It’s time for my annual year in review in advance. Here are what will be the top five legal stories of 2016. Accuracy guaranteed! Ish.

1. The year of the cell-phone video. The issue of police violence against African-Americans achieved critical mass in 2015, because people of all races had the opportunity to see the evidence themselves. In South Carolina, Baltimore, Chicago, and elsewhere, personal video cameras supplied the proof of what many people had been saying for decades. Cell-phone cameras didn’t identify a new problem; they proved the existence of an old one.

But the legal significance of the ubiquity of cell-phone cameras has just begun to become clear. Virtually every crime, and alleged crime, may soon have its own distinctive video. Consider, for example, domestic violence. Victims will be able to document, sometimes surreptitiously, how they have been treated. Terrorism investigations may also be the beneficiaries of this form of self-help. Technology shapes jurors’ expectations, too, and they will come to expect cell-phone evidence in the way that jurors came to expect DNA and other forensic science—the so-called C.S.I. effect—and be more skeptical than otherwise when it is absent.

2. Black Lives Matter (still). The challenge for the Black Lives Matter movement is to learn from and, in most respects, avoid the fate of another recent mobilization—the Occupy movement. Occupy had one great success: it put the issue of income inequality on the national agenda, where it remains. And that is not a small thing. But Occupy never articulated an agenda that could allow the movement itself to survive and grow, and it has now all but disappeared from the public eye. Better training for officers and more diversity on police forces are clearly parts of the B.L.M. agenda, and they are important, but it will be interesting to see if the movement expands beyond those basics.

3. The Supreme Court conservatives strike back. Liberals had a banner year at the Supreme Court in 2015, as the Justices extended marriage equality to all fifty states in the Obergefell case and insured the survival of Obamacare in King v. Burwell. This year’s agenda, though, favors the conservatives, as the court will take up affirmative action, voting rights, and abortion cases that appear likely to tip Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, away from the liberals. However, none of these cases, as important as they are, shape up as true blockbusters; none are likely to bring fundamental changes to the law. (The real impending drama on the Court—retirements among the Justices—is unlikely to happen this year, barring an unexpected health crisis.)

4. The fall of Bill Cosby. The comedian’s reputation has been destroyed in the course of 2015, as dozens (dozens!) of women came forward to say that he had drugged and sexually assaulted them. Cosby’s lawyers have denied most of the charges, when they have addressed them at all. But, in 2016, Cosby will suffer a lot more than bad publicity. A criminal investigation and multiple civil lawsuits are moving forward against him. The statute of limitations has been Cosby’s ally throughout his legal troubles, but the number and magnitude of the allegations should overwhelm him this year. It’s a good guess that Cosby will end 2016 in prison—and that he will end his life destitute.

5. N.S.A. surveillance, unchanged. I have long been skeptical of the significance of Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the surveillance policies of the American government. But the rise of ISIS, and the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, will continue to crush any movement for limitation or reform of N.S.A. activities. It’s clear now that any change will come in the direction of more surveillance, not less.