Judges Commons^™

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

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, …

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

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.

The Sffa V. Harvard Trojan Horse Admissions Lawsuit, Kimberly West-Faulcon

Seattle University Law Review

Affirmative-action-hostile admissions lawsuits are modern Trojan horses. The SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case—Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, et. al., decided jointly—is the most effective Trojan horse admissions lawsuit to date. Constructed to have the distractingly appealing exterior façade of a lawsuit seeking greater fairness in college admissions, the SFFA v. Harvard/UNC case is best understood as a deception-driven battle tactic used by forces waging a multi-decade war against the major legislative victories of America’s Civil Rights Movement, specifically Title VI and Title VII …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

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 …

The Curious Case Of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Justin Burnworth

Pace Law Review

Justice Gorsuch has a propensity for unexpected decisions. His opinions in Bostock v. Clayton County, United States v. Vaello Madero, and McGirt v. Oklahoma confounded the legal community at large. Some argue that his Western upbringing played a role. Others argue that his time clerking for Justice Kennedy primed him for unpredictable decisions. These explanations do not get at the core of Justice Gorsuch’s legal reasoning. This article dives into the depths of these opinions to extract his “Enduring” theories of law. I argue that legal scholarship has incorrectly viewed these three decisions as isolated incidents when they are best …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

The Effects Of National Security On Supreme Court Case Decisions Involving Civil Liberties, Callie Gerzanics

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This research project will analyze the effects that national security laws and tensions have on civil liberties and Supreme Court case decisions. National security has been a primary objective for the United States of America for as long as wars have been fought and enemies have been made. National security continues to be a concern for the U.S. government, especially with the prominence of technology that has made the U.S. more vulnerable to breaches in security, such as cybernetic attacks. The motivations behind this project stem from a concern of how national security can influence Supreme Court decisions, police arrests, …

An Analysis Of The Competing Views On The Interpretation Of The U.S. Constitution, Joseph Longo

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will examine the competing interpretations of the United States Constitution and the different effects these interpretations would have on the American government and legal systems. By examining legal precedents and different philosophical views, the varying interpretations will be examined and put through real-world scenarios. The founding of America was over 200 years ago, but philosophical views throughout history shall be used in the understanding of the different interpretations and real-world consequences. The thesis will not claim that one interpretation is proper and the perfect one for the United States, rather it will challenge each view in an attempt …

Applying Maimonides’ Hilkhot Teshuvah–Laws Of Repentance – In The Criminal Law System Of The State Of Israel: An Israeli Judge’S Perspectives, Moshe Drori

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Herman Melville’S Billy Budd: Why This Classic Law And Literature Novel Endures And Is Still Relevant Today, Rodger Citron

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judicial Credibility, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

Do people believe a federal court when it rules against the government? And does such judicial credibility depend on the perceived political affiliation of the judge? This study presents a survey experiment addressing these questions, based on a set of recent cases in which both a judge appointed by President George W. Bush and a judge appointed by President Bill Clinton declared the same Trump Administration action to be unlawful. The findings offer evidence that, in a politically salient case, the partisan identification of the judge – here, as a “Bush judge” or “Clinton judge” – can influence the credibility …

Notoriously Ruthless: The Idolization Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lucille Moran

Political Science Honors Projects

It is now a fixture of mainstream commentary in the United States that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has become a popular idol on the political left. Yet, while Justice Ginsburg’s image and story has reached an unprecedented level of valorization and even commercialization, scholars have yet to give sustained attention to the phenomenon and to contextualize it: why has this idolization emerged within this context, and what is its impact? This paper situates her portrayal in the cultural imagination as the product of two political forces, namely partisanship and identity politics. Considering parallel scholarly discourses of reputation, celebrity, …

Judicial Education, Private Violence, And Community Action: A Case Study In Legal Participatory Action Research, Kristin (Brandser) Kalsem

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In this Article, I present a case study of a legal PAR project involving judicial training on best practices in domestic violence cases. This judicial education project started over coffee and waffles, involved an award-winning documentary film Private Violence, and resulted in the training of more than 375 judges on best practices developed from two years of collaborative research conducted by a community action group. In 2014, I coauthored an article titled It's Critical: Legal Participatory Action Research with my colleague Emily Houh. In this piece, we introduced legal scholars to the field of PAR, including its origins, complementary relationship …

The Influence Of The Warren Court And Natural Rights On Substantive Due Process, James Marmaduke

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Research Winner 2019:

While the concept of substantive due process has guided judicial decision making even prior to the Civil War, it has become a lightning rod among the juristic community especially since the 1960s. This controversy includes issues ranging from the applicability and reliability to the cogency and legitimacy of the doctrine of substantive due process Many scholars attribute the skepticism toward the concept of substantive due process to be the result of a paradigm shift in the middle of the 20^th century when this concept transitioned from an economic and property rights based approach to one …

The History, Meaning, And Use Of The Words Justice And Judge, Jason Boatright

St. Mary's Law Journal

The words justice and judge have similar meanings because they have a common ancestry. They are derived from the same Latin term, jus, which is defined in dictionaries as “right” and “law.” However, those definitions of jus are so broad that they obscure the details of what the term meant when it formed the words that eventually became justice and judge. The etymology of jus reveals the kind of right and law it signified was related to the concepts of restriction and obligation. Vestiges of this sense of jus survived in the meaning of justice and judge. …

Scotus's 2017-2018 Term: More Of The 'Passive Virtues', John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[exerpt] "Examine a timelier topic: the court's decision to effectively punt on the major religious freedom and partisan gerrymandering cases it was poised to decide this term. For the court's restrain in these cases may have some relation to our turbulent political times."

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Criminal Prosecution And Section 1983, Barry C. Scheck

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Procedural Due Process Claims, Erwin Chemerinsky

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Section 1983 Custom Claims And The Code Of Silence, Myriam Gilles

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Problems Concerning Litigating Custom And Practice Cases, Steve Ryals

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chevron Bias, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

This Article takes a fresh approach to Chevron deference. Chevron requires judges to defer to agency interpretations of statutes and justifies this on a theory of statutory authorization for agencies. This Article, however, points to a pair of constitutional questions about the role of judges – questions that have not yet been adequately asked, let alone answered.

One question concerns independent judgment. Judges have a constitutional office or duty of independent judgment, under which they must exercise their own independent judgment about what the law is. Accordingly, when they defer to agency interpretations of the law, it must be asked …

Courtroom To Classroom: Judicial Policymaking And Affirmative Action, Dylan Britton Saul

Political Science Honors Projects

The judicial branch, by exercising judicial review, can replace public policies with ones of their own creation. To test the hypothesis that judicial policymaking is desirable only when courts possess high capacity and necessity, I propose an original model incorporating six variables: generalism, bi-polarity, minimalism, legitimization, structural impediments, and public support. Applying the model to a comparative case study of court-sanctioned affirmative action policies in higher education and K-12 public schools, I find that a lack of structural impediments and bi-polarity limits the desirability of judicial race-based remedies in education. Courts must restrain themselves when engaging in such policymaking.

'Gardens Of Justice': Australian Feminist Law Journal, 2013, Volume 39, Matilda Arvidsson, Leila Brännström, Merima Bruncevic, Leif Dahlberg

Matilda Arvidsson

FOREWARD: GARDENS OF JUSTICE

Matilda Arvidsson, Merima Bruncevic, Leila Brannstrom, Leif Dahlberg

Our Gardens of Justice special themed issue of the Australian Feminist Law Journal grew out of the 2012 Critical Legal Conference in Stockholm and its theme of Gardens of Justice, a conference organised by Matilda Arvidsson, Merima Bruncevic, Leila Brannstrom and Leif Dahlberg. We issued a Call for Papers early in 2013 in which several conference theme questions were repeated. We called for papers devoted to thinking about law and justice as a physical as well as a social environment. The theme suggested a plurality of justice gardens …