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Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Robust Unionism As A Compelling Interest: Evaluating The Exacting Policies Of Janus, Seth Santini

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Religious Roots Of Corporate Organization, Amanda Porterfield

Seattle University Law Review

Religion and corporate organization have developed side-by-side in Western culture, from antiquity to the present day. This Essay begins with the realignment of religion and secularity in seventeenth-century America, then looks to the religious antecedents of corporate organization in ancient Rome and medieval Europe, and then looks forward to the modern history of corporate organization. This Essay describes the long history behind the entanglement of business and religion in the United States today. It also shows how an understanding of both religion and business can be expanded by looking at the economic aspects of religion and the religious aspects of …

The Deceptive Dyad: How Falseness Structures International Law, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

Public International Law (PIL) is portrayed as an autonomous and tolerably just legal system. A determinable system of rules and principles, deployed by professionals to evaluate and constrain the global machinations of power politics. Law as an authoritative structure through which global justice can be pursued. This entrenches a comforting, but false, progress narrative; and obscures the limitations of pursuing progressive change through international law. PIL is structured by false necessity and false contingency. These interact to create the Deceptive Dyad, which disguises the radical indeterminacy of PIL. PIL’s purported demands, however meticulously crafted, do not effect change in the …

Harry Potter And The Gluttonous Machine, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I outline the colonial structure of international law, and examine the short decline or suppression of its coloniality in the so-called ‘era of decolonisation’, then illustrate its resurgence in the modern neo-colonial order. PIL has split into two separate systems. One includes, and is justified by, the heroic tales of human rights and ‘Humanity’s Law’. The other is the actualised system of International Economic Law (IEL), an order driven by the need of the over-developed states to plunder the under-developed states’ resources and labour, to subsidise the luxury to which we have grown accustomed. One purports to …

Functional Statehood In Contemporary International Law, William Thomas Worster

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The international community lacks a form of territorial-based, international legal personality distinct from statehood, and yet, non-state, territorial entities of varying degrees of autonomy or independence need to function within the international community in some form. Some of these entities cannot be recognized as states because their creation violates jus cogens norms, though others are not recognized based on an assessment that they may not fully qualify as a state or that there are political reasons to refuse recognition. However, existing states still need to engage with these territorial quasi-states through the only paradigm the international community has—statehood. For example, …

Fault Lines: An Empirical Legal Study Of California Secession, Bill Tomlinson, Andrew W. Torrance

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Over the last decade, multiple initiatives have proposed that California should secede from the United States. This article examines the legal aspects of California secession and integrates that analysis with findings from an empirical study of public perceptions of such secession. There is no provision in the United States Constitution allowing states, or other political or geographical units, to secede unilaterally. The Civil War was fought to uphold this principle, and the United States Supreme Court confirmed it in its 1869 Texas v. White decision. Nevertheless, numerous instances of secession, both legal and extralegal, have occurred across human history, and …

Predictable Punishments, Brian Galle, Murat C. Mungan

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analyses of both crime and regulation writ large suggest that the subjective cost or value of incentives is critical to their effectiveness. But reliable information about subjective valuation is scarce, as those who are punished have little reason to report honestly. Modern “big data” techniques promise to overcome this information shortfall but perhaps at the cost of individual privacy and the autonomy that privacy’s shield provides.

This Article argues that regulators can and should instead rely on methods that remain accurate even in the face of limited information. Building on a formal model we present elsewhere, we show that …

Court-Packing In 2021: Pathways To Democratic Legitimacy, Richard Mailey

Seattle University Law Review

This Article asks whether the openness to court-packing expressed by a number of Democratic presidential candidates (e.g., Pete Buttigieg) is democratically defensible. More specifically, it asks whether it is possible to break the apparent link between demagogic populism and court-packing, and it examines three possible ways of doing this via Bruce Ackerman’s dualist theory of constitutional moments—a theory which offers the possibility of legitimating problematic pathways to constitutional change on democratic but non-populist grounds. In the end, the Article suggests that an Ackermanian perspective offers just one, extremely limited pathway to democratically legitimate court-packing in 2021: namely, where a Democratic …

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Public Policy Origins Of U.S. Data, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed introduction and overview of public policy origins of U.S. data. Shows how congressional legislation and Office of Management and Budget documents influence compilation and dissemination of U.S. Government data. Stresses how Indiana General Assembly requirements influence compilation of Indiana state agency data and Indiana local government agency data. Places emphasis on roles played in data compilation and dissemination by public policy research institutions/think tanks. Concludes by stressing limitations of data collection by governmental and non-governmental entities.

Congressional Securities Trading, Gregory Shill

Indiana Law Journal

The trading of stocks and bonds by Members of Congress presents several risks that warrant public concern. One is the potential for policy distortion: lawmakers' personal investments may influence their official acts. Another is a special case of a general problem: that of insiders exploiting access to confidential information for personal gain. In each case, the current framework which is based on common law fiduciary principles is a poor fit. Surprisingly, rules from a related context have been overlooked.

Like lawmakers, public company insiders such as CEOs frequently trade securities while in possession of confidential information. Those insiders' trades are …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Kosovo's Controversial 100 Percent Tariff: An Analysis Of Its Imposition And The Issues Bleeding Into The Conflict Between Kosovo And Serbia, Ernira Mehmetaj

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

On November 6, 2018, Kosovo imposed a 10 percent tariff on products imported from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Later that month, on November 28, 2018, after Kosovo was denied membership in the International Criminal Police Organization, Kosovo increased the custom tariffs on Serbian and Bosnian goods from 10 to 100 percent. These actions resulted in a standstill of the European Union–mandated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue—a dialogue seeking to normalize the relations between the two states. Having the tumultuous history shared by Kosovo and Serbia as a backdrop, this Note analyzes the international agreements Kosovo is party to, specifically the Central European …

China's Belt And Road Initiative: An Examination Of Project Financing Issues And Alternatives, August Nelson Dinwiddie

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

In 2013, China launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to realize the vision of revitalizing the ancient Silk Road. The BRI can be characterized as a vast infrastructure development initiative spanning over sixty-five countries that total almost half of the world's GDP. Since its launch, BRI projects have primarily been financed through commercial loans provided by Chinese banks, creating concerns over debt sustainability. At the top of these concerns are fears over whether participation in the BRI will lead to a "debt-trap scenaro." Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) provide an alternative financing option. In project development under a PPP, particularly the …

The Grip Of Nationalism On Corporate Law, Mariana Pargendler

Indiana Law Journal

Part I provides a brief overview of the relationship between corporate law and nationalism and demonstrates their interaction in the historical experiences of several key jurisdictions. These vignettes are merely illustrative, but they indicate how deep the link between nationalism and corporate law can be. Part II summarizes the evidence on the economic effects of foreign corporate control, showing that it is ultimately inconclusive. Part III explains why corporate law can be an attractive instrument to accomplish nationalist objectives and explores the possible regulatory responses to this phenomenon. Part IV analyzes the implications of these findings for future developments in …

Screened Out Of Housing: The Impact Of Misleading Tenant Screening Reports And The Potential For Criminal Expungement As A Model For Effectively Sealing Evictions, Katelyn Polk

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

Having an eviction record “blacklists” tenants from finding future housing. Even renters with mere eviction filings—not eviction orders—on their records face the harsh collateral consequences of eviction. This Note argues that eviction records should be sealed at filing and only released into the public record if a landlord prevails in court. Juvenile record expungement mechanisms in Illinois serve as a model for one way to protect people with eviction records. Recent updates to the Illinois juvenile expungement process provided for the automatic expungement of certain records and strengthened the confidentiality protections of juvenile records. Illinois protects juvenile records because it …

Debt Bondage: How Private Collection Agencies Keep The Formerly Incarcerated Tethered To The Criminal Justice System, Bryan L. Adamson

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

This Article examines the constitutionality of statutes which allow courts to transfer outstanding legal financial obligations to private debt collection agencies. In Washington State, the clerk of courts can transfer the legal financial obligation of a formerly incarcerated person if he or she is only thirty days late making a payment. Upon transfer, the debt collection agencies can assess a “collection fee” of up to 50% of the first $100.000 of the unpaid legal financial obligation, and up to 35% of the unpaid debt over $100,000. This fee becomes part of the LFO debt imposed at sentencing, and like that …

Reflections On The Effects Of Federalism On Opioid Policy, Matthew B. Lawrence

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Deregulation Defanged: An Empirical Review Of Federal Deregulatory Policy And Its Legal Obstacles, Jack Thorlin

Brigham Young University Journal of Public Law

No abstract provided.

Public Defenders' Offices In Brazil: Access To Justice, Courts, And Public Defenders, Alexandre Dos Santos Cunha

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This essay discusses the impact of public defenders' offices in promoting equality through the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil. To achieve this goal, this note is divided into two parts.

Part I presents the Brazilian public defenders' offices, their history, institutional design, rights, and prerogatives. Part II discusses the role played by public defenders in the enforcement of the right to access to justice in Brazil, as well as the relations established between public defenders and courts. The Conclusion attempts to assess the sustainability of the Brazilian model, in order to determine if there is …

Movement Lawyering, Scott L. Cummings

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This article examines the relation between movement lawyering and American legal theory, explores the meaning and content of movement lawyering in the contemporary American context, and reflects on the implications of movement lawyering for the theory and practice of access to justice around the globe. It suggests that the rise of movement lawyering signals frustration with process-oriented solutions to fundamental problems of inequality and discrimination in the legal system, and challenges access to justice proponents to frame their work in connection with a political strategy that builds on movements for progressive legal change. In this sense, the article suggests that …

Tiptoeing Through The Landmines: The Evolution Of States’ Legal Ethics Authority Regarding Representing Cannabis Clients, Karen E. Boxx

Seattle University Law Review

Despite the continued federal classification of cannabis as an illegal drug, states have legalized the possession, use, production, and sale of cannabis. In order to do so, the states have created complex regulatory schemes to control and monitor the cannabis industry and satisfy the federal government concerns, such as use by minors and organized crime involvement. First, this Article presents the ethical dilemma of cannabis lawyering. Second, this Article describes the history, evolution, and current status of the various states’ pronouncements on a lawyer’s ethical duties with respect to the business and use of cannabis that may be legal under …

A Class Action Lawsuit For The Right To A Minimum Education In Detroit, Carter G. Phillips

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Pursuit Of Comprehensive Education Funding Reform Via Litigation, Lisa Scruggs

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Speech Inequality After Janus V. Afscme, Charlotte Garden

Indiana Law Journal

This Article explores the growing divide between the Roberts Court’s treatment of the free speech rights of wealthy individuals and corporations in campaign finance cases as compared to its treatment of the rights of public-sector labor unions and their members. First, it highlights some internal contradictions in the Janus Court’s analysis. Then, it discusses the growing—yet mostly ignored—divergence in the Court’s treatment of corporate and labor speakers with respect to the use of market influence to achieve political influence.

The Article has two Parts. In Part I, I explain how the Court reached its decision in Janus before critiquing the …

For Coöperation And The Abolition Of Capital, Or, How To Get Beyond Our Extractive Punitive Society And Achieve A Just Society, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

In hindsight, the term "capitalism" was always a misnomer, coined paradoxically by its critics in the nineteenth century. The term misleadingly suggests that the existence of capital produces a unique economic system or that capital itself is governed by economic laws. But that's an illusion. In truth, we do not live today in a system in which capital dictates our economic circumstances. Instead, we live under the tyranny of what I would call "tournament dirigisme": a type of state-directed gladiator sport where our political leaders bestow spoils on the wealthy, privileged elite.

We need to displace this tournament dirigisme with …

In Memory Of Professor James E. Bond, Janet Ainsworth

Seattle University Law Review

Janet Ainsworth, Professor of Law at Seattle University School of Law: In Memory of Professor James E. Bond.

Neoliberalism, Violence And Capital Accumulation, Reem M. El Barbary

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation looks into the violent, self-serving legal (neocolonial) order that revolves around wealth accumulation and the defense and sustainability of the status quo. The starting point and core idea that guides my discussion is the “redemptive” ideological framework and commitment to free market economies and profit-making. I thus look into the narratives upon which an alliance between development, progress, human rights and neoliberalism rests, in a manner that limits and restricts involvement and action; and normalizes and legitimizes suffering, ill-doing and irresponsibility through law. I examine the interdisciplinary and multilayered reality of repression that state sponsored, and supported, bodies …