Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

Publication Title

Denver Law Review

Publication Title (Abbreviation)

Denver L. Rev.

Volume

102

Issue

3

First Page

659

Abstract

For thousands of years, trials were held in brick-and-mortar courthouses. Then COVID-19 ravaged the world, and many businesses and institutions, including judicial courts, went online. For the first time many people realized, accepted, and benefited from online trials held via videoconference software like Zoom. But Zoom fatigue is real. As the epidemic subsides, we must explore the next exciting growth point for judicial reforms.

Outside the courtroom, since the second half of the twentieth century, a revolution in communication methods has profoundly affected people’s daily life: we have switched from almost entirely real-time, synchronous human interactions, such as in-person meetings and phone calls, to diversified asynchronous communication methods, such as texts, voicemail, email, and social media posts. This also represents a generational divide: younger generations are both more accepting of and more addicted to asynchronous communication.

This Article proposes pairing trials and asynchronous communication, to produce asynchronous trials for high-volume civil adjudication. State courts and jurisdictions in other parts of the world have begun to explore this possibility. Courts in the United States, however, have been slower to realize this potential. This Article probes this issue and explains the hesitancy—one might even say hostility—toward asynchronous trials. It further explores the pros and cons of asynchronous trials and provides preliminary proposals on how to develop procedural and evidentiary rules for asynchronous trials in the future.

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