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Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

Under The Guardianship: Experiences Of Mothers In Egypt’S El Nayaba El Hesbaya, Hana Khayry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersectional lived experience of El Nayaba El Hesbaya in Egypt. El Nayaba El Hesbaya, operating under Law 119/1952, is the administrative and judicial body responsible for overseeing the financial and legal affairs of minors whose father or mother had passed. Hundreds of thousands of mothers in Egypt have (had) children under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya. This research delves into the experience of mothers whose children are or were under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya, examining how it shape(s/d) their everyday life as women, mothers, widows or ex-wives, citizens, and legal subjects. …

Skrmetti And The Problem Of Incidental Intent, Martin J. Katz

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The modern Supreme Court has defined “discriminatory intent” as a strict-liability concept. It does not matter why the government sorts people by a protected characteristic, such as race or sex; it matters only that the government does sort people by such a characteristic. This principle is the key holding of affirmative-action cases, such as Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Yet, in the recent case United States v. Skrmetti, the Court seemed to focus not on the question of whether the government sorted people by sex (it did), but on the question …

Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Lecture 01-28-2026, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Volume 14 Masthead

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal History: The Curious Case Of The Disappearing Unceded Lakota Territories, Sebastian F. Braun

American Indian Law Journal

This Article discusses whether the Lakota Nation still has title to the unceded territories outlined in the Treaty of 1868. While many accounts focus on the supposed diminishment of the Great Sioux Reservation, the question of the unceded lands has largely been forgotten. It has renewed relevance in the context of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which crosses the lands. From a broader perspective, the case raises questions about how history is understood, constructed, and selected in American Indian Law cases. Most legal cases, especially those concerning treaty rights, are rooted in an interpretation of history; if that history is misinterpreted …

Expansion Of Federal Benefits To Non-Native Adopted Children, Anna-Grace Hockensmith

American Indian Law Journal

There is palpable tension between tribal sovereignty and federal administrative control in the distribution of federal benefits to members of Tribal Nations. This tension is felt by adopted non-Native children who might struggle to receive federal benefits even though the tribe of their adopted parent(s) has accepted them as a member. This Note explores how adoption of a non-Native child by a tribal member intersects with tribal membership and whether that membership should be enough for the child to receive federal benefits.

The Note discusses four main topics, including: (1) tribal membership, adoption, and current federal enrollment criteria; (2) an …

Beyond Icwa: Within Family Court Systems, Mixed Indigenous Families Confront Ongoing Jurisdictional Violence, Nis Wilbur

American Indian Law Journal

Mixed Indigenous families (MIFs) navigating parental custody in the United States can find themselves trapped in a Battleship®-style jurisdictional maze, where tribal, state, and federal authorities collide unpredictably. This legal mess threatens to separate children from their tribal communities, undermines tribal sovereignty, and can force families into years of costly litigation. The problem is rooted in centuries of white supremacist law and policy that systematically dispossess tribes of culture and self-governance: from the Marshall Trilogy to the boarding school era and harmful adoption schemes. Today, legal frameworks like the UCCJEA remain insufficient as they minimize or ignore tribal civil jurisdiction, …

Table Of Contents

American Indian Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Workers’ Compensation Codes In American Indian* Tribal Nations, Autumn N. Siegel

American Indian Law Journal

This Article examines various Tribal Nations’ experiences in developing their own workers’ compensation systems using a comparative law and legal development approach, including direct interviews with a diverse range of tribal members. Tribal Nations’ self-created workers’ compensation codes predominantly rely on local models and expertise to establish and operate their systems. However, Tribal Nations also infuse their own cultural values into their codes, incorporating tribal perspectives and priorities such as valuing traditional medicine and peace-making alternative dispute resolution, providing more generously to volunteers, and incorporating return-to-work programs into their workers’ compensation systems. Some Tribal Nations also find it necessary to …

U.N.Masking American Exceptionalism: How International Frameworks Can Inform American Indian Policy, Kaitlin Reese

American Indian Law Journal

“U.N.masking American Exceptionalism: How International Frameworks Can Inform American Policy,” serves primarily to examine and criticize how American case law, such as Johnson v. M’Intosh, has been used in foreign courts to justify the Doctrine of Discovery and how, despite many other courts eventually acknowledging it as a harmful rule of law in meaningful ways, the United States has done no such thing. This Article walks through not only the legal cases both at home and abroad, but also delves into the historical background that led up to Johnson, examines the cases abroad that integrate the Doctrine of Discovery and …

The Tribal Rules Of Evidence, Nicole Morote

American Indian Law Journal

Rules of evidence shape litigation practice across the country. In this sense, they govern the truth as it enters the court. Legal scholarship has yet to study tribal approaches to evidence— an area with tremendous promise for legal practitioners and evidence rulemakers alike.

This Article is the first to do so. It analyzes an array of tribal evidence codes across the United States. It reveals three frameworks that describe tribes’ approaches to the Federal Rules. In doing so, it offers a modest contribution to the nascent intersection between Tribal law and evidence studies: crucial insight into tribal systems’ unique needs, …

Advancing The Rights Of Nature: Lessons From Sauk-Suiattle V. City Of Seattle, Harry S. Katz

American Indian Law Journal

Advocates for the “rights of nature” seek recognition of legal rights for natural elements such as mountains, rivers, and non-human species as a means of protecting the environment. In the United States, Tribal Nations have been at the forefront of this nascent movement. In a 2022 Washington state case, the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe sued the City of Seattle, alleging that the City’s hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River infringe upon the rights of salmon. Those rights, they claim, include the salmon’s rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and evolve. The case, known as Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe v. City of Seattle, …

Native History Is United States History: How United States History Censorship Leads To Passive Acceptance Of Racial Discrimination And Furthers The Decline Of Tribal Sovereignty, Nickolasa A. Jackson

American Indian Law Journal

Native stories are embedded in the United States Constitution, property law, and the nation’s legal and political framework, but education frequently omits these truths. Such erasure perpetuates misunderstanding, invisibility, and hostility toward Native communities, obscuring the reality that the United States was built through the dispossession, coercion, and suffering of Indigenous Peoples. Whitewashing history has allowed the nation to claim moral virtue and industriousness while denying the foundational role of Indigenous Peoples. The Article emphasizes that Native rights, whether land, water, or other treaty-protected entitlements, as well as inherent rights such as tribal sovereignty, are not charitable or discretionary; they …

T.H. V. The Czech Republic: A Step Forward Or Back For Lgbtq+ Rights And Discourse In Europe With The First Openly Non-Binary Applicant?, Katherine Olsson

Human Rights Brief

On December 9, 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) issued a final judgment in the case of T.H. v. The Czech Republic.  The case concerned a non-binary individual, T.H., who was assigned male at birth and, since May 2012, had repeatedly petitioned to change their sex/gender marker and personal numerical code on their national identity card.  Because the Czech system does not provide for the option of a neutral gender marker, T.H. petitioned to have their registered gender changed to female.

Situating Stillbirth Within A Reproductive Justice Methodology Amidst Perilous Politics, Jamie Abrams

Book Reviews

Stillbirth and the Law, published in 2025 by the University of California Press, offers both a deeply personal and rigorously insightful examination of how law, medicine, and policy intersect around stillbirth. Jill Lens brings her full self to this work in ways that reflect deep feminist roots cultivated over years of Lens’s impressive scholarly production. Lens channels her lived experience of stillbirth into a comprehensive analysis that combines data, theory, law, narrative, policy, and pragmatic solutions.

The reader leaves the book equally feeling Lens’s deep love and longing for her son, Caleb, and equipped with a lengthy list of tools, …

“No One Can Hear You Scream”: Intimate Partner Violence And Family Justice Centers In Rural America, Jordan Stevenson

Legal Writing Competition Winners

In rural Kentucky, where cars are a necessity to traverse the rugged Appalachian Mountains and sparsely populated farmlands, “Barbara’s” abusive husband couldn’t let her get away—so he set her car aflame. Although census-defined rural areas contain only 20% of the United States population, some studies have found that intimate partner violence is more common and severe in rural areas than urban or suburban regions. 

People, especially women, in rural areas experience intimate partner violence in unique ways tied to their geographic and cultural context. Consequently, organizations, courts, and law enforcement struggle to meet the needs of affected populations in rural …

Bad Parenting On Trial: How Gender, Race, And Class Shape Parental Responsibility Prosecutions And Laws For School Shootings, Makayla R. Foust

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2021, James and Jennifer Crumbley became the first parents in the United States to be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in connection with their son’s school shooting that killed four people and injured multiple others. As school shootings continue to devastate communities across the country, prosecutors are increasingly holding parents criminally liable for their children’s actions. This development raises fundamental questions about justice, accountability, and the limits of criminal liability. While these laws aim to curb gun violence by enforcing parental accountability, they will disproportionately affect marginalized communities, particularly along gender, racial, and socioeconomic lines. As legal precedent expands, …

Regulating For Birth Justice, Jamille Fields Allsbrook

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Impacted persons have shared accounts of traumatic birthing experiences, and advocates have raised the alarm on the urgent need to advance birth justice. Despite this raised awareness, women and birthing people are still dying and suffering unnecessarily. Even more, systems are still structured to impede birthing choices, particularly those from marginalized communities such as Black and Indigenous women. Notably, over 80% of U.S. maternal deaths are preventable, according to federal government data. Ironically, the same laws and systems that have created, perpetuated, and tolerated birth injustices can be leveraged to move the country towards birth justice. On the national level, …

Incarceration As Sexualized Violence, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

Sexual violence—rape, sexual assault, strip and body cavity searches, surveillance, and reproductive abuse—is a regular occurrence in women’s prisons. Some of that violence is clearly illegal; some occupies a legally gray middle ground; and some is considered essential to the operation of the prison system. All of it, however, could violate the law if the victims were not incarcerated. Sexual violence is so pervasive within women’s prisons that incarceration can only be understood as a form of sexualized violence. Given the certainty that people incarcerated in women’s prisons will experience some form of sexual abuse, continued incarceration can only be …

Toward Interspecies Reproductive Justice, Asha A. Ramakumar

Animal Law Review

Reproductive justice discourse has largely overlooked non-human animals, despite the parallel forms of biopolitical control exercised over human women and female animals’ reproductive labor. By examining the shared logics underlying the subordina-tion of both human women and dairy cows, this Article argues that any genuine conception of reproductive justice must inter-rogate reproductive exploitation beyond the human experience. Drawing from Michel Foucault’s theory of biopower and Carol J. Adams’ framework of the “absent referent,” this Article elucidates how powerful institutions control those with the capacity for preg-nancy by perpetuating narratives of biological essentialism and obligation.

Part II examines several examples of …

Let’S Talk About The Biological Reality Of Sex, Baby, John Parsi

FIU Law Review

Sex is at the very core of individual identity. It affects the conception of the self and the way others view the individual. Every day, one’s sex may open and close doors, access to communities, and opportunities. Laws that define sex may affirm scientific knowledge and protect people, or threaten to unravel the facts and the reality of sex. A deep unmooring of sex is underway, and this Article aims to halt it. On day one of the current presidential term, January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an Executive Order on “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological …

Who Makes The Jury? Demographics And Decision-Making In The Jury Process., Ana B. Pons

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Within the American judicial system, juries have played a central role in promoting representation and fairness in the courtroom. However, limited information exists on whether prosecutorial decisions during jury selection, jury composition, or jury behavior differ based on the sex, race/ethnicity, type of case, political ideology, or geographic location of potential jurors. Following PRISMA guidelines, this scoping review synthesizes 48 peer-reviewed articles published between the 1940s and 2026 to examine whether prosecutorial decision-making and jury outcomes vary based on the sex, race/ethnicity, type of case, political ideology, or geographic location of potential jurors. Findings indicated that men are disproportionately selected …

Justice In Erotic Spaces, Elena L. Cohen

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

This Article posits that the concept of "erotic justice" could be used by courts to push back against the current cascade of anti-LGBTQ+ laws and meaningfully improve the lives ofgay and trans people. The beginning of the twenty-first century was widely seen as a time of great progress for LGBTQ+ people, with the legalization of gay marriage in countries across the world seen as the ultimate triumph. Yet there is a strong contemporary movement to re-criminalize the lives of LGBTQ+ people and to remove protections that have been granted by courts. In the U.S., the 2020s have seen an ongoing …

Fundamental Rights Betrayed: How Pregnancy Exclusions In Advance Directive Statutes Silence Pregnant People’S Wishes, Molly Hill

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

INTRODUCTION: In 2013, Marlise Muñoz collapsed at her home and was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors informed her family that she had suffered a pulmonary embolism and was now brain-dead. Marlise had previously expressed to her family that she never wished to be kept on life support if she was left brain-dead, so her family wanted to honor her wishes. However, despite her irreversible brain death, because Marlise was fourteen weeks pregnant, Texas law required that her body remain on life-sustaining treatment until her fetus became viable. Her body lay in the hospital hooked up to machines against …

What Is “The Nation’S History And Tradition?”: Using History To Redefine “Liberty” And Applying A New Deeply Rooted Test To Transgender Rights, Kaori Kawaguchi

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

INTRODUCTION: “In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.” In Roe v. Wade, the Court considered a woman’s liberty right to decide whether to continue a pregnancy or have an abortion and recognized the constitutional validity of a liberty right to abortion as part of the right to privacy. In Roe, the Court concluded, “[o]nly personal rights that can be deemed ‘fundamental’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ are included in the guarantee of a right of personal privacy.” Liberty should be “left to …