Juvenile Law Commons^™

A Retrospective Analysis Of Police And Legal Procedure In The West Memphis Three Murders, Nathan Scolaro

Scholars Day Conference

Presentation covering an overview of the West Memphis Three, key police and legal failings in the process and investigation, before concluding with policy suggestions.

The Link Between Intellectual Disability And Juvenile Delinquency, Scarlet Bates

Scholars Day Conference

The correlation between intellectual disability and juvenile delinquency is striking. Across the globe we see a higher number of offenders with an intellectual disability. Youths with intellectual disabilities may be more likely to engage in delinquent behavior. Early identification and intervention for intellectual disabilities, along with support for social and emotional development, could be crucial in reducing the likelihood of juvenile delinquency.

Juvenile Justice & Diminished Criminal Culpability, Mitchell F. Crusto

University of Miami Law Review

When regulating the bad, albeit illegal, choices made by minors, the law is conflicted. On the one hand, we have a clear national policy to ensure the safety of and to promote the positive development of our young people, yet we simultaneously criminalize minors who make bad choices. This conundrum raises a quintessential jurisprudential flaw in our legal system: We lack a unifying, overarching principle that guides the law’s relationship with minors. In a companion piece, I pose and explore such a unifying principle, which I coin as the “best interest of the minor” standard (“BIMS”). Consequently, this Article applies …

The Changing Nature Of Education In Youth Justice Centres In New South Wales (Australia), Laura Metcalfe, Cathy Little Dr, Garner Clancey Dr, David Evans Dr

Journal of Prison Education Research

Education is an important protective factor in preventing involvement in crime. For those young people that enter the youth justice system, and especially youth justice centres, education is a critical, but infrequently explored part of their time in custody following generally disrupted schooling experiences. There are currently six youth justice centres in New South Wales, Australia. Each of these centres have an Education and Training Unit which are schools funded by and staffed with Department of Education personnel. There is evidence that young people accessing these schools regard them very positively. However, this article, drawing on publicly available information, raises …

Illicit Drug Usage And Juvenile Justice System Involvement, Selene Chavez Saucedo, April Terry

SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days

Drug usage is strongly associated with significant social and psychological problems for youth, including juvenile justice system involvement. Research shows that approximately 4.5 million youth, ages 12-17, have used an illicit drug in the past year. Youth drug usage is related to juvenile justice system involvement. In fact, substance abuse is a top eight risk factor for juvenile offending and reoffending. Once youth are involved within the judicial system, the correctional system must then assume the responsibility of intervening in the youth cycle of drugs and delinquent behavior. Unfortunately, research shows that substance use treatment is available only sporadically for …

Lgbtq+ Youth In The Juvenile Justice System, Matthias B. Pearce, April Terry

SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days

Many experts agree that the juvenile justice system has flaws, resulting in the need for different modifications. One area of particular concern within the juvenile justice system is the involvement of LGBTQ+ youth. LGBTQ+ youth are grossly overrepresented in both the juvenile and adult systems, including those who are incarcerated. This rate is highest for queer women and trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals (Buist, 2020; Donohue et al., 2021; Hereth & Bouris, 2020). This known pathway clearly depicts a systemic issue—one that warrants attention and remediation. This poster provides background information on the disparities that exist for LGBTQ+ youth …

Use Of Restrictive Housing In The Juvenile Justice System, Caleb D. Purvis, April Terry

SACAD: John Heinrichs Scholarly and Creative Activity Days

In recent years, the term solitary confinement was replaced with restrictive housing (RH) as it had a less negative tone. However, the terms both represent the same process of isolating individuals in cells with nearly no contact with others. Restrictive housing has many negative effects, including, but not limited to deteriorating mental health and increased rates of recidivism. Such practices are not limited to the adult system as incarcerated youth are also subjected to various forms of restrictive housing (e.g., protective custody, disciplinary and administrative segregation). While those who oppose the use of RH call this cruel and unusual punishment, …

From Classroom To Incarceration: Dissecting The School To Prison Pipeline, Cardozo Public Service Scholars Program

Flyers 2023-2024

No abstract provided.

Kidfluencers: New Child Stars In Need Of Protection, Mikayla B. Jayroe

Arkansas Law Review

Despite the explosive growth of social media and various lobbying efforts, the legal system has fallen woefully behind in extending labor protections to children engaged in social media production. This Comment will offer a solution to the current gray area surrounding kidfluencers and the lack of protections they are afforded. First, this Comment will discuss the emergence and growth of the kidfluencer industry and explore the legal history of child labor laws in the United States, specifically evaluating protections historically provided to child actors. Second, this Comment will explain why posts by kidfluencers should be considered work, explore the harms …

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

Doe Not Worry: Expanding Protections For Unaccompanied Children, Heidi E. Davis

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

A recent Fourth Circuit decision created a circuit split regarding the standard applied to constitutional violations in secure holding facilities. The more “liberal” professional judgment standard—as promulgated by Youngberg v. Romeo and applied to unaccompanied immigrant minors in Doe 4 ex rel. Lopez—is necessary but insufficient for the protection of unaccompanied children. This Note first examines the origins of the professional judgment standard in the Youngberg case. Then, cases are surveyed showing that the Supreme Court has recognized children as a vulnerable population, and current regulations, legislation, and court opinions recognize the vulnerabilities of unaccompanied children. With these ideas in …

The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino

Seattle University Law Review

U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …

Don't Mess With Texans' Rights: Protecting Transgender Youth From The Paternalistic Policies Of State Executives, Mary Franklin

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion in 2022 detailing how gender-affirming care for transgender minors constituted child abuse under the Texas Family Code. As a result of this opinion, multiple families of trans teens engaging in various forms of gender-affirming care were investigated by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. This Article applies the constitutional standards imposed by the equal protection clause, substantive due process, and parental authority to Paxton’s recommendation, using both the U.S. and Texas Constitutions. Ultimately, this Article concludes that Paxton’s opinion fails to meet these constitutional standards and recommends action from the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

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 …

The Limits Of Corporate Governance, Cathy Hwang, Emily Winston

Seattle University Law Review

What is the purpose of the corporation? For decades, the answer was clear: to put shareholders’ interests first. In many cases, this theory of shareholder primacy also became synonymous with the imperative to maximize shareholder wealth. In the world where shareholder primacy was a north star, courts, scholars, and policymakers had relatively little to fight about: most debates were minor skirmishes about exactly how to maximize shareholder wealth.

Part I of this Essay discusses the shortcomings of shareholder primacy and stakeholder governance, arguing that neither of these modes of governance provides an adequate framework for incentivizing corporations to do good. …

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

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. …