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Full-Text Articles in Law

Ag Gag Past, Present, And Future, Justin F. Marceau Jul 2015

Ag Gag Past, Present, And Future, Justin F. Marceau

Seattle University Law Review

While the animal rights and food justice movements are relatively young, their political unpopularity has generated a steady onslaught of legislation designed to curtail their effectiveness. At each stage of their nascent development, these movements have confronted a new wave of criminal or civil sanctions carefully tailored to combat the previous successes the movements had achieved.


Opening The Barnyard Door: Transparency And The Resurgence Of Ag-Gag & Veggie Libel Laws, Nicole E. Negowetti Jul 2015

Opening The Barnyard Door: Transparency And The Resurgence Of Ag-Gag & Veggie Libel Laws, Nicole E. Negowetti

Seattle University Law Review

Over the past several decades, as the agricultural system became increasingly industrialized and the steps from farm to plate multiplied, consumers became farther removed from the sources of their food. Until recently, most consumers in America were content to eat their processed, cheap, and filling foods without giving a second thought to how these foods were produced. The tides are changing. Increasingly, consumers are calling for more transparency in the food system. Repulsed by images of animal cruelty and shocked by unsavory food production practices, consumers want the food industry’s veil lifted and are demanding changes in food production. The …


Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain: Concealment, Revelation, And The Question Of Food Safety, Denis W. Stearns Jul 2015

Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain: Concealment, Revelation, And The Question Of Food Safety, Denis W. Stearns

Seattle University Law Review

Despite knowledge that commerce in food is a profit-driven enterprise, the public has consistently put great faith in the wholesomeness and safety of the food being purchased. To some extent, such faith is necessary, even if not always justified. In making the decision to put a bite of food in one’s own mouth, or the mouth of a friend or family member, a form of faith or trust must accompany the act of eating. For who would knowingly eat food suspected to be unsafe? But that is precisely what millions of people do every year, with a great many of …


Re-Tooling Marine Food Supply Resilience In A Climate Change Era: Some Needed Reforms, Robin Kundis Craig Jul 2015

Re-Tooling Marine Food Supply Resilience In A Climate Change Era: Some Needed Reforms, Robin Kundis Craig

Seattle University Law Review

Ocean fisheries and marine aquaculture are an important but often overlooked component of world food security. For example, of the seven billion (and counting) people on the planet, over one billion depend on fish as their primary source of protein, and fish is a primary source of protein (30 percent or more of protein consumed) in many countries around the world, including Japan, Greenland, Taiwan, Indonesia, several countries in Africa, and several South Pacific island nations. Marine fisheries and marine aquaculture have been subject to a number of stressors that can undermine world food security, including overfishing, habitat destruction, and …


Public School Funding And Mccleary V. State Of Washington—A Violation Of The Separation Of Powers Doctrine Or A Legitimate Exercise Of Judicial Autonomy?, Jessica R. Burns Jul 2015

Public School Funding And Mccleary V. State Of Washington—A Violation Of The Separation Of Powers Doctrine Or A Legitimate Exercise Of Judicial Autonomy?, Jessica R. Burns

Seattle University Law Review

Public school funding has been contentiously litigated throughout the United States, and the Washington Supreme Court has addressed the inadequacy of public school funding in two pivotal cases: Seattle School District No. 1 v. State and McCleary v. State. In both decisions, the Washington Supreme Court held that the State failed to provide an adequate basic education for its public school students; however, in its attempt to remedy the situation, the court took drastically different approaches.


The 2014 Farm Bill: Farm Subsidies And Food Oppression, Andrea Freeman Jun 2015

The 2014 Farm Bill: Farm Subsidies And Food Oppression, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

The 2014 Farm Bill ushered in some significant and surprising changes. One of these was that it rendered the identity of all the recipients of farm subsidies secret. Representative Larry Combest, who is now a lobbyist for agribusiness, first introduced a secrecy provision into the bill in 2000. The provision, however, only applied to subsidies made in the form of crop insurance. Until 2014, the majority of subsidies were direct payments and the identity of the people who received them was public information. In fact, the Environmental Working Group’s release of the list of recipients led to a series of …


A Deal Is A Deal: Plea Bargains And Double Jeopardy After Ohio V. Johnson, Philip Chinn Nov 2013

A Deal Is A Deal: Plea Bargains And Double Jeopardy After Ohio V. Johnson, Philip Chinn

Seattle University Law Review

The Double Jeopardy Clause provides that no person will “be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.” On March 10, 2004, Pedro Cabrera made a statement that cost him fourteen years of his life: he proclaimed his innocence. The court accepted this plea and ordered a finding of guilty with a recommended sentence of six years. However, during an exchange that followed, Mr. Cabrera asserted that he was actually innocent but that he preferred “to take the time” instead of proceeding to trial. The judge then refused to accept Mr. Cabrera’s guilty …


State Session Freeze Laws—Potential Solution Or Unconstitutional Restriction?, Dru Swaim Nov 2013

State Session Freeze Laws—Potential Solution Or Unconstitutional Restriction?, Dru Swaim

Seattle University Law Review

Since the Citizens United decision in 2010 reduced Congress’s ability to constitutionally regulate money in elections, proponents of campaign finance reform have looked for alternative ways to achieve the goals of greater transparency and reduce the amount of money spent in federal elections. In the three years since Citizens United, the amount of money spent in federal campaigns has increased exponentially. In fact, the total amount of money spent in federal elections has nearly doubled since 2000. Citizens United represents a serious blow to the traditional methods used to restrict the amount of money in politics: limitations on the amounts …


The American Dream: Daca, Dreamers, And Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Heather Fathali Nov 2013

The American Dream: Daca, Dreamers, And Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Heather Fathali

Seattle University Law Review

On June 15, 2012, President Obama made an announcement that changed the lives of millions. Effective immediately, the Obama administration would implement a new program—what would come to be known as Deferred Action for Child-hood Arrivals (DACA)—offering eligible undocumented young people both a two-year respite from the haunting possibility of deportation as well as the eligibility to apply for employment authorization. While millions were elated by the President’s announcement, he also faced harsh criticism. Many claimed that his action exceeded federal statutory limits, exceeded his Executive powers, and usurped congressional authority. Still others, anxious to see comprehensive immigration reform implemented, …


A Mild Winter: The Status Of Environmental Preliminary Injunctions, Sarah J. Morath Nov 2013

A Mild Winter: The Status Of Environmental Preliminary Injunctions, Sarah J. Morath

Seattle University Law Review

Since the enactment of environmental legislation in the 1970s, the preliminary injunction standard articulated by the Supreme Court for environmental claims has evolved from general principles to enumerated factors. In Winter v. Natural Resource Defense Council, Inc., the Court’s most recent refinement, the Court endorsed but failed to explain the application of a common four-factor test when it held that the alleged injury to marine mammals was outweighed by the public interest of a well-trained and prepared Navy. While a number of commentators have speculated about Winter’s impact on future environmental preliminary injunctions, this article seeks to more precisely determine …


Character, Liberalism, And The Protean Culture Of Evidence Law, Daniel D. Blinka Nov 2013

Character, Liberalism, And The Protean Culture Of Evidence Law, Daniel D. Blinka

Seattle University Law Review

It is time to rethink character evidence. Long notorious as the most frequently litigated evidence issue, character doctrine plagues courts, trial lawyers, and law students with its infamously “grotesque” array of nonsensical rules, whimsical distinctions, and arcane procedures. Character is a calculation of social worth and value; it is the sum total of what others think of us, whether expressed as their own opinion or the collective opinions of many (reputation). Once we grasp that character is a social construct, we are in a better position to address some of the problems that plague evidence law. To provide needed clarity …


The Voice Of Reason—Why Recent Judicial Interpretations Of The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act’S Restrictions On Habeas Corpus Are Wrong, Judith L. Ritter Nov 2013

The Voice Of Reason—Why Recent Judicial Interpretations Of The Antiterrorism And Effective Death Penalty Act’S Restrictions On Habeas Corpus Are Wrong, Judith L. Ritter

Seattle University Law Review

By filing a petition for a federal writ of habeas corpus, a prisoner initiates a legal proceeding collateral to the direct appeals process. Federal statutes set forth the procedure and parameters of habeas corpus review. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) first signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, included significant cut-backs in the availability of federal writs of habeas corpus. This was by congressional design. Yet, despite the dire predictions, for most of the first decade of AEDPA’s reign, the door to habeas relief remained open. More recently, however, the Supreme Court reinterpreted a key portion …


Academic Freedom And Professorial Speech In The Post-Garcetti World, Oren R. Griffin Nov 2013

Academic Freedom And Professorial Speech In The Post-Garcetti World, Oren R. Griffin

Seattle University Law Review

Academic freedom, a coveted feature of higher education, is the concept that faculty should be free to perform their essential functions as professors and scholars without the threat of retaliation or undue administrative influence. The central mission of an academic institution, teach-ing and research, is well served by academic freedom that allows the faculty to conduct its work in the absence of censorship or coercion. In support of this proposition, courts have long held that academic freedom is a special concern of the First Amendment, granting professors and faculty members cherished protections regarding academic speech. In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the …


Mania: The Lives, Literature, And Law Of The Beats, Ronald K.L. Collins, David M. Skover Nov 2013

Mania: The Lives, Literature, And Law Of The Beats, Ronald K.L. Collins, David M. Skover

Seattle University Law Review

The Beats introduced the counter-culture to twentieth century America. They were the first to break away from Eisenhower conformity, from the era of the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. With them came an infusion of rebel spirit—a spirit that hearkened back to Walt Whitman—in their lives, literature, and law. Their literature spawned a remarkable chapter in American obscenity law. The prosecution of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, Howl, was the last of its kind in this nation; and the prosecution of William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch is one of the last times that a novel was charged as obscene. The First …


Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley Jan 2010

Foreword: In Berle’S Footsteps, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

On the weekend of November 6–8, 2009, scholars from around the world gathered in Seattle for a symposium—In Berle’s Footsteps—celebrating the launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. As founding director of the Berle Center, I described our undertaking: “It is with a profound sense of obligation to the legacy that has been entrusted to my care, that I announce the launching of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law and Society. It is a privilege to follow in Berle’s footsteps.”


Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii Jan 2010

Opening Remarks, Chancellor William B. Chandler Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Law is, in many ways, a backwards-looking field. We litigate over facts that have already occurred, challenge deals that have already been signed, and apply rules of decision based on previously-established precedent or statutes already enacted. To the extent that this Center and the symposium reflect on Berle’s work, they too are an exercise in looking back. Indeed, some might say the establishment of a Center named in Berle’s honor is a monument to the past.


Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch Jan 2010

Securities Intermediaries And The Separation Of Ownership From Control, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

The Modern Corporation & Private Property is a paradigm-shifting analysis of the modern corporation. The book is perhaps best known for the insights of Berle and Means about the separation of ownership from control and the consequences of that separation for the allocation of power within the corporation. The Berle and Means story focuses on the shareholder as the owner of the corporation. Berle and Means saw the mechanism of centralized management—in which the shareholder retains the economic interest but not the control rights associated with ownership—as threatening the conception of shareholder interests in terms of property rights. In particular, …


Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii Jan 2010

Rethinking The Separation Of Ownership From Management In American History, Kenneth Lipartito, Yumiko Morii

Seattle University Law Review

In <em>The Modern Corporation and Private Property</em>, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means would use AT&T as a prime example of what they saw as a dangerous new trend, the replacement of ownership-based capitalism with giant corporations controlled by a small group of propertyless managers. Indeed, AT&T became Berle and Means’ favorite example. . . . As we shall see, however, the claim that AT&T was a leading example of the separation of ownership from management is incomplete. More importantly, the common interpretation of Berle and Means’ work is mistaken, placing the emphasis incorrectly on the number of shareholders and reading …


The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman Jan 2010

The Modern Corporation As Social Construction, Mark S. Mizruchi, Daniel Hirschman

Seattle University Law Review

Classic works, Mark Mizruchi and Lisa Fein argued, share a particular fate. Authors often cite classic works without reading them—or without reading them carefully. . . . Yet perhaps no single work fits the above description better than one of the most important books on the large corporation ever published: Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’s The Modern Corporation and Private Property. One can speculate that few works in the social sciences have been as often cited and as little read. As a consequence, we would expect The Modern Corporation to be a good candidate for either selective interpretation or …


Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley Jan 2010

Berle And The Entrepreneur, Charles R.T. O'Kelley

Seattle University Law Review

In the first and last four chapters (“the Five Chapters”) of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf Berle, Jr. describes in sweeping terms a fundamental transformation of the American economy. . . . Writing more than ten years before Berle, another seminal scholar, Frank Knight . . . developed a theory of the entrepreneur as part of his larger effort to more carefully explain the theoretical underpinnings of a free-market economy. . . . Given Knight’s prominence and the fact that Knight apparently reached dramatically different conclusions than did Berle concerning the consequences flowing from separation of ownership …


Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces Jan 2010

Revisiting Berle And Rethinking The Corporate Structure, Kelli A. Alces

Seattle University Law Review

Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means painted what remains a defining portrait of corporate law. The separation of ownership and control they described and the agency costs it causes are still a central concern of the law of corporate governance. For that reason, Berle’s work is relevant nearly eighty years after its publication. Seemingly forgotten, however, is that Berle’s enduring description of the corporate structure was published before most of today’s corporate law was in place. His work preceded the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and even preceded the dominance of Delaware common law in …


Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda Jan 2010

Monitoring To Reduce Agency Costs: Examining The Behavior Of Independent And Non-Independent Boards, Anita Anand, Frank Milne, Lynnette Purda

Seattle University Law Review

Berle and Means’s analysis of the corporation—in particular, their view that those in control are not the owners of the corporation—raises questions about actions that corporations take to counter concerns regarding management’s influence. What mechanisms, if any, do corporations implement to balance the distribution of power in the corporation? To address this question, we analyze boards of directors’ propensity to voluntarily adopt recommended corporate governance practices. Because board independence is one way to enhance shareholders’ ability to monitor management, we probe whether firms with independent boards of directors (which we define as boards with either an independent chair or a …


Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao Jan 2010

Power Without Property, Still: Unger, Berle, And The Derivatives Revolution, Cristie Ford, Carol Liao

Seattle University Law Review

We are in a time when the notion of property is in flux. The derivatives revolution has shattered the “atom of property” well beyond what was originally imagined in 1932 by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means. This disaggregation has had fascinating, and often adverse, effects on corporate law and securities regulation. Moreover, the phenomenon has had the unexpected effect of permitting some parties that already possess considerable social, economic, and political power to accumulate even more.


The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel Jan 2010

The New Financial Assets: Separating Ownership From Control, Tamar Frankel

Seattle University Law Review

In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner Means wrote about the separation of ownership from control in corporations. They noted that the interests of the controlling directors and managers can diverge from those of the shareholder owners of the firm. . . . There are those who consider such a decoupling beneficial. Others express the same concern that Berle and Means have expressed. And depending on what one focuses on in viewing the pluses and minuses of these separations, one could reach different conclusions. I reach a number of conclusions. First, the separation of …


Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot Jan 2010

Enumerating Old Themes? Berle’S Concept Of Ownership And The Historical Development Of English Company Law In Context, Lorraine E. Talbot

Seattle University Law Review

This paper offers some tentative suggestions as to why Berle’s work has been read and interpreted so selectively in the United Kingdom. I suggest that this must be partly attributable to the historical developments in English company law that entrenched the notion of shareholder ownership claims. Specifically, unincorporated associations’ normative values—that members are owners and there is no distinction between small organizations with no share dispersal and large organizations with wide share dispersal—have a continuing influence on this entrenched notion of shareholder ownership claims. First, I provide an overview of the origins of English company law. Next, I address how …


Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter Jan 2010

Berle’S Vision Beyond Shareholder Interests: Why Investment Bankers Should Have (Some) Personal Liability, Claire Hill, Richard Painter

Seattle University Law Review

This essay, published in a symposium on the work of Adolf Berle, approaches the Berle-Dodd debate from the perspective that corporate managers have responsibilities beyond pursuing the interests of shareholders. Stock based executive compensation, designed to align managers’ interests with those of shareholders, has, in the investment banking industry in particular, failed to avert, and may have caused, managers (in this case, bankers) to take excessive risks that in the present financial crisis inflicted great damage on creditors and on society as a whole. We describe here the broad outlines of a proposal that we will discuss in future publications …


The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells Jan 2010

The Birth Of Corporate Governance, Harwell Wells

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Article briefly examines the concept of “corporate governance” and argues for dating the concept’s origins to the debates of the 1920s. Part II then moves on to examine early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control. After surveying the historical developments that produced the recognizably modern corporate economy around the turn of the century, it examines early scholarly and popular discussions of the separation of ownership and control, focusing on three major thinkers, Louis D. Brandeis, Walter Lippmann, and Thorstein Veblen. It argues that, while each of these authors examined the separation …


Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter Jan 2010

Tracking Berle’S Footsteps: The Trail Of The Modern Corporation’S Last Chapter, William W. Bratton, Michael L. Wachter

Seattle University Law Review

Readers game enough to work through all three hundred pages of The Modern Corporation and Private Property looking for insights on corporate law today encounter two, apparently contradictory, lines of thought. One line, set out in Books II and III, resonates comfortably with today’s shareholder-centered corporate legal theory. Here the book teaches that even as ownership and control have separated, managers should function as trustees for the shareholders and so should exercise their wide-ranging powers for the shareholders’ benefit. The other line of thought emerges in Books I and IV, where The Modern Corporation encases this shareholder trust model in …


See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George Jan 2010

See No Evil? Revisiting Early Visions Of The Social Responsibility Of Business: Adolf A. Berle’S Contribution To Contemporary Conversations, Erika George

Seattle University Law Review

Much corporate legal scholarship considers such fact patterns as beyond the scope of the discipline’s core concerns. Yet, increasingly, questions are asked concerning the scale and scope of modern corporate power. This Article will challenge the conventional understanding of what the core discipline of corporate law should encompass and argues that the failure to focus on precisely these sorts of factual scenarios involving allegations of corporate complicity in human rights violations and environmental degradation is misguided and short-sighted.


Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill Jan 2010

Then And Now: Professor Berle And The Unpredictable Shareholder, Jennifer G. Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholders, and the relationship between shareholders and management, lay at the heart of Professor Berle’s scholarship. The goal of this Article is to compare the image of shareholders emerging from The Modern Corporation and Private Property and the Berle/Dodd debate with a range of contemporary visions of the shareholder that underpin some international regulatory responses to recent financial debacles, from Enron to the current global financial crisis. As the Article dis- cusses, these recent developments in the era of financial crises have prompted a reevaluation of the traditional image of the shareholder—and the role of the shareholder in the modern …