Law Commons^™

The World Moved On Without Me: Redefining Contraband In A Technology-Driven World For Youth Detained In Washington State, Stephanie A. Lowry

Seattle University Law Review

If you ask a teenager in the United States to show you one of their favorite memories, they will likely show you a picture or video on their cell phone. This is because Americans, especially teenagers, love cell phones. Ninety-seven percent of all Americans own a cell phone according to a continuously updated survey by the Pew Research Center. For teenagers aged thirteen to seventeen, the number is roughly 95%. For eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds, the number grows to 100%. On average, eight to twelve-year-old’s use roughly five and a half hours of screen media per day, in comparison to thirteen …

Handle With Care: Domestic Violence Safety Planning In The Age Of Data Privacy Laws, Jenny Wu

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

The United States has been patiently waiting for a comprehensive federal data privacy law to protect consumers. However, strong data privacy laws can also protect a less thought-about group: survivors of domestic violence and intimate partner violence. As new technology proliferates into our daily lives, technology-based abuse is quickly becoming a common form of intimate partner abuse. Domestic violence survivors and advocates have to stay extra vigilant about who has access to their internet data. Needing to understand technology-specific safety measures and learn technology-literacy skills adds more work to already overwhelmed domestic violence advocates and survivors. Could the law serve …

Micro-Housing In Seattle Update: Combating “Seattle-Ization”, Taylor Haines

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Vehicle Manufacturers: Applying A Common Carrier Liability Scheme To Autonomous Vehicle Manufacturers—And Why Elon Musk Will Be Haunted By His Words, Alejandro Monarrez

Seattle University Law Review SUpra

The modes and levels of vehicle automation have advanced over the years with the goal of making driving safer. Features like self-steering, lane assist, and blind-spot warning are designed to assist drivers in operating their vehicles. However, the emergence of autonomous vehicle technology self-driving capabilities raises new questions about tort liability.

Since 2016, there have been numerous fatalities involving autonomous vehicles. In this Note, Alejandro Monarrez explores how we should assess liability in autonomous vehicle-related accidents when vehicles are in full automation mode. Monarrez similarly argues the common carrier liability scheme first conceptualized by Dylan LeValley in Autonomous Vehicle Liability—Application …

A Dangerous Inheritance: A Child’S Digital Identity, Kate Hamming

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment begins with one family’s story of its experience with social media that many others can relate to in today’s ever-growing world of technology and the Internet. Technology has made it possible for a person’s online presence to grow exponentially through continuous sharing by other Internet users. This ability to communicate and share information amongst family, friends, and strangers all over the world, while beneficial in some regard, comes with its privacy downfalls. The risks to privacy are elevated when children’s information is being revealed, which often stems from a child’s own parents conduct online. Parents all over the …

From The Myth Of Babel To Google Translate: Confronting Malicious Use Of Artificial Intelligence—Copyright And Algorithmic Biases In Online Translation Systems, Shlomit Yanisky-Ravid, Cynthia Martens

Seattle University Law Review

Many of us rely on Google Translate and other Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI) online translation daily for personal or commercial use. These AI systems have become ubiquitous and are poised to revolutionize human communication across the globe. Promising increased fluency across cultures by breaking down linguistic barriers and promoting cross-cultural relationships in a way that many civilizations have historically sought and struggled to achieve, AI translation affords users the means to turn any text—from phrases to books—into cognizable expression. This Article discusses the burgeoning possibilities in the 3A Era (Advanced, Autonomous, AI systems) of AI online translation as …

Regulating The Gdpr: Perspectives From The United Kingdom, Hannah Mccausland

Seattle University Law Review

Hannah McCausland leads the international group at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s International Engagement functions as the gateway to other data protection and privacy authorities on international matters. She’s involved in the work of the EU European Data Protection Board advising the commissioner and the deputy commissioner on international positioning of the ICO, and she has played a key role over the past six years in the ICO’s strategy on navigating the EU’s data protection framework. Hannah has also played a major role at the global level and advancing the practical tools that data protection and privacy …

Non-Autonomous Artificial Intelligence Programs And Products Liability: How New Ai Products Challenge Existing Liability Models And Pose New Financial Burdens, Greg Swanson

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment argues that the unique relationship between manufacturers, consumers, and their reinforcement learning AI systems challenges existing products liability law models. These traditional models inform how to identify and apportion liability between manufacturers and consumers while exposing litigants to low-dollar tort remedies with inherently high-dollar litigation costs.11 Rather than waiting for AI autonomy, the political and legal communities should be proactive and generate a liability model that recognizes how new AI programs have already redefined the relationship between manufacturer, consumer, and product while challenging the legal and financial burden of prospective consumer-plaintiffs and manufacturer-defendants.

Technological And Institutional Crossroads: The Life And Times Of Adolf A. Berle Jr., Bernard C. Beaudreau

Seattle University Law Review

In this paper, I examine the life and times of Adolf A. Berle Jr., perhaps the most influential scholar in the field of corporate governance. Specifically, I examine his contribution in light of the technological and institutional changes that occurred in the late nineteenth century—changes that were germane to his thinking and understanding of corporate governance. I argue that, despite his perspicacity, he failed to appreciate the changing role of corporate officers—that is, from that of fiduciary agent to that of visionary, founder, and essential element in corporate success. Put differently, in the early twentieth century, the key asset in …

Quasi Governments And Inchoate Law: Berle’S Vision Of Limits On Corporate Power, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

This Berle X Symposium essay gives prominence to distinguished corporate law scholar Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and his key writings of the 1950s and 1960s. Berle is most famous for his work decades earlier, in the 1930s, with Gardiner Means on the topic of the separation of ownership and control, and for his great debate of corporate social responsibility with E. Merrick Dodd. Yet the world was inching closer to our contemporary one in terms of both business and technology in Berle’s later years and his work from this period deserves attention.

3d Bioprinting Patentable Subject Matter Boundaries, Tabrez Y. Ebrahim

Seattle University Law Review

3D bioprinting combines emerging 3D printing technologies with synthetic biology. The promise of 3D bioprinting technology is to fabricate organs for transplantation, treat burn victims with in vivo skin repair, and create wearable microbiomes. 3D bioprinting can successively build, repair, or reproduce living human cells. This capability challenges eligible subject matter doctrine in U.S. patent law because the law has no brightline standard for patent eligibility for nature-based products. As 3D bioprinting technologies mature, U.S. patent law will need to respond to situations where living and nonliving worlds merge. This Article proposes a “Mixed-Scanned-Transformed” standard to supplement U.S. patent law’s …

Uber, Lyft, And Regulating The Sharing Economy, Brett Harris

Seattle University Law Review

The “sharing economy” goes by many names such as the “gig economy,” the “1099 economy,” and the “on-demand economy,” all of which describe the economic system that uses online platforms to connect workers and sellers with clients and consumers, primarily through smartphone applications. Many of the sharing economy companies are also called the “tech disruptors.” They earned this title because they have changed the way that people do business. But in changing the way that people do business, they have also created unique regulatory challenges for governments across the country. The news is rife with stories about when these regulations …

Copyright, Consumerism, And The Cloud: Proposing Standards-Essential Technology To Support First Sale In Digital Copyright, Marco Puccia

Seattle University Law Review

America’s entertainment industry, and the creative talent that drives it, is a national treasure. Equally valuable, however, is America’s drive and commitment toward technological innovation. These two sectors have been in tension since at least 1908, when the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to determine whether the makers of piano rolls for automatically playing pianos had to pay royalties to the composers. Since that time, the entertainment industry has continued to use copyright law to resist advances in technological innovation that it views as a threat to its existing business models. This Note seeks to provide the necessary context and …

Buying Teams, Andres Sawicki

Seattle University Law Review

The Sixth Annual Berle Symposium reflects on Margaret Blair and Lynn Stout’s classic article: A Team Production Theory of Corporate Law. Blair and Stout recast the modern law of public corporations through the lens of the team production theory of the firm. Here, I apply Blair and Stout’s insights—emphasizing the value of team production, independent monitors, and intellectual property rights—to a novel corporate transaction structure: the acqui-hire. In an acqui-hire, a publicly owned technology firm wants to add a start-up’s engineers. Instead of simply hiring them, though, it buys the start-up, discards most of its assets, and retains the start-up’s …

E-Books, Collusion, And Antitrust Policy: Protecting A Dominant Firm At The Cost Of Innovation, Nicholas Timchalk

Seattle University Law Review

Amazon’s main rival, Apple, went to great lengths and took major risks to enter the e-book market. Why did Apple simply choose not to compete on the merits of its product and brand equity (the iPad and iBookstore) as it does with its other products? Why did Apple decide not to continue to rely on its earlier success of situating its products differently in the market than other electronics and working hard to be different and cutting-edge with its e-book delivery? This Note argues that the combination of Amazon’s 90% market share, network externalities, and an innovative technology market creates …

Teaching Electronically: The Chicago-Kent Experiment, Richard Warner

Seattle University Law Review

Certain basic goals are widely shared, relatively uncontroversial, and sufficiently important that it makes sense to ask whether computer technology can improve our ability to achieve those goals. Consider the following four goals. This Review will focus primarily on the second goal (understanding the rationales behind the rules). Of course, to improve students' abilities to achieve this goal may also improve their abilities to achieve the first goal (knowledge of black letter rules) as a knowledge of a rule is obviously a precondition of understanding its purpose. Improving students' abilities to understand the rationale behind a rule may also improve …

Keynote Colloquy: Finding Justice In The Internet Dimension, Hon. Alex Kozinski

Seattle University Law Review

The Internet community—just like all other speech communities—ought to be afforded First Amendment protections. I don't see any reason why Internet speech should be treated any less favorably than other kinds of speech. But the vastly overblown claim that the communications medium somehow deserves to be put outside normal legal constraints--because it's so global, or because it's so different—is self-defeating. It substitutes generalities and sentiments for real thinking. The kind of analysis we've seen at this conference—the kind of debate we've had here—is very useful, because we're talking about the specifics of what legal constraints should be allowed. Not whether …

Bridging The Analogy Gap: The Internet, The Printing Press And Freedom Of Speech, Jonathan Wallace, Michael Green

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court will bring the highest degree of clarity to the Internet freedom of speech debate if, in ACLU v. Reno, it sets forth the operative metaphor for freedom of speech and applies the metaphor in conjunction with an appropriate analogy for the technology.Part I of this Article discusses judicial decision-making tools with an emphasis on the use of analogy and the importance of applying legal precedents in a manner which is consistent and logical. Part I also discusses the use of metaphor in judicial decisionmaking and illustrates how operative metaphors for free speech have served to provide …