Law Commons^™

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, Mariana Pargendler

Seattle University Law Review

How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated or plagued by problems of enforcement and misfit despite formal convergence. This Article offers a different view by showing how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Navigating Sexual Consent In Japan, Samara Mizutani Cesar

MSU Graduate Theses

Employing an exploratory sequential research design, including focus groups and an online survey, this thesis explores the factors influencing how Japanese people navigate the gray zones of sexual consent. This study not only addresses gaps in the literature on sexual consent but also provides a preliminary understanding of Japanese individuals’ perceptions, beliefs, behaviors, and experiences in ambiguous sexual interactions, which is particularly meaningful given Japan’s recent legal revisions and changing sociocultural landscape. Findings indicated the impact of traditional sexual scripts on consent perceptions, with gender and relationship norms contributing to the dismissal of sexual assaults within specific relationships. It was …

Crimes Against The Environment, Ecocide, And The International Criminal Court, Milena Sterio

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Ecocide as well as other crimes against the environment have become a feature of warfare, as exemplified in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the devastating environmental harm caused as a result. As this Paper has described, significant obstacles remain associated with the ICC’s ability to prosecute environmental crimes, either as war crimes or crimes against humanity. (Abstrast excerpted from article's Conclusion.)

"Other Inhumane Acts Of A Similar Character Intentionally Causing Great Suffering." Does Ecocide Fit Within The Bounds Of Crimes Against Humanity, Amanda Price

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Facing The Music: How The Face Act Harms, Rather Than Helps, The Post-Dobbs Abortion Movement, Kyriaki "Kiki" Council

University of Colorado Law Review

No abstract provided.

When We Need Someone To Blame: Officer Suicide, Justice, And The Felony Murder Rule In The Casey White Case, Mallory Sadler

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

A Critical Assessment Of The First Step Act's Recidivism-Reduction Measures, Raquel Wilson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The First Step Act of 2018 (“FSA”) is the most impactful federal sentencing reform of the past 40 years. While the Act represents a partial resurgence of the rehabilitative model of imprisonment, which had fallen out of favor decades before, it also represents a missed opportunity to fully integrate evidence-based rehabilitation programs for those offenders who pose the greatest risks to public safety.

The public has a strong interest in reducing recidivism, particularly among violent offenders, most of whom will be released from federal prison eventually. The FSA incentivizes participation in evidence-based, recidivism-reducing programs offered by the Bureau of Prisons …

U.S. Judiciary Syllabus: True True Crime Zines, Jason Leggett

Open Educational Resources

An experimental, open education syllabus for a pilot zero textbook cost course, U.S. Judiciary using zines and true crime.

The Role Of Pornography In The “Rough Sex” Defence In Canada, Lisa Gotell, Isabel Grant, Elizabeth Sheehy

All Faculty Publications

Drawing upon the authors’ earlier research studying the consent defence when it is used to suggest that the complainant agreed to “rough sex” involving violence, this paper develops an extended analysis of the complex role of pornography in these decisions. This paper focuses on a subset of “rough sex” cases, where pornography played a role in “scripting” the accused’s behaviour. Thematically, these cases included: those where the accused had a substantial history of consumption of violent pornography; cases in which the accused forced the complainant to view pornography as part of the assault; cases where the accused recorded the attack, …

Post-Conviction Disclosure In The Canadian Context, Alexandra Ballantyne, Tamara Levy, K.C.

All Faculty Publications

It is common knowledge that the criminal justice system is fallible and prone to human error. The most egregious of such errors is the conviction of an innocent person. While wrongful convictions have been acknowledged in Canada in the last few decades, they are mostly regarded as rare and extraordinary events.16 In response to this perception, experts have identified the challenge of determining the number of wrongful convictions and their exact causes.17 A 2019 study estimates that at least 85 people have been exonerated in Canada.18 The recent advent of the Canadian Registry of Wrongful Convictions creates a centralized location …

Neglected Discovery, Jenia I. Turner, Ronald F. Wright, Michael Braun

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In recent decades, many states have expanded discovery in criminal cases. These reforms were designed to make the criminal process fairer and more efficient. The success of these changes, however, depends on whether defense attorneys actually use the new discovery opportunities to represent their clients more effectively. Records from digital evidence platforms reveal that defense attorneys sometimes fail to carry out their professional duty to review discovery. Analyzing a novel dataset we obtained from digital evidence platforms used in Texas, we found that defense attorneys never accessed any available electronic discovery in a substantial number of felony cases between 2018 …

The Unintended Consequences Of Torture's Ineffectiveness, Russell Christopher

Articles, Chapters in Books and Other Contributions to Scholarly Works

Whether torture to extract true information—for example, military secrets or the location of a terrorist-planted bomb—is morally permissible and empirically effective is widely disputed. But many agree that such torture’s effectiveness is a necessary condition for its permissibility; if ineffective, then it is impermissible. Thus, the empirical issue has become crucial in deciding the moral issue. This Article addresses the empirical issue with a novel, non-empirical argument. Torture’s ineffectiveness not only ensures torture’s impermissibility but also exposes torture victims to criminal liability for any offenses they are tortured into committing. With torture as the most extreme and horrific form of …

Protecting The Innocent: How To Prevent The Consequences Of Misidentification And Doxing By Volunteers Helping With Open Source Investigations, Leigh M. Dannhauser

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Individuals performing open source investigations can misidentify alleged perpetrators and dox innocent parties online, which can subsequently lead to threats and harassment against innocent parties and their loved ones. For example, threats were made against Sunil Tripathi’s family after he was wrongly identified as one of the Boston Marathon bombers and doxed on Reddit and Twitter. In 2020, the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations was published as a guide, and it includes a set of principles to govern open source investigations. However, the Berkeley Protocol is limited to open source investigations performed by those working for organizations. It …

Redistributing Justice, Benjamin Levin, Kate Levine

Scholarship@WashULaw

This article surfaces an obstacle to decarceration hiding in plain sight: progressives’ continued support for the carceral system. Despite increasingly prevalent critiques of criminal law from progressives, there hardly is a consensus on the left in opposition to the carceral state. Many left-leaning academics and activists who may critique the criminal system writ large remain enthusiastic about criminal law in certain areas—often areas where defendants are imagined as powerful and victims as particularly vulnerable. In this article, we offer a novel theory for what animates the seemingly conflicted attitude among progressives toward criminal punishment—the hope that the criminal system can …

Imminence Should Not Be A Controlling Factor In The Duress Defense In The Context Of Battered Women, Jacqueline Fink

Touro Law Review

Domestic violence is a silent killer that attacks quickly. This Note specifically discusses the Battered Woman Syndrome and the need to explore the current laws that “protect” this group. Current laws in a majority of states create a barrier that blocks battered women from obtaining the justice that should be given to all citizens. When the abused woman is at an impasse in her relationship, she may be forced to make a life-or-death decision. More likely than not, the result becomes the worst possible outcome. Domestic violence continues to be higher amongst women than men, where women are emotionally, as …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Bail At The Founding, Kellen R. Funk, Sandra G. Mayson

Faculty Scholarship

How did criminal bail work in the Founding era? This question has become pressing as bail, and bail reform, have attracted increasing attention, in part because history is thought to bear on the meaning of bail-related constitutional provisions. To date, however, there has been no thorough account of bail at the Founding. This Article begins to correct the deficit in our collective memory by describing bail law and practice in the Founding era, from approximately 1790 to 1810. In order to give a full account, we surveyed a wide range of materials, including Founding-era statutes, case law, legal treatises, and …

Write Before You Watch: Policies For Police Body-Worn Cameras That Advance Accountability And Accuracy, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

In the wake of high-profile killings and abuse by police officers over the past few years, the public has come to expect that officers will be equipped with body-worn cameras (BWCs). These cameras capture and preserve encounters between police and civilians, and the footage they record often becomes critical evidence in criminal, civil, or administrative proceedings. Reformers believe BWCs can improve police accountability, build public trust in police, and potentially reform police behavior.

Considering the reliance on BWCs, a key question has emerged: should officers be allowed to review BWC footage before preparing a report or giving a statement, or …

Police Prosecutors In Rhode Island: The Wisdom Of Separate Lanes, Andrew P. Dunphy

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Gardner’S Zombie: Parental Alienation Syndrome, Parental Alienation, And The Threat Both Present To Rhode Island, Grant E. Mooney

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State V. Delossantos, 289 A.3d 1163 (R.I. 2023)., Jack Smeloff

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State V. Vose, 287 A.3d 997 (R.I. 2023)., Amy Anthony

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

State V. Morillo, 285 A.3d 995 (R.I. 2022)., Ryan J. Becker

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.