Law and Society Commons^™

Legal Deserts Or Mirages? Lawyers, Legal Services, And Respect For Law In Rural Wisconsin And Rural America, Joseph A. Ranney

Marquette Law Review

In recent years the legal profession has raised alarms about a perceived shortage of lawyers in rural America. State legislatures, courts, and bar associations have created rural lawyer recruitment (RLR) programs to address the perceived shortage, which include stipends, logistical support, and training for law students and lawyers willing to make a commitment to rural practice. Is there really a crisis? If so, are current RLR programs an effective means of stemming the crisis?

This Article examines these questions from several different angles, singling out rural Wisconsin for particular attention. It concludes that although lawyer density ratios (the proportion …

A Legal Analysis Of Wisconsin’S Disturbing History Of Unpunished Lynchings, 1848–1910, Steven M. Biskupic

Marquette Law Review

“Wisconsin is getting a reputation for lynching.” So reported the Manitowoc Pilot in 1881, after an enraged mob stormed a courtroom in Pepin County and, in the midst of legal proceedings, brutally lynched Ed Maxwell, who had been charged with killing two law enforcement officers. Between 1848 and 1910, Wisconsin had dozens of similar lynching attempts, undertaken by hundreds of otherwise law-abiding citizens and witnessed by thousands more. Nineteen resulted in violent death. Yet with only one exception, an outlier involving a battered wife, no one was ever criminally punished for engaging in lynchings in Wisconsin. This record is even …

Public Private Property, Xiaoqian Hu

Marquette Law Review

Many struggles are being fought in America today around regulation and redistribution of private property rights: between owners’ right to develop land and society’s need for environmental conservation; between landlords’ privilege to charge higher rents and society’s need for affordable housing, between property owners’ desire for protection from negative effects and unhoused persons’ need to live in the only space accessible to them, etc. These struggles, however, are doomed by a widely shared notion that public and private are inherent qualities in a zero-sum game. This Article refutes this notion. Building upon Legal Realist, post-Realist, and poststructuralist insights, it argues …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

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 …

On Snow’S Intellectual Property And Immorality, David O. Taylor

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

In this Essay, I consider the “why” and “how” of Professor Snow’s controversial, countercultural, important, and relevant position that immorality may result in the denial of intellectual property protection. First, I highlight how surprising it is that Professor Snow’s argument springs from the theories underlying intellectual property protection, rather than the theories underlying the morality and ethics he believes ought to be considered in determining intellectual property protection. No one (that I know, at least) goes to the Environmental Protection Agency seeking better regulations to protect the environment and uses the labor desert theory of property rights as an argument. …

What We Can Learn From The Notorious P&Id V. Nigeria, Emily Granja

Arbitration Brief

On October 23, 2023, England’s High Court of Justice ruled in favor of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in Nigeria v. Process & Industrial Developments Ltd. (P&ID). Reviewing the case, the High Court vacated P&ID’s $10 billion arbitral award after finding significant evidence of fraud and bribery. While the High Court’s decision marked a victory for Nigeria, it also shook the international arbitration system. This case exposed some of international arbitration’s flaws and generated new concerns regarding the confidentiality inherent in the arbitration process.

Temporary/Forever: The Fissured Economy, Obstacles To Employment, And Regulating The Future Of Exploitation In Temp Work, Kevin Herrera

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Among workers in United States, contingent and temporary work arrangements have grown to represent a substantial segment of available jobs, with spikes in their predominance corresponding to major economic shake ups like the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. These arrangements are part of a larger trend of the “fissuring” of United States employment, wherein applicants are hired by one company and then sent to do their job at another, obscuring who actually employs the worker. Jobs through temp staffing agencies are a particularly dominant form of fissuring among low-wage workers and create conditions under which accountability for workplace abuses …

Keynote Address For The 2025 University Of The Pacific Law Review Symposium: The Crime Victims' Rights Movement: Historical Foundations, Modern Ascendancy, And Future Aspirations, Paul Cassell

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

This article, which serves as the keynote address for the 2025 University of Pacific Law Review Symposium, explores the past, present, and future of America's crime victims' rights movement-one of the most successful social movements in modern history.

Historically, crime victims played a central role in criminal justice processes through private prosecutions-i.e., the ability of victims to initiate or participate in criminal prosecutions. Today, while private prosecutions have been largely supplanted by public prosecutions, the victims' rights movement has successfully restored the victims' voice in criminal processes. The movement has reformed contemporary American criminal justice so that criminal processes now …

The Right To Truth, Maureen Edobor

Scholarly Articles

This Article argues that today’s anti-CRT statutes, book bans, and “divisive concepts” laws are not isolated culture-war skirmishes but the latest chapter in a long campaign—dating back to the Lost Cause and the United Daughters of the Confederacy—to legislate white innocence as national identity. By sanitizing slavery, suppressing discussions of systemic racism, and threatening educators with punitive ambiguity, these laws flatten historical truth and convert classrooms into zones of anticipatory obedience. The result is a state-engineered amnesia that undermines the core First and Fourteenth Amendment protections the Supreme Court has recognized for more than a century, from Meyer and Barnette …

An Eye For An Eye Makes A Vigilant Society, Liam C. Preyer

Capstone Showcase

Vigilantism is one of the oldest practices of mankind; for as long as there have been moral and legal laws to govern us and live by, there have been individuals who have sought justice outside these systems. Vigilantism is the response to failures in the justice system, and in the United States in particular, we have seen examples from the Western Frontier to the modern-day digital landscape. This paper will explore the nature of vigilante justice through historical, psychological, media-driven, legal, and digital lenses. We will explore how cultural narratives, media influences, government actions, and psychological motivations have shaped the …

Procréation Assistée Par Autrui Et Fragmentation De La Maternité : Le Piège Du Récit Unique, Kévin Lavoie, Isabel Côté, Roxane Guay

Canadian Journal of Family Law

La fragmentation de la maternité introduite par la fécondation in vitro est une source de préoccupations sociales et scientifiques depuis une quarantaine d’années. Les débats actuels sur la grossesse pour autrui et le don d’ovules, alimentés par les mouvements féministes et les discours publics, font état d’opinions et de convictions autour de l’infertilité, de la conception de la maternité et de la disponibilité du corps des femmes dans le processus d’enfantement. Les tensions qui avivent ces débats sociaux et intellectuels opposent deux visions polarisées au sein desquelles la voix des femmes concernées est peu entendue. Cet article vise à situer …

Introduction To The Special Issue: Current Challenges In Reproduction And Law, Régine Tremblay

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Private Wrongs, Public Impact: The Case For A Tort Of Family Violence, Pahul Gupta

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This research paper investigates the adequacy of current civil actions available against a particular form of family violence: intimate partner violence (“IPV”). The paper identifies the torts which are most commonly applicable in the IPV context and argues that they fail to capture the cumulative harm associated with such conduct. It identifies the shortcomings of such causes of actions and analyzes the multifaceted factors contributing to the limitations and challenges IPV victims face when pursuing such claims.

The paper provides a brief background on the historical and legal context of family violence before moving on to identifying the various causes …

Front Matter

Canadian Journal of Family Law

No abstract provided.

Intersecting Abuse Of People And Animals In Practice: Implications Of The Connection Between Intimate Partner Violence And Animal Abuse For Family Justice Professionals, Amy Fitzgerald, Valerie Monckton, Kerri Thomson, Kendra Coulter

Canadian Journal of Family Law

According to recent estimates, 60% of Canadian homes have at least one cat or dog, and the number continues to climb. Often considered family members, these animals are vulnerable to family violence. Their presence can also render human victims of violence more vulnerable: research indicates many victims delay leaving their abuser out of concern for their animals or consider returning to the abusive relationship because their abuser has the animal companions. Despite a substantial body of literature documenting the link between intimate partner violence (IPV) and animal abuse, research has not examined how family law professionals encounter and deal with …

Surrogacy Agencies In Canada: Intended Parents' Experiences, Stefanie Carsley

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This article sheds new light on intended parents’ experiences working with surrogacy agencies—businesses that match surrogates with prospective parents. These agencies contravene the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, a federal law that prohibits commercial surrogacy. Interviews with intended parents suggest that some agencies are taking advantage of surrogates and intended parents and lend support to calls to regulate agencies’ practices. This piece will interest scholars and lawmakers advocating for evidence-based law and policy responses to surrogacy in Canada. It broadens the frame relevant to addressing surrogacy beyond relations between surrogates, intended parents, and children to include a commercial sector.

Evaluating Elective Egg Freezing Consent Materials From Canadian Fertility Clinics, Kathleen Hammond

Canadian Journal of Family Law

The use of elective egg freezing (EEF) has rapidly increased in recent years. Despite its popularity, scholars have documented a host of concerns in relation to the use of this technology, especially given aggressive advertising of EEF by the fertility industry as “insurance” and lack of data about success rates. Informed consent processes, and informed consent materials, are particularly important in situations like EEF where healthy people are undergoing interventions that are neither life nor health preserving. Despite these concerns necessitating a rigorous consent process, no research in Canada has explored consent processes surrounding EEF at Canadian fertility clinics to …

Sorting Out Surrogacy: Three Considerations For Evidence-Informed Law Reform, Vanessa Gruben, Alana Cattapan

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This article draws on novel survey research with surrogates in Canada—the Exploring Surrogates Experiences and Insights Survey—to examine three critical issues for potential law reform: (1) reimbursement and compensation (i.e., payment); (2) the work of surrogacy agencies; and (3) surrogacy arrangements involving foreign intended parents. Following a brief history of the regulation of surrogacy in Canada and a description of the survey’s methods, it explores each of these areas in turn, using the survey results to identify considerations for law reform. It argues that while the current legislative and regulatory framework largely addresses key issues related to commercialization and commodification, …

Testing Our Faith: Why It Is Important To Study The Complexity Of Client Experiences In Family Dispute Resolution, Heather Heavin, Brea Lowenberger, Michaela Keet

Canadian Journal of Family Law

Increasingly across Canada, court-based processes are being recast as forums of ‘last resort’ for family conflict. Studies inviting lawyers to reflect on the success of their collaborative negotiations, mediations, and settlement conferences show optimism—faith that the quality of their clients’ experiences has been more positive, or, at least, less damaging. As researchers, however, we know less about how the parties in the midst of separation and divorce actually experience those processes. The Saskatchewan study described in this article suggests that ‘the inside’ of dispute resolution (DR) processes in family conflict might be as qualitatively painful, negative, and difficult as the …

Family Violence And Child Support: Abuse, Shared Parenting, And Special Expenses, Joanna Radbord

Canadian Journal of Family Law

This article addresses specific sections of the Federal Child Support Guidelines which are particularly problematic for survivors of family violence: (a) section 9 in relation to child support in circumstances of shared parenting time, and (b) section 7 dealing with special or extraordinary expenses. Child support in Canada currently functions as an application-based system within an adversarial context, which creates significant barriers to child support for victims of abuse. In relation to shared parenting, a presumptive reduction in the quantum of child support is likely to exacerbate systemic inequalities and further disadvantage survivors of family violence—disproportionately women and children. This …

The Generation Of Maladies: The U.S. Tech Giants, David Vladeck

Loyola Consumer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Using Big Data To Dismantle Systemic Barriers: How Tracking Official Misconduct Can Foster Justice And Increase Accountability In The Criminal Legal System, Meagan R. Hurley

Articles

The U.S. criminal legal system is a vast and complex machine, long subject to public and scholarly scrutiny. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other nation, holding an astonishing 1.9 million individuals behind bars. Of them, approximately eighty percent are indigent, and over sixty percent are racial minorities, despite these groups comprising a relatively small portion of the overall population. In this expansive system, which disproportionately targets minorities and the poor, it is unsurprising that justice is not always served: Human error and bias are nearly guaranteed to occur at some juncture. Experts estimate that about four percent of …

Under The Influence: Duties, Deception, Disclosures, And Due Diligence Of Social Media Influencers, Arianna Kiaei

Washington and Lee Law Review

The encroachment of social media into the daily lives of society reflects a major shift in consumer behavior. As social media moves from providing platforms of narrow connectivity among friends and family to social connection beyond one’s personal network, novel channels are being formed for consumers to absorb and share information. It opens opportunity for corporations to market their products beyond traditional methods and establishes the “influencer” sharing personal thoughts and recommendations on such products.

Social media’s immense purchasing power has a direct effect on the decision-making processes of individuals and the profit margins of corporations, and thus, the capacity …