Law Commons^™

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …

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 …

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 …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

_Not That Bad_: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

In 2018, Roxane Gay assembled an anthology that addresses the severity of rape, rejecting the common belief that some sexually violent acts, compared to others, are not that bad. This collection, titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, compiles pieces from thirty different authors and sheds light on how the notion of not that bad contributes to a broader structural social problem involving sexual violence. This social problem, known as rape culture, is commonly defined as a culture that normalizes sexual violence and blames victims of sexual assault (“What is Rape Culture?”). In other words, rape culture …

Sexual Profiling & Blaqueer Furtivity: Blaqueers On The Run, T. Anansi Wilson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This article has taken some time to recollect. I have been struggling to find the grammar to communicate a phenomenon that is both central to BlaQueer life and beyond BlaQueer living. This difficulty, the silences, the gaps, the nonsensical and agrammatical nature of this phenomena—that of BlaQueer furtivity, the strict scrutiny of Black life and sexual profiling—are central features not only of this project but of the legal, extralegal and social logics and powers that mark, make and remake BlaQueer folks as always, already furtive, subject to strict scrutiny and necessarily sexual profiling. I have been struggling with whether to …

Tik Tok: Time To Eradicate Sexual Assault In The Music Industry Through The Implied Covenant Of Good Faith And Fair Dealing, Chanel Chasanov

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

Intersectionality As An Institution: Changing The Definition Of Feminism, Holly Sanchez Perry Esq.

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

What Judges Need To Know: Schemas, Implicit Bias, And Empirical Research On Lgbt Parenting And Demographics, Todd Brower

DePaul Journal of Women, Gender and the Law

No abstract provided.

The Communications Decency Act: Immunity For Internet-Facilitated Commercial Sexual Exploitation, Haley C. Halverson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This paper reviews the original intent and historical application of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), most notably Section 230, with special regard to cases of Internet-facilitated commercial sexual exploitation. Although the CDA was originally created to protect children online, Section 230 of the CDA has been interpreted by the courts to grant broad immunities to websites facilitating the sexual exploitation of children and adults alike. Through analyzing the genesis and evolution of the CDA, it becomes clear that court interpretations of Section 230 are starkly inconsistent with original Congressional intent, and that the primary way to avoid de facto decriminalization …

The Loving Analogy: Race And The Early Same-Sex Marriage Debate, Samuel W D Walburn

The Purdue Historian

In the early same-sex marriage debates advocates and opponents of marriage equality often relied upon comparing mixed-race marriage jurisprudence and the Loving v Virginia decision in order to conceptualize same-sex marriage cases. Liberal commentators relied upon the analogy between the Loving decision in order to carve out space for the protection of same-sex marriage rights. Conservative scholars, however, denounced the equal protection and due process claims that relied on the sameness of race and sexuality as inexact parallels. Finally, queer and black radicals called the goal of marriage equality into question by highlighting the white supremacist and heterosexist nature of …

Today's Porn: Not A Constitutional Right; Not A Human Right, Patrick Trueman

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Women, Migration, And Prostitution In Europe: Not A Sex Work Story, Anna Zobnina

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Slipping Between Danger, Pleasure And The Law: Thoughts On Three Recent Books Addressing Sexuality., Ummni Khan

Dalhousie Law Journal

Sexuality is slippery. It slips, for example, between pleasure and danger, between surrender and repression, and between force (the kind that turns some of us on) and violence (the kind that terrorizes us). It can be a site of intense oppression and unwanted objectification, and also ofempowerment and affirming desirability. In this review, I address three recent books that reckon with the ambivalence of sexuality in relation to the law and regulatory practices.

Images Of Men In Feminist Legal Theory , Brian Bendig

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Re-Orienting Law And Sexuality , Ratna Kapur, Tayyab Mahmud

Cleveland State Law Review

This symposium issue of the Cleveland State Law Review emerges from the Reorienting Law and Sexuality Conference hosted by Cleveland-Marshall College of Law in October 1999. The symposium locates itself as a continuation of the discourse that surfaced in the American legal academy in 1979 with a symposium issue of the Hastings Law Review. It is a discourse that brings into sharp relief technologies of power and strategies of resistance that contend at all sites where law aims to regulate human sexuality. While the initiative of 1979 was further cultivated by other forums of knowledge production within the American legal …

Law And The Sexual Subaltern: A Comparative Perspective , Ratna Kapur

Cleveland State Law Review

I am entering this conversation as a comparativist who wants to complicate the received wisdom about India in the West in regard to matters of sex, desire and the law. I want to address three issues:* First, how sex generally and alternative sexuality more specifically, are emerging as zones of contest in the legal arena and are simultaneously cast as cultural controversies in post-colonial India.* Second, I address how sexual subalterns, that is, gays, lesbians and sexworkers, are challenging dominant sexual and cultural norms.* And finally, I examine why a project of pleasure and desire is an important political goal …

Pansexuality And The Law, Jennifer Ann Drobac

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Lesbians, Gays And The Struggle For Equality Rights: Reversing The Progressive Hypothesis, Mary Eaton

Dalhousie Law Journal

The tale often told of Canadian law's advancement in the field of sexual orientation rights is simple but sublime: law has moved, however ploddingly and not without substantial prodding, out of an epoch of almost total repression, into an evermore enlightened era. Castigated by criminal law, pushed to the perimeter by administrative law, and ignored by human rights law, the "homosexual"' had once been law's quintessential "other." In recent years, however, legislatures and courts have increasingly been willing to recognize "homosexuals" as a constituency too long held down by the heavy hand of legal control. Most penal prohibitions against exercises …

Equal Protection

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.