Communications Law Commons^™

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

Targeting Children: Liability For Algorithmic Recommendations, Michal Lavi

American University Law Review

We live in the algorithmic society, characterized by massive digital surveillance and data collection by private companies exploiting human information vulnerabilities for profit. The infrastructure of free expression translates into an infrastructure of digital surveillance. This model, dubbed “surveillance capitalism,” includes massive personalized algorithmic targeting that departs from human speakers, allowing a level of influence never witnessed before in scale, scope, or depth.

Personalized targeting can garner many benefits, as it allows individuals to find content that interests them without needing to invest energy in seeking out that content. However, personalized targeting can also cause tremendous harm because it can …

Blacklisting Or Banning Technologies That Scare Us: Ai, Cryptocurrencies, And More, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Hadar Yoana Jabotinsky

American University Law Review

Policymakers often play a critical role in regulating the use and advancement of technology. Their decisions can have significant positive impacts on the development, adoption, and use of various technologies, but also negative ones if they decide to limit or even block a certain technology. Italy’s temporary banning of the Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) platform ChatGPT, much like New York City’s Department of Education, demonstrates administrations’ and policymakers’ reliance on blacklisting and banning.

Blacklisting and banning are often used interchangeably. Nevertheless, in the context of regulation, the terms are different and used for different purposes, and it is key to …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

Balancing Interests: Ai, Business & Human Rights, And The Legal Landscape In An Era Of Disruption, Jena Martin, Ritu Narula

Faculty Articles

On October 30, 2023, the Biden Administration issued a sweeping executive order espousing a policy to advance the development and use of artificial intelligence ("Al") while also establishing safeguards across the federal government. The Executive Order marked the U.S. government's largest move forward related to the regulation of Al. The Order also represents the government's latest effort to advance equity, privacy, and national security in the use of AI systems. Moreover, the Order comes at a time when governments around the world are wrestling with the impact of AI and its disruptive effect, not just on markets, but on society …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Artificial Intelligence Is Like A Perpetual Stew, Nathan Reitinger

American University Law Review

Artificial intelligence is inescapable. It is in our phones, fridges, and most of the businesses we engage with use it to “improve” their services. From deciding on what YouTube video to watch next to driving vehicles or firing weapons, artificial intelligence is a linchpin in our society. But what is artificial intelligence? And, more importantly, why does that matter? It matters because we are currently unprepared to deal with the paradigm-shifting legal issues brought about by artificial intelligence. And without this understanding, we are nearly certainly going to make mistakes. The bright side is that artificial intelligence is not complicated. …

The Battle Between Open Markets And National Security: How Limiting Investments Into Foreign Technology Might Be Hurting National Security Goals, Alexandra Van Cleef

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Breaking Algorithmic Immunity: Why Section 230 Immunity May Not Extend To Recommendation Algorithms, Max Del Real

Washington Law Review Online

In the mid-1990s, internet experiences were underwhelming by today’s standards, despite the breakthrough technologies at their core. When a person logged on to the internet, they were met with a static experience. No matter who you were, where you were, or how you accessed a particular website, it rendered a consistent page. Today, internet experiences are personalized, dynamic, and vast—a far cry from the digital landscape of just a few decades ago. While today’s internet is unrecognizable compared with its early predecessors, many of its governing laws remain materially unaltered. In particular, section 230 of the Communications Act, which passed …

American Star Chamber: Online Misinformation, Government Intervention, And The Intellectual Matrix Of The First Amendment, Emily E. Burton

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Just as monarchs and clerical authorities struggled to respond to seditious and heretical writings enabled by the invention of the printing press, twenty-first century governments are experiencing a similar information revolution as a result of the digital age and a rising tide of what the United States has labeled online misinformation. Like the printing press, the Internet has enabled the spread of information at an exponentially lower cost and an exponentially higher speed as it extends the ability to publish thoughts and opinions to an increasingly diverse array of individuals. Although this was largely celebrated during the first two decades …

Section 230'S Debts, Blake Reid

Publications

Much attention has been paid to the unknown First Amendment permissibility of the government regulating social media platforms' carriage practices. The Supreme Court's impending resolution of the NetChoice cases poses a high-stakes First Amendment question: "Can the government permissibly dictate what types of content platforms publish?"

But how did the First Amendment stakes in NetChoice get so high? This Article identifies a long-standing gap in the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence for platform regulation following its decision in Reno v. ACLU. This Article attributes that gap to the accumulation of both interpretive and legislative debts by Section 230 of the …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.

Overseeing The Administrative State, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has reduced the regulatory power of the Administrative State. Pending cases offer vehicles for the Court to go still further. Although the Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies may be rooted in Constitutional principles or political expediency, this Article explores another possible explanation—a shift in the nature of agencies and their regulatory role. As Pritchard and Thompson detail in their important book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was initially skeptical of agency power, jeopardizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s ambitious New Deal plan. The Court’s acceptance …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Always A Suspect: Law Enforcement's Violative Use Of Geofence Warrants And Geolocation Data In Criminal Investigations And Proceedings, Aaron A. Bengart

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note argues that geofence warrants, used by law enforcement to obtain location data from tech companies, pose significant Fourth Amendment concerns. It advocates for U.S. legislation similar to the U.K.'s to balance privacy rights with law enforcement needs, emphasizing the need for checks to prevent abuse and protect citizens from unreasonable searches.

Deceptive By Nature: A Model For Regulating Native And Embedded Advertising In The Contexts Of Children's Audiences, Zach Cihlar

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

The note advocates for enhanced regulatory measures to protect children from deceptive native and embedded advertising in digital media. It emphasizes the need for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to expand its regulatory framework to classify such advertising as deceptive, leveraging existing laws like the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The proposed model suggests a combination of stricter regulations, parental involvement through technology, and strengthened self-regulatory mechanisms to address the challenges posed by modern advertising formats.

Bias Notification Duty, Eldar Haber, Shai Stern

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

Algorithms are often tainted with bias that could negatively affect subjects' lives in many aspects. But while policymakers and scholars tend to focus their attention on methods to fix the bias within the algorithm or its output, they neglect a crucial piece of the puzzle: when companies discover bias and fix it in the algorithmic output, they do so behind the scenes. While such a move might debias the output, society remains in the dark about its existence or how it might have affected the outcome. Society thus misses a unique opportunity to study social and cognitive biases that shape …

Truth Bounties: A Market Solution To Fake News, Yonathan A. Arbel, Michael D. Gilbert

Articles

False information poses a threat to individuals, groups, and society. Many people struggle to judge the veracity of the information around them, whether that information travels through newspapers, talk radio, TV, or social media. Concerned with the spread of misinformation and harmful falsehoods, much of the policy, popular, and scholarly conversation today revolves around proposals to expand the regulation of individuals, platforms, and the media. While more regulation may seem inevitable, it faces constitutional and political hurdles. Furthermore, regulation can have undesirable side effects and be ripe for abuse by powerful actors, public and private.

This Article presents an alternative …

Uncommon Carriage, Blake Reid

Publications

As states have begun regulating the carriage of speech by “Big Tech” internet platforms, scholars, advocates, and policymakers have increasingly focused their attention on the law of common carriage. Legislators have invoked common carriage to defend social media regulations against First Amendment challenges, making arguments set to take center stage in the Supreme Court’s impending consideration of the NetChoice saga.

This Article challenges the coherence of common carriage as a field and its utility for assessing the constitutionality and policy wisdom of internet regulation. Evaluating the post-Civil War history of common carriage regimes in telecommunications law, this Article illustrates that …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

Race, Disability, And Section 230, Blake Reid

Publications

No abstract provided.

Protecting The Innocent: How To Prevent The Consequences Of Misidentification And Doxing By Volunteers Helping With Open Source Investigations, Leigh M. Dannhauser

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Individuals performing open source investigations can misidentify alleged perpetrators and dox innocent parties online, which can subsequently lead to threats and harassment against innocent parties and their loved ones. For example, threats were made against Sunil Tripathi’s family after he was wrongly identified as one of the Boston Marathon bombers and doxed on Reddit and Twitter. In 2020, the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations was published as a guide, and it includes a set of principles to govern open source investigations. However, the Berkeley Protocol is limited to open source investigations performed by those working for organizations. It …

Individualized Ideological Enclosures: The Generative Ai Crisis And How Consumers Can Reclaim Their Feeds, Sydney Rose

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

The Warrant Impact Study: Evaluating The Effects Of Bench Warrants On Individuals And Communities, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.