Proof Over Precedent is a weekly podcast discussing the work of bringing credible evidence to lawyers, judges, and decision makers, to transform the U.S. justice system into an evidence-based field. Listeners will learn from one-on-one interviews with experts in the area of access to justice–researchers, lawyers, professors, law students, data analysts, research participants, and anyone who has an interesting role in this growing area.
The seven-year-old Open Government Data Act has supported accessible, and useable, data from federal agencies, but it did not extend to the judiciary. This week’s Proof Over Precedent episode discusses the massive amounts of data in federal, and particularly state, courts that serve as a missed opportunity to provide transparency, notice court trends, and foster collaboration, all in the name of building trust.
It helps to have a lawyer in court, no question. But in immigration court, where the vast majority of individuals are self-representing and not enough immigration lawyers exist to represent them all anyway, is there a point in asylum proceedings where an attorney could be most effective at supporting due process for clients?
No counsel, worse outcomes in immigration proceedings? This week on Proof Over Precedent, Access to Justice Lab Faculty Director and occasional podcast host Jim Greiner interviewed two Vera Institute of Justice researchers, Jacquelyn Pavilon and Neil Agrawal, about their study measuring the effect of a lawyer in detained 240 removal proceedings in Chicago Immigration Court. Did individuals with legal representation see a greater likelihood of relief, temporary relief, or bond hearings and releases than those without lawyers? The discussion follows both research methodology and adherence to due process.
We like to use Proof Over Precedent as a platform to highlight our evidence-based findings, as well as others’ studies, from randomized control trials in the field of law. This is not one of those times. In this week’s episode, Professor Jim Greiner talks with the A2J Lab researcher and data analyst who spent years working on our Online Courts study about the disappointment, frustration, and lessons learned from a flawed RCT. They still managed to glean a takeaway from comparing remote and in-person hearings for self-represented litigants in family court.
Self-represented litigants primarily measure procedural justice by whether they had a voice, were listened to, and were treated fairly in court. Do these basic marks of overall satisfaction differ between the mode in which the hearing took place though? This week’s Proof Over Precedent episode features an interview with justice reform consultant Emily LaGratta and Nathanael Player, former director of the Utah State Court Self-Help Center, about a study looking at litigants’ perception of fairness in their respective experiences with either remote or in-person court.
Serving as a juror fulfills one’s civic duty to ensure a system of checks and balances in the U.S. In capital cases, however, “death qualification” ensures that prospective jurors opposed to the death penalty will not have the opportunity to perform this civic duty. This week’s Proof Over Precedent episode features a “Student Voices” interview with Megan Byrne of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project to discuss the shortcomings of less diverse juries due to race, gender, and religious differences. It also looks at a capital case in Kansas in which the courts examined the problems associated with death qualification and the death penalty overall.
Just because an individual may own property, does not guarantee that the person may keep that property—that’s the warning stemming from this week’s podcast episode featuring an interview with Dr. Kara Woods, research analyst at Alcorn State University’s National Policy Research Center. Issues may arise from heirs property—co-owned land in which the name of the original, and now deceased, owner is still on the deed. Land loss due to heirs property issues affects groups disproportionately by race and class, and the policy protections against it are inconsistent across states. The ensuing legal hurdles mark a barrier that some families cannot overcome. One takeaway: Communicate with your family members!
“Martinizing”, the controversial Supreme Court practice of denying court fee waivers for indigent litigants, is meant to reduce frivolous filings, but at what cost? This episode looks at the January 2026 Howell order in which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole dissenting voice against Martinizing indigent prisoners. Her argument reignites the perspective that access to justice and the potential for future meritorious claims should outweigh workload relief.
More than 100 million pending cases await Brazil courts, so it may not be surprising that the country’s Supreme Court Justice has a reportedly rosy view of AI in the court system, especially in time-sensitive civil and criminal matters. The potential for AI to help alleviate the backlog and potentially bring more balance and less bias may brush over the possible system errors and human rubber-stamping that come with it. This “Student Voices” podcast discusses Brazil’s use of AI in the court system and the areas ripe for more scrutiny–evaluations through RCTs and metric-based learning models.
The Texas Two-Step is a fairly simple dance, but in the world of corporate bankruptcy, it’s the name of a sophisticated maneuver that some profitable companies employ to stop mass tort liabilities and limit the settlements due to victims. It splits a company and strategically divides its assets and liabilities. In this manner, the companies win and the tort victims, by comparison, lose. But there may be reason for cautious optimism. Proof Over Precedent interviews bankruptcy scholar and law professor Melissa Jacoby about the practice, the reasons courts allow it, and the avenues under consideration for making bankruptcy a more just and exceptional option for corporations.
