of the overuse of their powers. The public never got convinced about what the media had shown. A person described that Lieback went into the hospital because of her critical situation. She suffered from third-degree burns, which depicted it as not just a mistakenly fallen cup of coffee.

<p><span>Despite being a billionaire and one of the greatest golfers in history, Tiger Woods’ restaurant etiquette needs to improve on his legendary sporting prowess. As per an individual, Woods can come across as distant, impolite, and infamous for being a lousy tipper. Sadly, his challenging behavior is not just limited to restaurants, as reports suggest that he can be challenging to work with at golf courses and other venues too.</span></p>

4. Jennifer Connell Case

Jennifer Connell was a woman who got insurance for her broken arm by her nephew. The media called him the worst aunt and the ‘aunt from hell’ just because she sued her nephew. An individual shared that she just wanted to get her medical bills by using her insurance. She got permission from the parents before suing her nephew, which was not a big deal.

<p><span>International Olympic Committee (IOC) members have everything from amassing significant wealth to traversing the globe. One user pointed to a survey revealing that an IOC president pulls in a staggering $251,000 annually, excluding living and travel expenses. The perks and responsibilities of IOC members continue to capture attention and raise eyebrows.</span></p>

5. Richard Jewell Case

In 1996, Richard Jewell was falsely accused of bombing the Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta. He was a security guard who saved lives by spotting the bomb. A respondent explained that the FBI found him a suspected person and dragged him through mud and national media. But it was not what Richard deserved. After the years, his name was cleared when the event’s criminal was caught.

<p><span>People who hide their money are easy to forget about in a world where showing off is the norm. These people are polite and don’t show off their money. Their lives may look simple, but a closer look reveals that they have a lot of money. These minor signs show that they are wealthy, from their taste in fine arts to how they dress to their exclusive memberships and charity work.</span></p>

6. Kelo Home Case

It was when the city of New London was on the way to building a shopping complex by removing Kele from her home. In the Supreme Court, Kele lost her home just for the sake of economic opportunities. An individual expressed that they were planning to construct a new bridge over there. But then the plan was canceled, which led to the death of Kele from a heart attack because of the stress.

<p><span>A passionate user has spoken out against the exorbitant cost of funerals and has called for a revolutionary change in how we approach these sad occasions. According to them, the current tradition of extravagant and costly ceremonies only adds to the pain and distress that families experience after losing a loved one. The user suggests that a more affordable and simple approach to funerals should be adopted.</span></p>

7. Casey Anthony Case

Casey Anthony was found to be the murderer of her baby. According to an individual, she killed Carlye but managed to lie again and again with her confidence in front of the court. Her confidence and behavior made people suspected of the original murderer. Police even investigated her chrome history. But then it was unfolded that she searched Firefox about how to kill somebody by suffocation.

8. Mason Greenwood Case

It was a case about a 19-year-old boy who physically abused her girlfriend. According to a commenter, the audio of the incident was also leaked, which was horrible to listen to. But the case was dropped after eighteen months. Another person shared that her girlfriend got great pressure from her parents to quit the case against Mason in court.

<p><span>The highly competitive nature of law school and the job market may attract individuals who have a strong desire to win at all costs. The adversarial nature of the legal system can sometimes lead to aggressive or confrontational behavior.</span></p> <p><strong>Related: <a href="https://maxmymoney.org/most-ridiculous-things-women-have-had-to-explain-to-grown-men/">10 Most Ridiculous Things Women Have Had To Explain To Grown Men</a></strong></p>

9. Duke Lacrosse Players

It was a widely reported criminal case in which three members of Duke University were accused of physically abusing a woman. However, according to the people on an online platform, the players were innocent. The corrupt lawyer was just trying to make a case against them because of the racial and political discrimination. The students were unaware of how the case was shaping their future in a drastic way.

<p><span>Shedding light on a sensitive subject, someone bravely shares their experience of being a male victim of domestic abuse, shedding light on the unique challenges men face in such situations. They recount the distressing account of a friend who endured physical abuse at the hands of his wife, only to encounter skepticism and victim-blaming from certain individuals who doubted his innocence in the altercation.</span></p>

10. Dan White Case

He was an American politician who murdered Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco. A person shared that he stated in court that he was depressed and went insane because he ate too many Twinkies. This act made him kill someone. Another respondent contributes to how a murderer could made his depression the reason for his criminal act.

<p><span>In the realm of celebrities, certain individuals’ attractiveness transcends the screen, captivating the hearts and minds of fans worldwide. These stars possess a magnetic presence, leaving a lasting impression with their striking looks and undeniable charm. Recently, people shared such celebrities on an online platform whose sheer attractiveness is nothing short of distracting. </span></p><ul> <li><a href="https://maxmymoney.org/10-celebrities-that-are-distractingly-attractive/">10 Celebrities That Are Distractingly Attractive</a></li> </ul>

10 Celebrities Who Are Distractingly Attractive

In the realm of celebrities, certain individuals’ attractiveness transcends the screen, captivating the hearts and minds of fans worldwide. These stars possess a magnetic presence, leaving a lasting impression with their striking looks and undeniable charm. Recently, people shared such celebrities on an online platform whose sheer attractiveness is nothing short of distracting.

10 Celebrities That Are Distractingly Attractive

<p>An enlightened soul expresses the joy of confidently saying “no” and setting boundaries without feeling guilty. Age brings a stronger feeling of self and the ability to assert oneself without hesitation. They no longer feel obligated to please others at their own expense and can prioritize their own well-being. Saying “no” becomes empowering and liberating, allowing them to choose that aligns with their own desires and needs.</p>

“No Boomer – We Don’t Want You Here” These 10 States Are Not For Boomers Nor Retirees

If you’re thinking about making a big move in retirement, it’s important to consider what characteristics you want in your new home and which ones to avoid at all costs. Here is a list of the top 10 worst states to retire in.

<p><span>Dogs are man's best friend, but only some are comfortable getting up close and personal with their furry companions. A canine critic, in particular, finds kissing dogs on their mouths revolting. Dogs are known to eat unsavory things like cat poop, making the thought of mouth-to-mouth contact enough to make this individual feel nauseous. While others may find it endearing, this person prefers to show affection for their dog in other ways.</span></p>

“Businesses Are Desperate” 12 Jobs Employers Can’t Fill No Matter How High The Pay

Nowadays, in the job market, opportunities are increasing. Because many industries continuously advance and expand their business, it creates many job vacancies. Same time a need for suitable candidates. Let us discuss a few job vacancies that often remain empty.

12 Jobs Employers Can’t Fill No Matter How High The Pay

“If He Does That He’s Hot” 10 Traits That Make Women Go Crazy For A Guy

Looks will only get you so far. What really makes a man attractive besides his outward appearance?

<p>One user says, “I don't want to be in that kind of relationship. It would be so annoying, embarrassing, and would lead to such a toxic relationship.”</p> <p>Another user asked, “If the partner says something, the other will be hurt but better in social or public settings, and embarrassment will be saved. On the other hand, it's a lack of humility to assume your ways are better than others, so in principle, there are no grounds for “correcting” Karen behavior, right?”</p>

“Is America The Best Country?” 20 Terrible Things About The USA Many Don’t Want to Accept

The American culture is diverse and unique, but some aspects of it can take time to accept by people from other countries. Recently on an online platform, people have shared their thoughts on some of the challenging aspects of American cultures, such as casual debt, limited vacation time, school mascots, zero-tolerance policies, and more.

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In a photo provided by Benji Weintraub, barber Levi Aronow gives an unidentified guest a haircut during Super Soul Party's 2019 Super Bowl party for homeless people Feb. 3, 2019, in New York. Super Soul Party will have parties in at least 35 cities for the Super Bowl between the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals. (Benji Weintraub via AP)

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Effective Legal Case Briefs for Law Students · LSData
Legal case briefs are an essential tool for you as a law student, as they provide a concise and organized summary of a court case. Case brief examples serve as a means for you to understand the facts, issues, and legal principles underlying a court decision, and are crucial in helping you develop analytical and critical thinking skills. One of the primary reasons why case briefs are important ...
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The issue, as presented by the court; the issue as interpreted by the reader. The holding, which includes the answer to the issue and the reasons. The statement of the prevailing rule in that doctrine. The analytical approach or pattern used by the court. The commentary provided by the court, usually called.
Law Case Study Examples
Explore case studies of previous cases which Allan Rouben has represented. Find examples of case studies in all focus areas of law. Legroulx v. Pitre: Striking Jury Notice, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Rules of Civil Procedure. By Allan Rouben. Background: A complicated action was proceeding in Ottawa before Justice Denis Power and a jury.
Eight cases from across history which still shape the law today
Ruling in Miller's favour in 2017, the Supreme Court drew on the 1610 case of proclamations. So there's no doubt that even the oldest cases still have the power to shape society today. From ...
Normile v. Miller
Normile did not have a contract to purchase the property from Defendant because Normile failed to accept the counteroffer before it was revoked. Citation22 Ill.313 N.C. 98, 326 S.E.2d 11 (1985) Brief Fact Summary. Plaintiffs Normile and Segal both attempted to purchase a piece of real estate from Defendant Miller.
Judicial Review Landmark Cases
This case did not reach the U.S. Supreme Court the way most issues do. Most cases reach the Supreme Court as the court of last resort, when the Justices are asked to review a decision of a lower court. In this case, William Marbury petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court directly due to the provision in Section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Criminal Law Case Studies
Real cases. Real results. We have published over 500 criminal law case studies. All cases were handled by our expert criminal lawyers and range from contested matters, appeals, bail applications, and pleas of guilty for both indictable and summary offences. They were heard in different County Courts, Magistrates' Courts, and Children's ...
Top Ten Cases Involving Ethical Issues for In-House Counsel ...
In this case, former officers of a bank brought a claim against the bank, alleging that its in-house counsel had given them bad legal advice regarding the exercise of stock options. The company won on summary judgment on the merits of the case, with the District Court determining that the lawyer's advice had been reasonable.
Disparate Racial Sentencing in lieu of Jones v. Mississippi
While previous Supreme Court decisions have cemented the unconstitutionality of mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile defendants, the Court's recent decision in Jones v. Mississippi marks a significant departure. Moreover, this transformative case may open the door to increased racial bias by judges.
Office for Access to Justice
Case Studies. The WH-LAIR Case Studies are two-page documents that illustrate how civil legal aid supports federal efforts to serve the low-income and other vulnerable populations in various areas. They contain descriptions of common challenges faced by vulnerable populations, examples of federal responses to these challenges, and concrete ...
How to Write a Case Study: from Outline to Examples
For example, case studies may be used to examine court cases if you study Law, or a patient's health history if you study Medicine. Case studies are also used in Marketing, which are thorough, empirically supported analysis of a good or service's performance. Well-designed case studies can be valuable for prospective customers as they can ...
Examples of Recent Cases
Examples of Recent Cases. Case Study 1. Mr M was viciously attacked by unknown assailants following a night out with friends. He suffered a fracture of the orbital bone cavity of his right eye requiring two operations and leaving him with permanent scarring. Having been refused Criminal Injuries Compensation by the CICA the Student Law Office ...
All Case Examples
All Case Examples. Hospital Implements New Minimum Necessary Polices for Telephone Messages ... in response to a subpoena (not accompanied by a court order), impermissibly disclosed the protected health information (PHI) of one of its patients. ... A private practice physician who was the principal investigator of a clinical research study ...
Organized Crime Module 11 Exercises: Case Studies
Case Study 1 (Mutual legal assistance in a case of online child sexual exploitation) Please note that the text below involves disturbing subject matter. A disclosure of the content of this case study may cause uncomfortable feeling or emotional distress. The defendant is an Israeli citizen who met the complainants, a woman and her 10 years old ...
Case Studies
Case Studies. More than 70 cases pair ethics concepts with real world situations. From journalism, performing arts, and scientific research to sports, law, and business, these case studies explore current and historic ethical dilemmas, their motivating biases, and their consequences. Each case includes discussion questions, related videos, and ...
AI on Trial: Legal Models Hallucinate in 1 out of 6 (or More
The system fails to correct the user's mistaken premise—in reality, Justice Ginsburg joined the Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage—and instead provides additional false information about the case. Bottom right: Example of a hallucinated response from GPT-4, which generates a statutory provision that has not been codified.
104766
Worker absent for 800 shifts during career was unfairly dismissed, tribunal finds. A worker who was absent for 808 shifts over a 20-year career - costing the firm an estimated £95,850 in sick pay - won an unfair dismissal claim after a tribunal found his former employer had not followed its own absence management procedures.
10 Examples of Criminal Cases Mishandled by the Courts
Below, you will find a list of some of the most vilified cases mishandled by the courts. 1. Ken McElroy Case. According to the commenter on a trusted online platform, the rap sheet of Ken McElroy ...

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Writing Effective Legal Case Briefs for Law Students

Understand the Structure of a Legal Case Brief

Focus on the Key Facts and Issues

Identify the Legal Principles and Rules

Use Clear and Concise Language

Be Organized and Structured

So, what’s the point?

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How to write a case brief for law school: Excerpt reproduced from Introduction to the Study of Law: Cases and Materials,

C. HOW TO BRIEF

D. EXTRACTING THE RELEVANT INFORMATION: ANNOTATING AND HIGHLIGHTING

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Legroulx v. Pitre: Striking Jury Notice, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Rules of Civil Procedure

Lucia’s Case: Appeal, Civil Litigation, Jurisdiction and Forum non Conveniens

Patrizia’s Case: Appeals, Civil Litigation, Negligence and Minimum Maintenance Standards

F.A.’s Case: Criminal Law, Appeals, Sexual Assault and Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Clare’s Case: Labour Law, Duty of Fair Representation and Ontario Labour Relations Board

Eight cases from across history which still shape the law today

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1. The Case of Proclamations, 1610

2. Entick v Carrington, 1765

3. R v Dudley and Stephens, 1884

4. Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co, 1893

5. Donoghue and Stevenson, 1932

6. Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, 1969

7. R v R, 1991

8. The Belmarsh case, 2004

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What Do You Think The U.S. Supreme Court Decided?

Ladue v. Gilleo, 1994

Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 1966

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Top Ten Cases Involving Ethical Issues for In-House Counsel (United States)

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