Running a Case File

A case file works any applied dispute in five moves: fix the undisputed facts, flag the disputed ones, list the affected and their interests, run each side's strongest argument, and locate the values line for the reader.

Take a city's proposed facial-recognition contract. Move one, undisputed facts: the cameras exist, the contract's terms are public. Move two, disputed facts, flagged as such: accuracy rates across faces, projected crime effects — fact questions, sent to evidence, not to shouting. Move three, the affected: residents scanned, victims of crimes solved and unsolved, officers, the wrongly flagged. Move four, strongest arguments — both sides hire their best lawyer: for, the protection of the vulnerable and the utility audit's honest sums; against, consent never asked, opacity unanswerable, the like-cases worry automated. Move five, the values line: after every fact resolves, the sides still divide over what security may cost in being watched — name that line and stop. The file ends where the viewer's own weighing begins; a case file that announces the verdict has quietly become a press release.