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State Legislatures: Guardians Of The Federal Balance, Practical Strategies For Monitoring, Strengthening, And Sustaining American Federalism (Remarks), Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

My remarks today are drawn from my book, Monitoring American Federalism: The History of State Legislative Resistance, and from an essay I wrote this year for the Center for the Study of Federalism about the responsibility of state legislators to sound the alarm when the federal government overreaches its constitutional authority.

The Separation Of Election Contest Powers, Casey Parker-Bell

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

States Strip Local Governments Of Authority To Govern Causing Some Rural Communities To Suffer, Terence J. Centner

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Acting Under Scrutiny: The Limits Of Federal-Officer Removal In Attorney General Of New Jersey V. Dow Chemical Company, Justin W. Berge

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Drawing A Line In The Mud: The Fifth Circuit's Narrow Reading Of Louisiana's Infrastructure Trespass Statute In White Hat V. Murrill, Andrew J. Lloyd

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Resiliency Planning And The Reorganization Of Legal Authority In Rural Maine, Nicholas F. Jacobs, Skylar Thielbar

Maine Law Review

Resiliency has become a dominant and largely unchallenged organizing principle of contemporary state-local governance in Maine, particularly as it affects rural towns and communities dependent on extractive industries. This Article argues that resiliency planning is not merely a policy orientation, but a distinct form of legal authority, which operates through an administrative structure that is closed off to normal channels of political accountability and judicial review. Focusing on Maine, the Article shows how statewide resiliency planning reallocates authority across state and local institutions, shaping fiscal access and territorial development without triggering the doctrinal safeguards of public law. Rural governance, where …

Betschart V. Oregon: A Seven-Day Standard For Maine, Henry Gates

Maine Law Review

Maine lacks a clear standard for ensuring the right to counsel for indigent defendants. The State’s public defense system is struggling to meet Maine’s constitutional mandate: To provide indigent defense services in rural areas and across the state. An aging bar with few new attorneys working in rural areas—where there are often higher relative prosecution rates and a corresponding increased need for legal services—is contributing to the problem. This has resulted in a legal system that negatively impacts rural communities and indigent defendants to the point that one court concluded the state is violating the Sixth Amendment. Following the Ninth …

The Other Right To Counsel: The Civil Guarantee In State Constitutions, Dmitry Bam

Maine Law Review

When most people speak of the right to counsel, they speak in the singular. After the Supreme Court’s seminal decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, the right to counsel in criminal prosecutions has become one of our most cherished fundamental rights. It is a right ingrained in our culture. Even children can recite the mantra that the accused have the right to a lawyer, and if they can’t afford a lawyer, one will be provided to them free of charge. It is no surprise, then, that our constitutional focus is trained on the criminal defendant’s right to counsel. After all, there …

Rurality And Redistricting: California's Proposition 50, Rural Identity, And Democratic Legitimacy, Lisa R. Pruitt

Maine Law Review

When California voters embraced mid-decade congressional redistricting in 2025, the greatest media attention landed on the state’s First Congressional District, CA-01. It is residents of that district who are likely to feel the consequences of the new maps most profoundly. In the form established by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2021, CA-01 occupied more than 26,000 square miles in the state’s northeastern corner. The district included a number of inland counties stretching from Modoc, tucked into the corner formed by the Oregon and Nevada state lines, to Colusa, in the Great Central Valley. The cluster of ten counties—hereinafter “old …

المادة ٤٩ من الدستور، وانتخاب حاكم مصرف لبنان لرئاسة الجمهورية, حسان تابت رفعت

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

L'Accord De Taêf Et La Coexistence Au Liban: Contribution À L'Étude De La Notion De Souveraineté, Hoda Hage

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Abortion (Re)Federalization, Gerald S. Dickinson

Utah Law Review

 This Article examines how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision has opened an unconventional pathway for the development of a new form of “bottom-up constitutionalism” that could reshape federal abortion rights in the future. Traditionally, federal constitutional law has exerted a dominant influence over state laws and state court jurisprudence. The uniformity in abortion protections nationwide for decades was a product of the Roe v. Wade era of federal supremacy. However, Dobbs reversed this dynamic by dramatically curtailing federal constitutional authority over abortion, thereby leaving states as primary rights regulators. This Article focuses on the …

Preemption Of State Fraudulent Transfer Law By The Bankruptcy Code, David G. Carlson

Articles

The article argues that state law tort claims based on fraudulent transfers are preempted by the Bankruptcy Code. It contends that allowing such tort claims to persist interferes with a bankruptcy trustee's ability to achieve universal settlements and recover assets, as the trustee cannot guarantee immunity from third-party tort liabilities.

Governing Algorithmic Attention: Attention Safeguard Models And The Cognitive Attentional Standard As System Level Interventions In Human Computer Interaction, Behavioral Economics, And Artificial Intelligence, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Algorithmic recommendation systems and interface designs shape attention by combining visually salient cues with uncertain reward timing and low friction interaction. These conditions can sustain anticipatory checking, extend time on task, and reduce natural disengagement points through patterns such as infinite scrolling and autoplay. This paper synthesizes research across neuroscience, human computer interaction, behavioral economics, and artificial intelligence to argue that attention capture is a predictable outcome of incentive driven design rather than an individual failure of self regulation. It advances the Attention Safeguard Models and the Cognitive Attentional Standard as system level interventions that regulate exposure conditions, pacing, and …

From Maps To Meadows: Ecologically Literate Zoning And The Regeneration Of Wildlife Habitats, Jonathan Rosenbloom

Cleveland State Law Review

For more than a century, zoning has shaped the American landscape, often at the expense of wildlife and ecosystems. Rooted in legal doctrines that treated animals as property and nature as a raw material, zoning codes have fragmented habitats, erased migration corridors, and accelerated biodiversity loss. At the same time, federal protections are narrowing, leaving critical gaps in environmental governance. This Article argues that local governments possess both the authority and the obligation to respond. By embedding ecological principles into zoning—through conservation districts, wildlife corridor protections, wetland buffers, pollinator protections, dark skies, wildlife fencing, habitat restoration, and others—municipalities can transform …

Le Parlement Arabe, Gilbert Aoun

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Regulating Deregulation: Why States Should Preempt Mandatory Inclusionary Housing Programs, Anna Bailey

BYU Law Review

Instead of easing the housing crises that exist across the country as intended, mandatory inclusionary housing programs burden development, impeding smaller projects and stunting development that in the aggregate could alleviate housing shortages. In this Note, I argue that states should preempt local governments from imposing burdensome mandatory inclusionary housing programs because they interfere with property rights and are counterproductive in their results. The Nollan-Dolan rough proportionality test requires that land-use conditions must be related to and proportional to the problem created by the land development project. The Supreme Court’s recent holding in Sheetz v. County of El Dorado clarified …

Felony Murder: What Courts Ignore In Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.02(B), Richard S. Walinski

Et Cetera

Ohio has two levels of felony murder. One is aggravated felony murder, 2903.01(b). It is an approximate equivalent of the common-law felony-murder rule. The other is a felony-murder rule for the lesser offence of simple murder, 2903.02(B). In felony-murder cases prosecuted under Ohio Revised Code § 2903.02(B), the nearly universal practice among the lower courts in Ohio is to ignore certain explicit text in the statute.

To warrant a conviction, 2903.02(B) requires that death have occurred as a proximate result of the defendant’s having committed or having attempted to commit one of many predicate offenses that the General Assembly labeled …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power Of Small-Group Instruction, Michael I. Meyerson

Seattle University Law Review

Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school have greater anxiety and less developed reading and writing skills than ever before. The traditional large Socratic class, which was never the most effective teaching method, has become increasingly counterproductive.

This Article contends that small-group instruction provides the opportunity for superior teaching, especially for first-year law students. Recent scholarship in active learning, educational psychology, and students’ mental health demonstrates the limitations of the traditional large Socratic class experience. Building on that theoretical foundation and informed by sustained classroom experience, this Article argues that small-group pedagogy more …

Land Without Legacy: The Case For Market-Based Appraisals On Hawaiian Home Lands, Alexis C. Owens

Seattle University Law Review

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 (HHCA) was enacted to restore Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands and promote long term economic self-sufficiency. More than a century later, that promise remains unfulfilled. This Note argues that a central but overlooked barrier lies in the HHCA’s mandated use of the replacement cost appraisal method, which systematically undervalues homestead properties by excluding market forces. In one of the most expensive housing markets in the United States, this approach suppresses home equity, the primary means of intergenerational wealth building, and restricts beneficiaries’ access to credit and financial stability. By severing the connection between …

International Law’S Forgotten Refugees—Palestinian Refugees In Egypt

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines the legal and humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian refugees who have fled to Egypt amidst the ongoing violence in Gaza. While escaping active conflict, these refugees face systemic barriers to employment and education, rendering their living conditions precarious and unsustainable. The unique legal status of Palestinian refugees stems from the fact that they have been excluded from the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, leaving them without any meaningful international protection. This exclusion is rooted in the political complexities of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and reflects a fragmented legal framework that prioritizes limited humanitarian aid over …

Owning Geothermal Energy, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Geothermal energy holds vast potential for decarbonizing the U.S. energy system, yet the sector remains significantly underdeveloped, supplying only 0.4% of the nation's electricity. A principal barrier to growth is the fragmented and ambiguous legal landscape currently governing ownership of geothermal resources: thirty-three states lack any clear statutory or common-law framework identifying who owns subsurface thermal energy. This Article examines the physical characteristics of geothermal energy, recent developments in the U.S. geothermal sector, and the principal doctrinal approaches that might govern ownership of subsurface heat, including the ad coelum doctrine, common-pool and open-access frameworks, the rule of capture, and public …

How The Dod Discourages Military Families From Seeking Mental Health Counseling, Christina Welch

Seattle University Law Review

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) administration of the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) presents significant barriers to mental health care access for military spouses and children. This paper explores how the EFMP, though designed to support military families with special needs, inadvertently creates barriers to mental health treatment. Military family members often do not seek mental health treatment to avoid the program's mandatory enrollment requirements. Military family members often view enrollment in the program undesirable because enrollment can restrict the pool of potential future duty assignment locations that are available to service members.

The lack of comprehensive data collection by …

2025, Richard Delgado

Seattle University Law Review

"In a cutting and provocative social critique in one of the more extended Rodrigo Chronicles, Richard Delgado in 2025 employs skillful narrative—one of CRT’s many contributions to legal scholarship —to tell a gripping story of just how far the nation has descended into darkness with President Trump’s re-election. In Delgado’s vision, law professors—along with other political opponents of the President: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, the underserved—have targets on their backs."

-excerpt from Kevin Johnson's review of 2025

The Preventative Care Gap: Completing The Aca’S Vision For Health, Abby Nagaich

Seattle University Law Review

This Note examines the preventive care mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the legal, political, and practical challenges that threaten its effectiveness. While the ACA significantly expanded access to no-cost preventive services, gaps remain—particularly in behavioral health, obesity management, and equitable service delivery. Ongoing litigation, potential administrative rollbacks, and shifting political leadership further destabilize this critical component of public health policy.

This Note argues that for the ACA to fulfill its original promise—and for any health framework to succeed—preventive care must be redefined as a comprehensive, early intervention approach grounded in both systemic access and patient education. It …

Cross-Enforcing The Plain Smell Doctrine, Alexa Perez

Washington Law Review

In a state that has legalized marijuana, does a state officer have probable cause to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle based on the smell of marijuana alone, because marijuana is still prohibited under federal law? This Article is the first to consider that unsettled question. Over the last ten years, almost every state has altered the legality of marijuana in some way, either through decriminalization or legalization. Yet the possession, use, and cultivation of marijuana continue to be illegal at the federal level. Prior to these reforms, state courts generally upheld warrantless searches of vehicles based on nothing …

The Impact Of New York's 2026 Climate Law Retreat, Jonathan A. Binder, Vincent M. Nolette

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

On May 26, 2026, New York State enacted significant revisions to its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). The 2026 Amendments, which include changes to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission accounting methodology, the statewide GHG emission limits, and the requirement to adopt implementing regulations, collectively weaken the Act's ambition. New York’s retreat from state climate action after championing it for years reflects a broader national trend of de-prioritizing mitigation efforts.

The 2026 Amendments will have vast and important consequences for the implementation of the CLCPA. Numerous actions will need to be updated through rulemaking, guidance, or other administrative …

Veiled Justice: Secularism And The Hijab Across Democracies, Mohamed ‘Arafa

Seattle University Law Review

For much of 2022, Iran was gripped by widespread protests led by women who openly challenged the regime’s authority, particularly its compulsory veiling laws, following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Women around the globe came around and showed solidarity with the women in Iran. However, in non-Islamic countries and societies, one can still make out many prejudices and stereotyping connected to the question of whether and to what extent veiling is mandatory for women according to Shārīe’ā law. Is wearing the hijab a choice, or rather, an essential religious practice that religious Muslim women need to obey? …