Courts Commons^™

Reel It In: Untangling The Circuit Split On The Constitutionality Of Geofence Warrants Under The Fourth Amendment, Kate P. Risser

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

This Note examines geofence warrants and their ongoing threat to constitutionally protected rights such as privacy, speech, and assembly. Part I will provide background information on geofence warrants and examine the prominent justifications for the use of the warrants. Part II will examine how law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants threatens citizens’ constitutionally protected fundamental rights like privacy and reproductive rights. Specifically, Part II addresses how geofence warrants disproportionately target and affect women, people of color, and low-income individuals. Part III will detail the history of the Fourth Amendment tracing its roots to before the Founding Era then exploring applicable …

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. …

Fixing Forty Years Of Failure: Objective Solutions To Batson’S Subjective Shortfalls, Katherine E. Donoghue

Cardozo Law Review

It is a sunny afternoon in rural Georgia. A young Black man goes for a jog. On his route, he crosses the train tracks and heads into a predominantly White neighborhood. As his sneakers rhythmically hit the pavement, he hears the rev of a pickup truck behind him. Shortly after, he hears a second truck. The young jogger picks up his pace, but so do the trucks. The trucks chase him and eventually surround him. Two White men get out with shotguns. One stands ready, barrel raised. The other approaches the jogger and fires a bullet into his chest.

That …

Negligent Hiring: Recidivism And Employment With A Criminal Record, Benjamin Pyle

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article tackles a difficult legal and policy challenge— reducing the impact of criminal records on job applicants’ chances in a manner that does not spur more discrimination—by looking at how another area of law, tort liability, impacts employers’ decision-making. It uses theoretical and empirical methods to study the most common reason employers report being reluctant to hire workers with a criminal record: legal liability generated by the tort of negligent hiring. While the purpose of the tort is ostensibly to protect and make whole those harmed when an employee misbehaves in a foreseeable manner, I show that, in practice, …

Winging It: Convergence, Convivencia, And Belonging Of Latina Lawyers, Verónica C. Gonzales

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

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 …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. 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 …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Under The Guardianship: Experiences Of Mothers In Egypt’S El Nayaba El Hesbaya, Hana Khayry

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intersectional lived experience of El Nayaba El Hesbaya in Egypt. El Nayaba El Hesbaya, operating under Law 119/1952, is the administrative and judicial body responsible for overseeing the financial and legal affairs of minors whose father or mother had passed. Hundreds of thousands of mothers in Egypt have (had) children under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya. This research delves into the experience of mothers whose children are or were under the guardianship of El Nayaba El Hesbaya, examining how it shape(s/d) their everyday life as women, mothers, widows or ex-wives, citizens, and legal subjects. …

Brief For Amici Curiae Immigration Law Scholars In Support Of Petitioner-Appellee, Supporting Affirmance, Lindsay Nash

Amicus Briefs

Amicus curiae brief filed by immigration law scholars, including Cardozo School of Law Professor Lindsay Nash, in Herrera Avila v. Bondi. The brief examines the scope of mandatory immigration detention under the Immigration and Nationality Act and argues that 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) applies to noncitizens seeking admission at the border rather than individuals apprehended within the interior of the United States.

Brief Of Amici Curiae Children's Rights Scholars And Advocates In Support Of Appellants' Opening Brief: Lighthiser V. Trump, Abigail L. Fleming, Douglas A. Ruley, Catherine Smith

Scholarly Articles

For decades, constitutional doctrine has recognized that children possess enforceable constitutional rights and that their developmental, physical, and social differences from adults are important considerations in constitutional analysis. Courts may not impute adult capacities, privileges, or political agency to children when determining whether their rights may be vindicated, leaving them no democratic mechanism to alleviate their injuries.

The district court’s dismissal of the youth plaintiffs’ claims rests on precisely that error. Although the court recognized that the children alleged concrete, severe, and escalating harms caused by the challenged executive actions, it concluded that relief must come from the political branches …

The Ambiguity That Isn’T: Why Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal In American Samoa, Dante Cade Harootunian, Sammi Lawrence

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the equal protection guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, several government officials in American Samoa issued statements claiming that the decision had no effect in American Samoa, and, to date, no same-sex couples have

applied for a marriage license in the territory. This Article analyzes the Obergefell decision in light of other federal and territorial court decisions that determined the applicability of constitutional rights to U.S. territories and concludes that, despite the statements of local officials, the Obergefell decision applies in American Samoa, and the …

Toys As Evidence, Randall K. Johnson

Faculty Works

This Essay asks and answers a single question, which was posed during a recent symposium at the National Museum of Toys & Miniatures. Could the study of revealed preferences, which is the idea that observed behaviors are the best indicator of one’s beliefs, improve our collective understanding about what constitutes unlawful discrimination in certain U.S. markets? A possible answer, which is informed by the Brown v. Board of Education decision, is the study of revealed preferences may improve our collective understanding for three reasons.

One reason is the study of revealed preferences provides a window into how some producers and …

Who Makes The Jury? Demographics And Decision-Making In The Jury Process., Ana B. Pons

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Within the American judicial system, juries have played a central role in promoting representation and fairness in the courtroom. However, limited information exists on whether prosecutorial decisions during jury selection, jury composition, or jury behavior differ based on the sex, race/ethnicity, type of case, political ideology, or geographic location of potential jurors. Following PRISMA guidelines, this scoping review synthesizes 48 peer-reviewed articles published between the 1940s and 2026 to examine whether prosecutorial decision-making and jury outcomes vary based on the sex, race/ethnicity, type of case, political ideology, or geographic location of potential jurors. Findings indicated that men are disproportionately selected …

Eroding Protections: The Decline Of Miranda Rights And Its Impact On Due Process In Contemporary America, Autumn G. Pelfrey

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines whether the protections established in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), remain robust within contemporary criminal justice practice or have been weakened through doctrinal and practical developments. Miranda warnings were originally designed to mitigate the risk that coercive custodial interrogation would produce compelled or unreliable self-incrimination. Since 1966, however, both judicial interpretation and evolving law-enforcement practices have created a growing gap between Miranda’s formal legal promise and its practical operation in real-world interrogations.

The study evaluates the erosion of Miranda’s protective force through three primary mechanisms. First, doctrinal developments have narrowed Miranda’s scope by redefining …

Public Facing, Privately Shielded: The Employment Gap Created By Title Vii’S Private Club Exemption, Ansley Salmon

American University Business Law Review

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination by employers but exempts “bona fide private membership clubs” that are tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c). Despite this seemingly clear statutory language, there is a notable lack of appellate decisions interpreting this exemption under Title VII. This scarcity of precedent has led to inconsistent approaches across circuits. For example, the Fifth Circuit has drawn heavily from the Private Club Exemption under Title II of the Civil Rights Act while the Seventh Circuit has treated the two exemptions as entirely distinct. This Comment argues that the Title …

Criminalizing Difference: An Intersectional Analysis Of Disability In The Criminal Justice System, Rowan Eisleman

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research addresses the central question: How do individuals with disabilities intersect with the criminal justice system, and what systemic factors contribute to their overrepresentation and victimization? Despite over 61 million Americans having disabilities, there exists a significant gap in comprehensive scholarship examining disability-criminal justice intersections, particularly regarding how people with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience unique vulnerabilities as both offenders and victims. This study contributes to disability studies and criminology by providing a comprehensive intersectional analysis examining how disability compounds with race and gender to create compounded marginalization. This study conducted a comprehensive literature review, analyzing government statistics from …

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Representing The Incommunicado Client: Regulating The Attorney-Client Relationship In A Civil Rights Emergency, Michael Kagan

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

When the government obstructs a detainee’s ability to communicate with attorneys, normal rules governing the formation of attorney-client relationships break down. While some work-arounds exist to allow lawyers to bring such cases to court, they have significant limitations and can create problems of their own. The legal profession and the courts should adopt new rules modeled on emergency medicine to facilitate the filing of urgent civil rights claims for clients who are not in a position to consent. In emergency medicine, physicians can presume client consent for certain narrow and urgent purposes. Certain lawyers, in extreme cases, should be able …

Public Defender Discretion, Alma Magaña

Articles

A focus of criminal legal system reform efforts has been the curtailment of police, prosecutorial, and judicial discretion, which has been criticized for its arbitrariness and its contribution to racial, class, and gender disparities. However, one system actor has largely escaped similar scrutiny: public defenders, who, by grant of authority from ethical rules of practice and Supreme Court jurisprudence, have significant decision-making authority in the cases of indigent persons charged with crimes.

This Article will, for the first time, explore the historical rationale for giving public defenders the power to make life-altering decisions for their clients. Specifically, it dissects the …

Freedom Clinic Faculty And Students Win Clemency Case Through New Jersey Second Chance Initiative, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law secured clemency for LaShawn Fitch through New Jersey's Second Chance Initiative. Cardozo Freedom Clinic faculty and students helped prepare Mr. Fitch's clemency petition, highlighting issues surrounding felony-murder sentencing, the trial penalty, and juvenile justice.