Law Commons^™

The Weaponization Of The “Alien Harboring” Statute In A New-Era Of Racial Animus Towards Immigrants, Hannah Hamley

Seattle University Law Review

Federal law 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii), commonly referred to as the “Alien Harboring” statute, was passed sixty-eight years ago and has been used as a weapon against immigrants and their allies. Spanning back decades, numerous scholars, alarmed by the dangerous use of the statute, have written about its muddled congressional intent and the unclear definition of “harboring.” These issues continue to be relevant and are foundational concerns with the enforcement of the harboring statute. However, in the era of President Donald J. Trump, we are faced with a new danger. We are confronted with an Administration that is ferociously anti-immigrant …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: The Court’S Premier Defender Of The Fourth Amendment, David L. Hudson Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

This essay posits that Justice Sotomayor is the Court’s chief defender of the Fourth Amendment and the cherished values it protects. She has consistently defended Fourth Amendment freedoms—in majority, concurring, and especially in dissenting opinions. Part I recounts a few of her majority opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. Part II examines her concurring opinion in United States v. Jones. Part III examines several of her dissenting opinions in Fourth Amendment cases. A review of these opinions demonstrates what should be clear to any observer of the Supreme Court: Justice Sotomayor consistently defends Fourth Amendment principles and values.

Government Tweets, Government Speech: The First Amendment Implications Of Government Trolling, Douglas B. Mckechnie

Seattle University Law Review

President Trump has been accused of using @realDonaldTrump to troll his critics. While the President’s tweets are often attributed to his personal views, they raise important Constitutional questions. This article posits that @realDonaldTrump tweets are government speech and, where they troll government critics, they violate the Free Speech Clause. I begin the article with an exploration of President Trump’s use of @realDonaldTrump from his time as a private citizen to President. The article then chronicles the development of the government speech doctrine and the Supreme Court’s factors that differentiate private speech from government speech. I argue that, based on the …

“Public Use” Or Public Abuse? A New Test For Public Use In Light Of Kelo, Taylor Haines

Seattle University Law Review

The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment has long been controversial. It allows the government to take private property for the purpose of “public use.” But what does public use mean? The definition is one of judicial interpretation. It has evolved from the original meaning intended by the drafters of the Constitution. Now, the meaning is extremely broad. This Note argues that both the original and contemporary meaning of public use are problematic. It explores the issues with both definitions and suggests a new test, solidified in legislation instead of judicial interpretation.

“Don’T Move”: Redefining “Physical Restraint” In Light Of A United States Circuit Court Divide, Julia Knitter

Seattle University Law Review

To reduce sentencing disparities and clarify the application of the sentencing guide to the physical restraint enhancement for a robbery conviction, this Comment argues that the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) must amend the USSC Guidelines Manual to provide federal courts with a clearer and more concise definition of physical restraint. Additionally, although there are many state-level sentencing systems throughout the United States, this Comment only focuses on the federal sentencing guidelines for robbery because of the disparate way in which these guidelines are applied from circuit to circuit.

Preservation Requests And The Fourth Amendment, Armin Tadayon

Seattle University Law Review

Every day, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, ridesharing companies, and numerous other service providers copy users’ account information upon receiving a preservation request from the government. These requests are authorized under a relatively obscure subsection of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The SCA is the federal statute that governs the disclosure of communications stored by third party service providers. Section 2703(f) of this statute authorizes the use of “f” or “preservation” letters, which enable the government to request that a service provider “take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession” while investigators seek valid legal process. …

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Effects Of Shareholder Primacy, Publicness, And "Privateness" On Corporate Cultures, Donald C. Langevoort

Seattle University Law Review

My conundrum question is this: suppose managerialism triumphed in the governance wars so as to regain its desired level of autonomy from shareholder pressures for boards and managers—would we then expect to see a cultural shift inside corporations toward greater honesty and civil engagement, and if so, why? A helpful diagnostic question is to ask how managers currently construe shareholder and market primacy. Have they internalized it as a value or do they instead resent the demands? My argument here leans more toward resentment, though my contribution is more about how to develop a credible hypothesis than how to prove …

Unsubstantiated Allegations And Organizational Culture, Eugene Soltes

Seattle University Law Review

When organizations investigate allegations of misconduct, they routinely determine that some allegations are unsubstantiated. A variety of factors may contribute to the conclusion that an allegation does not warrant substantiation, including a lack of supporting evidence, false claims against others within the organization, and a failure to conduct a thorough inquiry. This Article examines the potential value of examining unsubstantiated allegations of misconduct to better understand an organization’s culture. I show that unsubstantiated allegations provide insight into where future violations may occur, employees’ proclivity to engage in subsequent violations, and firm productivity. I conclude by discussing ways that organizations can …

The Role Of The Board Of Financial Services Firms In Improving Their Firm's Culture, Ciaran Walker

Seattle University Law Review

In this Article, we look at the role the board is expected to play under regulatory requirements and guidance; we then look specifically at the failings of boards in a number of the recent “scandals.” Finally, we offer a number of suggestions on ways in which the board can have a more effective role in improving firms’ culture. In this latter regard, we specifically focus on industry (rather than firm-specific) initiatives that could enable the board to have a more effective role, particularly in light of the setting up of the industry-funded Banking Standards Board in the U.K. and the …

The Clash Between Terrestrial And Digital Radio: Pinned By The Music Modernization Act, Dianlyn Cenidoza

Seattle University Law Review

Copyright law, specifically music licensing, has long been outdated due to changes in the way people listen to music. With the proliferation of technology, listeners can now enjoy music via channels that did not exist just a few decades ago. As a consequence, music creators have faced years of economic inequality. Songwriters, artists, and musicians have fought a long, and often fruitless, battle for justice—legislation that would change music law for the better has continuously been struck down. However, in 2018, the Music Modernization Act (MMA) was signed into law, representing a battle won for music creators. This Comment will …

The Problem With Predators, June Carbone, William K. Black

Seattle University Law Review

Both corporate theory and sex discrimination law start with presumptions that CEOs seek to advance legitimate ends and design the internal organization of business enterprises to achieve such ends. Yet, a growing literature questions why CEOs and boards of directors nonetheless select for Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and toxic masculinity, despite the downsides associated with these traits. Three scholarly literatures—economics, criminology, and gender theory—draw on advances in psychology to shed new light on the construction of seemingly dysfunctional corporate cultures. They start by questioning the assumption that CEOs—even CEOs of seemingly mainstream businesses—necessarily seek to advance “legitimate” ends. Instead, they suggest …

"Tone At The Top" And The Communication Of Corporate Values: Lost In Translation?, Alfredo Contreras, Aiyesha Dey, Claire Hill

Seattle University Law Review

Many firms that were involved in large-scale corporate frauds had strong corporate codes of ethics and values statements. These firms were also subject to considerable social pressures to be mindful of their reputations; frauds are “negative reputational events.” Notably, the frauds not infrequently involved possible, or even outright, illegality. Why didn’t these strong forces—strong codes of ethics and firms’ clear interest in maintaining a good reputation, as well as the fear of legal liability—do more to prevent the frauds? It seems hard to imagine that serious misdeeds could occur if the top management was committed to preventing them. But top …

Why Do Good People Do Bad Things? A Multi-Level Analysis Of Individual, Organizational, And Structural Causes Of White-Collar Crime, Dr. Joe Mcgrath

Seattle University Law Review

This Article draws on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) complaint against Serageldin, the transcript for his plea hearing, and the transcript for his sentencing hearing. The SEC’s complaint provides a prosecutorial account of the fraud. It also includes actual extracts from Serageldin’s recorded phone calls at Credit Suisse which provide a realtime narrative of the fraud. The court transcripts detail Serageldin’s own account of the fraud and give a biographical account of Serageldin’s life, provided by his mother, who offered character evidence on his behalf. These perspectives allowed for the recasting of the SEC’s account of the fraud and …

Regulating Banking Ethics: A Toolkit, David Zaring

Seattle University Law Review

There is little doubt that culture matters for institutions—entities ranging from economics departments to soccer teams spend plenty of time thinking about the cultures they hope to foster—and that culture is also exceedingly hard to measure or define. Regulators now have had a decade since the financial crisis to operationalize their approach to guiding and improving the ethics and culture of the banks they oversee. Understanding what they have chosen to do makes it easier to assess the value of the effort to make cultural transformation an important part of a regulatory program. It also offers lessons to the broader …

Developing Fiduciary Culture In Vietnam, Brian Jm Quinn

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines Vietnam’s efforts during the past two and a half decades to build up its legal infrastructure during its transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. In particular, this Article will focus on the development of legal and regulatory infrastructure to support the development of the corporate sector and fiduciary culture in Vietnam. In thinking about corporate law, I do not intend to single out this particular area of law as somehow special in the context of transition. In fact, its commonness and generality are what makes the experience of the development of corporate law and …

In The Name Of Shareholder Value: Origin Myths Of Corporations And Their Ongoing Implications, Karen Ho

Seattle University Law Review

Part I of this Article analyzes some of the contemporary critiques of, and debates around, shareholder value in order to illustrate why many of these contestations demonstrate underlying gaps or problematic assertions in the history and politics of shareholder value, especially if they are delimited by the narrow legal frames and neoliberal assumptions of corporations. It also provides the context necessary to explicate and ground why shareholder primacy and ownership assumptions are historically and legally flawed, and how financial values and assumptions continue to be championed (and financial power elided), despite the recent implosions of shareholder value. Part II expands …

Management Culture And Surveillance, J.S. Nelson

Seattle University Law Review

As the modern workplace increasingly adopts technology, that technology is being used to surveil workers in ways that can be highly invasive. Ostensibly, management uses surveillance to assess workers’ productivity, but it uses the same systems to, for example, map their interpersonal relationships, study their conversations, collect data on their health, track where they travel on and off the job, as well as monitor and manipulate their emotional responses. Many of these overreaches are justified in the name of enterprise control. That justification should worry us. This Article aims to make us think about how surveillance is being used as …

Coercive Competition: A New Paradigm For Culture And Conduct Risk Management, Stephen Scott

Seattle University Law Review

Ultimately, this is an Article about human behavior, its causes and consequences. A subject so vast does not confine itself to any one, narrow, academic swim-lane and neither do I. Rather, I have afforded myself the luxury of borrowing liberally from a range of disciplines and their associated literatures, seeking to weave a coherent narrative that allows us to ask “what are we to do?” and to posit an approach to identifying responsive ideas that at least warrant some consideration.

Epistemic Corporate Culture: Knowledge, Common Knowledge, And Professional Oaths, Boudewijn De Bruin

Seattle University Law Review

This Article does not assume that professional oaths accomplish what they are intended to do. Yet, I believe that oaths can fulfill important functions once they are crafted as part of carefully designed, more comprehensive approaches to managing ethical culture. Or better, I believe that by investigating more closely what an oath really is and what its preconditions are, we may gain insights that will help to change corporate culture for the better, even if companies do not wish to adopt oaths to manage ethics. Methodologically, this Article is grounded in various strands of philosophical research. In particular, I build …

Silver And Old: How Emtala's Outdated Appropriate Medical Screening Standard Impacts The Aging Population, Madisyn Uekawa

Seattle University Law Review

With the U.S. elder population on the brink of booming, attention to the ramifications of legal standards that affect them is a must. In 2018, the Sixth Circuit split from its sister circuits and solidified an interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act’s (EMTALA) “appropriate medical screening” standard that will adversely affect aging individuals. Since older adults are the most likely demographic to use emergency care services, laws that impact emergency care will inevitably trickle down to this group of people. To protect already vulnerable older adults, EMTALA should be modified in such a way that (1) it …

Bank Culture And The Official Sector: A Spectrum Of Options, Michael Held, Thomas M. Noone

Seattle University Law Review

If you think culture is too squishy, please hear us out. In Part I of this Article, we set out what we mean by culture. In Part II, we explain why we are interested in culture and why it matters to us now. In Part III, we will survey the work of other public authorities in their efforts to address culture. In our view, these efforts fall into several categories along a spectrum from more advisory to more prescriptive. We do not endorse any particular method. All of these efforts are useful attempts to address a common problem: repeated ethical …

Revisiting The Enforceability Of Online Contracts: The Need For Unambiguous Assent To Inconspicuous Terms, Tom Mozingo

Seattle University Law Review

In determining the enforceability of online contracts, namely those formed from the use of smartphone applications, courts typically look to whether the contract terms were reasonably conspicuous or communicated to the consumer. With the rise of “browse-wrap” contracts, where terms are not directly communicated to the consumer or where the consumer is not required to click the equivalent of an “I agree” button clearly manifesting assent to the terms, courts have inconsistently applied the reasonable communicativeness standard to the detriment of consumers and application developers alike. This Comment will explore the development of browse-wrap contracting jurisprudence and the need to …

Does The Woman Suffrage Amendment Protect The Voting Rights Of Men?, Steve Kolbert

Seattle University Law Review

This Article—part of the Seattle University Law Review’s symposium on the centennial of the ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment—examines that open possibility. Concluding that the Nineteenth Amendment does protect men’s voting rights, this Article explores why and how that protection empowers Congress to address felon disenfranchisement and military voting. This Article also examines the advantages of using Nineteenth Amendment enforcement legislation compared to legislation enacted under other constitutional provisions.

Part I discusses the unique barriers to voting faced by voters with criminal convictions (Section I.A) and voters in the armed forces (Section I.B). This Part also explains how existing …

"Inciting A Riot": Silent Sentinels, Group Protests, And Prisoners' Petition And Associational Rights, Nicole B. Godfrey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues for increased legal protections for prisoners who choose to engage in group protest to shed light on the conditions of their incarceration. A companion piece to a similar article that focused on prisoner free speech rights, this Article uses the acts of protest utilized by the Silent Sentinels to examine why prisoners’ rights to petition and association should be strengthened. By strengthening these rights, the Article argues that we will advance the values enshrined by the First Amendment’s Petition Clause while simultaneously advancing the rights of the incarcerated millions with little to no political power.

The Article …

Attorney–Client Privilege In Bad Faith Insurance Claims: The Cedell Presumption And A Necessary National Resolution, Klien Hilliard

Seattle University Law Review

Attorney–client privilege is one of the most important aspects of our legal system. It is one of the oldest privileges in American law and is codified both at the national and state level. Applying to both individual persons and corporations, this expanded privilege covers a wide breadth of clients. However, this broad privilege can sometimes become blurred in relationships between the corporation and the individuals it serves. Specifically, insurance companies and those they cover have complex relationships, as the insurer possesses a quasi-fiduciary relationship in relation to the insured. This type of relationship requires that the insurer act in good …

Say “No” To Discrimination, “Yes” To Accommodation: Why States Should Prohibit Discrimination Of Workers Who Use Cannabis For Medical Purposes, Anne Marie Lofaso, Lakyn D. Cecil

Seattle University Law Review

This Article addresses the question of how the law should treat medical cannabis in the employment context. Using Colorado as a primary example, we argue that states such as Colorado should amend their constitutions and legislate to provide employment protections for employees who are registered medical cannabis cardholders or registered caregivers.

Part I briefly traces the legal regulation of cannabis from an unregulated medicine known as cannabis to a highly regulated illicit substance known as marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. Our travail through this history reveals, unsurprisingly, an increasing demonization of cannabis throughout the twentieth century. That socio-legal demonization …

Unfair-But-Not-Deceptive: Confronting The Ambiguity In Washington State’S Consumer Protection Act, Emily Beale

Seattle University Law Review

This Comment will argue that Washington state courts must promulgate a new, workable definition of “unfair-but-not-deceptive” under Washington’s Consumer Protection Act. Washington courts have acknowledged that a business act or practice can be unfair but not deceptive, but a simple recognition does not fulfill the liberal intentions of the Consumer Protection Act. By continuously declining to define unfair- but-not-deceptive, Washington courts have left consumers vulnerable and without recourse. This Comment will highlight the approaches developed by the federal government and other state governments on how to confront the ambiguity of unfair-but-not-deceptive and will propose a concrete definition for the term.