Courts Commons^™

Rebalancing Judicial Immunity For Civil Rights Actions, Bailey D. Barnes

Faculty Publications

Sterilization for shorter jail sentences. Vasectomies and birth control implants for freedom. In 2017, a criminal court judge in rural Tennessee made this offer to people incarcerated through sentences issued by his court. When litigators sought monetary damages and to enjoin the practice, and the local media exposed the scheme, the judge begrudgingly rescinded the order while expressing surprise that it was controversial. The Board of Judicial Conduct issued a letter of reprimand to the judge. Meanwhile, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee summarily dismissed the constitutional tort claims against the judge based on absolute …

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 …

What Is In Your Tampon? Increasing Transparency In Menstrual Products, Elianna Spitzer

Seattle University Law Review

The average person who menstruates will bleed for an average of five days, every twenty-four to thirty-eight days, over several decades and could use thousands of disposable menstrual products in their lifetime. Menstrual products line retail shelves. They can be found in homes, bags, and bodies—but until 2021, manufacturers were not required to disclose the ingredients used to make these products to consumers at all. In fact, they still are not federally required to disclose menstrual product ingredients on product packaging. Instead, in recent years, changes to menstrual product labels have largely been the result of state legislation. In 2019, …

Review Of Veterans Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit 2022-2023 Edition, Yelena Duterte, Hugh Mcclean, Stacey-Rae Simcox

American University Law Review

In 2022 to 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) continued its conversation with the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”), Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), and veterans to help sculpt the jurisprudence coming from the youngest of the federal courts, the Veterans Court. The Federal Circuit’s jurisprudence addressed ten main legal issues: class actions, petitions for writ of mandamus under the All Writs Act, defining standards of proof with the term “results from,” the benefit of the doubt doctrine post-Lynch, education benefits, less than honorable discharges, the rating schedule, implicit denials, equitable …

A Year In Review: The Federal Circuit's 2023 Government Contract Law Decisions, Sophie Marsh, Taylor Mcdaniels, Allison Moors

American University Law Review

This Article continues previous in-depth reviews of government contract law cases decided by the Federal Circuit and published by the American University Law Review. In 2023, the Federal Circuit clarified the appropriate standard of review, emphasizing that, more likely than not, the Boards of Contract Appeals should apply a de novo standard of review. Additionally, the court set significant judicial precedent by holding that the issues of party standing, timely raising a solicitation defect, and asserting a sum certain are nonjurisdictional. Finally, the court also issued decisions concerning implied-in-fact contracts, excusable delays, and the importance of reporting unallowable costs.

The Difference A Da Makes, Victoria M. Smiegocki, Shem Vinton, Pamela R. Metzger

Faculty Articles

During his 2018 campaign to become Dallas County District Attorney, John Creuzot promised to decline prosecution of low-level marijuana misdemeanors. After his election, District Attorney Creuzot (DA Creuzot) honored this campaign promise, issuing policies designed to radically reduce misdemeanor marijuana prosecutions. Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data, the authors describe police enforcement changes associated with the Dallas County District Attorney's Office's (DAO) marijuana prosecution policies. The authors also explore how the

DAO's Intake Unit successfully implemented and enforced these marijuana prosecution policies.

The authors show that DA Creuzot's policies were associated with a significant decrease in marijuana misdemeanor arrests and an …

Brief Of Professor Derek T. Muller As Amicus Curiae In Support Of Neither Party, Heather Gebelin Hacker, Derek T. Muller

Court Briefs

No. 23-719
Donald J. Trump v. Norma Anderson

On Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Colorado

From the Summary of Argument

States hold the power to adjudicate the qualifications of presidential candidates. That power extends to the general election, even though the election is formally a process to appoint presidential electors. And that power extends to the primary election, even though state voters are formally selecting delegates to a party’s nominating convention. But states have no obligation to evaluate the qualifications of presidential candidates, and states may choose to permit openly unqualified presidential candidates to appear on the …

The Constitutional Multiverse: A Retroactive Analysis Of Hemphill V. New York, Michael C. Wetmore

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

In 2022, the Supreme Court was asked the question: May a criminal defendant “open the door” to evidence that it is otherwise inadmissible because of their Sixth Amendment right to confront adversarial witnesses? It is not unheard of that, at trial, a defendant’s attorney makes arguments that prosecutors and judges think will mislead the jury. Many times, these arguments reference evidence that—by evidentiary rule, pretrial ruling, or otherwise—is inadmissible. Trial courts have long been afforded the discretion to measure how much evidence can come through the door a defendant opens by raising these arguments to cure any false impression that …

An Unconstitutional Band-Aid: The Practice Of Sitting By Designation In The Federal Judiciary, Michaela Conley

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Legal Issues In Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, And Non-Fungible Tokens (Nfts), Christa Laser

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

When do new technologies require changes in the law? Judge Easterbrook argued in 1996 that there is no more need for a "Law of Cyberspace" than there ever was for a "Law of the Horse." Rather, existing laws spanning multiple fields are often sufficient to cover niche factual applications and even new technological change. The same is true now for "The Law of Blockchain." Nonetheless, blockchain marketplace participants lack any cohesive, useful analysis to tum to that is neutral in outcome and performs a comprehensive analysis spanning the multitude of laws affecting the whole ecosystem. We might not need a …

Converse-Osborn: State Sovereign Immunity, Standing, And The Dog-Wagging Effect Of Article Iii, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“[T]he legislative, executive, and judicial powers, of every well-constructed government, are co-extensive with each other . . . [T]he judicial department may receive from the Legislature the power of construing any . . . law [which the Legislature may constitutionally make].” Chief Justice Marshall relied on this axiom in Osborn v. Bank of the United States to stress the breadth of the federal judicial power: The federal courts must have the potential power to adjudicate any claim based on any law Congress has the power to enact. In recent years, however, the axiom has sometimes operated in the opposite direction: …

Sticky Procedure And Procedural Values In The Federal Appellate Courts, Merritt E. Mcalister

UF Law Faculty Publications

New federal appeals have fallen by forty percent over the last three decades. And yet the case management procedures—reduced oral argument, unpublished decisions, case-screening, and staff attorneys—adopted to help courts tackle rising caseloads have remained. And these case management adaptations appear as durable as ever. The “stickiness” of these adaptations suggest that efficient resolution of disputes is the sine qua non of modern appellate practice. Equally sticky are some longstanding disparities in the extent to which different federal appellate courts rely on these efficiencies, raising new questions about the extent to which the federal appellate courts share core adjudicatory values.

Against The Clock: Examining How Federal Courts Consider Agency Delay In Emergency Rulemaking Cases, Tyler Haas

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Compassionless Plea Bargaining, Julian A. Cook Iii

UF Law Faculty Publications

Too often, the guilty plea hearing process practiced in our federal courts fails to adequately ensure the validity of a defendant’s change of plea decision. Rather than engage in colloquies that are sufficiently in-depth and truly aimed at ascertaining voluntariness and defendant comprehension, critical details are frequently glossed over, and defendant guilty pleas are accepted without meaningful inquiry.

While academics have skillfully critiqued the Sixth Amendment and its trial-focused provisions, comparatively scant focus has been expended on the equally, if not more, critical change of plea hearing. Compassionless Plea Bargaining seeks to fill this gap with its focus on a …

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 …

The Categorical Imperative: In Search Of The Mythical Perfect Privilege Log So Devoutly To Be Wished, Jared S. Sunshine

Touro Law Review

Though evidentiary privilege is amongst the most perplexing fields of the law, privilege logs are assuredly amongst the most vexing. With vastly increased discovery in the age of electronically stored information, the burdens incurred by individually articulating claims of privilege on every document have grown gargantuan. In desperate search of efficiencies, many commentators and courts have looked to “categorical” privilege logs that assert claims over generic groups of similar material rather than over each item seriatim. Disputes, however, have remained distressingly acrimonious, as these new categorical logs have proven no cure-all for the fundamental divergence of interests between litigants in …

Against Associational Standing, Michael T. Morley, F. Andrew Hessick

Scholarly Publications

Associational standing is a widely used doctrine that has never been subject to serious academic scrutiny. It allows an organization that has not suffered any injury in fact to sue in its own name to assert its members' causes of action. Though the doctrine is often associated with public interest groups, major corporations have usurped it to be able to sue, through trade groups or entities created solely to pursue a particular lawsuit, without becoming party litigants to the case.

The Supreme Court first recognized associational standing as an offshoot of third-party standing to allow an organization that had suffered …

Partisan Panel Composition And Reliance On Earlier Opinions In The Circuit Courts, Stuart M. Benjamin, Byungkoo Kim, Kevin M. Quinn

Faculty Articles

Does the partisan composition of three-judge panels affect how earlier opinions are treated and thus how the law develops? Using a novel data set of Shepard’s treatments for all cases decided in the U.S. courts of appeals from 1974 to 2017, we investigate three different versions of this question. First, are panels composed of three Democratic (Republican) appointees more likely to follow opinions decided by panels of three Democratic (Republican) appointees than are panels composed of three Republican (Democratic) appointees? Second, does the presence of a single out-party judge change how a panel relies on earlier decisions compared to what …

When Is Legal Methodology Binding?, Jonathan R. Nash

Faculty Articles

Common-law interpretive methodologies are mostly nonbinding, but some interpretive methodologies are seen as binding precedent. This Article offers an explanation for this state of affairs. Whereas the extant scholarship on common-law interpretive methodologies offers descriptive accounts (often assuming that common-law methodologies are per se nonbinding) and normative analysis, this Article fills a gap in the literature by providing a realist explanation for the legal landscape of binding interpretive methodologies. It identifies whether a methodology is rule-like, and whether it increases judicial legitimacy and/or court power as “pull factors”—that is, incentives that might attract judges to recognize interpretive methodologies as binding. …

Derailing Democracy, Shrinking Responsibility: The New Election Law Landscape, Cory Conley, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

In democracy jurisprudence, the Roberts Court wears two faces. Its most recent duo of cases illustrates the inconsistency. In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court ruled that even grossly partisan gerrymanders are nonjusticiable in federal courts. Yet, in Moore v. Harper, the Court rejected granting unreviewable authority to state lawmakers to regulate federal elections—for now. This combination of rulings is not ideological moderation or judicial restraint, as the Court claims. These recent cases are emblematic of broader unpredictability and selectivity in election law. The assertions of judicial humility in Rucho stand in stark contrast to the bald activism …

Institutional Design And The Predictability Of Judicial Interruptions At Oral Argument, Tonja Jacobi, Patrick Leslie, Zoë Robinson

Faculty Articles

Examining oral argument in the Australian High Court and comparing to the U.S. Supreme Court, this article shows that institutional design drives judicial interruptive behavior. Many of the same individual- and case-level factors predict oral argument behavior. Notably, despite orthodoxy of the High Court as “apolitical,” ideology strongly predicts interruptions, just as in the United States. Yet, important divergent institutional design features between the two apex courts translate into meaningful behavioral differences, with the greater power of the Chief Justice resulting in differences in interruptions. Finally, gender effects are lower and only identifiable with new methodological techniques we develop and …

Reports Of Cases In The Court Of Chancery From 1683 To 1688, William Hamilton Bryson

Law Faculty Publications

This collection of law reports brings together in one place the reports of cases in the Court of Chancery from the short tenure of Sir Francis North, lord Guilford, and that of Sir George Jeffreys, Lord Jeffreys, who was the Lord Chancellor during the reign of King James II. These reports have been scattered heretofore, but it is hoped that, by reprinting them in one place, they can be more easily comprehended individually and the jurisprudence of this court can be better understood. They come from the reigns of King Charles II and King James II, and date from 1683 …

Michigan Senators' Crucial Role In Keeping Federal Courts Full, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

One critical responsibility that the American Constitution assigns senators is the provision of comprehensive advice and consent respecting accomplished federal judicial candidates suggested by the President to serve, particularly in their home states. Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, who is completing her fourth term representing Michigan, has always joined with her colleague Democratic Senator Gary Peters in the administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to astutely discharge this crucial responsibility. Stabenow and Peters exercised sound judgment, intelligence, hard work, and keen appreciation for the distinct roles that the Constitution accords the President and senators in the confirmation …