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Foreword, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Foreword.

The Deans' Roundtable, Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean Danielle Conway, Dean Tamara Lawson, Dean Mario Barnes, Dean L. Song Richardson

Seattle University Law Review

The Deans' Roundtable.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents and Special Thanks.

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Inside The Master's Gates: Resources And Tools To Dismantle Racism And Sexism In Higher Education, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

The spring of 2020 saw waves of protest as police killed people of color. After George Floyd’s death, protests erupted in over 140 cities. The systemic racism exhibited by these killings has been uncontrollable, hopeless, and endless. Our country is facing a national crisis. In response to the police killings, businesses, schools, and communities held diversity workshops across the nation, and businesses and organizations posted antiracism statements. Legislators and City Councils introduced bills and orders to defund police and to limit qualified immunity. As schools prepared for the fall semester, teachers considered ways to incorporate antiracism materials into the curriculum. …

Time To Panic! The Need For State Laws Mandating Panic Buttons And Anti-Sexual Harassment Policies To Protect Vulnerable Employees In The Hotel Industry, Kristy D'Angelo-Corker

Seattle University Law Review

One only has to turn on the television or read the newspaper to see news story after news story reporting instances of women facing harassment, discrimination, or assault while at work. The “Me Too” and “Time’s Up” campaigns have brought many of these issues to the forefront and have shown that women are fighting to be respected and demanding equal treatment. Although this fight for equal protection is ongoing, many women, such as those in lower-paying service industries, are still unable to protect themselves from sexual harassment, discrimination, and assault, as they do not have the support or power to …

School “Safety” Measures Jump Constitutional Guardrails, Maryam Ahranjani

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and efforts to achieve racial justice through systemic reform, this Article argues that widespread “security” measures in public schools, including embedded law enforcement officers, jump constitutional guardrails. These measures must be rethought in light of their negative impact on all children and in favor of more effective—and constitutionally compliant—alternatives to promote school safety. The Black Lives Matter, #DefundthePolice, #abolishthepolice, and #DefundSchoolPolice movements shine a timely and bright spotlight on how the prisonization of public schools leads to the mistreatment of children, particularly children with disabilities, boys, Black and brown children, and low-income children. …

Property Owners Look Out: The Train Is Coming, Natalie Crane

Seattle University Law Review

Over 4 million people currently live in the Puget Sound area in Washington state, and about 6 million people are expected to reside in the area by 2050. Additionally, Seattle renters faced a 71.2% increase in rent prices from 2010 to 2019. This data supports the need for much of the congested Seattle population to move outward and commute into the city for work. The implementation of a 116-mile system and other efforts to increase public transportation makes this need achievable and affordable.

This Comment focuses on the issue of just compensation in eminent domain; specifically, unique questions of compensation …

Unwaivable: Public Enforcement Claims And Mandatory Arbitration, Myriam E. Gilles, Gary Friedman

Articles

This essay, written for a conference on the “pathways and hurdles” that lie ahead in consumer litigation, is the first to examine the implications of California’s recent jurisprudence holding public enforcement claims unwaivable in standard-form contracts of adhesion, and the inevitable clash with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisional law interpreting the Federal Arbitration Act. With its rich history of rebuffing efforts to deprive citizens of public rights through private contract, California provides an ideal laboratory for exploring this escalating conflict.

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 …

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.

Material Lives: Amending The False Claims Act To Restore Qui Tam Medicaid Enforcement And Protect Our Most Vulnerable Communities, C. Deen

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In 2016, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Universal Health Services, Inc. v United States ex rel. Escobar to resolve a circuit split on implied certification under the False Claims Act. The Court’s opinion also addressed the issue of materiality under the False Claims Act. The “rigorous standard” expounded by the Court raised the standard of materiality beyond simple contractual or regulatory noncompliance. This heightened standard represents a significant departure from previous jurisprudence. Moreover, the heightened standard frustrates the repeatedly expressed will of Congress to empower qui tam whistleblowers to prosecute fraud perpetrated on the government. The primary focus of …

Accessible Websites And Mobile Applications Under The Ada: The Lack Of Legal Guidelines And What This Means For Businesses And Their Customers, Josephine Meyer

Seattle University Law Review Online

No abstract provided.

Excessive Force: Justice Requires Refining State Qualified Immunity Standards For Negligent Police Officers, Angie Weiss

Seattle University Law Review Online

At the time this Note was written, there was no Washington state equivalent of the § 1983 Civil Rights Act. As plaintiffs look to the Washington state courts as an alternative to federal courts, they will find that Washington state has a different structure of qualified immunity protecting law enforcement officers from liability.

In this Note, Angie Weiss recommends changing Washington state's standard of qualified immunity. This change would ensure plaintiffs have a state court path towards justice when they seek to hold law enforcement officers accountable for harm. Weiss explains the structure and context of federal qualified immunity; compares …

The Support-Or-Advocacy Clauses, Richard Primus, Cameron O. Kistler

Articles

Two little known clauses of a Reconstruction-era civil rights statute are potentially powerful weapons for litigators seeking to protect the integrity of federal elections. For the clauses to achieve their potential, however, the courts will need to settle correctly a contested question of statutory interpretation: do the clauses create substantive rights, or do they merely create remedies for substantive rights specified elsewhere? The correct answer is that the clauses create substantive rights.

Jail By Another Name: Ice Detention Of Immigrant Criminal Defendants On Pretrial Release, Kerry Martin

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This Article assesses the legality of an alarming practice: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) routinely detains noncitizen criminal defendants soon after they have been released on bail, depriving them of their court-ordered freedom. Since the District of Oregon’s decision in United States v. Trujillo-Alvarez, 900 F. Supp. 2d 1167 (D. Or. 2012), a growing group of federal courts has held that when ICE detains federal criminal defendants released under the Bail Reform Act (BRA), it violates their BRA rights. These courts have ordered that the government either free the defendants from ICE custody or dismiss their criminal charges. This …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Legitimacy And Agency Implementation Of Title Ix, Samuel R. Bagenstos

Articles

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits sex discrimination by programs receiving federal education funding. Primary responsibility for administering that statute lies in the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR). Because Title IX involves a subject that remains highly controversial in our polity (sex roles and interactions among the sexes more generally), and because it targets a highly sensitive area (education), OCR’s administration of the statute has long drawn criticism. The critics have not merely noted disagreements with the legal and policy decisions of the agency, however. Rather, they have attacked the agency’s decisions …

Another Collateral Consequence: Kicking The Victim When She’S Down, Lauren N. Hancock

Washington and Lee Law Review

Every state has a victim compensation fund that provides financial relief to victims of crime who have no other way to pay for medical expenses, funeral costs, crime scene cleanup, or other costs associated with the crime. States impose their own eligibility requirements to determine which victims can receive funding. Six states prohibit victims with certain criminal histories from obtaining compensation. This means that innocent victims of crime are left with nowhere to turn because of something that they already “paid” for. This leaves victims, who are likely already in a financially precarious situation due to their felon status, with …

Legal Requirements For Equitable Design And Implementation Of Flood Buyout Programs In Rhode Island, Sarah Friedman, Read Porter

Sea Grant Law Fellow Publications

No abstract provided.

Accommodating Absence: Medical Leave As An Ada Reasonable Accommodation, Sean P. Mulloy

Michigan Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is widely regarded as one of the most significant pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. Among its requirements, Title I of the ADA prohibits employers from discriminating against people with disabilities and requires that employers make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals. Many questions about the scope of the reasonable-accommodation mandate remain, however, as federal circuit courts disagree over whether extended medical leave may be considered a reasonable accommodation and whether an employee on leave is a qualified individual. This Note argues that courts should presume finite unpaid medical leaves of absence are …

Enforcement Of The Americans With Disabilities Act: Remedying “Abusive” Litigation While Strengthening Disability Rights, Evelyn Clark

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note explores the Americans with Disabilities Act and the private litigation used to enforce compliance. While the ADA was designed to be enforced by private citizens, many have called for reform to limit what they see as “abusive” litigants. This Note focuses on (1) the perceived problem of vexatious litigants abusing the ADA and its state counterparts to benefit monetarily, (2) the attempted solutions on both a state and federal level, and (3) recommended solutions that focus on protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities while limiting abusive litigation meant to extort businesses.

Artificial Entities With Natural Rights: Pursuing Profits At The Expense Of Human Capital, Loren M. Findlay

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note explores the legal and constitutional rights granted to corporations and highlights how these corporate benefits are often at the expense of individuals. Over the past century, the corporation has evolved, taking on human-like characteristics. While many statutes and the Constitution use the word “person,” courts have inconsistently interpreted the definition of “person” in determining when it expands to corporations. In courts’ ad hoc analysis and interpretation, individuals get the metaphorical short-end of the stick.

The First Amendment of the Constitution was interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to afford the right of free speech to corporations in the …

Redefining Immutability: A Door To The Ostracized, Adriana Domingo

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

The Promise Of Executive Order 11246: “Equality As A Fact And Equality As A Result”, Jane Farrell

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Conversations From Invisible Neighbors: Fighting The Stigma Of Homelessness In Chicago, Depaul Panel

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Cedaw Disapproves: The United States’ Treatment Of Transgender Women In Prisons, Victoria Harrison

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.