Law and Society Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Sunshine Laws Cast A Dark Shadow On Democracy, Elizabeth Stephani

Wyoming Law Review

A group of people keenly aware of government corruption and the consequences of concentrated power created the United States Constitution. Flowing from the Founders’ fear of another King, the U.S. Constitution designed public institutions to be accountable to the people through the separation of powers. While the separation of powers remains the bedrock of American democracy, laws like the Wyoming Public Records Act (Wyoming Sunshine Law) allow for harmful overlaps in government powers. This Article begins by assessing federal legal frameworks for open records requests incorporated in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Next, the Article compares and contrasts Wyoming’s …

Safer Futures: Strategies For Enhancing Collaboration Between Law Enforcement And Child Welfare Agencies In Preventing Fatal Child Abuse, Kayla M. Brown

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Do Federal Circuit Courts Of Appeal Provide Adequate Assistance To Self-Represented Litigants? A Review Of The Circuits’ Websites Resources, Jona Goldschmidt

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

Company Districts, C.J. Suglia

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

Special districts that are owned or controlled by private entities and act almost uniformly like a company town can be dubbed a “company district.” These special districts, similar to historical company towns, have autonomy over the districts, control the local government, and only have to answer to the state government. Historical company towns like Pullman, Illinois and Hershey, Pennsylvania had almost canonical command over the land within their boundaries. Company districts operate their business similar to a company town—in a city that the private entity controls, but do not have employees living on-site. Company districts benefit by being immune to …

Alternatives To Delaware? Evaluating Corporate Law In Nevada, Texas, And Wyoming, Joseph Landau, Bailey Swartz, Anthony Rickey, Robert Ragazzo, Benjamin Edwards, George A. Mocsary

Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law

No abstract provided.

Who Decides: The Role Of Parental Rights In Abortion And Gender-Affirming-Care Decisions For Minors, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The American legal system presumes that children’s interests are best protected by their parents and, secondarily, by the state’s parens patriae authority. Yet this structure falters when parental authority and state power are infused with political and ideological agendas. This Essay examines how these dynamics have distorted decision-making authority in two contexts—minors’ access to abortion and gender-affirming medical care—and allowed children’s welfare and autonomy to be sacrificed to partisan aims. The law is inconsistent on the role of parental rights—typically empowering parents to grant or withhold consent to a minor’s abortion but categorically stripping them of the power to consent …

The Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic Demands On By-Law Officer Wellness And Work, Harveen Randhawa

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This research sheds light on how the rapid demand to enforce transitioning pandemic-related (and reopening) mandates impacts the wellness of bylaw officers in the context of resource strain. Ontario bylaw officers are at the forefront of the province’s response, enforcing lockdown rules to ensure community safety. This research is imperative in understanding how bylaw officers maintain their roles in municipal enforcement, while enforcing rapidly shifting COVID-19 regulations and moving forward into a post-lockdown climate. The research focuses on identifying and understanding the demands and resources that currently typify bylaw officers working in Southern Ontario. It further examines how the COVID-19 …

Addressing Witness Coaching By Cross-Examination, Gregory C. Sisk

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

In preparing a witness, may a lawyer script the testimony by taking the witness through repeated rehearsals to fabricate a narrative in the form directed by the lawyer and to use words that the lawyer suggests are more favorable for the represented party? Suppose the lawyer believes a suggestion to the witness regarding the specific substance or word choice of testimony does not introduce a falsehood but rather produces a more favorable spin on the witness narrative. May the lawyer justify that shaping of testimonial content as legitimate zealous representation of a client?

Given that any such suggestion by the …

Our Ai, Ourselves: Illuminating The Human Fears Animating Early Regulatory Responses To The Use Of Generative Ai In The Practice Of Law, Margaret Raymond

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Generative artificial intelligence is changing the way lawyers work, and with those changes have come questions and concerns about how it should be regulated. Those questions and concerns, particularly on the individual level, are driven by fears about the implications of the use of generative AI. This Article identifies and explores the fears that drive these regulatory responses: fear of exposing judicial fallibility, anxiety over AI replacing human lawyers, and concerns about missing out on AI’s potential benefits. Ultimately, effective regulation of the use of generative AI in legal practice needs to be attentive to the fears and hopes surrounding …

Trading Places: An Education For Legal Employers: A View From The Perspective Of A New Generation Of Legal Talent, Michele N. Struffolino

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Most lawyers remember the stress associated with walking into their first job interview. The goal being to get the interviewer to “pick me.” Today, legal employers need to be prepared to be more of the interviewee than the interviewer in the hiring process. Over the past few decades, much focus has been on identifying the skills essential to success in the legal profession—mainly those skills and traits legal employers view as important when hiring new associates. These findings led to changes in legal education in order to prepare law students for entering the employment market and successfully securing a position. …

Artificial Intelligence In Texas: Navigating The Risks, Benefits, And Uncharged Boundaries Of An Emerging Technology, Jordanna Tobias

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.

Fifty Years Of Protecting The Surviving Spouse: The Origin And Evolution Of Florida's Elective Share, Flavia Argamasilla

FIU Law Review

Currently, Florida’s elective share framework calculates the amount a surviving spouse is entitled to based on a decedent’s “elective estate.” Although this “elective estate” represents a significant improvement from previous law, where a decedent was free to completely disinherit a surviving spouse, issues still loom regarding the fairness of the framework. Granting a surviving spouse a fixed share of 30 percent of the decedent’s “elective estate” regardless of the length of the marriage can lead to inequitable outcomes. For instance, a surviving spouse who was married to the decedent for any period of time, one month even, can elect to …

Partisan Impact? Rejecting The Wisconsin Supreme Court’S New Remedial Redistricting Criterion, Anthony Sikorski

Marquette Law Review

In Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the districting maps for the Wisconsin Legislature that the court had adopted at the close of the Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission trilogy of cases. In so doing, while the Clarke majority based its decision on the maps containing noncontiguous districts, in violation of article IV, sections 4 and 5 of the Wisconsin Constitution, it not-so-subtly introduced a new criterion that would be used to judge remedial maps: “partisan impact.” This Comment critiques the partisan impact criterion through a textualist lens, concluding that the Wisconsin Constitution does …

Cleaning Our Hands Of Climate Washing: Promoting Corporate Responsibility With The European Union’S Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Parker M. Jacobs

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

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 …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

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

Measuring The Rapidly Increasing Use Of Artificial Intelligence In Legal Scholarship, Michael Conklin, Christopher Houston

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a profound impact on nearly every industry, including legal academia. As AI-driven tools like ChatGPT become more prevalent, they raise critical questions about authorship, academic integrity, and the evolving nature of legal writing. While AI offers promising benefits—such as improved efficiency in research, drafting, and analysis—it also presents ethical dilemmas related to originality, bias, and the potential homogenization of legal discourse.

One of the challenges in assessing AI’s influence on legal scholarship is the difficulty of identifying AI-generated content. Traditional plagiarism-detection methods are often inadequate, as AI does not merely copy …

Special-Purpose Governments, Conor Clarke, Henry Hansmann

Scholarship@WashULaw

When one thinks of government, what comes to mind are familiar general-purpose entities like states, counties, and cities. But more than half of the 90,000 governments in the United States are strikingly different: They are “special-purpose” governments that do one thing, such as supply water, fight fire, or pick up the trash. These entities have expanded far more rapidly than any other form of government. Yet they remain understudied, and they present at least two puzzles. First, special-purpose governments are difficult to distinguish from entities that are typically regarded as business organizations—such as consumer cooperatives—and thus underscore the nebulous border …

Expanding Access To Justice Through Regulatory Reform And Innovation: Arizona Lessons From The Past, Present, And Future, Samuel A. Thumma

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Nil: How Third-Party Businesses Exploit Collegiate Student-Athletes With Impunity, Matthew Glogower

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

While there are numerous state NIL (name, image, and likeness) laws protecting student-athletes from economic exploitation, there is no federal law which offers universal protection, nationwide, to student-athletes. State NIL laws offer some protections for student-athletes from exploitation by colleges, universities, and boosters, but there is no protection for student-athletes who sign NIL deals with for-profit third-party businesses. These NIL deals, between the student-athlete and third-party businesses, make up the majority of NIL agreements. Section 6 of the proposed College Athlete Economic Freedom Act (“CAEFA”), titled “Enforcement Provisions,” aims to codify federal protection for student-athletes against colleges, universities, and boosters, …

The Enduring Relevance Of Congress Despite The Court's Shift To “Ordinary Reader” Statutory Interpretation, Abbe R. Gluck, Laila M. Robbins

Journal of Law and Policy

Has Congress become irrelevant to statutory interpretation? The dominant theoretical and doctrinal paradigm in American statutory interpretation has always been the conversation between Congress and the courts. Today, however, the Court’s new, second-generation textualists claim they have left Congress behind. They argue they have changed textualism’s perspective, from an “insider” perspective focused on Congress’s textual choices, to an “outsider” perspective based on how “ordinary people” read statutes. The Court’s self-professed shift away from a legiscentric approach, if true, would be a seismic shift in the conception of the judicial role. Whereas judges and scholars—including first-generation textualists—had for a century focused …

The Broad Church Of Modern Textualism, Nicole Steitz, Brian G. Slocum, Kevin Tobia

Journal of Law and Policy

Nearly thirty years ago, Justice Scalia’s Tanner lectures branded Holy Trinity Church v. United States (1892) as the anti-textualist archetype, a decision trumping the text’s plain meaning with a suspect judicial investigation of the law’s purpose or spirit. And so Holy Trinity seemed, until Gales and Solan’s groundbreaking empirical study supported an alternative reading of the key statutory term (“labor or service”) that would avoid this conflict between text and purpose. Taking inspiration from Gales and Solan, we reconsider Holy Trinity using the precepts of modern textualism, with its increased emphasis on context, pragmatics, anti-literalism, legal meaning, holistic meaning, non-compositionality, …

The Pet Fish Canon, William N. Eskridge Jr.

Journal of Law and Policy

Inspired by the work of the late Professor Larry Solan, this article proposes that judges recognize as one of the textualist canons of statutory construction a “pet fish” canon. Such a canon would posit that when an ordinary reader would understand two or more words to yield a meaning that is different than the sum of the two words defined separately, the statutory interpreter should not disaggregate them. The Roberts Court has already followed such a linguistic precept in some statutory cases, and this article proposes that the Court recognize this as a canon considered at least as seriously as …

Grammar & Syntax Arguments On The Roberts Court, Anita S. Krishnakumar

Journal of Law and Policy

In his excellent book, The Language of Judges, Professor Solan demonstrates how judges use grammatical or linguistic arguments to avoid acknowledging statutory ambiguity—and how they often get the grammar or linguistics wrong. Since his book was published, textualism has become the dominant interpretive approach on the U.S. Supreme Court—and we have seen increasingly prominent battles involving grammatical devices and rules. This comment takes Professor Solan’s analysis as a jumping off point to evaluate how grammar and linguistic arguments are employed on the modern Supreme Court, in the age of textualism. The comment offers a brief empirical and doctrinal assessment of …