Law Commons^™

Will They Stay Or Will They Go? An Examination Of South Africa’S International Invest Arbitration Policy, Taylor Bates

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2018, South Africa’s much debated Protection of Investment Act, 2015 went into effect. Designed to replace the state’s bilateral investment treaties, the Act signified a radical shift in South Africa’s attitude towards international investment policy. South Africa’s decision to terminate its bilateral investment treaties is part of a larger, ongoing discussion surrounding investor-state dispute resolution reform. This Note seeks to examine South Africa’s Protection of Investment Act, 2015, its proposal for investor-state dispute settlement reform to Working Group III, and its comments during investor-state dispute settlement reform meetings, through the lens of Albert Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty theory. …

Red Scare Or Red Herring: How The “China Initiative” Strategy For Non-Traditional Collectors Is Stifling Innovation In The United States, Bianca Tillman

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

In 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice launched the “China Initiative” in response to the growing economic and national security threat posed by China. The China Initiative is a sweeping federal plan designed, in part, to protect the United States’ status as a leader in global innovation and scientific discourse. The U.S. is justified in its concern over China’s unfair practices to achieve military, technological, and economic prominence. While U.S. and Chinese intelligence agencies have spied on each other for decades, China has increased both the scope and the sophistication of its efforts to steal secrets from the U.S. in …

Functional Statehood In Contemporary International Law, William Thomas Worster

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The international community lacks a form of territorial-based, international legal personality distinct from statehood, and yet, non-state, territorial entities of varying degrees of autonomy or independence need to function within the international community in some form. Some of these entities cannot be recognized as states because their creation violates jus cogens norms, though others are not recognized based on an assessment that they may not fully qualify as a state or that there are political reasons to refuse recognition. However, existing states still need to engage with these territorial quasi-states through the only paradigm the international community has—statehood. For example, …

The Impact Of Cultural Heritage On Japanese Towns And Villages, Yuichiro Tsuji Dr.

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

In 1954, when historically significant clays and clay pots were found in the Iba district of Shizuoka prefecture, the city applied to the prefectural education committee for a historic site designation. The committee granted this designation to the city..

However, in 1973 the education committee lifted its permission to promote development around the location. Historians have sought revocation of this decision under the Administrative Case Litigation Act (ACLA), but the Supreme Court has denied standing. By denying standing, the Japanese Supreme Court allows the prefecture to destroy a historical site.

First, this paper seeks to discuss the doctrine of standing …

Fault Lines: An Empirical Legal Study Of California Secession, Bill Tomlinson, Andrew W. Torrance

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental & Innovation Law

Over the last decade, multiple initiatives have proposed that California should secede from the United States. This article examines the legal aspects of California secession and integrates that analysis with findings from an empirical study of public perceptions of such secession. There is no provision in the United States Constitution allowing states, or other political or geographical units, to secede unilaterally. The Civil War was fought to uphold this principle, and the United States Supreme Court confirmed it in its 1869 Texas v. White decision. Nevertheless, numerous instances of secession, both legal and extralegal, have occurred across human history, and …

Splendid Isolation: Va’S Failure To Provide Due Process Protections And Access To Justice To Veterans And Their Caregivers, Yelena Duterte

Journal of Law and Policy

Imagine you are a spouse and caregiver of a severely injured post-9/11 veteran. Your spouse served in the Marine Corps, with several deployments to Iraq. During their last deployment, your spouse sustained a severe traumatic brain injury and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Due to these injuries, they need consistent care throughout the day. Thankfully, upon their return, the VA provided a caregiver program that allowed you to step away from your job and focus on caring for your spouse full time. As part of this program, you received a caregiver stipend of $2,400 per month, healthcare, and support from …

Third Wheeling In The Two-Party System: How Same-Party Replacement Systems Impede The Replacement Of Independent And Third-Party Legislators, Tyler Yeargain

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Governor's Mansion Is A House, Not A Home: Requiring Executives To Live At The Seat Of Government, Ashley Faulkner

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Politics, Identity, And Class Certification On The U.S. Courts Of Appeals, Stephen B. Burbank, Sean Farhang

Michigan Law Review

This Article draws on novel data and presents the results of the first empirical analysis of how potentially salient characteristics of Court of Appeals judges influence class certification under Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. We find that the ideological composition of the panel (measured by the party of the appointing president) has a very strong association with certification outcomes, with all-Democratic panels having dramatically higher rates of procertification outcomes than all-Republican panels—nearly triple in about the past twenty years. We also find that the presence of one African American on a panel, and the presence of …

Same-Party Legislative Appointments And The Problem Of Party-Switching, Tyler Yeargain

Texas A&M Law Review

For half of the states and almost every territory in the United States, legislative vacancies are filled by some system of temporary appointments rather than by special elections. Most of these systems utilize “same-party” appointments to ensure continuity of representation. But few states have anticipated the problem of state legislators switching parties. Though party-switching is rare, it happens frequently enough that several state supreme courts have already interpreted same-party appointment statutes as applied to party-switchers.

This Article argues for a uniform approach to the problem of party-switchers in same-party appointment systems. First, this Article reviews the current legislative appointment schemes …

A Few Grains Of Incense: Law, Religion, And Politics From The Perspective Of The "Christian" And "Pagan" Dispensations, Paul Horwitz

Journal of Catholic Legal Studies

(Excerpt)

The pleasures of reading Steven D. Smith’s writing are varied and immense. That certainly holds true for his substantial new book, Pagans and Christians in the City. As with so much of his work, Smith’s argument is presented simply and calmly, and with such mild wit and irony as to be seductive. Yet there is no question that in this book as elsewhere, Smith is unafraid of, and even courts, disagreement and controversy. With a book as seemingly panoptic as this, the real challenge is deciding which part of the book to push and poke at.

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.

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 …

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 …

Defending Bridgegate, George D. Brown

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The Supreme Court’s decision in the “Bridgegate” controversy has been the subject of intense debate. It has received strong support. However, some critics assail the decision as representative of a pattern of recent cases in which the Court has shown itself as indifferent to political corruption, if not supportive of it. Somewhat lost in the discussion is the decision’s potential to be the foundation for a seismic re-alignment of anti-corruption enforcement in the United States. The current model—with federal prosecution as the norm—is not cast in stone.

Policing In A Democratic Constitution, Michael Wasco

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

Most constitutions contain provisions relating to or impacting policing. Separate from the armed forces and intelligence services, the police are the state’s internal security apparatus, and codifying issues related to policing within a constitution can ensure efficient service delivery and human rights protections.

Originating from the Libyan constitution making process, this paper provides a taxonomy of options for constitution drafters and scholars. More so than other issues, such as separation of powers or human rights protections generally, policing sections are very country specific. While not advocating for specific best practices, the work gives ample justifications for certain policing principles and …

Gerrymandering & Justiciability: The Political Question Doctrine After Rucho V. Common Cause, G. Michael Parsons

Indiana Law Journal

This Article deconstructs Rucho’s articulation and application of the political question doctrine and makes two contributions. First, the Article disentangles the political question doctrine from neighboring justiciability doctrines. The result is a set of substantive principles that should guide federal courts as they exercise a range of routine judicial functions—remedial, adjudicative, and interpretive. Rather than unrealistically attempting to draw crisp jurisdictional boundaries between exercises of “political” and “judicial” power, the political question doctrine should seek to moderate their inevitable (and frequent) clash. Standing doctrine should continue to guide courts in determining whether they have authority over a case involving a …

Congressional Securities Trading, Gregory Shill

Indiana Law Journal

The trading of stocks and bonds by Members of Congress presents several risks that warrant public concern. One is the potential for policy distortion: lawmakers' personal investments may influence their official acts. Another is a special case of a general problem: that of insiders exploiting access to confidential information for personal gain. In each case, the current framework which is based on common law fiduciary principles is a poor fit. Surprisingly, rules from a related context have been overlooked.

Like lawmakers, public company insiders such as CEOs frequently trade securities while in possession of confidential information. Those insiders' trades are …

Say The Magic Words: Establishing A Historically Informed Standard To Prevent Partisanship From Shielding Racial Gerrymanders From Federal Judicial Review, Emily K. Dalessio

Washington and Lee Law Review

In its 2019 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court closed the doors of the federal courts to litigants claiming a violation of their constitutional rights based on partisan gerrymandering. In Rucho, the Court held that partisan gerrymandering presents a political question that falls outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts. However, the Supreme Court did not address an insidious consequence of this ruling: namely, that map-drawers may use partisan rationales to obscure what is otherwise an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. This Note uses North Carolina as an example of a state with a long history of …

Legitimacy Matters: The Case For Public Financing In Prosecutor Elections, Rory Fleming

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Money matters. Given the empirical data presented in this Article, it is fair to draw the assumption that a progressive prosecutor candidate’s viability depends much more on whether one or two billionaires support the candidate, especially George Soros. The Soros effect is undeniable for progressive DA candidates running in Democratic primaries, where it seems to be almost determinative for either victory or defeat. For criminal justice reformers interested in “progressive prosecution” as a way to end mass incarceration, it is crucial that this is acknowledged rather than suppressed. The better option is moving toward a model of public financing for …

No Path To Redemption: Evaluating Texas’S Practice Of Sentencing Kids To De Facto Life Without Parole In Adult Prison, Lindsey Linder, Justin Martinez

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

Abstract forthcoming.

It Is Time To Get Back To Basics On The Border, Donna Coltharp

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

Abstract forthcoming.

Politicians As Fiduciaries: Public Law V. Private Law When Altering The Date Of An Election, Steven J. Cleveland

Washington and Lee Law Review

In the 2019 decision Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that federal challenges to partisan gerrymandering—a practice yielding election results that “reasonably seem unjust”—were non-justiciable. If partisan gerrymandering claims are not federally justiciable, and if that conclusion emboldens politicians, how else might incumbents manipulate election mechanics to preserve their political advantage? This Article explores one possibility that was briefly mentioned by the Rucho majority: the strategic advancement or delay of the date of a federal election. The strategic shift of election day is not simply a theoretical problem. Foreign politicians have strategically altered their election days …

The Never-Ending Grasp Of The Prison Walls: Banning The Box On Housing Applications, Ashley De La Garza

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

Abstract forthcoming.

Reclaiming Access To Truth In Reproductive Healthcare After National Institute Of Family & Life Advocates V. Becerra, Diane Kee

Michigan Law Review

Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are antiabortion organizations that seek to “intercept” people with unintended pregnancies to convince them to forego abortion. It is well documented that CPCs intentionally present themselves as medical professionals even when they lack licensure, while also providing medically inaccurate information on abortion. To combat the blatant deception committed by CPCs, California passed the Reproductive FACT Act in 2015. The Act required CPCs to post notices that disclosed their licensure status and informed potential clients that the state provided subsidized abortion and contraceptives. Soon after, CPCs brought First Amendment challenges to these disclosure requirements, claiming that the …

Comments On Mcgahn "A Brief History Of Judicial Appointments From The Last 50 Years Through The Trump Administration", Russell Wheeler

William & Mary Law Review Online

Donald McGahn is a respected member of the Washington D.C. legal community, known especially for his expertise in election law. He served as White House counsel in the Trump administration until October 2018 and was a key player in the Trump administration’s judicial appointments process.His article is witty, sometimes revealing, but above all a description, as he sees it, of the decades-long deterioration of the process for Senate confirmation of federal judicial nominees, with some blame assigning. He also provides a few behind-the-scenes looks at Trump administration confirmation battles, and some recommendations for easing contentiousness in— or at least, speeding …

The Gun Subsidy, Christian Turner, Justin C. Van Orsdol

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lies, Gaslighting And Propaganda, G. Alex Sinha

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents