Some US courts are turning to Zoom for trials during the lockdown, which critics say limits public access to the courts and favors high-end law firms
Zoe Schiffer / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
When lockdowns closed courthouses in April 2020, some US courts moved trials onto Zoom, and critics immediately flagged two costs: proceedings that are harder for the public to follow, and a format that rewards firms able to field polished video setups. The move landed at the start of an arc the related coverage traces closely — by September 2020 a Nigerian man was sentenced to death over Zoom as virtual hearings went global, and by March 2021 clips from court hearings were spreading virally enough to force a debate over citizen privacy and judicial transparency on the internet.
The privacy half of that arc has a precedent in adjacent justice infrastructure: months after this story, [[a:958847|HomeWAV's unprotected server exposed private calls between inmates and their families and attorneys]], showing what happens when justice communication moves onto commercial video platforms without hardened controls.
First-order effects
- Defendants and the public feel it first: trials shift to a medium where watching requires the right link and platform, thinning the open-courtroom access critics point to, while well-resourced law firms gain a presentation advantage over smaller practices.
Second-order effects
- Commercial video vendors acquire a foothold in judicial process they did not previously hold, and the HomeWAV breach shows the exposure that follows when sensitive justice communications run on consumer-grade infrastructure — pushing courts toward procurement and security decisions they historically never had to make.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, remote hearings become standing infrastructure rather than a pandemic stopgap — as the global spread to cases like Nigeria's suggests — forcing a durable reckoning over how courts balance open-justice principles against privacy once hearing footage is inherently recordable and shareable.
The trend: Courts worldwide are converting emergency video hearings into permanent digital infrastructure, dragging long-settled norms of public access and courtroom privacy into a renegotiation with commercial platforms.