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Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Civil Appeals Mediation Program 2023 Mediation Colloquy "Thinking 101" And Mediation

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino

Seattle University Law Review

U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner

Seattle University Law Review

Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Italian Comparative: A Trait Of The Legal System, Bianca Gardella Tedeschi

FIU Law Review

The cultural environment of Italian academia was open to suggestions that came from other legal systems and shaped an eclectic legal culture. Italy is an hybrid system that took the code from France, the legal science from Germany, and has always been receptive of foreign suggestions. This cultural background may explain why the Italian legal curriculum requires a mandatory course of comparative law and why comparative law has been an important field of Italian legal research. At the same time, comparative law was characterized by an an important mark of antiformalism, necessary to swim through the times of Fascism and …

Putin Skirts The Icc: The Invasion Of Ukraine And The Symbolic Power Of International Law, Corbin Gregg

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Much can be said about the role of international law in shaping the behavior of states and leaders. Often maligned, international organizations face criticism from those who wish to see them do more: punish human rights violations, sanction aggressive state actors, and prevent wars of aggression. While these are overall purported goals of international organizations, the way they attempt to effectuate change is sometimes unclear. Nowhere is this more true than the way the international organizations have reacted to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on December 26, …

Testing The Boundaries Of Torture: Forced Circumcision As A Crime Against Humanity, Marina Coriale

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has history that extends across countless cultures and regions, impacting women and girls around the world still searching for redress and reparations. Knowing this, the international community should understand the necessity of providing a space for FGM survivors in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on December 4, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button above.

A Comparative Analysis Of The Animal Protection Laws In The United States And Switzerland, Kelly Ziyu Xia

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” This statement underlines the significance of how a society cares for those under its dominion, particularly those who are defenseless. Animal welfare laws vary widely across the globe, reflecting the diverse approaches taken by different countries to protect the interests of animals. While the United States has made commendable strides, the current legal framework for animal protection remains inadequate. Both Switzerland and the United States have federal laws that aim to protect animal welfare, but …

Applicants Beware: Chinese Trademark Fraud Is Rampant, And It Is Affecting U.S. Trademarks, Lily Barash

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

If you are looking to file a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), you should raise your vigilance. When the COVID-19 pandemic sent people in the United States into emergency lockdown, brick and mortar businesses closed their doors and people started opening their minds. People found new, and more, ways to be creative and e-commerce began to boom. With budding ideas, creators and companies recognized the imperativeness of protecting their intellectual property. The USPTO announced that as of June 17, 2021, it had experienced an increase of roughly 63% in trademark applications filed over the …

Out Of The Shadows: The Need For Increased Scrutiny Of Shadow Banking In China, Benson M. Clements

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Zhongrong International Trust Co., a Chinese investment trust with significant real estate exposure, has missed payments on dozens of corporate trust products since late July. Retail investors are left with frustration and panic as they fear they may have lost their life savings. Regulators are concerned they may have to further tame an already faltering economy. It may be time to question the free reign with which shadow banks have enjoyed for decades.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on November 14, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link …

Writer V. Big Pharma: How John Green, Author And Youtuber, Fought The Evergreening Of A Drug Patent, Rachel Bier

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Tuberculosis (TB), an illness caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is the deadliest disease in human history. In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists developed several drugs that could treat TB. These developments meant that TB became a curable disease. However, TB remains a terrible epidemic in poor communities around the world. About 4,000 people die from TB every day, with over eighty percent of those deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on November 9, 2023. The original post can be accessed via the Archived Link button …

Higher Wages In A High Inflation World: What The United States Can Learn From Icelandic Unionization, Jack Berroug

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

Since March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire world, inflation has slowly been on the rise. OECD countries across the globe immediately felt the effects of inflation and despite the increase in wages amongst workers globally, inflation outpaced nominal wage growth for many countries. Over the past couple years, many of the capitalist OECD countries have dealt with inflation in various ways with varying degrees of success. One capitalist country in particular has kept up with real wage growth despite inflation: Iceland. Iceland is the most unionized country in the world with 90 percent of its workplace …

From Maritime Pushbacks To Naval Blockade: How Europe Is Drowning In Legal Pitfalls, Martine Bjørnstad

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review (CICLR) Blog

As if haunted by the past, the headlines are once again filled with cautionary tales of Europe’s unsecure borders and looming migration crisis. The arrival of 11,000 migrants on the Italian island of Lampedusa in early September, amidst deadlocked negotiations over the European Union’s New Pact on Migration and Asylum, has again sparked debate in Europe about how to tackle illegal immigration from North Africa. The proposed solution that has perhaps drawn the most attention is that of a naval blockade.

This post was originally published on the Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review on October 25, 2023. The original …

Law’S Sexual Infections, Kyle Kirkup

Dalhousie Law Journal

In 2019, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights published its study on the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canada. The report recommended removing HIV non-disclosure from sexual assault laws in Canada. This constituted a welcome development for many HIV advocates. Yet other recommendations proved more controversial. In order to counter the exceptional targeting of HIV, the Committee proposed an offence for the non disclosure of all infectious diseases. This article uses the proposal to develop three arguments. First, the idea of creating an offence for all infectious diseases finds its origins in criminal laws dating …

Mixing Mathematics And Morality: Precarity And Moral Hazard In Employment Insurance And Personal Insolvency Law, Anna J. Lund

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article examines how financially precarious Canadians face particular challenges to accessing the benefits of employment insurance and personal insolvency because these two systems include features designed to guard against moral hazard. However, these design features do not adequately account for how an increasing number of Canadians are precariously employed and precariously indebted. This article synthesizes the research on precarious employment in Canada, and uses it to suggest how one might conceptualize precarious indebtedness. It then traces how the Canadian employment insurance and personal insolvency systems treat characteristics of financial precarity as evidence of misconduct. As a result, precariously employed …