Law Commons^™

The End Of The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Its Success And Legacy, Choongman Lee

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

This note critically examines the effectiveness of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (“ECCC”), in achieving justice against members of the Democratic Kampuchea, also known as the Khmer Rouge, and explores areas where the ECCC could influence international criminal law in the future. The analysis explores the structural flaws, political interference, and challenges faced by the ECCC, particularly in Cases 003 and 004. Despite these challenges, the court successfully convicted three individuals in Cases 001 and 002, providing a degree of justice for victims. Also, the ECCC’s unique features, such as the super-majority rule, victim-centered approach, and residual …

Regulating Misdemeanors In China, Enshen Li

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

China has arguably entered an era of misdemeanors. Perceived as offenses punishable by a sentence of three years’ imprisonment or less, misdemeanors have reportedly taken up the majority of criminality in China over the past two decades. This shift in criminal dynamics has precipitated a pressing need for structural changes in the state’s criminal legal system, with calls for reform oriented toward decriminalization as a tailored dispositional channel for petty offenders showing a lower level of criminal culpability. This Article offers a critical scrutiny of China’s prevailing decriminalization initiatives for reducing the penalties and collateral consequences of misdemeanors. Situating these …

Questioning Us Immigration Law Compliance With Treaties For Trade And Investment, William Thomas Worster

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This Article examines the extent to which US immigration law complies with the United States’ treaty obligations to admit qualifying foreign nationals as treaty traders (E-1) or treaty investors (E-2). These immigration categories are grounded in international agreements—specifically Friendship, Commerce and Navigation treaties (FCNs), Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)—that commit the United States to grant entry to certain foreign individuals and enterprises for the purposes of trade or investment. Although each treaty includes specifically tailored terms and conditions, US immigration regulations apply a single, harmonized set of regulations that often diverge from the treaty texts. This …

Sovereign Immunity And International Arbitration In China: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, And Three Steps Forward Again, Ylli Dautaj

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Investment treaty arbitration (ITA), like any other dispute resolution regime, must guarantee the quality if its means as well as offering effective sanctioning of its ends. Thus, any obstacle with respect to post-award proceedings should be dealt with seriously. Due to sovereign immunity, the enforcement against an award-debtor State is more difficult than against a private party. Courts in various jurisdictions have battled with sovereign immunity for many years now and many issues remain outstanding nevertheless. It is for these reasons that sovereign immunity from execution has been said to represent “the last fortress, the last bastion of State immunity.” …

Visa To Stay: Immigration Reform For International Students In The United States: From Contractual Limits To Affiliation-Based Opportunities, Jeanette Subkhanberdina

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

International student mobility is a vehicle of globalization in today’s world, with a significant rise in students pursuing higher education abroad over the past two decades, reaching approximately 6.9 million globally. Regardless of personal motivations, the decision to study abroad rests in a careful evaluation of whether long-term rewards outweigh the short-term sacrifices these students make. For students looking to build a professional foundation and immerse themselves in the culture of the country in which they study, few long-term rewards are more appealing than having their student visas serve as a pathway to permanent residency. Determining who may be granted …

Funding Repression: How The Eu Migration Agreements With Libya And Tunisia Circumvent Non-Refoulement And Enable Human Rights Violations, Emma Soltis

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2023, the European Union and Tunisia entered into a Memorandum of Understanding, which outlined cooperation between the parties on several issues, including migration and mobility. Consistent with the European Union’s broader externalization agenda, the Memorandum of Understanding primarily allocates monetary and technical support to Tunisia and its authorities for migration management. In particular, Tunisian authorities are enabled to patrol the coast and intercept migrants and refugees attempting to irregularly migrate from North Africa to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. The European Union sponsored a similar Memorandum of Understanding between Italy and Libya in 2017. Critics have widely denounced the …

The Starving Artist: What The Us Can Learn From Dutch Artist-Focused Legislation About Equitable Remuneration For Musical Creators, Natalia Perez-Flores

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The United States (US) is the “leader in [the] creation, distribution, and worldwide licensing of recorded music.” Despite this, the US fails to afford moral rights protections to musical creators. Unlike economic rights, moral rights are not primarily concerned with the economic exploitation of art and instead protect the personal and reputational value of a work. Legislative justifications for copyright protection in the US include providing adequate rewards and appropriate incentives for artistic creation. To accomplish this, copyright law must protect authors’ personal expression, or moral rights, as much as it protects authors’ financial compensation, or economic rights. By focusing …

Beyond Statutory Loopholes, Qualified Immunity, And Internal Investigations: A Comparative Analysis Of Police Accountability In The United States And The United Kingdom, Kevyn Mcconlogue

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

While the landscape of policing in the United States and United Kingdom appear different today, their shared roots of enslavement and racism fostered a culture of impunity for police officers in both countries. With community skepticism and public discontent with law enforcement continuing to rise in the United States, the investigative and procedural roadblocks in the way of holding police officers accountable for misconduct must come to an end. In an effort to facilitate conversations about progressive police reform and eventual abolition, this Note compares the modern American and British police accountability systems and the avenues through which victims of …

Human Rights And Foreign Policy: South Africa's Genocide Complaint Against Israel At The International Court Of Justice, Penelope Andrews

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

No abstract provided.

Revival Of Industrial Policy Implications For International Trade Law, Yong-Shik Lee

Minnesota Journal of International Law, Vols. 28:2 onward (2019-present)

In recent years, the world’s major economies, such as the United States, China, and the European Union, have adopted policies that aim to promote domestic industries in strategic areas, such as semiconductors and electric vehicles, through substantial subsidization. These policies have been justified for the need to secure supply chains and protect national security interests, but they are also incompatible with the rules of international trade law, such as the WTO Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement. There are considerable challenges to addressing this incompatibility as these economies have shared interests in promoting these policies for their own domestic industries. The …

Using State Policy To Neutralize Green Infrastructure Project-Ending Litigation And Strategically Advance Community Engagement, Sara Cody

Pace Environmental Law Review

In May 2023, Governor Gavin Newsome publicly announced a California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”) reform bill (SB 149), which he signed into law on July 10, 2023. From the moment this was announced, the proposal was barraged by pushback, not from climate negative industry, but from major environmental groups, including the National Resource Defense Council and the Sierra Club, among others. Why is this? One reason is that permit reform has historically been championed by the fossil fuel industry as a method for cutting red tape to make resource exploration faster, easier, and less costly. Even so, the ratio of …

Strange Bedfellows: Guardians For Fetuses And Future Generations, Celia Parry

Pace Environmental Law Review

In the 1970s, savvy anti-abortion lawyers began employing “fetal guardians” as a procedural mechanism to restrict abortion access. In Juliana v. United States, arguably the most important climate lawsuit from the past ten years, a “guardian for future generations” acted as a plaintiff. These forms of legal guardianship resemble each other because they both rely on property law precedent, invoke creative interpretations of guardianship, and represent future interests. This connection also presents a predicament for climate litigators and anti-abortion litigators, who don’t typically share the same agenda. To date, this intersection between fetal and future generation guardianship has not received …

Ecocentric Environmental Justice: Why We Should Go There And How We Can Get There, Jillian R. Houle

Pace Environmental Law Review

Environmental justice is necessary. It forces us to grapple with the fact that environmental burdens and benefits have been disproportionately divvied up across arbitrary race- and income-based lines, asks “what are you going to do about it?”, and offers solutions and answers to the problems it identifies. Everyone benefits from environmental justice. At the same time, environmental protection is necessary. Not only does environmental protection, by definition, protect the biotic and abiotic components of the natural world, but it further serves to protect humans, who unequivocally rely on the natural environment to sustain their collective life. Everything – living and …

Geothermal Energy And The Possibility Of Narrative Unity In Environmental And Energy Law, Jarrod Ingles

Pace Environmental Law Review

As the United States seeks to address concerns about climate change and energy affordability through the deployment of renewable energy and natural gas, the tensions between energy law and environmental law have come into sharper relief. These two related fields are converging as never before because solutions to rising energy costs and the “wicked problem” of climate change often pit the impulses of energy and environmental agencies against one another. Applying a narrative theory approach, I contend that energy law and environmental law will continue to be in tension because they are grounded in different narratives, which in turn communicate …

Back To The Future For Climate Liability, Anthony Moffa

Pace Environmental Law Review

The Polluter Pays Principle has been a central tenet of environmental policy for decades. It provided an economic justification for compelling cleanups through the Superfund law (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)). However, outside of that context, it has not been explicitly cited as the chief justification for much environmental law in the United States—until now. The principle has recently been invoked in state climate lawmaking. Last year, Vermont and New York became the first states to enact laws that impose liability on fossil fuel producers for climate change harms, invoking the Polluter Pays Principle and Superfund …

Montana Trout Unlimited V. Montana Department Of Natural Resources, Kelly Brady

Public Land & Resources Law Review

A proposed copper mine located near tributaries of the highly protected Smith River in central Montana set off a series of lawsuits over the use of water in the state. After a number of administrative hearings and subsequent trials, the only substantial question left was the status of “mine dewatering.” The Montana Supreme Court decided whether 1,500,000 gallons of water removed annually from the inner workings of a mine should require a water use permit as a beneficial use or if it exists outside of the regulatory jurisdiction of the Montana Department of Natural Resources under the Montana Water Use …

Montana Environmental Information Center. V. Montana Department Of Public Service Regulation, Sadie Giles

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Montana Environmental Information Center v. Montana Department of Public Service Regulation provides insight into the discretion of the Public Service Commission and its impact on renewable energy development in Montana, especially in the wake of the repeal of the Renewable Power Production and Rural Economic Development Act. This case evaluates the Commission’s decisions to grant waivers to NorthWestern Energy for its 2015 and 2016 renewable energy purchase obligations under the Act. The Court found the Commission’s decisions were arbitrary and unsupported by substantial evidence and appropriate reasoning. Montana’s renewable portfolio standards had proven effective in promoting renewable energy and economic …

Tribal Sovereignty And The Limits Of Federal Evidence: Authenticating Indian Status In United States V. Harper, Anthony J. Shirey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In United States v. Harper, the Tenth Circuit reversed a conviction for violent crimes committed in Indian Country because the government failed to provide admissible evidence proving that the defendant was an “Indian” under federal law. At first glance, the ruling appears to turn on a technical evidentiary issue concerning the exclusion of a tribal membership verification letter under the business records exception. Yet the case reveals something deeper: a jurisdictional framework that conditions the recognition of tribal identity on federal evidentiary norms, and in doing so, limits the functional sovereignty of tribal governments in federal courts. This Note seeks …

Friends Of The Inyo V. United States Forest Service, Sarah J. Leopard

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Friends of the Inyo v. United States Forest Service provides necessary guidance for categorical exclusion analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the United States Forest Service wrongfully construed NEPA as permissive of applying different categorical exclusions to various components of the same mining project until the project was excluded in its entirety from further environmental review. The Court’s holding establishes two essential rules for evaluating mining proposals on public lands: (1) a categorical exclusion, when applied under § 220.6, must cover the entire scope of a proposed project; and (2) the …

Law School News: John Dorsey L'10 Selected For U.S. Bankruptcy Court In Rhode Island 6-7-2025, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Opinion: The Constitution - Not Trump - Demands Our Allegiance, Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

Supporting the Constitution not only requires submission to constitutional authority but implies resistance to powers that are exercised unconstitutionally. Such resistance might take the form of brave individuals living up to their oath of office or courts defending the rule of law and the Constitution. But while the Supreme Court plays a key role in interpreting the Constitution and holding a president in check, it has long been recognized that others besides the court have always been necessary to help monitor America’s constitutional order. The practice of resisting unconstitutional acts of the federal government by sounding the alarm was described …

Session 6: Ai Regulation: The Role Of Washington State Legal Organizations, Alicia Burton, Michele Carney, Ryan Harkins, Craig Shank, Drew Simshaw, Christon Skinner, Leslie Veloz

SITIE Symposiums

In session six of the SITIE 2025 Symposium, the panelists discuss how legal institutions in the State of Washington are responding to the challenges surrounding artificial intelligence (AI). Being aware that AI is continuing to evolve and will inevitably be integrated more into the legal field, this session discusses the benefits and concerns of AI and what legal institutions like the Board of Judicial Administration, Washington State Bar Association (WSBA) Committee on Professional Ethics, and the Washington State Bar Association Legal Technology Task Force are doing to educate lawyers and what changes, if any, are being done to address AI …

Session 5: Ai Regulation From Domestic Sources: From Where And When?, Mark Geistfeld, Margaret Hu, Emile Loza De Siles

SITIE Symposiums

In the wake of high-profile calls for AI regulation from tech leaders like Sam Altman and Brad Smith, domestic efforts to shape AI governance in the U.S. are becoming more urgent. Moderated by Professor Steve Tapia, this panel of legal scholars examined the evolving field of AI regulation, here from domestic sources, focusing on gaps in legal literacy, the limits of tort law, and the promise of more transparent frameworks. Panelists explored the challenges posed by the “Black Box” nature of AI, including trade secret protections, opaque algorithms, and their impact on tort causation and discrimination. They highlighted tensions between …

Session 4: Analyzing The Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence To Racially Inclusive Democracy, Spencer Overton, Jeffrey Omari

SITIE Symposiums

This keynote discussion explored the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI), race, and democratic governance, focusing on the challenges and opportunities AI presents for creating a racially inclusive democracy. Professor Overton argued that while AI has transformative potential, it is currently influenced by actors and systems that may unintentionally (or intentionally) weaken racial equity. The spread of AI technologies—without proper safeguards—has opened new pathways for reinforcing structural inequalities, especially in the democratic process.

Session 3: Conference Spotlight- Politics In A World Of Ai Misinformation: Regulatory Approaches, Richard Painter, Mark Verstraete

SITIE Symposiums

Considering developments regarding AI-generated media, fake news, and impersonations, panelists discuss the challenges in regulating AI-generated media, particularly in the context of deepfakes and political misinformation. Panelists discuss the evolution of content from a text-based presentation to video-based manipulations, along with broader concerns, including the role of social media platforms, how platforms are becoming more focused, confirmation bias of individual voting publics, and the potential conflicts of interest in regulating AI-generated content. Panelists suggest solutions involving a proactive method to warn the public about AI-generated misinformation. Further, the panelists also call for greater inter-disciplinary collaboration to develop flexible and forward-thinking …

Session 2: The Cases For Industry Self-Regulation And Government Regulation Of Ai, Boaz Ashkenazy, Kevin Bartholomew, Kevin De Liban, Christopher Yoo

SITIE Symposiums

In Session Two of the SITIE 2025 Symposium titled “The Cases for Industry Self-Regulation and Government Regulation of AI,” moderated by Seattle University Technology Ethics Initiative Director and Professor Onur Bakiner, the panelists discuss their perspectives and experiences with AI regulation. They share observations about the industry and delve into the topics of AI complexity, concerns around accountability, the shift to agentic AI, the current state of AI regulation, existing legal guardrails, and their outlook on AI regulation.

Session 1: Guidance From International Regulation Sources, Charlotte Tschider, Marie-Charlotte Roques-Bonnet

SITIE Symposiums

In Session One of the SITIE 2025 Symposium titled “Regulating Artificial Intelligence: From Where and When?”, Professor Mark Chinen moderated a panel featuring Professor Charlotte Tschider and Dr. Marie-Charlotte Roques-Bonnet. The discussion focused on international AI regulation, privacy, data governance, and the EU’s regulatory approach to AI oversight.

8th Annual Innovation And Technology Law Conference: Regulating Artificial Intelligence: From Where And When?, Steven Bender

SITIE Symposiums

Since 2018, the Seattle University School of Law has presented an annual late spring/summer conference on innovation and technology, shifting to a virtual conference in 2020. The virtual format fosters inclusion of national and even international speakers (as this year with Marie-Charlotte Roques-Bonnet, Data Protection/AI Consultant & Research Lead, ID side.eu, joining from France), and participation from a broad base audience, which this year included over 200 registrants who joined live or watched the recording.

Chevron Was Not, And Cannot Be, Overruled: The Dullness Of Loper Bright, Edward L. Rubin

Duke Journal of Constitutional Law & Public Policy

As expected, the Supreme Court declared, in Loper Bright Enterprises. v. Raimondo, that "Chevron is overruled." But the Court did not understand the decision that it claimed to overrule. It focused its criticisms on Chevron's notorious two-step test, but failed to recognize that the decision is a major conceptual advance – the first clear judicial recognition that statutory interpretation is the initial and invariably necessary stage in the process by which administrative agencies enforce the law. Chevron thus revealed a reality that the current Court is powerless to alter. Most administrative statutes are not the normative declarations of the pre-administrative …

Employee Speech V. Workplace Values: A Defense Of At-Will Employment And Private Employer Regulation Of Political Speech, Isaac Mamaysky

Duke Law Journal Online

The public policy underlying at-will employment—and particularly our collective interest in freedom of choice in the employment relationship—weighs in favor of allowing employers to regulate their employees' political activities and thus align personnel decisions with organizational values.

Beginning with an exploration of the laws that somewhat limit employers' ability to regulate their employees' political activities, this Essay considers the National Labor Relations Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, state anti-discrimination laws, state laws governing captive audience meetings, and state employment protections for political activity.

This Essay applies these laws to three increasingly prevalent employer practices: (1) prohibiting employees …