Courts Commons^™

Veiled Justice: Secularism And The Hijab Across Democracies, Mohamed ‘Arafa

Seattle University Law Review

For much of 2022, Iran was gripped by widespread protests led by women who openly challenged the regime’s authority, particularly its compulsory veiling laws, following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Women around the globe came around and showed solidarity with the women in Iran. However, in non-Islamic countries and societies, one can still make out many prejudices and stereotyping connected to the question of whether and to what extent veiling is mandatory for women according to Shārīe’ā law. Is wearing the hijab a choice, or rather, an essential religious practice that religious Muslim women need to obey? …

Rewriting The Playbook: The X’S And O’S Of The House Settlement And The Future Of Student-Athletes’ Voice In Their Compensation, Matthew K.V. Glazer

Seattle University Law Review

Since the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the 1900s, collegiate athletes (student-athletes) have been prohibited from using their own name, image and likeness (NIL) for profit. But on July 1, 2021, the NCAA changed course and began allowing student-athletes to profit from their own NIL. In the past few years, U.S. college athletics have undergone significant changes, most notably introducing monetary compensation for student-athletes’ NIL. While these changes were long overdue and ultimately beneficial, they have significantly disrupted the landscape of college sports, giving rise to numerous challenges that some experts have compared to the “Wild …

Mr. Trump Goes To Washington Part Ii: A Review Of Richard Delgado's 2025, Kevin Johnson

Seattle University Law Review

Richard Delgado’s The Rodrigo Chronicles have captivated a generation of law students and legal scholars.  Mapping the terrain of race, racism, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), the skillful, and long-running narrative series stands as a testament to Delgado’s dedication to justice for all.

The Rodrigo Chronicles are simply one of Delgado’s many intellectual contributions and part of an unparalleled scholarly legacy.  As one of the founders of CRT, he produced a landmark body of scholarship –authoring the field's primary text,  making the argument for the regulation of hate speech,  forcefully challenging the Black/white binary of civil rights that long dominated …

From Self-Representation To Smart Representation: How Ai & Self-Help Services Can Strengthen Pro Se Litigation, John W. Park

Journal of Law and Policy

The American legal system has long struggled with the gap between those who can afford counsel and those who cannot, leaving millions of pro se litigants to navigate complex civil proceedings alone and lose at staggering rates. Yet, over decades of incremental reform, existing self-help infrastructure has failed to keep pace with the growing pro se crisis or the rapid technological advancement that now gives represented parties an unprecedented advantage. Meanwhile, law firms and attorneys increasingly harness law firm tailored AI programs that are generally unavailable to the unrepresented litigant. This technological asymmetry has transformed an already significant capability gap …

The Court Of Small Things, The Curse Of Legal Superstition: The Precipitous Decline Of Small Claims Court, Why It Matters, And What Can Be Done About It, Telia Mary U. Williams

Nevada Law Journal

This Article addresses the precipitous decline of small claims courts in the United States and argues that their erosion is more than administrative; it is a democratic and constitutional crisis. Small claims courts were once the laboratories of everyday justice, where ordinary citizens could access law without lawyers, ritual, or mystery. The seemingly minor disputes of the small claims court illuminate the democratic soul of American law. Yet, over recent decades, filings have declined dramatically, and the locus of power has shifted from the poor to repeat-player institutional actors. This is in part due to what I call, “legal superstition,” …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Aggregation And The “Universal” Injunction, Portia Pedro, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we begin with a brief summary of the CASA decision’s holding regarding the availability of “universal” injunctions. Part II discusses the relationship between remedies and judicial review and the important role that such injunctions play in that regard. Part III explores how class actions could serve as an alternative path for federal courts, after engaging in judicial review, to make their decisions meaningful by requiring officials to comply with the law and to cease illegal actions or policies. We also respond to several objections to the use of class actions in this context. The final Part addresses …

Curbing Unsupported Claims In Mass Tort Litigation, Cary Silverman

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Early Returns Are In: A Review Of The First Two Years Of Amended Federal Rule Of Evidence 702, Mark Behrens, Lee Mickus, Christopher Appel

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

الإجتهاد اللبناني, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

الإجتهاد اللبناني, Poej

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

No abstract provided.

Open And Shut: Non-Removal Statutesand Door-Closing Penalties, Isaac Zwerling

Pepperdine Law Review

There is a longstanding tension in the Court’s treatment of non-removal statutes and door-closing penalties. On the one hand, the Court has held non-removal statutes—business registration statutes that condition a foreign corporation’s license on that corporation’s right to remove cases brought against it to federal court—pose an unconstitutional limit on federal court access. On the other, the Court has extended door-closing penalties statutes prohibiting unregistered foreign corporations from initiating an action in the forum state—to federal courts sitting in diversity. This Article surveys how the Court arrived at this puzzling result. It does so by analyzing each line of cases …

Judgment By The Record: How The Eleventh Circuit Is Shaping Retail Litigation And Regulation, Susan L. Shin, Aubrianna L. Mierow

University of Miami Law Review

The Eleventh Circuit’s 2025 term reinforced a disciplined, text-driven approach to statutory and contractual interpretation and a firm demand for proof: the court vacated an FCC rule that restricted consent beyond what the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) provides. It rejected a constitutional challenge to adjudication by the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer (OCAHO) while emphasizing the Attorney General’s supervisory role. It required plaintiffs alleging deception through promotional content to identify the specific communication at issue. It denied standing for credit file inaccuracies absent dissemination or real-world effect. It interpreted standard limitation clauses to preserve direct damages under …

The Quiet Revival Of The Effective Vindication Of Rights Doctrine, Myriam Gilles

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in American Express v. Italian Colors Restaurantwas widely seen as the death knell for the “effective vindication of rights” doctrine—a judicially created rule that arbitration agreements are enforceable only “so long as the prospective litigant effectively may vindicate its statutory cause of action in the arbitral forum.” By upholding a class action–banning arbitration provision that rendered arbitration economically irrational, Italian Colors appeared to extinguish any meaningful limits on the enforcement of arbitration agreements.

But reports of the doctrine’s demise were premature. This Article uncovers how, in the decade since Italian Colors, lower …

Foreign Judgments In U.S. Courts, Yanbai Andrea Wang

Fordham Law Review

American law on foreign judgments is at an inflection point. For over a century, the doctrine has been shaped by concerns about outgoing U.S. judgments seeking asset collection in the civil law countries of continental Europe. But shifting trade flows and changing litigation tactics have carved a new landscape, demanding a return to foreign judgments law’s conceptual and doctrinal underpinnings. This Article first maps the new landscape, in which China is rapidly rising as a foremost foreign judgments interlocutor. Meanwhile, litigants are increasingly pursuing parallel litigation in multiple countries. The impact of incoming judgments and the interactions between related litigations …

قراءة تحليلية نقدية لمقتضيات المادة ٢٣٥ من قانون الإجراءات المدنية الملغاة ولمقتضيات المادة ٨٥ من اللائحة التنظيمية من قانون الإجراءات المدنية الاتحادي, خالد زاهر

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

This paper addresses one of the conditions for the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgements in the United Arab Emirates, namely verifying the jurisdiction of the foreign court that issued the judgment. In this regard, the UAE Civil Transactions Code provides that the Emirati enforcement judge cannot order the enforcement of a foreign judgment before verifying that the Emirati courts do not enjoy exclusive jurisdiction over the dispute that had led to the issuance of the judgment or the order, and that the foreign court that issued the judgment or the order enjoys jurisdiction under the international jurisdiction rules laid …

عقد الايجار التجاري في زمن الوباء: النزاعات والعوامل المؤثرة في الاحكام, ميساء نصر

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

The courts of Dubai faced many disputes resulting from the pandemic and its repercussions, and the Dubai Rental Dispute Settlement Center played a key role in ruling on requests to terminate commercial lease contracts or reduce rent. This study aims at inferring the factors that have affected the decisions of the Center’s committees, reaching the following conclusions. On the one hand, the main factor to determine whether a specific damage was caused by the epidemic or not is the extent to which the commercial activity is connected to customers. On the other hand, the committees have issued diverse decisions with …

الدفع بعدم الإختصاص في قانون الإجراءات المدنية الإماراتي, أحمد حجال

Proche-Orient, Études juridiques

This study addresses the procedural regime of the objection to jurisdiction, which is one of the procedural defenses that raise in the UAE law the issue of the applicable procedural rules. Before which courts and at what stage of the litigation this defense can be raised, and who is the party entitled to raise it? May or should the court raise it proprio motu? Did the Emirati law adopt the traditional categorization of objections to jurisdiction, that is founded on the jurisdiction rules as such? The rules of absolute jurisdiction are the ones whose violation results in a lack …

Racial Bias In Jury Selection: The Fundamental And Pragmatic Issues With Batson Challenges, Abigail Lindsey

Arkansas Law Review

In April of 2024, the District Attorney of Alameda County in California revealed evidence of “serious misconduct” by several prosecutors who oversaw a murder trial in 1993, in which the jury found a Black man guilty and sentenced him to death. The evidence of misconduct included the prosecutors’ trial notes. The notes that have been released suggest the prosecutors struck potential jurors from the jury pool because they were Jewish—the notes include: “I liked him better than any other Jew but no way.” The District Attorney is now looking into the county’s other death penalty cases, some of which took …

The Ex Parte Young Cause Of Action: A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery, Inside An Enigma, Andrew S. Oldham, Adam I. Steene, John W. Tienken

Northwestern University Law Review

Ex parte Young ushered in a new era of the American judicial system. Most famously, the decision allowed plaintiffs, in certain circumstances, to sue state officials without having to worry about sovereign immunity. Young’s other holding, though perhaps lesser known, is no less important: individuals, the Supreme Court held, have an equitable cause of action to sue government officials for injunctive relief.

Even today, that second holding remains something of a riddle. Did this cause of action always exist in American law? Or was it an invention of the Young Court? And, at any rate, does the Ex parte …

“Conditional” Class Certification Under The Flsa: Violation Of Rule 23 And The Rules Enabling Act, Markham R. Leventhal

University of Miami Law Review

So-called “collective” actions under § 216(b) of the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”) are nothing more than “opt-in” class actions. This Article exposes the unjustifiable failure to apply Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to these actions, the erroneous conclusion by several circuit courts that these actions are not “representative” actions but rather some kind of “mass joinder,” and the resulting violation of the Rules Enabling Act when courts allow these “collective” actions to proceed without satisfying the requirements of Rules 23(a) and (b). The author explains why the vast majority of federal courts, using an …

The Hidden Power Of Citizenship: Political Identity In The Twilight Zone Of Equal Protection, Charles J. Anderson

Indiana Law Journal

More than half a century ago, in the landmark case of Graham v. Richardson, the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits state-level blanket exclusions of noncitizens. That case ushered in a new rule: State classifications based on alienage are “inherently suspect” and subject to strict scrutiny. But Graham’s rule has a major exception. Just a few years after Graham was decided, the Court upheld several state laws excluding noncitizens from working as police officers, public school teachers, and probation officers. So was created what would later be termed “political function” doctrine. …

The Vanishing Enforcer: Consumer Protection In An Era Of Dual Retrenchment, Alisher Juzgenbayev

Northwestern University Law Review

Recent developments, including reductions in the federal workforce, effective suspension of certain enforcement activities, and attempted centralization of independent agency rulemaking in the White House, have significantly weakened administrative agencies. This administrative retrenchment is concerning as private enforcement of a number of consumer protection statutes has been simultaneously curtailed through the Supreme Court’s decisions in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins and TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, which dramatically narrowed plaintiffs’ standing. These decisions rely in part on a vision of strong executive authority, positing that broad private standing conflicts with an Article II framework where a politically accountable President faithfully implements laws …

Vegas Aqua, Llc Vs. Jupitor Corp., 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 21 (Mar. 05, 2026), Miranda Romero

Nevada Supreme Court Summaries

The plain language of Nevada Short Trial Rules (NSTR) Rule 3(d) requires a district court judge to adjudicate objections to proposed judgments rather than a short trial judge, and public policy requires adjudication of any proposed NRCP 59 motions.

All The King’S Lawyers, Rebecca Aviel

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Standing In The Shadows: Member Anonymity In Associational Standing Cases, Mitchell Brost

Pepperdine Law Review

Associational standing serves several benefits for plaintiff members: associations often have expertise in a certain field that guides the representation of their members, they have greater resources that allow them to bring lawsuits in the first place, and they can serve as the public face of the lawsuit to shield the plaintiff member from serious retaliation that may result from bringing the claim. But due to some imprecise language in Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Summers v. Earth Island Institute, circuit courts are divided over whether associational members can remain anonymous at all. Thus, individuals who have legitimate legal claims, …

Jealously Guarded: The Right To Trial By Jury In Federal Court Under California’S Unruh Civil Rights Act, Denis Bogatin

Pepperdine Law Review

Since California adopted heightened pleading standards for high-frequency litigants alleging violations of the Unruh Act in state court, federal district courts have seen a surge of ADA and Unruh Act claims filed together to secure subject matter jurisdiction. Most courts dismissed the Unruh claims under their discretionary authority under 28 U.S.C. § 1367, but they remained divided on whether plaintiffs in these cases have a right to jury trial—statutory or constitutional. In 2025, the Ninth Circuit resolved part of the split in In re Tsay, holding that the Unruh Act provides a constitutional right to a jury trial because it …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …