Designing Legal Experiences

Technological advancements are improving how courts operate by changing the way they handle proceedings and interact with litigants. Court Innovations is a socially minded software startup that enables citizens, law enforcement, and courts to resolve legal matters through Matterhorn, an online communication and dispute resolution platform. Matterhorn was conceived at the University of Michigan Law School and successfully piloted in two Michigan district courts beginning in 2014. The platform now operates in over 40 courts and in at least eight states, and it has facilitated the resolution of more than 40,000 cases to date. These numbers will continue to grow as new categories of disputes and other legal matters become eligible for online management and resolution and as more court systems recognize the economic and social benefits of adopting online platform technology. This case study chronicles the development, implementation, and refinement of Matterhorn. Implementing software in the legal world can be cumbersome, especially when adoption requires the coordination and agreement of multiple public entities with overlapping – but not identical – goals. We hope that by sharing the story of Matterhorn’s creation and growth over the last few years, we can light the way for the next generation of court-focused technology and e-governance tools, especially those that relate to the criminal justice system. We also hope to offer valuable lessons for transitioning ideas for progress into realized change. First, we outline the social problem that Matterhorn was initially designed to address – minor warrants – and how that focus led to Matterhorn’s now-broader aim of improving court access generally. Second, we describe Matterhorn and how it works in practical terms. Third, we present an analysis of the platform’s underlying design philosophy and objectives. Fourth, we address two challenges that Court Innovations encountered and overcame in implementing Matterhorn in a variety of courts with diverse stakeholders. We conclude that Matterhorn has demonstrated the value of using online platform technology to resolve disputes in courts and has succeeded in producing measurable improvements in court accessibility and efficienc

Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, and Efficiency

Online case resolution (OCR) systems have the potential to dramatically increase access to our justice system. Part I introduces the concept of an OCR system, how it might work in practice, and its likely impact on courts and citizens. Part II argues that OCR systems can lower many of the barriers to going to court by reducing the need for face-to-face resolution of disputes; cutting the amount of time needed for hearings; mitigating litigant confusion and fear; allowing asynchronous scheduling that can accommodate work and child-care schedules; and offering a more reliable and easier-to-use means for litigants to voice their views. These advantages should especially benefit those of lower socioeconomic status, who often suffer disproportionality under the status quo. Part III contends that OCR systems need not compromise a judge’s or a prosecutor’s decision-making process but can actually enhance both. OCR systems can provide more, better, and easier-to-use information, and by removing a litigant’s appearance (race, gender, weight, etc.) from a judge’s consideration, can render outcomes less subject to implicit biases

Online Case Resolution Systems: Enhancing Access, Fairness, Accuracy, and Efficiency

Online case resolution (OCR) systems have the potential to dramatically increase access to our justice system. Part I introduces the concept of an OCR system, how it might work in practice, and its likely impact on courts and citizens. Part II argues that OCR systems can lower many of the barriers to going to court by reducing the need for face-to-face resolution of disputes; cutting the amount of time needed for hearings; mitigating litigant confusion and fear; allowing asynchronous scheduling that can accommodate work and child-care schedules; and offering a more reliable and easier-to-use means for litigants to voice their views. These advantages should especially benefit those of lower socioeconomic status, who often suffer disproportionality under the status quo. Part III contends that OCR systems need not compromise a judge’s or a prosecutor’s decision-making process but can actually enhance both. OCR systems can provide more, better, and easier-to-use information, and by removing a litigant’s appearance (race, gender, weight, etc.) from a judge’s consideration, can render outcomes less subject to implicit biases

Designing Legal Experiences

Technological advancements are improving how courts operate by changing the way they handle proceedings and interact with litigants. Court Innovations is a socially minded software startup that enables citizens, law enforcement, and courts to resolve legal matters through Matterhorn, an online communication and dispute resolution platform. Matterhorn was conceived at the University of Michigan Law School and successfully piloted in two Michigan district courts beginning in 2014. The platform now operates in over 40 courts and in at least eight states, and it has facilitated the resolution of more than 40,000 cases to date. These numbers will continue to grow as new categories of disputes and other legal matters become eligible for online management and resolution and as more court systems recognize the economic and social benefits of adopting online platform technology. This case study chronicles the development, implementation, and refinement of Matterhorn. Implementing software in the legal world can be cumbersome, especially when adoption requires the coordination and agreement of multiple public entities with overlapping – but not identical – goals. We hope that by sharing the story of Matterhorn’s creation and growth over the last few years, we can light the way for the next generation of court-focused technology and e-governance tools, especially those that relate to the criminal justice system. We also hope to offer valuable lessons for transitioning ideas for progress into realized change. First, we outline the social problem that Matterhorn was initially designed to address – minor warrants – and how that focus led to Matterhorn’s now-broader aim of improving court access generally. Second, we describe Matterhorn and how it works in practical terms. Third, we present an analysis of the platform’s underlying design philosophy and objectives. Fourth, we address two challenges that Court Innovations encountered and overcame in implementing Matterhorn in a variety of courts with diverse stakeholders. We conclude that Matterhorn has demonstrated the value of using online platform technology to resolve disputes in courts and has succeeded in producing measurable improvements in court accessibility and efficienc

FACT - Highlights from more than Seven Years of Unbiased Monitoring at TeV Energies

The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) has been monitoring TeV-blazars since October 2011. Thanks to its unbiased observing strategy, the robotic operation and the usage of solid state photosensors (SiPM, aka G-APDs), the instrument's duty cycle has been maximized and the observational gaps minimized, providing an unprecedented data sample of more than 13'800 hours of physics data, of which more than 2600 hours were taken in the past 12 months. Results of an automatic quick-look analysis are published with low latency on an open-access website. Based on this, 98 alerts and 11 astronomer's telegrams have been issued in more than five years, triggering a variety of multi-wavelength studies. Target-of-opportunity programs with X-ray satellites are in place. For example, combined gamma-ray observations (FACT, Fermi-LAT, HESS) on Mrk 501 in 2014 have been used to constrain the underlying physics processes analysing the shape of flux distributions on different time scales. A trigger to MAGIC on a high state of 1ES 2344+51.4 in 2016 reveals a very hard spectrum. The combined observations are used to study the source's extreme behaviour. Studying the long-term multi-wavelength behaviour of Mrk 421, more than 30 flares have been found in 5.5 years of data. Correlating different wavelengths, delays are determined and models are constrained. In addition to multi-wavelength studies, the unprecedented, unbiased data sample at TeV energies provides a unique chance to study the duty cycle and variability behaviour of the sources. Based on this, a search for a periodic signal has been performed.ISSN:1824-803

FACT - Probing the Periodicity of Mrk 421 and Mrk 501

Markarian 421 and Markarian 501 are Active Galactic Nuclei and two of the most prominent sources of very high energetic gamma rays. In contrast to the predominantly stable Crab Nebula, the two blazars have extremely variable gamma-ray fluxes. Those could be caused by erratic accretion flow instabilities, but also by processes leading to quasi periodic oscillations (QPOs). Recently, hints of such a QPO of Mrk 501 with a period of about 322 days have been observed with the Large Area Telescope on-board of the Fermi satellite at GeV energies featuring global and local significances of the signal above 99%. The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) has monitored a small sample of known TeV gamma-ray sources including Mrk 421 and Mrk 501 over the last seven years. Therefore, it is ideally suited for periodicity studies of Active Galactic Nuclei, as they require unbiased and continuous long-term observations. Based on measurements of the well-known gamma-ray flux originating from the Crab Nebula, corrections to the measured light curves are applied. In total, 2500~hours of data for each of the two blazars have been analysed using the Lomb-Scargle algorithm. The resulting periodogram of Mrk 501 shows a hint of QPO with a similar period as the one observed by Fermi/LAT.ISSN:1824-803

FACT - Highlights from more than Five Years of Unbiased Monitoring at TeV Energies

The First G-APD Cherenkov Telescope (FACT) is monitoring blazars at TeV energies. Thanks to the observing strategy, the automatic operation and the usage of solid state photosensors (SiPM, aka G-APDs), the duty cycle of the instrument has been maximized and the observational gaps minimized. This provides a unprecedented, unbiased data sample of almost 9000~hours of data of which 2375 hours were taken in 2016. An automatic quick look analysis provides results with low latency on a public website. More than 40 alerts have been sent in the last three years based on this. To study the origin of the very high energy emission from blazars simultaneous multi-wavelength and multi-messenger observations are crucial to draw conclusions on the underlying emission mechanisms, e.g. to distinguish between leptonic and hadronic models. FACT not only participates in multi-wavelength studies, correlation studies with other instruments and multi-messenger studies, but also collects time-resolved spectral energy distributions using a target-of-opportunity program with X-ray satellites. At TeV energies, FACT provides an unprecedented, unbiased data sample. Using up to 1850 hours per source, the duty cycle of the sources and the characteristics of flares at TeV energies are studied. In the presentation, the highlights from more than five years of monitoring will be summarized including several flaring activities of Mrk 421, Mrk 501 and 1ES 1959+650.ISSN:1824-803