Digital Commons Network^™

Monitoring Academic Freedom: Reflections For Advocates, Andrea Boggio

Politics, Law, and Society Faculty Journal Articles

This paper reflects on the challenges and opportunities of academic freedom monitoring from an advocacy perspective. Based on the review of two existing academic freedom indexes and the author’s experience building scientific freedom indicators, the paper discusses three challenges: conceptual, methodological, and political. The conceptual challenges are of four kinds: undertheorization, complexity, necessity of specification, and variation. The paper concludes by identifying three strategies (theory-building, interoperability, and cosmopolitanism) to strengthen monitoring and make it a more effective advocacy tool.

Front Matter And Table Of Contents

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Teaching The Rule Of Law: An Essay, Christopher R. Kelley

Arkansas Law Notes

This Essay reflects on a Rule of Law course taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law since 2009, exploring its evolution and purpose over fifteen years. Moving beyond a historical survey of the rule of law and debates about its meaning, the course integrates diverse disciplines such as psychology, economics, and current events to cultivate lawyer professionalism through a rule of law lens. Central to the course is a focus on corruption—its causes, consequences, and cures—with professionalism presented as a key antidote, and an emphasis on helping students define what the rule of law means to them and …

Washington State Bar Licensure Task Force Subcommittee On Ethics/Character Fitness Report And Recommendations, Brent Williams-Ruth

Seattle University Law Review Online

The Washington State Bar Licensure Task Force’s Subcommittee on Ethics/Character and Fitness (the Subcommittee) was created at the behest of Brent Williams-Ruth, the representative selected by the President of the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA or the Bar) to represent the Board of Governors on the Bar Licensure Task Force. His interest in modifying the Character and Fitness process took root after meeting Tarra Simmons during her experience with the Character and Fitness Board. After the WSBA Character and Fitness Board recommended that Simmons’s application to sit for the bar exam be denied, the Washington Supreme Court reversed that recommendation …

Children’S Privacy In Xr Applications – A Rights-Based Approach, Witzleb, Normann

Santa Clara High Technology Law Journal

In the extended reality (XR) of Metaverse applications, several innovative technologies converge and interconnect to blur the lines between the digital and physical worlds. The seamless operation of XR applications requires the collection and processing of huge quantities of data, including personal data, to give users a truly immersive virtual experience. One of the major intended user groups of the Metaverse are children, who increasingly use XR spaces to learn, play, create content, and engage in a wide range of other activities. This article considers the challenges to safeguarding children’s privacy in this evolving digital landscape and makes recommendations for …

State Of Utah Appellee/ Plaintiff V. Ryan Scott Hatch Appellant/Defendant : Reply Brief, Utah Court Of Appeals

Utah Court of Appeals Briefs (2020 –)

On appeal from a conviction of wanton destruction of protected wildlife, a third degree felony, in the Sixth Judicial District Court, Case No. 211600066, the Honorable Mandy Larsen presiding

Scott F. Garrett, Jessica Griffin Anderson, Attorneys for Appellant Ryan Scott Hatch

Criminal Protection Of Genomic Data: A Comparative Analytical Study, Maitha Hareb Al Amimi

Thesis/ Dissertation Defenses

This study aims to provide an analytical comparison of legal protection mechanisms for genomic data in the United Arab Emirates and the United States by examining the legislative frameworks governing this sensitive information. Genomic data is among the most private forms of personal information due to its significant use in medicine, insurance, and employment—necessitating robust legal protections against misuse and genetic discrimination. In the UAE, the research focuses on the 2021 Personal Data Protection Law, which outlines rules for handling genomic data and imposes penalties for violations. It also examines the UAE Human Genome Law, which regulates the collection and …

Endocrinology Expert Witness: Bridging Healthcare And Law To Uphold Standards, Mihail Zilbermint, Stacey B. Lee

Journal of Community Hospital Internal Medicine Perspectives

The role of a medical expert witness is vital in bridging the gap between the healthcare and legal systems, ensuring that justice is served while maintaining high standards of medical care. This perspective highlights the importance of medical professionals engaging in expert witness work, examining both the challenges and rewards of this role. Initially, community physicians may hesitate to participate due to misconceptions about legal risks or potential professional backlash. However, expert witness work provides a unique opportunity to supplement income, contribute to the integrity of the medical profession, and deepen medical knowledge.

The development of legal knowledge, such as …

The Ethics Of Insider Trading, Miles Morgan

Global Tides

In business ethics, insider trading has gone untouched by scholars, as the consensus is that insider trading is morally indefensible, however, questions have emerged regarding the moral responsibility of insiders. This paper engages with Analyzing Insider Trading from the Perspectives of Utilitarian Ethics and Rights Theory by Robert McGee to evaluate the relationship between applied ethics and insider trading. A satisfactory anti-insider trading account must be able to economically or philosophically explain why insider trading is morally wrong. The assumption that this is impossible may be due to a misunderstanding of how we decide what morality is or how economic …

Winter Is Coming: What States Should Do Now, Part I, David Gamage, Darien Shanske

Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the unprecedented fiscal challenges facing state governments as federal policy shifts threaten to create a perfect storm of revenue losses and increased service demands. As states confront potential federal cuts to essential services like Medicaid, reduced tax enforcement capacity, and possible tariff-driven economic disruption, we argue that piecemeal responses will prove insufficient.

We propose a seven-step framework for state fiscal resilience: (1) pausing automatic conformity to federal tax changes to preserve revenue bases; (2) enhancing state tax enforcement capacity by hiring federal personnel as the IRS sheds expertise; (3) maintaining and expanding taxpayer service innovations like direct …

Buxbaum Elected To Ajil Editorial Board, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Hannah L. Buxbaum has been elected to the American Journal of International Law’s Board of Editors.

She will serve a four-year term running through April 2029.

The AJIL is a leading peer-reviewed journal, published quarterly since 1907, that serves as the flagship publication of the American Society of International Law.

Class Is In Session: Anders V. Cal. State Univ., Fresno And The Debate Over Class Certification In Title Ix Athletics Cases, Fuller Kolsrud, Morgan

Santa Clara Law Review

The world of college athletics is changing rapidly and dramatically. Conferences are disintegrating and realigning. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the cutting of varsity sport programs at universities around the country. Student-athletes are signing multi- year name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals with major brands such as Gatorade, State Farm, and Nike that are worth millions of dollars. Yet with all of these changes, a college or university receiving federal funds remains obligated to abide by the anti-discrimination requirements of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, widely known as Title IX.

Though Title IX has been federal law for …

Recent U.S. Government Policy Literature On Critical And Strategic Minerals, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Critical and strategic minerals have become increasingly important in U.S. government civilian and military policymaking in recent years. This is demonstrated by the heavy use of such minerals in many critical civilian and military infrastructures. This work will discuss how this subject has been addressed in laws, presidential documents, and works by government agencies along with congressional oversight committees and support agencies. It will stress how the United States is heavily dependent on strategic minerals from adversarial foreign countries such as China and will examine U.S. efforts to increase its ability to produce such materials in the United States by …

A New Mandate For Ottawa: Building Canada’S Sovereign Future, Barry Appleton

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

The Rising Returns To R&D: Ideas Are Not Getting Harder To Find, Yoshiki Ando, James Bessen, Xiupeng Wang

Faculty Scholarship

R&D investment has grown robustly, yet aggregate productivity growth has stagnated. Is this because “ideas are getting harder to find”? This paper uses micro-data from the US Census Bureau to explore the relationship between R&D and productivity in the manufacturing sector from 1976 to 2018. We find that both the elasticity of output (TFP) with respect to R&D and the marginal returns to R&D have risen sharply. Exploring factors affecting returns, we conclude that R&D obsolescence rates must have risen. Using a novel estimation approach, we find consistent evidence of sharply rising technological rivalry. These findings suggest that R&D has …

Ndls Communicator: Week Of 05.05.25, Notre Dame Law School

NDLS Communicator

The Latest News

• Notre Dame Military and Veterans Law Society hosts Symposium:"What Do We Owe Our Veterans?"
• Catholic educators urge Supreme Court to uphold their freedom to serve communities in need
• Notre Dame Law School students help prepare religious charter school case for U.S. Supreme Court
• Faith and freedom: Dean Marcus Cole on religious liberty
• Notre Dame Law School Hosts Private Law Workshop Featuring Leading Legal Scholars
• Program on Law and Economics holds End of the Academic Year breakfast

Faculty Briefs

• Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the St. Isidore case.
• Nicole Garnett wrote about the St. …

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study Of Pragmatism And The Flaws Of “Purposeful” Decision Making In Argersinger V. Hamlin, Alisa Smith, Sarah K. Stice

Seattle University Law Review

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground …

Ensuring Housing Stability And Protections For The Nation’S Renters: Avenues For Federal Action, Margaret Hagan, Peter Hepburn, Justin Steil, Brandon Weiss

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What would it take to ensure housing stability and protections for the nation’s renters? This essay reviews the current literature on landlord–tenant laws, eviction court policies, the provision of legal aid, and the residential security of renter households. It then lays out avenues through which the federal government—particularly the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—might work to improve renters’ stability. These include targeted efforts to improve engagement with both tenants and landlords, robust implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing provision of the federal Fair Housing Act, especially around source of income discrimination, and facilitation of reforms to state …

The Race To Erase: Destruction Of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-Of-Information Laws, Frank D. Lomonte

Seattle University Law Review

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law …

When You’Re Arrested For A Felony In Seattle, You’Ll Meet Me., Austin Field

Seattle University Law Review

In this Essay, Austin Field, a practicing public defender, uses a first-person perspective to describe what it is like to meet a criminal defendant for the first time. He explains the process from start to finish, detailing everything from the way he introduces himself to how bail works.

"I’ll ask you for your name. Most of the time, you tell me. I check your name against my list. On any given day I’m supposed to interview between five and fifteen people. I have a lot of questions for you. We only have about ten minutes."

The Public Square In A Private-Property Obsessed Country: What New York City’S Pops Regulations Get Right And Why Other Cities Should (Mostly) Copy Them, Carson Mcgregor

Seattle University Law Review

When New York City (NYC) was first becoming the metropolitan monolith it is today, it had a problem: the city streets were chock full of skyscrapers, and sunlight, air, and usable open space were at a premium. In response, the City promulgated its first Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) regulations, which allowed developers to build skyward in exchange for providing public space on the street level. Unfortunately, in July of 2023, the New York Times (NYT) discovered that New Yorkers received only a fraction of what they were promised. Building owners received billions of dollars’ worth of added floor space, …

Social Media And Protection Of The Youth: Assessing Policy Safeguards And Political Implications, Genesis N. Rivera

Honors Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to explain the potential gaps in U.S. state-level policies from Illinois, Utah, and California. The scope of this paper focuses on policies that specifically address the emerging issue of child influencers. Through a comparative analysis, I found that states like Illinois, California, and Utah all lack enforcement mechanisms, which rational choice theory explains are crucial for ensuring policy effectiveness. Many states, such as California and Utah, followed Illinois’s legal framework through policy diffusion. Therefore, I propose that, in order for states to adopt stronger measures, they should implement France’s more developed legal framework. Through …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Evaluating The Extent And Consequences Of Polarization In The Supreme Court, Brianna Pechman

Honors Capstones

This research joins a limited number of existing studies investigating polarization on the Supreme Court by focusing on a specific policy area, reproductive rights, through an analysis of Martin-Quinn scores, a traditional measurement of judicial ideology. Following previous studies investigating polarization in the judicial system, polarization on the Supreme Court is identified through partisan sorting, the alignment of party affiliation and issue position, and traditional polarization, increasing support for extreme positions relative to more positions. Overall, the Court shows no signs of traditional polarization as moderate justices are still present on the Supreme Court and liberal and conservative justices are …

More Easily Facilitating Involuntary Treatment: The Impacts Of Senate Bill 43 On The Intersection Of Mental Illness And Homelessness In California, Linthacum-Janker, Gracean

Santa Clara Law Review

Mental health and homelessness are two of the most prominent matters affecting California. The Legislature has attempted to combat the issues stemming from these concerns through various forms of legislation. Despite legislative efforts, the intersection between mental illness and homelessness continues to present further challenges. California Senate Bill 43 (SB-43) sets out to address the mental health crisis by modernizing California’s laws handling behavioral health, specifically for individuals living on the streets.

This Note analyzes the impact of SB-43 on California’s mental health system and individuals. SB-43 expands the legal definition of “gravely disabled” to include individuals who fit the …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead