Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Washington Law Review

Discipline
Keyword
Publication Year

Articles 301 - 330 of 3365

Full-Text Articles in Law

The New Sister-State Sovereign Immunity, Michael H. Hoffheimer Dec 2017

The New Sister-State Sovereign Immunity, Michael H. Hoffheimer

Washington Law Review

The Article reviews the constitutional status of sister-state sovereign immunity. It argues that the parity requirement announced in Franchise Tax Board v. Hyatt (2016) is a temporary compromise that is supported by neither the purposes of the Full Faith and Credit Clause nor by cases cited by the Court. It further argues that parity is bad policy because parity overprotects states for acts they commit beyond their borders and under protects the interests of forum states in regulating conduct within their territorial jurisdiction. But the Article breaks from most scholarship. It suggests that the Court went too far in Nevada …


Safeguarding Washington's Trade Secrets: Protecting Businesses From Public Records Requests, John Delaney Dec 2017

Safeguarding Washington's Trade Secrets: Protecting Businesses From Public Records Requests, John Delaney

Washington Law Review

Lawmakers constantly balance competing interests. They decide where to draw lines so that societal goals are accomplished without ignoring the needs of those who will be affected by their choices. The Washington State Legislature is now in the process of addressing the line between government transparency and the protection of private companies’ trade secrets. Companies who provide technology to the federal government are susceptible to losing their trade secrets through a public records request. The Washington State Legislature is currently reviewing the trade secret exception to the Public Records Act to ensure it is continuing to protect companies from losing …


The Helicopter State: Misuse Of Parens Patriae Unconstitutionally Precludes Individual And Class Claims, Gabrielle J. Hanna Dec 2017

The Helicopter State: Misuse Of Parens Patriae Unconstitutionally Precludes Individual And Class Claims, Gabrielle J. Hanna

Washington Law Review

The doctrine of parens patriae allows state attorneys general to represent state citizens in aggregate litigation suits that are, in many ways, similar to class actions and mass-tort actions. Its origins, however, reflect a more modest scope. Parens patriae began as a doctrine allowing the British king to protect those without the ability to protect themselves, including wards and mentally disabled individuals. The rapid expansion of parens patriae standing in the United States may be partly to blame for the relative absence of limiting requirements or even well-developed case law governing parens patriae suits. On the one hand, class actions …


Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu Dec 2017

Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu

Washington Law Review

This Article describes a cybersurveillance nonintrusion test under the Fourth Amendment that is grounded in evolving customary law to replace the reasonable expectation of privacy test formulated in Katz v. United States. To illustrate how customary law norms are shaping modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Article examines the recurrence of judicial references to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, within the Fourth Amendment context when federal courts have assessed the constitutionality of modern surveillance methods. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Fourth Amendment privacy doctrine must now evolve to impose meaningful limitations on the intrusiveness of new surveillance technologies. …


Adjudicating Religious Sincerity, Nathan S. Chapman Oct 2017

Adjudicating Religious Sincerity, Nathan S. Chapman

Washington Law Review

Recent disputes about the “contraception mandate” under the Affordable Care Act and about the provision of goods and services for same-sex weddings have drawn attention to the law of religious accommodations. So far, however, one of the requirements of a religious accommodation claim has escaped sustained scholarly attention: a claimant must be sincere. Historically, scholars have contested this requirement on the ground that adjudicating religious sincerity requires government officials to delve too deeply into religious questions, something the Establishment Clause forbids. Until recently, however, the doctrine was fairly clear: though the government may not evaluate the objective accuracy or plausibility …


Dignity, Inequality, And Stereotypes, Luke A. Boso Oct 2017

Dignity, Inequality, And Stereotypes, Luke A. Boso

Washington Law Review

In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage bans violate the Equal Protection Clause for two primary reasons. First, they subordinate; they send the message that lesbians and gays are inferior to heterosexuals. Second, they unequally deny lesbian and gay individuals the liberty to make fundamental decisions about identity and self. These two conjoined themes—anti-group subordination and pro-individual liberty—comprise the two pillars of “equal dignity” that anchor Obergefell’s holding. This Article proposes that these pillars also support the Court’s anti-stereotyping jurisprudence, and equal dignity is thus one important aspect of what the Equal Protection Clause …


Pre-Enforcement Litigation Needed For Taxing Procedures, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon Oct 2017

Pre-Enforcement Litigation Needed For Taxing Procedures, Stephanie Hunter Mcmahon

Washington Law Review

Courts have opened tax guidance to procedural attack. Consequently, taxpayers who are found to owe tax may challenge the validity of the guidance implementing the tax if the procedure used by the Treasury Department in adopting the guidance failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act, in particular, with notice-and-comment. This increased willingness to consider tax guidance’s procedural defects offers little to most taxpayers unless they are also given a better means to raise procedural challenges. Under current law and in most circumstances, generally, taxpayers can bring a challenge only after they have been found to owe taxes in an …


What’S (Still) Wrong With Credit Ratings?, Frank Partnoy Oct 2017

What’S (Still) Wrong With Credit Ratings?, Frank Partnoy

Washington Law Review

Scholars and regulators generally agree that credit rating agency failures were at the center of the recent financial crisis. Congress responded to these failures with reforms in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. This Article demonstrates that those reforms have failed. Instead, regulators have thwarted Congress’s intent at every turn. As a result, the major credit rating agencies continue to be hugely profitable, yet generate little or no informational value. The fundamental problems that led to the financial crisis—overreliance on credit ratings, a lack of oversight and accountability, and primitive methodologies—remain as significant as they were before the financial crisis. This Article …


An Uncommon Carrier: The Fcc's Unintended Effects On Constitutional Use Taxation, Maricarmen Perez-Vargas Oct 2017

An Uncommon Carrier: The Fcc's Unintended Effects On Constitutional Use Taxation, Maricarmen Perez-Vargas

Washington Law Review

The constitutional use taxation framework, which regulates the circumstances under which states can require out-of-state sellers to collect and remit use taxes on products sold for use within the state, has not been examined by Congress or the Supreme Court since the 1990s, and then only to reaffirm a rule that had been in place since the 1960s. Since the 1960s, the Supreme Court has held that states can only collect use taxes from sellers that have a physical presence within the state and whose connections to the state are beyond connections via common carriers. The Court interpreted this rule …


Quick, Stop Hiring Old People! How The Eleventh Circuit Opened The Door For Discriminatory Hiring Practices Under The Adea, Samantha Pitsch Oct 2017

Quick, Stop Hiring Old People! How The Eleventh Circuit Opened The Door For Discriminatory Hiring Practices Under The Adea, Samantha Pitsch

Washington Law Review

Do not discriminate against older persons. It seems like a simple mandate. However, the statute creating that mandate, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”), has been anything but simple to implement. The details of the ADEA—who can bring a claim, and what kind of claim they can bring—have been extensively litigated since its inception. In 2016, the Eleventh Circuit, sitting en banc, decided that an employer could discriminate against older applicants by having a policy of not hiring people who have been out of college for a certain number of years, or who have a certain number of years …


Breaking Down Bias: Legal Mandates Vs. Corporate Interests, Jamillah Bowman Williams Oct 2017

Breaking Down Bias: Legal Mandates Vs. Corporate Interests, Jamillah Bowman Williams

Washington Law Review

Bias and discrimination continue to limit opportunities and outcomes for racial minorities in American institutions in the twenty-first century. The diversity rationale, touting the broad benefits of inclusion, has become widely accepted by corporate employers, courts, and universities. At the same time, many view a focus on antidiscrimination law and the threat of legal enforcement as outmoded and ineffective. Thus, many organizations talk less in terms of the mandates of laws such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or a “legal case,” and more in terms of a “business case” where benefits of inclusion seem to accrue to everyone. It …


Nudging Patient Decision-Making, Wendy Netter Epstein Oct 2017

Nudging Patient Decision-Making, Wendy Netter Epstein

Washington Law Review

Rational choice theory once pervaded the law. But we now know that individuals often make decisions that are not in their best interests. Many areas of the law have responded accordingly. The law of health care decision-making, however, has not. With limited exception, patients have the right to make their own medical decisions about their treatment, even if they make bad decisions. And there is ample evidence from the behavioral sciences that they do make bad decisions. Patients lack the stable preferences that the law assumes they will draw upon in making decisions, and they suffer from a number of …


A Natural Progression Of Restrictive Immunity: Why The Jasta Amendment Does Not Violate International Law, Eric T. Kohan Oct 2017

A Natural Progression Of Restrictive Immunity: Why The Jasta Amendment Does Not Violate International Law, Eric T. Kohan

Washington Law Review

On September 11, 2001, terrorists from extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial flights and flew two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Many sought justice for friends and loved ones harmed in the attacks by bringing lawsuits against Saudi Arabia. These lawsuits alleged that Saudi Arabian leaders knowingly donated to charities that funded al-Qaeda which helped the group to pay for the September 11th terror attacks. The Second Circuit, however, dismissed the lawsuit on sovereign immunity grounds in 2008. Frustrated with the ruling, Congress passed the Justice Against …


Making It Work: Tribal Innovation, State Reaction, And The Future Of Tribes As Regulatory Laboratories, Katherine Florey Jun 2017

Making It Work: Tribal Innovation, State Reaction, And The Future Of Tribes As Regulatory Laboratories, Katherine Florey

Washington Law Review

This Article examines a growing phenomenon: even as the Supreme Court has steadily contracted the scope of tribes’ regulatory authority, many tribes have in recent years passed innovative laws and ordinances, often extending well beyond any comparable initiatives at the state or local level. Recently, for example, the Navajo Nation passed a comprehensive taxation scheme designed to discourage the consumption of unhealthy food items and to subsidize the purchase of healthy ones—a scheme far more ambitious than the soda tax efforts that have stalled in many cities and states. Likewise, amid national controversy over marijuana legalization, the Flandreau Santee Sioux …


Class Conflicts, Morris A. Ratner Jun 2017

Class Conflicts, Morris A. Ratner

Washington Law Review

The approach of the twentieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Amchem Products, Inc. v. Windsor provides the opportunity to reflect on the collapse of the framework it announced for managing intra-class conflicts. That framework, reinforced two years later in Ortiz v. Fibreboard Corp., was bold, in that it broadly defined actionable conflicts to include divergent interests with regard to settlement allocation; market-based, in that it sought to regulate such conflicts by harnessing competing subclass counsel’s financial incentives; and committed to intrinsic process values, insofar as, to assure structural fairness, the Court was willing to upend a …


Traditional Ecological Disclosure: How The Freedom Of Information Act Frustrates Tribal Natural Resource Consultation With Federal Agencies, Sophia E. Amberson Jun 2017

Traditional Ecological Disclosure: How The Freedom Of Information Act Frustrates Tribal Natural Resource Consultation With Federal Agencies, Sophia E. Amberson

Washington Law Review

When a federal or state agency administers environmental laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, the agency often consults with tribes. During these consultations, tribes often disseminate traditional ecological knowledge (TEK)—knowledge acquired by a tribe that is a mix of environmental ethics and scientific knowledge about tribal use. However, these consultations may be susceptible to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The purpose of FOIA is to inform the public. Because TEK often contains sensitive information about tribal social, cultural, psychological, and economic factors, tribes do not want this information available to those who are not members of …


Anything But Common: New York's "Pending Or Anticipated Litigation" Limitation To The Common Interest Doctrine Creates More Problems Than It Solves, Eric A. Franz Jun 2017

Anything But Common: New York's "Pending Or Anticipated Litigation" Limitation To The Common Interest Doctrine Creates More Problems Than It Solves, Eric A. Franz

Washington Law Review

New York’s highest court recently handed down Ambac v. Countrywide, a decision that has major ramifications in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) world. Once parties sign a merger or acquisition agreement, they share a common interest in ensuring that both parties comply with applicable laws, a process that requires legal communications with each other’s attorneys. Under the common interest doctrine, Delaware and the majority of federal circuits apply the attorney-client privilege to shield many of these communications from discovery. However, Ambac upset M&A attorneys’ reliance on the common interest doctrine by holding that parties to a merger waive their …


Small Investments, Big Losses: The States' Role In Protecting Local Investors From Securities Fraud, Carlos Berkejó Jun 2017

Small Investments, Big Losses: The States' Role In Protecting Local Investors From Securities Fraud, Carlos Berkejó

Washington Law Review

The securities regulation landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. Federal laws have increasingly preempted the regulatory power of states, while at the same time expanding the universe of securities offerings that are not subject to registration at the federal level. These political and policy choices reflect a balancing of two sometimes competing goals: protecting investors and facilitating capital formation. While policies centered on preemption and deregulation might reduce the cost of raising capital, these could also lead to more pervasive securities fraud. Any resulting increase in fraudulent practices is likely to disproportionately affect small securities offerings that are local …


Third Party Consent And Container Searches In The Home, Harlan Thomas Mechling Jun 2017

Third Party Consent And Container Searches In The Home, Harlan Thomas Mechling

Washington Law Review

Circuit courts disagree as to whether law enforcement officers have a duty to inquire about a resident’s actual authority to consent to searches of ambiguous containers in a common area. Two circuit courts use the ambiguity approach and two circuit courts use the obviousness approach. The ambiguity approach articulated by the D.C. Circuit in United States v. Peyton provides protection for individuals’ rights while placing a minimal burden on law enforcement officers. In Peyton, the D.C. Circuit held that law enforcement officers have a duty to ask clarifying questions if ownership over a container is ambiguous. The ambiguity approach …


Employee, Volunteer, Or Neither? Proposing A Tax-Based Exception To Flsa Wage Requirements For Nonprofit Interns After Glatt V. Fox Searchlight, Jane Pryjmak Jun 2017

Employee, Volunteer, Or Neither? Proposing A Tax-Based Exception To Flsa Wage Requirements For Nonprofit Interns After Glatt V. Fox Searchlight, Jane Pryjmak

Washington Law Review

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates compliance with various requirements, including minimum wages, for individuals classified as “employees.” But courts have grappled with the definition of “employee” for decades. They have struggled to determine whether individuals who are not classified as employees by their employer and are instead labeled “trainees,” “interns,” “externs,” or otherwise must be paid fair wages under the FLSA. This question became more pronounced amid the rise of unpaid internships for students and recent graduates in the post-2008 recession years. In Glatt v. Fox Searchlight, the Second Circuit became the first federal court of appeals …


W(H)Ither The Tax Gap?, James Alm, Jay A. Soled Jun 2017

W(H)Ither The Tax Gap?, James Alm, Jay A. Soled

Washington Law Review

For decades, policy makers and politicians have railed against the “tax gap,” or the difference between what taxpayers are legally obligated to pay in taxes and what they actually pay in taxes. To close the gap, Congress has instituted numerous reforms with varying degrees of success. Notwithstanding these efforts, the tax gap has largely remained intact, and, if anything, it has gradually grown over the last several decades. However, the tax gap may well begin to diminish in size (or “wither” away), if not immediately then over time. Three developments will help narrow the tax gap’s size. First, the ubiquity …


The Canons Of Construction For Choice-Of-Law Clauses, John F. Coyle Jun 2017

The Canons Of Construction For Choice-Of-Law Clauses, John F. Coyle

Washington Law Review

Over the past half-century, courts in the United States have developed canons of construction that they use exclusively to construe choice-of-law clauses. These canons are consistently applied by state and federal courts. They play an important role in determining the meaning of choice-of-law clauses and, by extension, the law that will be applied to resolve disputes that come before the courts. To date, however, these canons have attracted relatively little attention in the academic literature. This Article aspires to fill that gap. It develops the first taxonomy of these canons, which fall into one of two families. The first consists …


Parental Abduction And The State Intervention Paradox, Jane K. Stoever Jun 2017

Parental Abduction And The State Intervention Paradox, Jane K. Stoever

Washington Law Review

For most of America’s history, the common law deemed the family a “private sphere” into which the government did not enter. In recent decades, however, the state has increasingly regulated the family in overprotective and overly punitive ways. Many current state interventions in the family are misdirected, penalizing abuse victims and intervening in undesired ways that create harm while failing to respond to pleas for help. A prime area in which the state paradoxically remains laissez-faire concerns the phenomenon of parental abduction, a pervasive and devastating problem that has received scant attention due to the socio-legal focus on stranger danger. …


Artistic Control After Death, Eva E. Subotnik Mar 2017

Artistic Control After Death, Eva E. Subotnik

Washington Law Review

To what extent should authors be able to control what happens to their literary, artistic, and musical creations after they die? Viewed through the lens of a number of succession law trends, the evidence might suggest that strong control is warranted. The decline of the Rule Against Perpetuities and rise of incentive trusts reflect a tightening grip of the dead hand. And yet, an unconstrained ability of the dead to determine future uses of literature, art, and music is a fundamentally troubling notion. This Article evaluates the instructions authors give with respect to their authorial works against the backdrop of …


Are The Sec's Administrative Law Judges Biased? An Empirical Investigation, Urska Velikonja Mar 2017

Are The Sec's Administrative Law Judges Biased? An Empirical Investigation, Urska Velikonja

Washington Law Review

The Dodd-Frank Act significantly expanded the SEC’s enforcement flexibility by authorizing the agency to choose whether to bring an enforcement action in court or in an administrative proceeding. The change has faced strong opposition. Federal courts have enjoined several enforcement actions filed in administrative proceedings for constitutional infirmities, and cases are currently winding their way through the appellate process. But even if any constitutional problems were remedied, controversy would persist. Judges, lawmakers, practitioners, and academics have raised doubts as to whether litigation before administrative law judges (“ALJs”) is fair to defendants. In advancing their arguments, they have relied heavily on …


The Bright Line's Dark Side: Pre-Charge Attachment Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Steven J. Mulroy Mar 2017

The Bright Line's Dark Side: Pre-Charge Attachment Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Steven J. Mulroy

Washington Law Review

In this Article, Professor Mulroy discusses a current circuit split over whether the Sixth Amendment right to counsel can ever attach prior to a prosecutor filing a formal charge (i.e., an indictment or information). Relying on language in several Supreme Court opinions, some lower courts impose a bright-line rule stating that unless there has been such a formal charge (or unless the defendant has appeared before a judge), the right can never attach, in part because the Sixth Amendment’s text refers to a “criminal prosecution” and an “accused.” This rule can lead to harsh results—e.g., where a prosecutor takes advantage …


"A Nuanced Approach": How Washington Courts Should Apply The Filed Rate Doctrine, Kaleigh Powell Mar 2017

"A Nuanced Approach": How Washington Courts Should Apply The Filed Rate Doctrine, Kaleigh Powell

Washington Law Review

As of 2015, the vast majority of the American public had some form of health insurance, mostly provided by private companies. While some customers might, at some point, contemplate suing their insurance provider—for breach of contract, consumer protection statute violation, or some other cause—these potential plaintiffs are not likely to get far in many cases. The reason is the little-known “filed rate doctrine,” a court-created rule that bars lawsuits against many agency-regulated entities. The filed rate doctrine is based on the fact that many states, including Washington, require health insurers to file their rates with a regulatory agency—and have those …


The Washington State Constitution And Charter Schools: A General And Uniform Prohibition?, Asti Gallina Mar 2017

The Washington State Constitution And Charter Schools: A General And Uniform Prohibition?, Asti Gallina

Washington Law Review

In its 2015 opinion in Washington League of Women Voters v. State, the Washington State Supreme Court invalidated Initiative 1240—which authorized the creation of charter schools. The Court considered two issues on appeal: (1) that the charter schools unconstitutionally diverted common school funds to non-common schools; and (2) that the charter schools violated article IX, section 2 requiring the legislature to establish a “general and uniform system of common schools.” The Court resolved the case on the common school fund issue and did not reach the “general and uniform” challenge. In its slip opinion, the Court had included a …


Indian Treaty Fishing Rights And The Environment: Affirming The Right To Habitat Protection And Restoration, Michael C. Blumm Mar 2017

Indian Treaty Fishing Rights And The Environment: Affirming The Right To Habitat Protection And Restoration, Michael C. Blumm

Washington Law Review

In 1970, several tribes in the Pacific Northwest, along with their federal trustee, sued the state of Washington claiming that numerous state actions violated their treaty rights, which assured them “the right of taking fish in common with” white settlers. The tribes and their federal trustee maintained that the treaties of the 1850s guaranteed the tribes: (1) a share of fish harvests for subsistence, cultural, and commercial purposes; (2) inclusion of hatchery fish in that harvest share; and (3) protection of the habitat necessary for the salmon that were the basis of the treaty bargain and the peaceful white settlement …


"Clientless" Lawyers, Russell M. Gold Mar 2017

"Clientless" Lawyers, Russell M. Gold

Washington Law Review

Class counsel and prosecutors have a lot more in common than scholars realize. These lawyers have clients, but their clients are diffuse and lack a formal decisionmaking structure. Because of the nature of their clients, class counsel and prosecutors have to make decisions for their clients that one would ordinarily expect clients to make—and indeed that legal ethics rules would expressly require clients to make in other contexts—such as decisions concerning objectives of representation or whether to settle or plead guilty. Both complex litigation and criminal law scholars recognize that these lawyers’ self-interests diverge from their clients’ interests. But the …