Criminal Procedure Commons^™

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 …

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 …

How The Dod Discourages Military Families From Seeking Mental Health Counseling, Christina Welch

Seattle University Law Review

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) administration of the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) presents significant barriers to mental health care access for military spouses and children. This paper explores how the EFMP, though designed to support military families with special needs, inadvertently creates barriers to mental health treatment. Military family members often do not seek mental health treatment to avoid the program's mandatory enrollment requirements. Military family members often view enrollment in the program undesirable because enrollment can restrict the pool of potential future duty assignment locations that are available to service members.

The lack of comprehensive data collection by …

2025, Richard Delgado

Seattle University Law Review

"In a cutting and provocative social critique in one of the more extended Rodrigo Chronicles, Richard Delgado in 2025 employs skillful narrative—one of CRT’s many contributions to legal scholarship —to tell a gripping story of just how far the nation has descended into darkness with President Trump’s re-election. In Delgado’s vision, law professors—along with other political opponents of the President: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, the underserved—have targets on their backs."

-excerpt from Kevin Johnson's review of 2025

The Preventative Care Gap: Completing The Aca’S Vision For Health, Abby Nagaich

Seattle University Law Review

This Note examines the preventive care mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the legal, political, and practical challenges that threaten its effectiveness. While the ACA significantly expanded access to no-cost preventive services, gaps remain—particularly in behavioral health, obesity management, and equitable service delivery. Ongoing litigation, potential administrative rollbacks, and shifting political leadership further destabilize this critical component of public health policy.

This Note argues that for the ACA to fulfill its original promise—and for any health framework to succeed—preventive care must be redefined as a comprehensive, early intervention approach grounded in both systemic access and patient education. It …

Presumed Guilty By Proximity: How Geofence Warrants Undermine The Fourteenth Amendment, Radha Patel

University of Miami Race & Social Justice Law Review

Geofence warrants are utilized as a surveillance tool to gather location data on every user within a specific area and are being integrated into policing without a stable legal framework. This integration threatens individual rights and disproportionately impacts people and communities of color. While these warrants are often scrutinized under the Fourth Amendment, this note argues that they significantly undermine the Fourteenth Amendment by granting law enforcement excessive discretion. This unchecked discretion allows systemic bias and racial profiling to influence criminal investigations, creating the potential for wrongful convictions. The analysis in this note details the three-step execution process of geofence …

Reasonable, Legal, Voluntary? Grants Pass Decision Sparks Need For A Revised Fourth Amendment Search Analysis In The Context Of Homelessness, Hali R. Woods

Catholic University Law Review

On June 28, 2024 the Supreme Court decided City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson.  The case addressed whether the enforcement of city ordinances regulating camping on public property against individuals including respondents, unhoused individuals residing in the city of Grants Pass, constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.  The Court upheld enforcement of the ordinances and since then approximately 150 cities across the United States have passed similar ordinances or strengthened existing similar laws.  This comment evaluates how Grants Pass is an Eighth Amendment case with Fourth Amendment consequences which sparks a need for a revised …

Glossip’S Road Map To Nowhere, Vida Johnson

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma was heralded as a victory for the defense. This essay argues that the 2025 Glossip decision does little to fix the myriad problems that led to Mr. Glossip’s wrongful conviction. While ultimately the Supreme Court reached the correct outcome this time, the ordinary judicial process and its purported safeguards were not what saved Mr. Glossip’s life. Rather, it was random chance that came to Mr. Glossip’s aid.

Ten years earlier, the Supreme Court, with many of the same Justices on the bench now, paved the way for Mr. Glossip’s execution. The …

Causes, Effects, And Solutions Of Wrongful Convictions, Allison B. Gobuzzi

Honors Theses

This study examines the wrongful conviction of Anthony Hinton and other examples that illustrate the causes of wrongful convictions in the United States and the effects that wrongful convictions have on the wrongfully accused and their families. This study uses research from scholarly articles and legal cases to analyze the factors that contribute to wrongful convictions and the impact on the wrongfully accused and their families. The research concludes that wrongful convictions are frequently the result of both evidentiary and procedural issues within the criminal justice system.

Deliberately Silenced, Rachel Kincaid

Mercer Law Review

The Prison Litigation Reform Act is celebrating its 30^th birthday this year. It was designed to make it harder for incarcerated people to file lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of their conditions of confinement and to restrict their remedies even when they do so successfully. It has been wildly effective at achieving those objectives. It has also propped up mass incarceration and facilitated the persistence of dismal conditions of confinement in carceral facilities in the United States.

The PLRA’s exhaustion requirement—arguably its most damaging provision—silences carceral voices without regard for the merit of their complaints. It does so by mandating …

The Expanding Digital Border: Ai, Surveillance, And The Fight For Justice, James Chesser

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

As artificial intelligence transforms the mechanisms of immigration control, the modern border has become a digital filter—one governed less by geography and more by code. This Article examines the legal, technical, and ethical implications of AI-driven systems now central to global border enforcement, including biometric surveillance, algorithmic risk scoring, and predictive profiling. It explores how states use these technologies not only to manage irregular migration, but to compete for global talent—constructing migration regimes that reward capital and compliance while eroding transparency, due process, and equality.

Through an international and comparative lens, the piece highlights the expansion of algorithmic decision-making across …

Fit To Be Tried By Jury, But Not To Be A Juror: The Dilemma Faced By “Adults” Under Age 21, Kenneth Bell

SLU Law Journal Online

This article, “A Time To Speak: A Lifer’s Assessment of the Sentence of Death by Imprisonment” appeared in the 2025 Special Edition of The Writer’s Block under the longer title, “A Time To Speak: A Lifer’s Assessment of the Sentence of Death by Imprisonment and the Application of Roper v. Simmons and Miller v. Alabama.”  It is a four part discussion of the nature and continued viability of the sentence of life without parole particularly the need to end the imposition of that sentence upon persons between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, i.e., emerging adults. This shorter piece extends …

Harmless In Name Only: Prosecutorial Misconduct And The Right To A Fair Trial, Jennifer Brinkman

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Prosecutorial misconduct during trial—particularly improper questioning of witnesses and improper argument—occurs in front of the jury and directly shapes its deliberations. Yet appellate courts routinely dismiss such misconduct as “harmless error,” allowing convictions to stand even when prosecutors violate defendants’ rights. This Article contends that the harmless error framework both underestimates the impact of misconduct on jurors and undermines the Constitutional guarantee of a fair trial. It proposes that certain instances of misconduct that occur during trial should be classified as structural error, requiring automatic reversal. This would protect defendants’ right to a fair trial and maintain the integrity of …

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 …

Rethinking Objectivity: The Problem Of Pretext In The Fourth Amendment, Monu S. Bedi

Indiana Law Journal

Pretextual encounters continue to erode the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Simply put, a police officer can act on personal bias or animus as long as the search or seizure is deemed “objectively reasonable.” Numerous scholars (e.g., Bennett Capers, Gabriel Chin, and David Harris) have critiqued this objective standard, contending it perpetuates discriminatory practices, particularly against communities of color. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself suggested that the Court might need to reconsider the legal precedent she helped establish. More recently, Orin Kerr has also argued that the Court’s reliance on objective determinations is inconsistent with …

Uncomfortably Reminiscent: Odonnell V. Harris County In History And Memory, Kellen R. Funk

Faculty Scholarship

In ODonnell v. Harris County, a federal trial court enjoined the misdemeanor bail system of Houston, Texas, freeing approximately 20,000 indigent defendants annually. To do this, the trial court drew upon Reconstruction era precedents establishing intensive federal oversight of state criminal proceedings. The court explicitly invoked the Civil War and Reconstruction transformation of the federal judiciary, comparing the County’s defenses to slavery era arguments. Conversely, when the en banc Fifth Circuit reviewed a similar order in Dallas, Texas, six years later, it rejected this historical framework, condemning such litigation as an impermissible “ongoing federal audit of state criminal proceedings.” …

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 …

Lost And Found, Katherine M. Houlden

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Home Of The Brave, Land Of The Free: The Star-Spangled Banner's Contested History, Michael H. Hoffheimer

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Pearl's Perfect Last Will - Crushed By Infantilism Bias, Edward F. Fogarty Mr

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Dangerous Or Neglected, Amanda Landaverde

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

The Call To Action, And My Reluctant Answer, Audrey R. Svane

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Legacy: Introduction To Issue 2, Nicholas L. Marti

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Volume 2, Issue 2 Masthead, Njaj Editorial Board

Nebraska Journal on Advancing Justice

No abstract provided.

Civil Rights Microviolations, Alissa Cooley Yonesawa, Michael Kagan

University of Cincinnati Law Review

This essay is an attempt to name and define a certain kind of civil rights problem. Namely: Rights violations that are small enough that the rational thing for the victim to do might be to just cope with them, but when allowed to fester and repeat, do significant damage. We call these problems microviolations. To define them, we borrow from the idea of a microaggression, a concept that developed to understand an analogous challenge in workplace and school discrimination. We offer a diagnosis of why microviolations are both problematic and difficult to address, and arguments that they should be a …

Contagious Discrimination: Why Race-Blind Justice In Courtrooms Is Not Enough, Yijia Lu, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Existing theories of discrimination focus on discrimination at the individual, societal, or organizational level. We highlight the importance of the dynamic relationship between different institutional actors who jointly give rise to discriminatory outcomes. This reveals that discrimination can be contagious: discrimination that would otherwise not occur at one institutional level can arise due to discrimination at another institutional level. Therefore, discrimination by some actors can trickle down and create disparate impacts in processes that would otherwise be free of discrimination. This phenomenon, which we term “contagious discrimination,” can manifest itself in various settings such as employment and commercial trade negotiations. …

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 …

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 …