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Full-Text Articles in Law
Proposed Citizens Right To Standing Act-Finding The Keys To Unlock The Courthouse Doors, Harold W. Wood, Jr.
Proposed Citizens Right To Standing Act-Finding The Keys To Unlock The Courthouse Doors, Harold W. Wood, Jr.
Seattle University Law Review
Recent Supreme Court decisions severely restrict the right of citizens to litigate in federal courts. The Court's standing requirements not only limit the ability of citizens to successfully invoke federal court jurisdiction, but also confuse lower courts and litigants attempting to apply the requirements. Standing requirements have met with increasing criticism. And Congress is now considering legislative modification of standing doctrine. Unfortunately, the Court's employment of constitutional foundations in establishing current standing requirements imposes substantial roadblocks Congress must avoid to enact remedial standing legislation. This comment examines the constitutional and pragmatic difficulties of statutory modification of standing requirements and recommends …
Parent-Child Privilege: Constitutional Right Or Specious Analogy?, Donald Cofer
Parent-Child Privilege: Constitutional Right Or Specious Analogy?, Donald Cofer
Seattle University Law Review
To avoid reaching incorrect verdicts as a result of insufficient evidence, courts generally require witnesses to testify to all relevant facts within their knowledge. Two important exceptions to this general rule, incompetency and privilege, rest on very different rationales. Developed at common law to exclude unreliable evidence, rules of competency disqualify certain untrustworthy witnesses from testifying. To promote extrinsic public policies, however, privileges excuse competent witnesses from providing what may be highly probative and reliable evidence. In the past decade there have been calls for legislative or judicial recognition of a parent-child privilege, similar to the marital privilege, that would …
Book Review: H. Fingarette & A. Fingarette Hasse, Mental Disabilities And Criminal Responsibilities, John Q. La Fond
Book Review: H. Fingarette & A. Fingarette Hasse, Mental Disabilities And Criminal Responsibilities, John Q. La Fond
Seattle University Law Review
Whether mental illness and related impairments in the human psyche should affect an individual's criminal responsibilityfor law-breaking behavior has always provoked intense andwide-ranging debate. This debate clearly reflects society's lack of consensus concerning the appropriateness and scope of considering mental impairment in assessing individual criminal responsiblility. Thus, it is not unexpected that recently proposals to abolish the insanity defense have been seriously suggested or that noted scholars have urged society to place the disposition of mentally ill offenders in the exclusive hands of experts. That this heated discussion continues unabated should come as no surprise, since legal doctrines which excuse …