Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

Emergency Surgery: A Plea For Student Debt Relief, Stephen Urciolo

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Metals Derivatives Markets And The Energy Transition, Colleen Baker, James W. Coleman

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Sec V. Ripple Labs, Inc.: Securities Vs. Cryptocurrency, Ellie Kaufman

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Pampena V. Musk: Securities - Securities Fraud, Conner Mitchell

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Keynote Address: Law Schools Need Curricular Reform: Time To Address Transactional Students' Needs, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

The Empty Space In The Teaching Of Commercial Law: An Argument For Including Article 7 Of The Ucc In The Commercial Law Curriculum, Glenys Spence

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Raising The Bar: The Nextgen Bar Exam And Contract Drafting, Susan M. Chesler, Karen J. Sneddon

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Balancing Predictability With Flexibility In Contract Negotiation And Drafting, Tahirih V. Lee

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

Teaching Dobbs As A Contemporary Case Study Of Federalism In Action And An Introduction To The Cross-Disciplinary Nature Of The Law, Antonia A.B. Miceli

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy

With its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and returned the issue of legal access to an abortion to the states. Prior to Dobbs, reproductive rights and the right to an abortion were firmly situated within the substantive due process and fundamental rights coverage of law school constitutional law courses. But this coverage often falls late in, or completely outside the scope of, the required constitutional law curriculum at U.S. law schools. This Article offers the …

Valuing Social Data, Amanda Parsons, Salome Viljoen

Articles

Social data production—accumulating, processing, and using large volumes of data about people—is a unique form of value creation that characterizes the digital economy. Social data production also presents critical challenges for the legal regimes that encounter it. This Article provides scholars and policymakers with the tools to comprehend this new form of value creation through two descriptive contributions. First, it presents a theoretical account of social data, a mode of production that is cultivated and exploited for two distinct (albeit related) forms of value: prediction value and exchange value. Second, it creates and defends a taxonomy of three “scripts” that …

Time For Reform, Not Abolition: Balancing Justice And Morality Through Amendment Of The Federal Death Penalty, Madison Steinkamp

St. Thomas Law Review

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan addressed Congress, saying it was "scandalous and intolerable" that federal law did not provide for an enforceable death penalty.' Ten years prior, following a brief moratorium on its application, the death penalty had been ruled constitutional. While thirty-five states had already reinstated the death penalty at the state level and constitutionally executed ninety-three prisoners since 1976, Congress had not yet enacted the rational, objective standards necessary for applying the death penalty constitutionally. In the year following his speech to Congress, President Reagan successfully signed the federal death penalty into law through the Anti-Drug Abuse Act …

Lessons From Rwanda: Why The U.K. Should Promote Reconciliation Through Localized Strategies In Place Of Prosecutorial Amnesty, Jeremy J. Perillo

St. Thomas Law Review

The United Kingdom ("U.K.") has a long, rich, and complicated history, but is likely better known contemporarily through its icons, the late Queen Elizabeth II and Big Ben, for example. Beyond that surface, formulated through its time as an expansive empire, is the complexity and controversy that comes with being the U.K., a prominent global hegemonic power throughout generations. One such complexity that has spanned centuries is the demarcation between Northern Ireland ("N.I.") and the Republic of Ireland. In early September 2023, the U.K.'s House of Commons ("Parliament") passed the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act ("the Act"), intending …

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 …

Tsai Today (2024), Southern Methodist University, Dedman School Of Law, Tsai Center For Law, Science And Innovation

Tsai Today

No abstract provided.

The Unreasonableness Of The Reasonable Woman Standard: Evaluating And Reforming Sexual Harassment Jurisprudence, Richa Parikh

CMC Senior Theses

The “Reasonable Woman Standard” was first used in the 1991 case of Ellison v. Brady and has been central in shaping legal responses to sexual harassment. However, as societal norms and understandings of gender dynamics continue to evolve, as we experienced with the #MeToo movement, this “Reasonable Woman” often fails to grow with the times. I argue that this “Reasonable Woman” fails to encapsulate the complexities of sexual harassment experiences across different genders and cultural backgrounds. In this thesis, I deconstruct the historical development of the “Reasonable Woman Standard,” analyzing its roots in the “Reasonable Person Standard.” Through a combination …

Creating A Just System Of Civil Recourse – Articulating The Controlled Instrumentalist Approach For Marginalized People, Rukmini Banerjee

CMC Senior Theses

A system of civil recourse is a precondition for a just society. In this paper, I outline the ideal version of a system of civil recourse and analyze the accounts of various liberal philosophers to explain how a non-instrumental and mutual accountability theory of civil recourse best encapsulates its stated purpose. I analyze the American system of civil recourse, specifically tort law, and argue that it bypasses the threshold of tolerable injustice for marginalized people in the United States. Using Tommie Shelby’s framework in Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform, I argue that marginalized people are not obligated by …

Establishing A Future-Proof Framework For Ai Regulation: Balancing Ethics, Transparency, And Innovation, Marcia Narine Weldon, Gabrielle Thomas, Lauren Skidmore

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

One Semester, One Deal: A Transactional-Practice Focused Syllabus, Kari Sanderson

Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law

No abstract provided.

The Fairness Model Of Legal Institutions, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Books and Chapters

If any group is to endure over time, individual frustrations, while inevitable, must be usually experienced as acceptable, or at least tolerable. Failing that, little would prevent the losers in these conflicts from leaving or revolting, which would be cumulatively debilitating to the group. As opposed to holding law’s job to impose order and police infringers, the second approach suggests that finding the balance between group and individual desires is the ‘major difficulty of all law—the problem of really getting a fresh start in relations between litigants after disposition of a trouble-case. This is the problem not only of keeping …

Datafication, Power, And Publics In India's National Digital Health Ecosystem, Ramya Chandrasekhar

Socio-Legal Review

While evident for a long time, the COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated the need to strengthen India’s public healthcare system. But since 2017, the solution to India’s public health woes takes the shape of the National Digital Health Ecosystem (‘NDHE’) – a digital system for the generation, use, and “frictionless” circulation of health data across healthcare actors through the use of artefacts such as health IDs, electronic health records, data standards, and federated computing architectures. These artefacts are not neutral technological systems. Rather, together with social practices, they constitute a “data infrastructure.” Seeing the NDHE as a data infrastructure allows us …

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 …

Law And Literature In Pennsylvania: A Changing Landscape, Juliette Gaggini

Honors Theses

This thesis examines themes of American national identity perpetuated in Pennsylvania surrounding private property through historical, literary and legal analysis. Ideals of private property and land ownership are broken into three transitions throughout Pennsylvania history: the American frontier and initial land claiming by settlers, mass-deforestation and the introduction of widespread agriculture, and finally industrialization and the introduction of mining and fracking. Each of these transitions highlights the physical changes to the region and how they were influenced by American ideals of private property, productivity, and profitability.

Throughout this thesis, I analyze both literary and legal texts to examine societal beliefs …

Overturning Race-Conscious Admissions: Analyzing The History Of Higher Education Affirmative Acton Legal Discourse And Preserving Whiteness, Hiba A. Qari

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Although researchers have investigated Affirmative Action, few have attempted to understand and explain the language mechanisms shaping public opinion and policy. The purpose of this study was to explore the historical context of higher education Affirmative Action legal discourse. This study employed Critical Discourse Analysis and Critical Race Theory to analyze how language and race, as social constructs, maintain White dominance in law and higher education. The thematic concepts included power, White normativity, and diversity rhetoric. This project explored the historical evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions on Affirmative Action policy in higher education. The study also investigated the …

Celebrating Michael Reisman: The Inner World Of Others - A Guiding Light For Indigenous Re-Empowerment, Siegfried Wiessner

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

Michael Reisman is a beacon of light in the firmament of international law and jurisprudence. His retirement from his faculty position at the Yale Law School affords a welcome occasion to celebrate his work in the quest for a world public order of human dignity. Michael is the cherished leader of the New Haven School of Jurisprudence, an intellectual movement designed to combine the prescriptive purposes of the law with the empirical insights of the sciences to achieve the goal of the flourishing of human beings, through access by all to the processes of shaping and sharing all things humans …

Protection Of Cultural Property In Armed Conflict And Military Necessity, Fausto Pocar

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

The protection of cultural property in armed conflict has been a matter for special consideration by customary and conventional international humanitarian law since its first expressions. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 already enunciated a principle of protection in this matter, as shown in particular by the Regulations concerning the laws and customs of war on land annexed to the fourth convention, which provided that in sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals, and places where the sick and …

Law And Identity: Whether The 2013 Amendments To The Sex Discrimination Act Are Laws With Respect To External Affairs, Joshua Paul Anderson

Theses

The external affairs power under the Australian Constitution gives the Commonwealth Parliament the power to pass legislation that implements the obligations in bona fide treaties to which Australia is a party, provided that the legislation is reasonably appropriate and adapted to that purpose.

The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (‘SDA’) was passed to implement the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1981) (‘CEDAW’). There has never been any serious doubt that the SDA, as originally passed, is a valid law with respect to external affairs. The SDA was progressively amended to prohibit discrimination on …

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 …