Law and Politics Commons^™

The Ai Doppelgänger Dilemma: Cloned Voices In The Music Industry, Elizabeth Shields

Seattle University Law Review

With the rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI), there has been an influx of “voice clones”—deep-learning algorithms that create synthetic speech to realistically mimic human voices. Celebrities and, in particular, music artists, have been subjected to the proliferation of AI voice clones on social media platforms like TikTok and streaming platforms such as Spotify. Despite music utilizing AI voice clones having amassed much popularity, this technology can be harmful and highly invasive to musicians whose livelihoods often depend on their distinct voices. While legal scholars have attempted to articulate various rights that could protect a person’s voice, individuals are largely …

Re-Imagining Tomorrow: A Technology, Innovation Law, And Ethics Symposium On Addictive Technology And Children, Margaret Chon

Seattle University Law Review

In this Foreword, Professor Margaret Chon introduces Seattle University's Technology, Innovation Law, and Ethics (TILE) program, the 2024 TILE Symposium, and Dr. Gaia Bernstein’s Unwired: Gaining Control Over Addictive Technologies.

Let The Sunshine In: Crafting Constitutional Transparency Regulations For Content Moderation, Caitlin Ring Carlson

Seattle University Law Review

In response to public concern about the impact of social media, legislators in some U.S. states have developed laws to regulate the process of content moderation. Many include mandatory transparency and disclosure requirements, some of which courts have already deemed an unconstitutional infringement on social media platforms’ right to free expression. This article explores the parameters for crafting constitutional social media transparency regulations using existing U.S. media policy and insights from recent legal challenges. The resulting analysis identifies content neutral transparency requirements that mandate the disclosure of purely factual, non-controversial information as those most likely to withstand judicial scrutiny. Specifically, …

This Is Not A Game: The Addictive Allure Of Digital Companions, Nizan Geslevich Packin, Karni Chagal-Feferkorn

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents have become an inescapable part of modern childhood, reshaping education, leisure activities, entertainment, and social interaction. From AI-powered tutors that adapt to individual learning styles to emotionally responsive chatbots that simulate human companionship, these systems promise unprecedented personalization, cognitive stimulation, and social support. However, these benefits mask significant risks that remain unregulated and inadequately addressed.

Although adults are also susceptible to forming deep emotional bonds with AI companions—often trusting them as if they possessed genuine understanding and empathy—children are particularly vulnerable. Their misplaced trust can more severely distort social development, weaken critical thinking, and foster unhealthy …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Responding To Digital Addiction, Ned Snow

Seattle University Law Review

In Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies, Professor Gaia Bernstein calls our attention to the growing problem of digital addiction. Digital addiction may sound like something out of a science-fiction novel or something that does not raise the same sort of real-life practical concerns as are present in a physical health crisis or an economic decline. But as Bernstein presents the evidence, we learn that the consequences of digital addiction can be just as harmful as a serious disease or a financial depression. Cognitive development disorders, anxiety, emotional depression, social isolation, and other mental health ills can be debilitating—as much …

Statutes And Special Interests, Kirsten Matoy Carlson

Northwestern University Law Review

Who really decides what statutes say? Most Americans think that special interests play an outsized role in our lawmaking processes. Yet empirical studies have produced little evidence that special interests get everything, or even most of, what they ask for from Congress. This Article takes an innovative new approach to tackling the difficult question of how advocates influence legislation. It presents the first comprehensive empirical study of how advocates influence the law through amendments in the legislative process. The Article analyzes an original dataset of 2,137 witnesses and their testimony at referral hearings on 108 Indian-related bills in the 97th …

National Origin Bias And U.S. Public Opinion On Supreme Court Nominees: Evidence From A Conjoint Experiment, Christopher P. Dinkel, Andrew Ifedapo Thompson, Marc C. Mcallister

Pace Law Review

As the ultimate arbiter of the interpretation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court has a significant impact on businesses and individuals across an increasingly diverse country. Although the vast majority of the Justices who have served on the Court have been white males, recent Presidents have appointed nominees who have brought greater racial and gender diversity to the Court. Despite these efforts, however, not a single U.S. Supreme Court Justice in the past six decades has been born abroad, even though Americans who were born outside the United States constitute nearly a tenth of the …

P*Law 2025: What’S Next? Reproductive Justice Under The Trump Administration, Center For Public Service Law, Shayna Medley, Jenny Ma, Chelsea Williams-Diggs, Bella Pori

2024–2025 Flyers

Hosted by Cardozo P*LAW 2025, this January 28 event explored abortion rights and reproductive justice under the Trump administration. Panelists discussed litigation, nonprofit advocacy, and policymaking at both state and federal levels, with a focus on how New York-based law students can support local efforts. Moderated by Bella Pori ’21.

The Forgotten Fundamental Right To Free Movement, Noah Smith-Drelich

Northwestern University Law Review

There is a powerful fundamental right hiding in plain sight: the fundamental right to free movement. This right goes beyond the consistently acknowledged—though infrequently applied—fundamental right to interstate travel. The true scope of the Constitution’s protection of movement through substantive due process safeguards local, interstate, and international travel. Though overlooked today, the fundamental right to free movement has deep roots in history and tradition, and in the decisions of numerous state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

This Article is the first to examine freedom of movement using the history and tradition test for unenumerated fundamental rights. This Article …

The Untenability Of Justice Clarence Thomas's Indian Law Jurisprudence: Confronting The Indian Commerce Clause To Address The Problem Of Historical Change In Federal Indian Law, Skylar Logan Wiseman

American Indian Law Journal

By viewing the Indian Commerce Clause as conferring only a modest grant of federal power over Indian affairs—a power limited solely to trade in the economic sense of the word—Justice Clarence Thomas has subjected the Court’s Indian law jurisprudence to a wide-ranging originalist critique that, if successful, would invalidate nearly all of federal Indian law. Justice Thomas’s efforts to locate plenary power within the metes and bounds of the Indian Commerce Clause are here revealed for what they really are: attempts at tenability and coherence in a field of law which simultaneously bolsters tribal sovereignty while restricting it in ways …

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Letters From A Fragmented Democracy, Maureen Edobor

Scholarly Articles

This piece confronts the stakes of our current trajectory by looking to the future. It presents six fictional letters to illustrate where today’s ominous currents could lead. In this imagined tomorrow, contemporary voting restrictions, judicial erosion, and administrative manipulation have gradually hollowed out the franchise, transforming formal democracy into little more than an empty spectacle. Each letter voices a different facet of democratic erosion: a voter disenfranchised by bureaucratic hurdles, a candidate’s voice hijacked by deepfake technology, a neighbor ensnared by punitive voting laws, a community erased by gerrymandering, a campaign drowned in dark money, and even a corporate memo …

Quota Reform, Repression, And The Fight For Human Rights In Bangladesh, Noreen Tareque

Human Rights Brief

On June 5, 2024, the High Court of Bangladesh ruled against the government’s decision to cancel the country’s quota system, stating that the decision to cancel the system in 2018 was invalid. This meant the country would go back to using the quota system to assign government jobs to students after they had completed their higher education. The quota system established that 30% of Bangladesh’s government jobs were reserved for the children and family members of freedom fighters who lost their lives during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 against Pakistan.  Additionally, the quota system reserved 10% for women affected …

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 …

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 …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

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 …

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

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

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 …

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 …

War Courts: Fdr, National Security, And The War On Terrorism, Harvey Gee

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

The Method Is The Message: Movement Law And The Social Change Commons, Raymond H. Brescia

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Legal scholars have long sought to understand the relationship between social movements and the law. A new group of such scholars has argued that to better understand this relationship, and to advance social change that is effective, sustainable, equitable, and just, they must engage in dialogue with such movements to generate ideas that will catalyze that change. For those interested in generating ideas that can spark meaningful and lasting social change, such developments in legal scholarship represent an exciting evolution in the relationship between legal scholarship, legal scholars, and social movements: a relationship that appears to be growing stronger, deeper, …

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 …

Dobbs V. Brown, Benjamin H. Barton

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization1is the most important and impactful Supreme Court decision since at least Roe v. Wade, and potentially since Brown v. Board of Education. Past survey data show that most Americans can only name two Supreme Court opinions: Roe and Brown. Dobbs will surely join that list. This Article compares the history, drafting, and opinions of Dobbs and Brown to show what a missed opportunity Dobbs represents. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with the opinion, it should be clear that Dobbs was one of those unique times (like that of Brown) where the Court …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead