Law and Psychology Commons^™

Free Speech, Rational Deliberation, And Some Truths About Lies, Alan K. Chen

William & Mary Law Review

Could “fake news” have First Amendment value? This claim would seem to be almost frivolous given the potential for fake news to undermine two core functions of the freedom of speech—promoting democracy and facilitating the search for “truth,” as well as the corollary that to be valuable, speech must promote rational deliberation. Some would therefore claim that fake news should be classified as “no value” speech falling outside of the First Amendment’s reach. This Article argues somewhat counterintuitively that fake news has value because speech doctrine should not be focused exclusively on the promotion of rational deliberation, but should also …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

America's Newest Boogeyman For Deviant Teen Behavior: Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, Joseph C. Alfe, Grant D. Talabay

Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum

Are violent video games harming America’s youth? Is it possible a series of interconnected circuit boards can influence children (or even adults) to become, themselves, violent? If so, how should our society-- and government-- respond?

To properly answer this last query, violent video games must be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. Simply put: do games depicting grotesque acts of depravity so profound as to negatively influence the psyche warrant the full constitutional protections ordinarily guaranteed under the mantle of free speech and expression? Are these guarantees without limit? If not, how far may the government go in …

Youtube Is Unsafe For Children: Youtube's Safeguards And The Current Legal Framework Are Inadequate To Protect Children From Disturbing Content, Heather Wilson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

For America’s children, the amount of screen time they consume has not changed much over the years. Children under eight have steadily spent about two hours a day in front of a screen, with those under age two averaging 42 minutes a day. Children from low-income families spend roughly an hour and forty minutes longer in front of a screen. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, screen time should be limited to two hours a day for children ages two to five; whereas, for those youngest children—under two years—they recommend zero screen time.

While the average amount of screen …

The Use Of Digital Millenium Copyright Act To Stifle Speech Through Non-Copyright Related Takedowns, Miller Freeman

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

In 1998, Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provided new methods of protecting copyright in online media. These protections shift the normal judicial process that would stop the publication of infringing materials to private actors: the online platforms. As a result, online platforms receive notices of infringement and issue takedowns of allegedly copyrighted works without the judicial process which normally considers the purpose of the original notice of infringement. In at least one case, discussed in detail below, this has resulted in a notice and takedown against an individual for reasons not related to the purpose of …

Is The Establishment Clause Asymmetrical?, Sam Foer

Senior Honors Projects

Through numerous Establishment Clause cases, the Supreme Court has concluded that when public educators promote or denigrate religious views in the K-12 classroom, they violate the First Amendment. The Court has found that the protection of ‘freedom of conscience’ is embedded in the purpose of the Establishment Clause, which applies most strictly to the public school setting. This is because the sphere of conscience is most vulnerable to invasion in developing minds, and children are in a captive environment at school - they cannot escape from State instruction. Thus, states, school systems, and teachers who impose their religious beliefs onto …

Mhpaea & Marble Cake: Parity & The Forgotten Frame Of Federalism, Taleed El-Sabawi

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

State Regulatory Responses To The Prescription Opioid Crisis: Too Much To Bear?, Lars Noah

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

In order to prevent further overuse of prescription opioids, states have adopted a variety of strategies. This article summarizes the growing use of prescription drug monitoring programs, crackdowns on “pill mills,” prohibitions on the use of particularly hazardous opioids, limitations on the duration and dosage of prescribed opioids, excise taxes, physician education and patient disclosure requirements, public awareness campaigns, and drug take-back programs. Although occasionally challenged on constitutional grounds, including claims of federal preemption under the Supremacy Clause, discrimination against out-of-state businesses under the dormant Commerce Clause doctrine, and interference with rights of commercial free speech, this article evaluates the …

Panel Discussion: The Right To Education: With Liberty, Justice, And Education For All?

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Experiments With Suppression: The Evolution Of Repressive Legality In Britain In The Revolutionary Period, Christopher M. Roberts

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

This article is concerned with the structure of repressive governance, and how it has evolved historically. It examines this theme through an exploration of the manner which repressive laws and institutions evolved in Britain over the course of the late eighteenth century. In particular, it reviews the various measures that British authorities utilized and relied upon in order to confront a growing wave of calls for social and political reforms. These included a policy of aggressive prosecutions of dissidents; the creation of new institutions such as the Home Office designed to enhance the powers of the central authorities; extralegal measures …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Washington’S Young Offenders: O’Dell Demands A Change To Sentencing Guidelines, Erika Vranizan

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues that the O’Dell decision was a watershed moment for criminal justice reform. It argues that the reasoning in O’Dell should be seized upon by the legislature to take action to remediate instances in which defendants are legal adults but do not possess the cognitive characteristics of an adult sufficient to justify adult punishment. Given both the scientific impossibility of identifying a precise age at which characteristics of youthfulness end and adulthood begins and the Court’s repeated recognition that these very factors impact culpability, the current approach to sentencing young offenders aged eighteen to twenty-five as adults simply …

Rules, Tricks And Emancipation, Jessie Allen

Book Chapters

Rules and tricks are generally seen as different things. Rules produce order and control; tricks produce chaos. Rules help us predict how things will work out. Tricks are deceptive and transgressive, built to surprise us and confound our expectations in ways that can be entertaining or devastating. But rules can be tricky. General prohibitions and prescriptions generate surprising results in particular contexts. In some situations, a rule produces results that seem far from what the rule makers expected and antagonistic to the interests the rule is understood to promote. This contradictory aspect of rules is usually framed as a downside …