Juvenile Law Commons^™

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

Locking Up Potential: Why Children Need Access To Special Education Services In Solitary, Lauren Edwards

Touro Law Review

Correctional facilities across the country are consistently failing to provide adequate special education to disabled children who are placed in solitary confinement due to inadequate funding, untrained staff, and lack of consensus on how to implement a program. This Note compares the special education services that disabled children are entitled to under the Free Appropriate Public Education (“FAPE”) statute with the education they receive during incarceration. This Note also discusses suggestions for implementing meaningful special education when a child is isolated. When disabled children are placed in solitary confinement and deprived of education tailored to their specific needs and abilities, …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Understanding The Big Three’S Wavering Support Of Environmental And Social Shareholder Proposals, Jeff Schwartz, Jefferson Jensen

Seattle University Law Review

Because of their substantial equity portfolios, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street (the Big 3) are central players in corporate governance. It is, therefore, critical to understand how they vote. One puzzle is that their support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social matters appears to waiver. In 2020, for instance, BlackRock supported 11.1% of environmental proposals at S&P 500 firms. In 2021, it seemingly reversed course, supporting 55.2%. It then flipped again, supporting 32.1% in 2022. Such statistics suggest that the Big 3 are constantly changing their views on these topics. This Article seeks to better understand whether this is …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Trauma-Informed Courts? How Judges May Influence Kids’ Experiences Of Court, Eva Mckinsey, Amelia Ashton Thorn, Minjee Kristin Kim, Catherine Gorey

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Kid Clickbait: Online Privacy Concerns For The Children Of Today's Social Media Movement, Kiara Green

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

“Pick-Up Orders” And Foster Youth In Washington, Lauren Higgins

Seattle Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

“Change Is Inevitable”: How The First Amendment Safety-Valve Theory Can Expand Protections For Student Expression, Leslie Klein, Jonathan Peters

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

This article challenges the traditional notion that the regulation and protection of student expression in public schools should be based primarily or exclusively on the marketplace theory, which often reinforces the status quo. The safety valve theory is more appropriate and should be applied, especially in the current political and social climate, to inspire an expansion of student speech and press rights that would support expressive activities seeking to change the public discourse around important issues. Students who can speak freely will be more willing to accept decisions that go against them, and a school environment in which passionate or …

Adopted Into Debt?, Grace Palcic

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

While adoption procedures differ from state to state, every state uses some variation of the best interest of the child standard to determine the outcome of an adoption proceeding. To gather information for the best interest determination, states have created the home study process to investigate prospective adoptive families. A home study allows social workers and/or private adoption agencies to look at the needs of the child, the ability of the parents to care for the child, the existing familial dynamics, the safety of the physical home, the perceived moral character and reputation of the parents, mental and physical health …

The Chemical Straightjacket: Institutional Over-Use Of Psychotropic Drugs On Children In Lieu Of Therapeutic Community Mental Health Services, Marisa Leib-Neri

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

This Article argues that the abysmal state of children’s mental health in America is in part due to an overreliance on and over prescription of psychotropic drugs inside psychiatric residential institutions in lieu of community based mental health services. This overreliance on residential institutions and psychotropic drugs has allowed a new form of chemical restraint to flourish—the chemical straitjacket. This Article uses the medication lists of twelve children in seven different North Carolina psychiatric residential treatment facilities to demonstrate how the chemical straitjacket operates: the prescription of drugs not approved for pediatric populations, counter to evidence-based practices for particular diagnoses, …

Restorative Justice Initiatives In Marin County: Mitigating The Impacts Of The School-To-Prison Pipeline On Youth, Gina Dudley

Social Justice | Senior Theses

My senior thesis project delves into Restorative Justice's role in addressing the school-to-prison pipeline in Marin County. Restorative Justice prioritizes repairing the harm caused by crime to individuals, relationships, and communities, advocating for offenders to take responsibility and make amends rather than solely facing punishment (Restorative Justice Exchange, 2022). My capstone aims to pinpoint factors driving student exclusion from schools and subsequent entanglement in the legal system while highlighting how restorative approaches can prevent such outcomes. Additionally, it discusses the benefits of removing police officers from schools and reducing reliance on law enforcement within educational settings. My research will use …

Culpable Kids, Cara H. Drinan

Scholarly Articles

When a child commits a crime, how do states determine if that child is culpable? There are procedural rules that determine the forum for a minor’s trial and doctrines that limit children’s exposure to the most severe sentencing. But when it comes to culpability, states employ the same substantive law whether the defendant is 50 or 15. As this Article explains, that approach is profoundly flawed. In the early 21st century, in a series of cases known as the Miller trilogy, the United States Supreme Court established that youth are fundamentally different from adults and state sentencing practices must recognize …

De/Reconstructing Delinquency, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Hundreds of thousands of children are brought under the jurisdiction of delinquency courts every year in the United States. Despite the reality that most children engage in delinquent behavior during their adolescence, poor children, children of color, children with disabilities, and children who identify as LGBTQIA+ comprise a disproportionate number of those who become delinquency system-involved. These disparities exist by design. Their origins can be traced back to the flawed first principles upon which the juvenile court was built and, specifically, to the unduly expansive legal definition of delinquency that has undergirded the jurisdiction and power of the juvenile court …

Lewd, Rude, Obscene, And… Violent? Analyzing Student Clothing Depicting Firearms Under The First Amendment’S Obscenity Test, Luke Gorman

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Today’s national news and social media have repeatedly exposed our school-age children to the effects of shootings occurring within their schools and communities. Each shooting brings with it commentary, sometimes from the students themselves. While in-school student speech is more limited than speech levied in the outside world, students do not shed their speech rights at the “schoolhouse gate.” As a result, courts have failed to outline a consistent approach for when a student will be punished for wearing a shirt depicting a firearm to school. This Comment addresses this delicate balance by proposing a consistent three-part test framed by …

"A Plain Denial”: Reclaiming Equal Protection In American Juvenile Law, Addie C. Rolnick, David S. Tanenhaus, Justin Iverson, Danielle L. Silvestri

Scholarly Works

Juvenile courts are based on the premise that children are different from adults and should therefore be treated differently. Children may be treated more informally by courts, punished for different purposes, and brought before the court for different behaviors. Since In re Gault, the Supreme Court has been clear that there are limits to how different juvenile courts can be. Juveniles are entitled to many of the same procedural protections as adult criminal defendants, although the Court has preserved some procedural differences where it has determined that their benefit is outweighed by the need to preserve the informality, flexibility, …

Promoting Public Health And Public Safety By Ending The Exclusion Of Incarcerated Children From Access To Medicaid, Eduardo R. Ferrer

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay is a response to Professor Den Houter's article entitled Children are Not Inmates in which she effectively calls eliminating the exclusion of indigent incarcerated children from Medicaid coverage pursuant to the Medicaid Inmate Exclusion Policy (MIEP). This essay affirms and builds upon Professor Den Houter's recommendation. Part I of this response provides additional support for why ensuring system-involved youth receive timely, uninterrupted, high-quality behavioral health services is critical to improving both public health and public safety. Part II analyzes the benefits and risks attendant to excluding indigent incarcerated children from the MIEP. Part III proposes the implementation of …

Reentry Realities: Examining The Role Of Aftercare Programs In Supporting Justice-Involved Youth, Lynda Girven

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The current study examined if aftercare and reentry programs helped to reduce recidivism among youth who have been involved in the juvenile system, and specifically, youth released from residential placement facilities. Different components of aftercare programs were also examined, such as the inclusion of mentoring or family support, how many services were offered, and if the program followed the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model. Through completing a systematic review of studies published since 2008, five studies met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. All five studies found that the youth who received services through aftercare programs were less likely to reoffend than youth …

Book Review, Rumyana Van Ark Et Al., Children’S Rights, ‘Foreign Fighters’, Counter-Terrorism: Children Of Nowhere (2024), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

The focus of Children’s Rights, ‘Foreign Fighters’, Counter-Terrorism: Children of Nowhere is on foreign fighters who join terrorist groups, ISIS, and other entities engaged in armed conflict in Syria and Iraq. Counterterrorism measures, and the threats of terrorist attacks, have triggered a degradation and distortion of law. I have noted this following the 9/11 attacks and the concomitant refusal to treat children associated with terrorist groups as protected child soldiers. Whereas child soldiers in distant African conflicts are largely seen in the centers of global power as ‘faultless, passive victims’ of a pathological society, child terrorists taken as disruptive of …

The Kincare Craze In Child Protection: Romanticism, Subterfuge, And Racial Separatism, James G. Dwyer

FIU Law Review

A deluge of federal and state legislation in recent years aims to channel maltreated children removed from parents’ custody into kin placements, responding to advocates for parents who claim this is categorically better for children than entering or remaining in foster care with biologically unrelated caregivers. The claim has romantic appeal, sufficient to beguile legislators. But the research on outcomes for children in different post-removal placements does not support it. In reality, motivations other than child welfare underlie the advocacy for this legislation. The core aim is to evade federal child-welfare mandates adopted in the 1990s and long condemned by …