Human Rights Law Commons^™

A Meaningful Life: The Future Of Juvenile Justice In Washington After Anderson, Samuel Coren

Seattle University Law Review

Until 2022, Washington’s line of juvenile sentencing jurisprudence gave every indication of continuing along the course set by Miller v. Alabama, as Washington courts recognized that “children are different” and should not be subjected to the harshest punishments available in the criminal legal system. State v. Anderson marked a stark diversion from this course. In upholding the constitutionality of a de facto life sentence for a juvenile, the Washington Supreme Court all but rejected the well-established scientific consensus surrounding juvenile brain development and implicit racial bias. Whether this decision reflects a minor aberration or a broader trend in the court’s …

Sneakers, The Shoes That Talk The Talk And Walk The Walk: How Jack Daniel’S Properties, Inc. V. Vip Products Left Its Footprint On Trademark Law And The Sneaker Industry, Nitya Tolani

Seattle University Law Review

As the fashion industry—including the sneaker industry housed within it—continues to go through the motions of collectively flocking out, and then collectively flocking again to the newest innovations in the world of wearables, the landscape of laws to protect and promote those innovations expands as well, mainly in the area of intellectual property law. Although copyright, trademark, and patent law can cover innovations in the fashion industry, this Note centers its analysis on trademark law. Trademark law has been through notable change in recent years because of the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. …

The First Amendment To The Constitution, Associational Freedom, And The Future Of The Country: Alabama’S Direct Attack On The Existence Of The Naacp, Helen J. Knowles-Gardner

Seattle University Law Review

Sixty years ago, on Wednesday, April 8, 1964, Professor Harry Kalven, Jr., gave the second of three lectures at The Ohio State University College of Law Forum. These lectures were published two years later in a book entitled The Negro & the 1st Amendment. In the second lecture, Kalven distinguished between direct and indirect threats to the associational freedom of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Kalven categorized the 1958 decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson as an indirect effort to control the NAACP.

With the benefit of material obtained from numerous archival sources, …

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, …

The Legally Binding Character Of The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition Of Anti-Semitism, Kenneth L. Marcus

Lewis & Clark Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sanctuary Without Resistance, Ava Ayers

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Activist movements that embrace the idea of sanctuary for noncitizens are rich with narratives of resistance. These narratives vary; some sanctuary advocates pursue resistance only to specific federal immigration policies, while others offer more radical critiques that challenge the very legitimacy of U.S. immigration law. But when local and state governments adopt sanctuary policies, the idea of resistance is often altogether lost.

Local and state governments who adopt policies of noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement sometimes offer narratives in which the values that motivate sanctuary policies involve not resistance to injustice, but public safety, economic development, and other more traditional …

Voices Of The Denied, Heather Spencer

Lewis & Clark Law Review

This Note explores the impact of lengthy prison sentences on rehabilitation and the need for second chances. While incarceration serves purposes such as retribution and incapacitation, it fails to promote rehabilitation and deterrence. Oregon should do more in providing opportunities for early release and rehabilitation for individuals serving lengthy sentences. The Note features interviews with incarcerated individuals who share their thoughts and experiences. Overall, this Note sheds light on the importance of second chances and on the need for reform in the criminal justice system to ensure that prisoners are not denied the chance to lead productive and fulfilling lives.

Constitutional Interpretation And Zombie Provisions, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

The United States Constitution and state constitutions contain numerous zombie provisions, including language restricting marriage to relationships between one man and one woman, voter literacy test requirements, disqualification of atheists from serving in office or testifying as witnesses, and pervasive gendered language restricting rights and offices to men alone. Though these provisions are unenforceable due to subsequent amendment, determinations of federal unconstitutionality, or preemption by federal laws, they live on in constitutional text.

This Article addresses the danger of these zombie provisions that has, thus far, been overlooked the prospect that zombie provisions may influence the interpretation of still-living constitutional …

Is The Women's Treaty A Paper Tiger? Indian Courts' Application Of The United Nations Treaty, Amanda L. Stephens

Faculty Articles

This Article examines whether the United Nations ("U.N.") Treaty, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW'), is a "paper tiger"-a law that seems powerful but is in fact weak and ineffectual. While some scholars question the Treaty's effectiveness based on statistical studies, others point to legal reforms in state parties as evidence of its success. Neither provides a nuanced middle ground by examining the CEDAW at a micro rather than a macro level. This Article fills this gap by conducting a qualitative analysis of 10 Indian judicial opinions. Specifically, the Article explores how the …

'A Very Murky Process': Embracing The Intermediacy Of International Justice And Human Rights, Richard Ashby Wilson

Faculty Articles and Papers

Wilson, Richard Ashby. 2024. “’A Very Murky Process:’ Embracing the Indeterminacy of International Justice and Human Rights.” In Philip Alston, ed., The Complexity of Human Rights: From Vernacularization to Quantification. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Medical Research Without Consent? It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again, Lois Shepherd, Donna Chen

Indiana Law Journal

When patients seek medical care, they trust their physician to offer treatments that are in their best medical interests and to engage them in a shared decision-making process to determine the best way forward. But today, in hospitals and doctors’ offices around the country, physicians also place patients in research studies that randomly assign them to a standard of care treatment, sometimes without the patients’ knowledge or consent. In such studies, patients may receive a treatment that results in worse outcomes for them, some of which can be serious and permanent. What’s more, there are reasons to be concerned that …

Botched Bans: Analyzing Conversion Therapy Bans After A Decade Of Legal Challenges, Cameron J. Rachford

Indiana Law Journal

Despite empirical evidence documenting its harms and substantial legislative efforts to ban its practice, conversion therapy remains a tragically prevalent practice in the United States. Recently, a circuit split between the Ninth and Eleventh Circuits has developed, raising questions about the future of conversion therapy regulation. This Note takes a retrospective look at the last ten years of conversion therapy bans and related legal challenges, questions the effectiveness of enacted bans, and explores routes for more effective regulation. This Note ultimately argues that conversion therapy bans must shift their focus to the regulation of unlicensed practitioners in order to better …

Editor's Note

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Religious Clause Challenges To Early Abortion Bans, Caroline Mala Corbin

Articles

The substantive due process right to abortion is gone. But other parts of the Constitution may also protect women’s right to control their bodies and live as equals in the United States. This Essay addresses what role the two religion clauses may play in advancing reproductive autonomy. Because religion and reproduction are intertwined, the religion clauses may provide some measure of constitutional protection.

The Establishment Clause bars the government from imposing religion onto those who do not share it. It also forbids the government from taking sides in theological disputes. Early abortion bans not only favor one religious belief on …

Banned Books & Banned Identities: Maintaining Secularism And The Ability To Read In Public Education For The Well-Being Of America's Youth, Megan M. Tylenda

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

Books containing LGBTQ+ themes and characters are being removed from public school libraries at a rapid rate across the United States. While a book challenge has made it to the Supreme Court once before, the resulting singular plurality opinion left courts without a clear test to apply, ultimately leaving students’ First Amendment rights in the air. Additionally, the increasingly relaxed view of courts towards religious influence in public schools indicates that if a modern case were to reach the Supreme Court, religious challenges may be accepted, which would leave LGBTQ+ students who seek to see themselves represented in literature without …

How Can Law Enforcement Use Technology To Protect Citizens Justly?, Zach Kantenwein

Emerging Writers

This paper explores the danger of emerging artificial intelligence technology perpetuating racial injustice in law enforcement and how police can ensure the protection of citizens amid this information age. We dissect a real-world case in which AI predictive policing technology resulted in alarming racial discrimination against American minority citizens. We discuss the possible explanations for this result and explore the limitations of artificial intelligence technology. Furthermore, we brainstorm methods for ensuring American citizens' just and constitutional protection as new technology is developed and tested. We propose implementing transparency laws that make the details about any policing technology and surveillance available …

The Eu-China Cai And The Uyghur Challenge In The Context Of China's Domestic Law Barriers To International Labor And Human Rights Standards, Ronald C. Brown

American University Business Law Review

While China engages in world commerce as a global player and is signatory to international labor and human rights standards, at the same time it uses treaty reservations and its own domestic laws to limit and undermine the full application of those standards. Concern from Western governments and global human rights groups regarding China’s longstanding treatment of the Uyghur people has resulted in a freeze in negotiations for the EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CAI). This was also a result of China’s failure to ratify or implement relevant United Nations (U.N.) covenants and International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and placing reservations …

Hemispheric Justice: Awakening To 303 Creative’S Troubles – A Glocalized Latcrit Analysis, Berta E. Hernández-Truyol

UF Law Faculty Publications

In this essay, I will first describe and critique 303 Creative, a 2023 Supreme Court decision that subordinates LGBTQIA+ equality and nondiscrimination rights to an imagined intrusion into the free speech rights of a Christian business owner. Based upon her religious beliefs, the business owner claimed that Colorado’s public accommodations law, which prohibited discrimination based upon sexual orientation or gender identity (among other categories), violated her rights because it mandated that she serve the LGBTQIA+ community. Next, this essay shares insights from the recent Awakened decisions of Inter-American Human Rights institutions to demonstrate a path towards achieving justice for …

Assemblages And Actor Networks In The Borderlands - The Apposition Of Reproductive Rights Along The Mexican-American Border, Madeleine M. Plasencia

Articles

In 1971, Sarah Weddington argued Roe v. Wade as a class action on behalf of pregnant women living in Texas, many of whom, including herself had to flee the State to obtain an abortion in Mexico. In 2021, Texas enacted S. B. 8, otherwise known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which created a private cause of action for injunctive relief and statutory damages awards against any person assisting in and any physician accused of performing an abortion, thus reigniting the cross-border flows that historically have made Mexico a haven for runaway enslaved people and pregnant persons heading south to freedom. …

Colonialism, Jurisdiction, And Sovereignty In Palestine, Usha Natarajan

National Law School of India Review

Knowledge production is never neutral, and academia – much like international laws and institutions among other social structures – is a key conduit for the efficient operations of power. Israel’s longstanding occupation and settler colonialism in Palestine challenges mainstream accounts of the international laws of jurisdiction, whereas Chimni’s TWAIL analysis better accounts for and predicts the imperial operations of such laws and points to fruitful evolution towards fairness and justice.10 I elaborate by considering firstly the exercise of jurisdiction during occupation and settler colonialism, and secondly the exercise of universal jurisdiction by states. I conclude with some thoughts on jurisdiction …

Are Race-Based Environmental Justice Policies Safe?, Oday Salim

Other Publications

In recent years, we have seen a signiicant volume of federal and state environmental justice policy with attorneys general developing enforcement plans focused on environmental justice. Environmental and conservation agencies have adopted limited English proiciency (LEP) plans to ensure that LEP individuals are not let out of decision-making processes. And, in some states, there are environmental justice laws on the books that impact public hearings, siting, and permitting. Many of these recent policies require the government to consider race directly or indirectly when making decisions. In light of recent jurisprudence on the legality of race-conscious state action—particularly the U.S. Supreme …

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 …

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …

The Pioneers, Waves, And Random Walks Of Securities Law In The Supreme Court, Elizabeth Pollman

Seattle University Law Review

After the pioneers, waves, and random walks that have animated the history of securities laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, we might now be on the precipice of a new chapter. Pritchard and Thompson’s superb book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, illuminates with rich archival detail how the Court’s view of the securities laws and the SEC have changed over time and how individuals have influenced this history. The book provides an invaluable resource for understanding nearly a century’s worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence in the area of securities law and much needed context for …

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

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 …

Due Process Shaped By The Present Instead Of The Past: The Needed Reinvigoration Of A Lawrence Vision Of Due Process, Azor Cole

Seattle University Law Review

The recognition of unenumerated rights, rights implied from the text of the constitution, is a political battlefield waged through law with profound implications for all Americans. Generally, there have been two prongs for an inquiry into an unenumerated constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. One is to ask whether the right to be found is objectively deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition. The other is to ask whether the right to be found is fundamental to this Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty. The current Supreme Court has effectively done away with this present-day liberty analysis, saying it is …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Reclaiming Personal Privacy Rights Through The Freedom Of Intimate Association, Nancy C. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has entered a new constitutional era where substantive due process, under attack by the Supreme Court itself, can no longer be viewed as a solid foundation for the securing of personal privacy rights. In a post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization world, the right to personal privacy, long understood to be protected under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ Due Process Clauses, is in need of a new doctrinal home. The evisceration of modern substantive due process in the context of abortion rights implicates and endangers LGBTQ+ rights and other personal privacy rights as well. As such, …