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Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

Infrastructure Finance For The Public Good: How Asset Recycling Can Untangle The New York Mta's $50 Billion Debt Load, Lev Breydo

Journal of Law and Mobility

Systematic infrastructure underinvestment – a $2.6 trillion ‘gap’ – and accelerating climate change have become facts of life in the United States. Though typically attributed to politics, this Article posits the circumstances as a market disequilibrium rooted in an interplay between unique dimensions of infrastructure and distinctive features of the U.S. approach. Legislative action, including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is insufficient to overcome these long-standing challenges.

Based on a broad, global study of effective approaches to infrastructure finance, as well as a multi-disciplinary analysis of the economics, engineering and finance literature, this Article proposes addressing the U.S. infrastructure …

The Structure Of Corporate Law Revolutions, William Savitt

Seattle University Law Review

Since, call it 1970, corporate law has operated under a dominant conception of governance that identifies profit-maximization for stockholder benefit as the purpose of the corporation. Milton Friedman’s essay The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits, published in September of that year, provides a handy, if admittedly imprecise, marker for the coronation of the shareholder-primacy paradigm. In the decades that followed, corporate law scholars pursued an ever-narrowing research agenda with the purpose and effect of confirming the shareholder-primacy paradigm. Corporate jurisprudence followed a similar path, slowly at first and later accelerating, to discover in the precedents and …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Prejudice Standards In Washington’S Appellate Courts, Andrew B. Van Winkle

Seattle University Law Review

When an appellate court finds an error to have occurred during a proceeding, the error is not yet subject to correction. In order to merit a remedy, the error must have been sufficiently prejudicial to the aggrieved party’s case. Drawing the line between correctable and non-correctable errors is not an easy task, for it often requires guessing at what was in the minds of jurors and trial judges. To cope with this task, courts have devised various rules and tests for deciding whether an error was likely prejudicial or not. These standards often go by names such as “harmless error,” …

Corporate Law In The Global South: Heterodox Stakeholderism, Mariana Pargendler

Seattle University Law Review

How do the corporate laws of Global South jurisdictions differ from their Global North counterparts? Prevailing stereotypes depict the corporate laws of developing countries as either antiquated or plagued by problems of enforcement and misfit despite formal convergence. This Article offers a different view by showing how Global South jurisdictions have pioneered heterodox stakeholder approaches in corporate law, such as the erosion of limited liability for purposes of stakeholder protection in Brazil and India, the adoption of mandatory corporate social responsibility in Indonesia and India, and the large-scale program of Black corporate ownership and empowerment in South Africa, among many …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

Protecting The Sovereign's Money Monopoly, Gary B. Gorton, Jeffery Zhang

Articles

Sovereign states have held a monopoly over the production of circulating money for well over a century. Governments, not private entities, issue circulating money. The advent of stablecoins—privately issued digital money that can circulate—raises the question of the sovereign’s money monopoly from the grave. Should private money circulate alongside sovereign money in the twenty-first century? We argue against coexistence to preserve financial stability and monetary sovereignty.

Through the lens of economic theory, we explore the coexistence question by revisiting the original debates that led to the sovereign’s money monopoly in England, the United States, Canada, and Sweden. In each case, …

The Macroprudential Myth, Jeremy C. Kress, Jeffery Yufeng Zhang

Articles

According to conventional wisdom, the 2008 fnancial crisis fundamen- tally changed how policymakers approach fnancial regulation. Before the crisis, regulators sought to prevent individual fnancial institutions from collapsing, but this “microprudential” strategy proved inadequate to stop the market-wide meltdown. In response, policymakers purportedly turned to a new “macroprudential” approach that prioritizes the stability of the fnancial system as a whole instead of individual institutions in isolation. Regulators in the United States and abroad enthusiastically embraced macroprudential policy, implementing stress tests, capital buffers, liquidity requirements, and other supposed macroprudential tools. As the United States’ top bank regulator declared in 2015, “[W]e …

Constructing A Taxonomy Of Financial Consumer Protection Policy And Assessing The New Consumer Duty In The United Kingdom's Financial Sector, Iris H-Y Chiu, Wai-Yee Wan

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article critically examines the UK's Consumer Duty, introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), arguing that while it represents a significant step in financial consumer protection, it falls short in addressing welfare outcomes and distributive justice. The Duty focuses on consumer empowerment but neglects key aspects of consumer citizenship, such as access to essential financial services and guarantees of product quality. The article proposes a taxonomy of consumer protection levels to evaluate the Duty's effectiveness and advocates for a more robust framework that prioritizes financial inclusion and long-term consumer welfare.

Reducing The American National Debt By Negotiating New Tax Practices On Internal Revenue Code Sec. 501(C) Organizations, Armando D. Gonzalez

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Unblocking The Chain: Leveraging Mediation And Negotiation In Crypto Exchange User Disputes, Jane Perov

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

No abstract provided.

Paying For Performance? Attorneys' Fees In Securities Fraud Class Actions, Jessica M. Erickson

Law Faculty Publications

This Article studies whether plaintiffs’ lawyers matter in securities class actions. We use inverse propensity score weighting (IPW) to compare the results in cases led by top-tier firms against those brought by lower-tier firms. This technique addresses case selection effects by using all of the cases led by a top-tier firm and then weighting the cases led by lower-tier firms based on how similar these cases are to the cases led by top-tier firms. We do find that top-tier lawyers obtain better outcomes for shareholders in a subset of securities class actions, specifically the cases against the larger (although not …

Smart Money For The People: Using Financial Innovation And Technology To Promote Esg, Frank Emmert

Duke Law & Technology Review

Traditional fiat currencies managed by governments and central banks have had negative impacts on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. Central banks in mature democracies pursue policies that prioritize economic growth and high employment. However, these policies often lead to inflation, eroding the savings and pension funds of average citizens and encouraging risky behavior by banks and entrepreneurs. The pursuit of endless growth is socially and environmentally unsustainable. Leaders in developing countries and dictatorships use expansive monetary policy to maintain their positions, further exacerbating the situation. Convertible fiat currencies moving across borders in untraceable transactions evade regulation and taxation, with …

After Ftx: Can The Original Bitcoin Use Case Be Saved?, Mark Burge

Faculty Scholarship

Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies spawned by the innovation of blockchain programming have exploded in prominence, both in gains of massive market value and in dramatic market losses, the latter most notably seen in connection with the failure of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022. After years of investment and speculation, however, something crucial has faded: the original use case for Bitcoin as a system of payment. Can cryptocurrency-as-a-payment-system be saved, or are day traders and speculators the actual cryptocurrency future? This article suggests that cryptocurrency has been hobbled by a lack of foundational commercial and consumer-protection law that …

Financial Inclusion, Cryptocurrency, And Afrofuturism, Lynnise Phillips Pantin

Northwestern University Law Review

As a community, Black people consistently face barriers to full participation in traditional financial markets. The decentralized nature of the cryptocurrency market is attractive to a community that has been historically and systematically excluded from the traditional financial markets by both private and public actors. As new entrants to any type of financial market, Black people have increasingly embraced blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as a path towards the wealth-building opportunities and financial freedom they have been denied in traditional markets. This Article analyzes whether the technology’s decentralized system will lead to financial inclusion or increased financial exclusion. Without reconciling the …

Racism As A Threat To Financial Stability, Cary Martin Shelby

Northwestern University Law Review

This Article draws from several theoretical frameworks such as critical race theory, law and economics, and rule of law conceptions to argue that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) should formally recognize racism as a threat to financial stability due to its interconnectedness with recent and projected systemic disruptions. This Article begins by first introducing a novel model created by the author through which to dissect this claim. This “Systemic Disruption Model” provides a theoretical depiction of how racism drives every phase along the life-cycle continuum of a systemic disruption.

First, with respect to the Model’s “Introduction” phase, this Article …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Defeating Rumpelstiltskin: Why The Temporary Provision That Excludes Student Loan Forgiveness From Gross Income Should Be Made Permanent, Josh Cohron

MC Law Review

Despite the advances in higher education that have been made in the United States over the years, there is still a crisis in this country concerning student debt and its fallout. One aspect of the student debt crisis that has the potential to loom over many individuals is the taxation of student debt forgiveness. Up until March 11, 2021, when all or part of one’s student debt was discharged, the amount was taxed as ordinary income for the year in which it was forgiven. Fortunately, on that date, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was passed which included a …

Flexibility And Conversions In New York City's Housing Stock: Building For An Era Of Rapid Change, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Noah Kazis

Law & Economics Working Papers

Post-COVID, New York City faces reduced demand for commercial space in its central business districts, even as residential demand is resurgent. Just as in past eras of New York’s history, conversion of commercial spaces into housing may help the city adapt to these new market conditions and provide an additional pathway for producing badly needed housing. If 10 percent of office and hotel spaces were converted to residential use, around 75,000 homes would be created, concentrated in Midtown Manhattan. However, there are considerable obstacles to such conversions, including a slew of regulatory barriers. Allowing greater flexibility in building uses—including by …

Taming Wildcat Stablecoins, Gary B. Gorton, Jeffery Y. Zhang

Articles

Cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins, are all the rage. Investors are exploring ways to profit off of them. Governments are considering ways to regulate them. While the technology underlying cryptocurrencies is new, the economics is centuries old. Oftentimes, lawmakers are so focused on understanding a new technological innovation that they fail to ask what exactly is being created.

In this case, the new technology has recreated circulating private money in the form of stablecoins, which are similar to the banknotes that circulated in many countries during the nineteenth century. The implication is that stablecoin issuers are unregulated banks. Based on lessons learned …

Beyond Consumer Protection: Standardized Stablecoins Disclosure As Information Infrastructure, Shuping Li

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

This article argues for standardized disclosure for stablecoins regulation. Information disclosure has long been considered a primary tool for consumer protection. Stablecoin issuers should disclose honestly and responsibly about the qualification of themselves, as well as the value, quantity, and operational mechanism of their stablecoins. Such disclosure can prevent issuers from taking advantage of information asymmetries for consumer exploitation or fraud. It is then up to the consumers to make informed investment or consumption decisions. More importantly, this paper argues that the fundamental role of information disclosure is to form a knowledge base for financial regulation and policymaking. The importance …

Auditing Overseas: How The United States Can Learn From Recent Financial Audit Reform In The United Kingdom, Daniel Damitio

Northwestern University Law Review

Financial auditing is one of the cornerstones of an effective capital market structure. When performed correctly, an independent financial audit provides investors with the security they need to effectively transact based on company disclosures. When this system fails, however, the results for investors and the economy as a whole can be devastating. In recognition of this danger, the market for financial auditing in the United States is regulated by a number of governmental and nongovernmental bodies charged with maintaining its health and effectiveness. But stakeholders within the U.S. market and government have criticized these regulators for failing to adequately respond …

Federal Data Privacy Regulation: Do Not Expect An American Gdpr, Matt Buckley

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Legal Representation And The Metaverse: The Ethics Of Practicing In Multiple Realities, Madeline Brom

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.