Contracts Commons^™

Cisg (2025 Survey), Wayne R. Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

This survey article discusses cases during the prior year, which are decided based on one or more provisions of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG). The CISG is a United Nations treaty that provides a uniform international sales law. It was adopted in Vienna in 1980 and went into effect in 1988. The CISG governs contracts for the international sale of goods between businesses located in different countries that have ratified the treaty. It has been adopted by 95+ countries, including major trading nations like the United States, China, and most European countries. …

Swiping Rights: Hidden Costs Of Hidden Laws, Rachel Landy

Articles

While many legal regimes have undergone fundamental shifts to account for the online economy, one lags behind: industry-specific mandatory contract rules. These rules, frequently buried in decades-old, nonintuitive statutes, are often overly prescriptive and come with draconian penalties, hampering the goals of entrepreneurship and impeding startup growth.

Much has been written about the intersection of regulation and entrepreneurship. But sparse attention has been paid to the unintended consequences on early-stage companies of more subtle regulatory interventions like contract rules — especially those with inconsistent or conflicting requirements among the states. This Article begins to fill that gap and uses as …

Living Property, Joseph William Singer

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court has increasingly defined property rights that are per se exempt from regulation in the absence of compensation, most recently in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid (2021) and Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023). The Court claims that it can identify property rights that are categorically protected from regulation by reference to history, tradition, and precedent. Yet this approach is oddly ahistorical; it is inconsistent with the fact that property law changed dramatically over U.S. history, as well as varying tremendously among the states. It is also inconsistent with the historical context of the Founding era. At that time, …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Roots Of Credit Inequality, Andrea Freeman

Seattle University Law Review

Debt oppression began before the United States became a country. Settlers enslaved Africans and Indigenous people, treating them as property that they could buy and sell for their economic and personal benefit. When enslavement became illegal, new economic systems and laws that included sharecropping, Black Codes, and Jim Crow kept Black people in servitude. Laws that prohibited enslaved people from owning property or selling goods to white people evolved into restrictions on Black people’s occupations and market participation, both formal and informal. When Black entrepreneurs overcame these obstacles and built wealth within Black business enclaves, white people enforced their racist …

“A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Seattle University Law Review

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Mandating Fluoride: A Constitutional Exercise Of Police Power, Anita Jahangiri

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses the ongoing debate over fluoridation: the regulation of fluoride levels in public water systems. Extensive research indicates fluoridation, when regulated at the recommended concentration, is both safe and highly effective in preventing dental caries. Better known as cavities, dental caries is a preventable yet widespread health issue that disproportionately affects low-income populations. Reducing dental health disparities among economic classes is a pressing public health issue. Fluoridation is not merely a policy option, but a critical, proven tool to address such disparities and uphold the collective welfare of Washingtonians. This Note focuses on fluoridation as a public health …

Neurodiversity In The Courtroom: Expanding Jury Service Accessibility Beyond Physical Disability, Samantha L. Mabe

Seattle University Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act has required equal access to jury service for decades; however, efforts to accommodate jurors with disabilities have been slow to develop beyond some minor accommodations for physical disabilities. While neurodivergent people frequently struggle to navigate a world catered toward neurotypical people, jury service remains inaccessible for many neurodivergent people who need accommodations to attend trial and engage in jury deliberations. If courts and advocates do not consider how to develop accommodations to secure the service of neurodivergent jurors, they will miss out on the unique skillsets that neurodivergent people can bring to resolving disputes.

Disabled …

Redefining Section 230 Immunity, Lucas Dini

Seattle University Law Review

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has provided broad immunity to online platforms for third-party content which was the foundation for the internet's growth. However, the rise in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce algorithms to curate content to users of online services has blurred the line between being a passive host of third party content and active editorial control. This Note examines the legal, policy, and constitutional implications of applying Section 230 immunity to platforms that use AI to curate and promote third-party content. This analysis argues that algorithmic promotion of third-party content constitutes a platform's …

Overcrowding The System: Rethinking Juvenile Justice In Washington State, Mckenna White

Seattle University Law Review

The recent crisis at Green Hill School highlights the detrimental consequences of severe overcrowding in Washington State’s Juvenile Rehabilitation system—a problem exacerbated by the implementation of the JR to 25 legislation. This Note argues that the juvenile rehabilitation system, which is currently struggling to manage a wide age range of offenders, necessitates a fundamental rethinking of juvenile justice practices. By examining neurological research indicating continued brain development into the mid-twenties, along with the high prevalence of trauma among justice-involved youth, this Note proposes the creation of a dedicated third system of care within the Department of Children, Youth, and Families …

Addressing The Root Of Housing Insecurity: Washington Should Divest From “Crime-Free” Housing Programs, Sarah Cerdena

Seattle University Law Review

Crime-Free Rental Housing Properties (CFRHPs) have proven to be an ineffective and inequitable approach to public safety. Often, tenants in these properties are evicted—at times, extrajudicially—as a result of conduct that does not rise to violations of their lease provisions, much less criminal behavior. By placing extraordinary power in the hands of local law enforcement to carry out these ordinances, CFRHPs predictably pose significant harm to Black and Latinx communities, survivors of domestic violence, disabled tenants, and low-income tenants generally. Recently, the Washington State Supreme Court grappled with the tensions arising between CFRHPs and the enforcement of Washington landlord-tenant law. …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Esg Investing Breaches Erisa Fiduciary Duties? A Closer Look At Spence V. American Airlines, Inc., Eric Chin-Ru Chang

Seattle University Law Review

In Spence v. American Airlines, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found that American Airlines breached its fiduciary duties due to BlackRock’s ESG investing practices. Contrary to some reports suggesting that the ruling prohibits ESG investing under ERISA, a closer look at the ruling shows that the court only targeted American Airlines’ failure to manage conflicts of interest appropriately, rather than the legality of ESG investing itself. In light of the intensifying ESG backlash in the United States, this Article cautions against further restrictive measures on ESG investing. Such measures would exacerbate the widening …

Promising The First Amendment: (De)Regulating Speech In Higher Education, Max M. Schanzenbach, Kimberly A. Yuracko

Northwestern University Law Review

The war between Hamas and Israel has caused havoc in higher education. Amid student unrest, alumni pressure, congressional hearings, civil rights investigations, and student lawsuits, universities stand at a crossroads. The current situation, in which most private universities unevenly regulate student speech under ambiguous student codes, is not sustainable politically or legally. A tsunami of litigation and regulatory actions has already begun. One increasingly favored response is for private universities to more vigorously enforce existing codes or expand their scope. An alternative is for private universities to deregulate student expression and commit by contract to the First Amendment. This Article …

Reclaiming Sound: Copyright Restoration As Cultural And Economic Justice For Black Musicians, James Roberts Jr.

Senior Theses

This paper examines copyright restoration as both a legal mechanism and a form of cultural reparations for Black musicians historically excluded from ownership and profit in the American music industry. It traces the evolution of U.S. copyright law from its earliest forms to the Music Modernization Act of 2018, highlighting how shifting statutory frameworks have gradually extended protection and restoration rights to artists who were once denied them. The analysis situates this legal trajectory within a broader history of racialized exploitation in the recording industry, where inequitable contracts and systemic power imbalances functioned as modern forms of artistic sharecropping. Through …

Drive-By Mediation And Other Opportunistic Distortions Of Process, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Many states in the United States, along with many nations, have implemented special benefits and privileges to encourage parties’ use of mediation to assist their communication, negotiation, and ultimate resolution of disputes. This is despite how loosely mediation is defined. This Article discusses how vague definitions, paired with special benefits and privileges, are incentivizing both the opportunistic distortion of mediation and the use of mediation for improper purposes. In Texas, for example, judges are extraordinarily limited in their ability to disapprove parents’ mediated child custody agreements—even if there is reason to worry that an agreement is contrary to the best …

Agentizing Privacy Preferences Without Privatizing Data Protection Policy, Frank Pasquale, Vanna Carter

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This essay explores how consumers might exercise newly restored agency in a digital environment increasingly shaped by generative AI. Rather than expecting consumers to read privacy-related terms of service, policymakers should encourage the emergence of Automated Consumer Agents (“ACAs”) capable of interpreting privacy provisions and acting on behalf of users according to their stated preferences. These systems could automatically reject objectionable forms of data extraction, translating consumer values into actionable decisions in online transactions.

Despite this promise, the rise of ACAs would also present new problems. Without supportive policy and legal frameworks, agentization of privacy preferences could itself reproduce or …

Dual-Class Contracting--A Response To Roberto Tallarita, Brian Broughman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Roberto Tallarita's Dual-Class Contracting confronts a question that scholars and policymakers have largely overlooked: once a firm opts out of "one-share, one-vote," how does it determine the degree and duration of voting inequality? This is not a binary choice between single- and dual-class structures, but a continuum with infinitely many possible configurations. To investigate this question, Tallarita assembled a dataset of 293 corporate charters from dual-class IPOs completed between 1996 and 2022. Despite the wide lati- tude finms have to tailor these arrangements, he finds that most converge on strikingly similar terms-granting holders of high-vote stock majority control with just …

The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

The survey that follows highlights the most important developments of 2024 dealing with domestic and international sales of goods, personal property leases, payments, letters of credit, documents of title, investment securities, and secured transactions. Along with the usual descriptions of interesting judicial decisions highlighted in the survey, there has also been legislative progress. The 2022 Amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code ("U.C.C.") (the "2022 Amendments")' have been adopted in thirty-one states plus the District of Colombia and introduced in six states.

Better Digital Contracts With Prosocial Friction-In-Design, Brett Frischmann, Moshe Y. Vardi

Faculty Publications

Contract law is supposed to enable people to reach genuine agreements and cooperate. If this ideal was ever a reality, the rise of mass market contracts and boil­erplate rendered it pure fiction. Modern consumer contracts are incomprehensible to most people. No one reads them anyway.

Digital contracting involves design features that amplify traditional boilerplate harms and create others. For example, digital contracting is too cheap; low marginal costs lead to overexpansion in scale and scope. To make matters worse, the loss of autonomy from repeat engagement with digital contracting systems is pernicious. People become increasingly predictable and programmable as digital …

The Enforceability Of Adult Film Employment Contracts And Their Impact On The Predatory Nature Of And Unethical Practices Within The Adult Film Industry, Taylor Allen

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

No abstract provided.

Keabsahan Pemberian Kuasa Pendebetan Dan Pemblokiran Sebagai Jaminan Dalam Suatu Perjanjian Kredit (Studi Putusan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 587k/Pdt.Sus-Bpsk/2021), Reyvia Fitri

Indonesian Notary

This thesis analyzes the validity for granting a power of attorney in a credit agreement and to which court has the authority to adjudicate disputes arising from the validity of such granting of power of attorney. This article was prepared using doctrinal methods with secondary data originating from the Civil Code and other related regulations. Today's urgent need for credit encourages people to enter into credit agreements without fully understanding the contents of the agreement they are entering. In practice, the contents of the credit agreement contain a clause granting authority to debit and block the customer's account to ensure …

Tanggung Jawab Notaris Atas Keabsahan Pelaksanaan Rupslb Dan Akta Hibah Saham Yang Bertentangan Dengan Anggaran Dasar Perseroan Terbatas (Studi Putusan Pengadilan Negeri Padang Nomor 10/Pdt.G.S/2023/Pn Pdg), Aqilah Nurshafira Anwar

Indonesian Notary

This thesis examines the validity of the Extraordinary General Meeting and the creation of the share gift deed that does not comply with the Articles of Association, based on the UUPT and UUJN. This thesis also examines Notary's liability for creating the share gift deed in violation of the law, as Padang District Court Decision No. 10/Pdt.G.S/2023/PN Pdg. This research uses doctrinal methodology with qualitative analysis. The results show that the RUPSLB decision of PT INT, remains valid despite procedural disrepancies in the meeting invitation, as all shareholders attended and approved the decision, as per Article 82(5) UUPT. However, …

Pendaftaran Akta Wasiat Untuk Pelindungan Terhadap Penerima Wasiat Dan Pihak Ketiga (Studi Putusan Pengadilan Negeri Denpasar Nomor 218/Pdt.G/2021/Pn Dps), Arde Nauval Sulistyo

Indonesian Notary

A person can state his will after he dies in an authentic deed, namely a Will Deed. Furthermore, the Will Deed must be registered with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights (Kemenkumham). The case of not registering a Will Deed which ultimately gave rise to a dispute can be found in the Denpasar District Court Decision Number 218/Pdt.G/PN Dps. The problem raised in this study is about the legal consequences of a Will Deed that is not registered with the Ministry of Law and Human Rights. In addition, the judge's considerations in his decision to fulfill justice and legal …

Kedudukan Ahli Waris Sebagaimana Surat Keterangan Hak Mewaris Yang Dibuat Pasca Terjadinya Pelanggaran Hak Cipta (Studi Putusan Nomor 35/Pdt.Sus-Hak Cipta/2020/Pn Niaga Jkt.Pst), Mirza Alvina Maharani

Indonesian Notary

This thesis examines the status of copyright as an inheritable asset recognized under Indonesian law, as well as the legal standing of heirs based on a Certificate of Inheritance (Surat Keterangan Hak Mewaris or SKHM) issued after a copyright infringement has occurred, as reflected in Decision No. 35/Pdt.Sus-Hak Cipta/2020/PN Niaga Jkt.Pst. This research employs a doctrinal legal method, supported by expert interviews. In the case under study, it was found that although inheritance under civil law occurs automatically upon the death of the copyright holder, the transfer of copyright requires written evidence and official registration with the Directorate General of …

Peranan Majelis Pengawas Daerah Kota Depok Dalam Menghadapi Permasalahan Pelanggaran Jabatan Notaris Di Kota Depok, Gabriella Tiku Sarungu

Indonesian Notary

The Regional Supervisory Council (MPD) functions to oversee and provide guidance on the Notary profession. The role of MPD is crucial in minimizing violations related to the Notary profession, particularly in Depok City. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the role of MPD in addressing violations of the Notary profession in Depok City, based on applicable regulations, as well as the implications of handling various types of violation reports submitted by the public on the performance of MPD in Depok City. This study uses a non-doctrinal method with qualitative empirical data, gathered through interviews and supported by secondary data. The …

Akibat Hukum Akta Penegasan Notaris Yang Memuat Perjanjian Pinjam Nama (Nominee) Benda Bergerak (Studi Putusan Nomor 5/Pdt.G/2022/Pn Stb Jo. Putusan 612/Pdt/2022/Pt Mdn), Andasmara Rizky Pranata

Indonesian Notary

In practice, the existence of nominee agreements often raises debates about their validity and legal protection for the parties involved, so nominee agreements should not be used carelessly and notaries play an important role in drafting these agreements. The purpose of this study is to analyze the validity of the deed confirming the agreement to borrow a name made by a Notary and to find out the role and responsibilities of a notary in confirming the agreement to borrow a name (nominee) related to movable property that is detrimental to the parties in the decision of Decision Number 5/Pdt.G/2022/PN Stb …

Kewenangan Dan Tanggung Jawab Notaris Berkaitan Dengan Bukti-Bukti Yang Diserahkan Para Pihak Untuk Pelaksanaan Surat Perjanjian Bersama (Studi Kasus Putusan Pengadilan Negeri Medan Nomor 693/Pdt.G/2021/Pn Mdn), Moudy Khanza

Indonesian Notary

This article analyzes the authority and responsibilities of a notary in matters relating to the evidence submitted by the parties for the implementation of the joint agreement (Case Study of Medan District Court Decision Number 693/Pdt.G/2021/PN Mdn). The problem formulated is firstly regarding the notary’s authority to store files relating to the deed, and secondly, the notary’s responsibilities are related to storing files for the implementation of the collective agreement related to Medan District Court decision Number 693/Pdt.G/2021/PN Mdn, where the agreement contains a joint agreement between party A and party W regarding the issue of reporting land disputes at …

Bernard Parks, Jr. V. Kelly King, Order On Motion To Dismiss Appeal, John J. Goger

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.

Delta Air Lines, Inc., V. Crowdstrike, Inc., Order On Motion To Compel, Kelly L. Ellerbe

Superior Court of Fulton County: Metro Atlanta Business Case Division Opinions

No abstract provided.