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Seattle University Law Review

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Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

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Converting Buildings Is Hard: Why Seattle’S Municipal Government Should Streamline Commercial-To-Residential Conversions, Tyler M. King

Seattle University Law Review

The conversion of commercial buildings into housing is a promising solution to the growing housing crisis in many urban areas. However, despite its potential benefits, the process of repurposing commercial spaces is often stymied by complex zoning codes, high conversion costs, and bureaucratic hurdles. This Article argues that the local and state governments in Seattle should adopt more streamlined policies and offer greater incentives to developers to facilitate these conversions. By reforming zoning regulations and providing targeted financial support, municipalities can reduce the barriers to conversion and unlock the potential of underutilized commercial properties. This article examines the legal and …

Getting Money Out Of Politics By Putting Money Into Politics: A Few Modest Proposals To Reform Seattle’S Democracy Voucher Program, Decker O’Donnell

Seattle University Law Review

Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program offers an unconventional response to the growing influence of money in American elections: rather than restricting political spending, it seeks to amplify the participation of ordinary voters by providing publicly funded vouchers that residents may assign to participating candidates. This Article examines the program’s development, operation, and constitutional foundation within the modern campaign-finance framework established by Buckley v. Valeo and subsequent Supreme Court decisions. It argues that democracy vouchers provide a constitutionally viable means of broadening participation in campaign financing while mitigating the influence of wealthy donors. The Article identifies two weaknesses in the current system: …

Legal Malpractice In Washington: Use Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct, Angelo Tadrous

Seattle University Law Review

Legal malpractice claims are difficult to prove. They are difficult to prove because many jurisdictions require that a plaintiff prove that, but for the lawyer’s misconduct, the client would have fared better. Thus, in a malpractice suit, a plaintiff must try a case within a case. Despite this difficulty, many jurisdictions prohibit the use of the Rules of Professional Conduct when litigating a malpractice case. Washington State is one of these jurisdictions. The Washington Supreme Court held in Hizey v. Carpenter that the Rules of Professional Conduct may not be referred to during trial. This Note argues that this prohibition …

Who Decides The Dead? Interpreting Washington’S Disposition Of Remains Statute, Wyatt Young

Seattle University Law Review

Washington’s disposition-of-remains statute, RCW 68.50.160, is designed to honor a decedent’s expressed wishes regarding the control and disposition of their body after death. Yet recent litigation reveals a critical gap between the statute’s intent-centered design and its practical enforceability. In Larotonda v. Blackburn, a trial court acknowledged that irreparable harm would occur if a decedent’s burial wishes were ignored but nonetheless denied relief on the grounds that the individual designated to carry out those wishes lacked standing. The result was a legal paradox: a statute that recognizes decedent autonomy in theory but withholds any meaningful mechanism for its enforcement …

Mapping Minority Investigative Powers In Congress, David Rapallo

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

“Shut down the Senate . . .” “Roll over and play dead . . .” In the first hundred days of President Donald Trump’s second term, these were the rallying cries of two far ends of a debate among Democrats about how to respond to the administration’s unprecedented actions. This debate, which rages on today, has been marked by a lack of specificity about the various oversight tools available to members of the minority party in Congress, particularly when they investigate whether the Executive Branch is faithfully executing the laws Congress passes. Scholarship too has focused little on the full …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

How The Dod Discourages Military Families From Seeking Mental Health Counseling, Christina Welch

Seattle University Law Review

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) administration of the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) presents significant barriers to mental health care access for military spouses and children. This paper explores how the EFMP, though designed to support military families with special needs, inadvertently creates barriers to mental health treatment. Military family members often do not seek mental health treatment to avoid the program's mandatory enrollment requirements. Military family members often view enrollment in the program undesirable because enrollment can restrict the pool of potential future duty assignment locations that are available to service members.

The lack of comprehensive data collection by …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

2025, Richard Delgado

Seattle University Law Review

"In a cutting and provocative social critique in one of the more extended Rodrigo Chronicles, Richard Delgado in 2025 employs skillful narrative—one of CRT’s many contributions to legal scholarship —to tell a gripping story of just how far the nation has descended into darkness with President Trump’s re-election. In Delgado’s vision, law professors—along with other political opponents of the President: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, the underserved—have targets on their backs."

-excerpt from Kevin Johnson's review of 2025

Veiled Justice: Secularism And The Hijab Across Democracies, Mohamed ‘Arafa

Seattle University Law Review

For much of 2022, Iran was gripped by widespread protests led by women who openly challenged the regime’s authority, particularly its compulsory veiling laws, following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Women around the globe came around and showed solidarity with the women in Iran. However, in non-Islamic countries and societies, one can still make out many prejudices and stereotyping connected to the question of whether and to what extent veiling is mandatory for women according to Shārīe’ā law. Is wearing the hijab a choice, or rather, an essential religious practice that religious Muslim women need to obey? …

Rewriting The Playbook: The X’S And O’S Of The House Settlement And The Future Of Student-Athletes’ Voice In Their Compensation, Matthew K.V. Glazer

Seattle University Law Review

Since the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the 1900s, collegiate athletes (student-athletes) have been prohibited from using their own name, image and likeness (NIL) for profit. But on July 1, 2021, the NCAA changed course and began allowing student-athletes to profit from their own NIL. In the past few years, U.S. college athletics have undergone significant changes, most notably introducing monetary compensation for student-athletes’ NIL. While these changes were long overdue and ultimately beneficial, they have significantly disrupted the landscape of college sports, giving rise to numerous challenges that some experts have compared to the “Wild …

Mr. Trump Goes To Washington Part Ii: A Review Of Richard Delgado's 2025, Kevin Johnson

Seattle University Law Review

Richard Delgado’s The Rodrigo Chronicles have captivated a generation of law students and legal scholars.  Mapping the terrain of race, racism, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), the skillful, and long-running narrative series stands as a testament to Delgado’s dedication to justice for all.

The Rodrigo Chronicles are simply one of Delgado’s many intellectual contributions and part of an unparalleled scholarly legacy.  As one of the founders of CRT, he produced a landmark body of scholarship –authoring the field's primary text,  making the argument for the regulation of hate speech,  forcefully challenging the Black/white binary of civil rights that long dominated …

International Law’S Forgotten Refugees—Palestinian Refugees In Egypt

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines the legal and humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian refugees who have fled to Egypt amidst the ongoing violence in Gaza. While escaping active conflict, these refugees face systemic barriers to employment and education, rendering their living conditions precarious and unsustainable. The unique legal status of Palestinian refugees stems from the fact that they have been excluded from the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, leaving them without any meaningful international protection. This exclusion is rooted in the political complexities of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and reflects a fragmented legal framework that prioritizes limited humanitarian aid over …

Symposium Introduction, David Orentlicher

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Preventative Care Gap: Completing The Aca’S Vision For Health, Abby Nagaich

Seattle University Law Review

This Note examines the preventive care mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the legal, political, and practical challenges that threaten its effectiveness. While the ACA significantly expanded access to no-cost preventive services, gaps remain—particularly in behavioral health, obesity management, and equitable service delivery. Ongoing litigation, potential administrative rollbacks, and shifting political leadership further destabilize this critical component of public health policy.

This Note argues that for the ACA to fulfill its original promise—and for any health framework to succeed—preventive care must be redefined as a comprehensive, early intervention approach grounded in both systemic access and patient education. It …

Land Without Legacy: The Case For Market-Based Appraisals On Hawaiian Home Lands, Alexis C. Owens

Seattle University Law Review

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 (HHCA) was enacted to restore Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands and promote long term economic self-sufficiency. More than a century later, that promise remains unfulfilled. This Note argues that a central but overlooked barrier lies in the HHCA’s mandated use of the replacement cost appraisal method, which systematically undervalues homestead properties by excluding market forces. In one of the most expensive housing markets in the United States, this approach suppresses home equity, the primary means of intergenerational wealth building, and restricts beneficiaries’ access to credit and financial stability. By severing the connection between …

President Or King? What The United States Can Learn From Brazil’S Conviction Of Former President Jair Bolsonaro, Emma Al-Angurli Peltzer

Journal of Law and Policy

In the United States, January 6, 2021, became a defining moment. President Donald Trump’s conduct and the lack of consequences have been indelibly etched into the nation’s political memory. In Brazil, January 8, 2023, marked a similar political rupture, but one that sealed former President Jair Bolsonaro’s fate in a very different legal order. Through a comparison of the Unites States Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States and Brazil’s criminal conviction of former President Bolsonaro, this Note demonstrates how two presidential democracies took sharply different paths when confronted with attacks on their constitutional order. Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, shaped …

Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power Of Small-Group Instruction, Michael I. Meyerson

Seattle University Law Review

Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school have greater anxiety and less developed reading and writing skills than ever before. The traditional large Socratic class, which was never the most effective teaching method, has become increasingly counterproductive.

This Article contends that small-group instruction provides the opportunity for superior teaching, especially for first-year law students. Recent scholarship in active learning, educational psychology, and students’ mental health demonstrates the limitations of the traditional large Socratic class experience. Building on that theoretical foundation and informed by sustained classroom experience, this Article argues that small-group pedagogy more …

The Administrative Law Of Mccarthyism, Nicholas Handler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article recovers the largely overlooked legal and administrative history of the federal loyalty-security program, and argues that it played a formative role in the development of modern civil service protections and administrative law. During the McCarthy era, the United States Civil Service Commission (CSC), under pressure from Congress, implemented a sweeping loyalty program aimed at rooting out purportedly disloyal federal employees. Though often remembered as a moment of political overreach and civil liberties violations, this Article shows that the loyalty program simultaneously catalyzed a surprising expansion in procedural rights for government workers—both through internal reforms initiated by the CSC …

The Supreme Court Under Threat: Early Lessons In Judicial Self-Protection, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores how the U.S. Supreme Court, despite being vulnerable to defiance of its decisions and political retaliation, has developed tools of judicial self-protection to preserve its institutional authority and thus its capacity to sustain the Constitution and the rule of law. Arguing that the Court performs not only a legal role that requires interpretation of the law but also a political one that demands institutional preservation, the Essay examines how the Court has historically navigated political threats by using a range of tools—including avoidance, delay, narrow rulings, strategic dicta, and rhetorical appeals. The Essay focuses on three nineteenth-century …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Communicative Administration: The Administrative State Beyond Legal Administration, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

On many dimensions, the administrative state is at the nadir of its power. The Supreme Court has tightened administrative law controls on agency power, and the Trump Administration has stormed the bureaucracy in an unprecedented blitz designed to kneecap agency capacity and independence. For better or worse, many agencies and their civil servants are being sidelined as meaningful actors in the administration of government. Yet this familiar account doesn’t tell the entire story. At the same time that agencies are being stripped of the power to implement law—what this Article calls “legal administration”— they are steadily accumulating extensive and largely …

Legal Academia And Permanent Democracy: The Fault In Our Law Schools, Sara Dillon

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

It is widely recognized that the American Constitution is failing as the foundational document of a modern democracy. Although many basic principles of constitutionalism have faded into irrelevance, with rising authoritarianism eclipsing such core ideals as judicial independence, separation of powers and restraints on arbitrary use of power, America’s nearly 200 institutions of legal teaching and scholarship have provided little in the way of proposals for urgently needed law reform. It is striking that even with so many high-powered academic institutions, so few meaningful proposals for constitutional change have been presented to the public as a way out of our …

Immigration Federalism In The Second Trump Administration, Stella Burch Elias

Idaho Law Review

This Article explores the ongoing transformation of state and local engagement in immigration-related rulemaking in the United States during the Second Trump Administration. The Article examines the myriad ways in which federal executive actions and state responses to those actions, alongside independent state actions and the federal government’s responses to those actions, are upending long established immigration law doctrines and shifting the borders of American federalism. The Article discusses legal scholars’ previous understanding of immigration federalism, embodied in United States v. Arizona, and the prior distinctions between permissible “alienage” laws and impermissible “immigration” laws, which could not be introduced by …

Reorganizing The Administrative State: Executive Ambition And Legislative Constraint, Jordan Graber

Fordham Law Review

Beginning in the 1930s, Congress enacted a series of statutes granting presidents the authority to initiate reorganizations of the administrative state. Under these reorganization statutes, the president determined any necessary changes in agency organization and submitted a reorganization proposal to Congress, which could approve or reject the plan. Over the next fifty years, the president and Congress worked cooperatively to promote the effective and efficient functioning of the administrative state.

Despite the successful reorganization initiatives undertaken pursuant to these statutes, Congress has not conferred reorganization authority on any president in the last four decades. As a result, the organization of …

The Unitary Executive And The Federal Reserve, Lev Menand

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court may soon embrace an interpretation of the U.S. Constitution that would significantly expand the power of the president over federal administrators and invalidate key provisions in dozens of federal statutes. A critical question is whether this interpretation—known as the unitary executive theory (UET)—would also render unconstitutional central bank independence (CBI), an arrangement where a country’s monetary policy is formulated by a semiautonomous body of experts insulated from partisan political pressure. Several justices have suggested that it would not, and a growing scholarly literature has proposed ways for the Court to distinguish the country’s central banking apparatus …

Plea Bargain Skepticism When Companies Kill People, Peter R. Reilly

Faculty Scholarship

In 2018 and 2019, two Boeing 737 MAX airplanes fell from the sky, killing 346 people—one of the deadliest corporate crimes in U.S. history. Instead of taking the case to trial, the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) addressed the matter by using two different alternative dispute resolution vehicles. First, Boeing was given a three-year deferred prosecution agree-ment. That deal was canceled when DOJ determined the company had breached it. Next, Boeing was given a plea bargain. This Article argues that federal courts, which are empowered to approve or reject plea deals, should be skeptical when the government turns to …

Court-Stripping, Court-Packing, And Court Defying: Revisiting The Supreme Court’S Essential Functions, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

The "essential functions thesis" is one of the most famous structural arguments in the field of federal courts. The thesis, which has been endorsed by a number of prominent scholars and the executive branch, posits that there are implicit, structural limits on Congress's authority to "strip" the Supreme Court of its appellate jurisdiction. Court-stripping, the thesis contends, is not allowed if it would undermine the essential functions of the Court-in particular, maintaining the supremacy and uniformity of federal law. In this Article, we revisit that thesis with three goals in mind. First, we aim to show that the structural arguments …