Law Commons^™

Volume 50, Issue I - Full Combined Issue

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

There’S A Law For That: Examining The Need For Personal Finance Education Legislation And Its Impact On Retirement In A Post Covid-19 World, Natalie M. Poirier

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

Re-Imagining The Post-9/11 Authorizations For Use Of Military Force In The Era Of Emerging Consensus On Reform, Peter J. Amato

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

A Model State Compensation Law For The Wrongfully Convicted, Jacqueline Kamel

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

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 …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner

Seattle University Law Review

Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

"Major Questions" Malarkey: An Arbitrary And Capricious New Doctrine For Vetoing Controversial Agency Rules, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2022, in West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court officially adopted the “major questions” doctrine. Commentators have already spilled plenty of ink trying to make sense of what this might portend, but so far seemingly everyone has accepted at face value the Court’s framing of the issue that it confronted in that case. This symposium contribution offers a slightly different perspective on the decision and suggests that closer attention to the precise nature of the question posed therein might reveal a distinctive flaw at the heart of the majority’s newfangled clear statement rule—it only sows confusion to …

The Uniform Restrictive Agreement Act In A Vast Sea Of Strange Reform: An Introduction, Rachel Arnow-Richman

UF Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Against The Clock: Examining How Federal Courts Consider Agency Delay In Emergency Rulemaking Cases, Tyler Haas

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

Congress And Shifting Sands In Administrative Law., Christopher J. Walker

Articles

In recent years, we have seen an anti-administrativist turn in the federal judiciary, with the Supreme Court limiting agency power in important respects. These shifting sands in administrative law seem to be motivated, at least in part, by the Court’s perception of the rise of presidential administration and decline in legislative activity. As part of the Widener Commonwealth Law Review Judging in Administrative Law Symposium, this Essay assesses how the Court has responded to concerns about over-presidentialism and then sketches out several ways Congress can respond to reassert itself in federal lawmaking.

Finding Our Way: Teaching Legislative Advocacy Clinics, Anita Weinberg, Elizabeth B. Cooper

Faculty Publications & Other Works

Legislative advocacy clinics are excellent vehicles for teaching lawyering skills, for achieving broad-based social change, and for imparting to law students the important roles they can play in preserving and strengthening our democracy. Notwithstanding their growth over the last 15 years, there has been little scholarly reflection about the pedagogy of teaching such clinics. This Article helps to fill this gap. We provide a roadmap through the challenges that come with teaching legislative advocacy clinics-some inherent to working within legislative bodies and some that accompany working with organizational clients and advocacy partners-identifying ways that clinicians can ensure an excellent learning …

Letting The Kids Run Wild: Free-Range Parenting And The (De)Regulation Of Child Protective Services, Fenja R. Schick-Malone

Washington and Lee Law Review

Families in the United States suffer from a removal epidemic. The child welfare framework allows unnecessary and harmful intervention into family and parenting matters, traditionally left to the discretion of the parent. Many states allow Child Protective Services (“CPS”) to investigate, intervene, and permanently separate a child from their parents for innocuous activities such as letting the child play outside unattended. This especially affects low-income and minority families.

To prevent CPS from unnecessarily intervening in a family’s decision to let their children engage in independent, unsupervised activities, Utah passed a “free-range” parenting act (“Act”) in 2018. The Act explicitly excludes …

Critical Race Theory Model Measure And Implementation In Curriculum, Taifha Natalee Alexander, Ahilan Arulanantham

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

This memorandum aims to explain the purpose of the following model measure. The proposed legislation would preserve the freedom of teachers to teach—and students to learn—about racism, including its history and on-going effects in this country. It does this by providing a framework through which state governments can encourage the teaching and learning of Critical Race Theory ("CRT") principles as a lens through which to teach and learn about racial inequality in America, its history, and its current manifestations, to enhance K-12 public school curricula.

We believe the model measure should be of interest to a broad range of …

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 …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Breaking Algorithmic Immunity: Why Section 230 Immunity May Not Extend To Recommendation Algorithms, Max Del Real

Washington Law Review Online

In the mid-1990s, internet experiences were underwhelming by today’s standards, despite the breakthrough technologies at their core. When a person logged on to the internet, they were met with a static experience. No matter who you were, where you were, or how you accessed a particular website, it rendered a consistent page. Today, internet experiences are personalized, dynamic, and vast—a far cry from the digital landscape of just a few decades ago. While today’s internet is unrecognizable compared with its early predecessors, many of its governing laws remain materially unaltered. In particular, section 230 of the Communications Act, which passed …

Taking Care Of Our Future: Considering Gender In Juvenile Reentry Reform, Delaney J. Dibble

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Origin Stories: The Three Godmothers Of Title Ix, Susan Ware

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Re Block Island Power Co., 288 A.3d 589 (R.I. 2023)., Alexandra N. Lebeau

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sun, Surf, And Suppression: Unconstitutional Voting Restrictions In Rhode Island Beach Enclaves, David Marks

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Open Hunting Season: Black Bodies As A Threatened Species, Mark C. Grafenreed

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

Tracing the Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides striking parallels with the historical, legal, and cultural aspects of bondage mapped upon Black bodies. The United States Congress promulgated the Endangered Species Act to protect and conserve threatened and endangered wildlife species. However, this gives rise to a serious moral dilemma and cognitive dissonance in that nearly 1,500 wildlife species benefit from the Endangered Species Act's protections. At the same time, Black bodies disproportionately suffer without similar federal protections. Congress has strengthened the Endangered Species Act's force through four amendments since its inception, even while there have been mounting threats to …

Removing Statistical Discrimination In Personal Injury And Wrongful Death Compensation In Rhode Island, Natalie Deangelis, Colleen P. Murphy

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Why I Will Not Stop Teaching Law Students To Think Critically About Race: The Attack On Teaching About The Role Of Race In Law, Leroy Pernell

Journal Publications

As someone who has been involved in legal education teaching for over 40 years and as someone who was drawn to legal education as an alternative to a career more directly devoted to litigation concerning racial justice, so that others might be encouraged to explore critically both what race has meant to our legal system and how we might collectively counter its negative influence, the “Stop W.O.K.E act” presents a real and present danger. Thus, in August of 2022 I agreed to be the lead named plaintiff in Pernell, et. al. v. Florida Board of Governors of the State University …