Legal Profession Commons^™

Going Forward: The Role Of Affirmative Action, Race, And Diversity In University Admissions And The Broader Construction Of Society, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review

The third annual EPOCH symposium, a partnership between the Seattle University Law Review and the Black Law Student Association took place in late summer 2023 at the Seattle University School of Law. It was intended to uplift and amplify Black voices and ideas, and those of allies in the legal community. Prompted by the swell of public outcry surrounding ongoing police violence against the Black community, the EPOCH partnership marked a commitment to antiracism imperatives and effectuating change for the Black community. The published symposium in this volume encompasses some, but not all, the ideas and vision detailed in the …

Memories Of An Affirmative Action Activist, Margaret E. Montoya

Seattle University Law Review

Some twenty-five years ago, the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT) led a march supporting Affirmative Action in legal education to counter the spate of litigation and other legal prohibitions that exploded during the 1990s, seeking to limit or abolish race-based measures. The march began at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel, where the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) was having its annual meeting, and proceeded to Union Square. We, the organizers of the march, did not expect the march to become an iconic event; one that would be remembered as a harbinger of a new era of activism by …

After Affirmative Action, Meera E. Deo

Seattle University Law Review

This is a time of crisis in legal education. In truth, we are in the midst of several crises. We are emerging from the COVID pandemic, a period of unprecedented upheaval where law students and law faculty alike struggled through physical challenges, mental health burdens, and decreased academic and professional success. The past few years also have seen a precipitous drop in applications to and enrollment in legal education. Simultaneously, students have been burdened with the skyrocketing costs of attending law school, taking on unmanageable levels of debt. And with the Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard, we are …

Defeat Fascism, Transform Democracy: Mapping Academic Resources, Reframing The Fundamentals, And Organizing For Collective Actions, Francisco Valdes

Seattle University Law Review

The information we gathered during 2021–2023 shows that critical faculty and other academic resources are present throughout most of U.S. legal academia. Counting only full-time faculty, our limited research identified 778 contacts in 200 schools equating to nearly four contacts on average per school. But no organized critical “core” had coalesced within legal academia or, more broadly, throughout higher education expressly dedicated to defending and advancing critical knowledge and its production up to now. And yet, as the 2021–2022 formation of the Critical (Legal) Collective (“CLC”) outlined below demonstrates, many academics sense or acknowledge the need for greater cohesion among …

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.

The Class Of Injuries Test: A Unifying Proposal To Determining Duty, Proximate Cause, And Superseding Cause In Negligence Claims, Judge Leonard J. Feldman, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

While there seems to be universal agreement that liability in tort cannot be unlimited, there is widespread disagreement regarding the various tests that courts utilize to limit such liability. We assume here that breach can be proven: the defendant failed to conduct themself in accordance with the salient standard of conduct (for example, failure to exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances). In the ensuing litigation, the court and jury are asked to decide several issues that each limit liability for negligence. Here, we focus on three oft-debated issues: duty, proximate cause, and superseding cause. The tests for each are …

Ai, New Technologies, And Corporate Governance: Three Phenomena, Martin Petrin

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies are increasingly influencing the operations, business models, and structures of companies. This Article focuses on three emerging phenomena that impact significant aspects of corporate governance and regulation: (1) perforation and blurring of firm boundaries through the ubiquitous use of externally provided AI services; (2) businesses engaging in strategic access and leveraging of critical resources held by third parties without owning them; and (3) the unusual hybrid role of online platforms between market facilitators and markets themselves. The Article explores how these phenomena challenge traditional views of firms as separate units, with technology leading …

Due Process Shaped By The Present Instead Of The Past: The Needed Reinvigoration Of A Lawrence Vision Of Due Process, Azor Cole

Seattle University Law Review

The recognition of unenumerated rights, rights implied from the text of the constitution, is a political battlefield waged through law with profound implications for all Americans. Generally, there have been two prongs for an inquiry into an unenumerated constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment. One is to ask whether the right to be found is objectively deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition. The other is to ask whether the right to be found is fundamental to this Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty. The current Supreme Court has effectively done away with this present-day liberty analysis, saying it is …

A Meaningful Life: The Future Of Juvenile Justice In Washington After Anderson, Samuel Coren

Seattle University Law Review

Until 2022, Washington’s line of juvenile sentencing jurisprudence gave every indication of continuing along the course set by Miller v. Alabama, as Washington courts recognized that “children are different” and should not be subjected to the harshest punishments available in the criminal legal system. State v. Anderson marked a stark diversion from this course. In upholding the constitutionality of a de facto life sentence for a juvenile, the Washington Supreme Court all but rejected the well-established scientific consensus surrounding juvenile brain development and implicit racial bias. Whether this decision reflects a minor aberration or a broader trend in the court’s …

Reconciling Disjunct Cryptocurrency Securities Enforcement With Purchaser Expectations, Jacob E. Simmons

Seattle University Law Review

The Southern District of New York’s July 2023 decision in SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc. has been touted as a monumental win for cryptocurrency purchasers and related businesses. The Ripple court held that, except institutional investor transactions, all sales of Ripple’s XRP token were not investment contracts, a class of security subject to federal securities law. The court’s ruling meant that Ripple could not be held liable for the unregistered trading of XRP beyond its sales to institutional investors. Ripple adds new insights to a pervasive policymaking dilemma addressed in this Note: is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulatory …

Sneakers, The Shoes That Talk The Talk And Walk The Walk: How Jack Daniel’S Properties, Inc. V. Vip Products Left Its Footprint On Trademark Law And The Sneaker Industry, Nitya Tolani

Seattle University Law Review

As the fashion industry—including the sneaker industry housed within it—continues to go through the motions of collectively flocking out, and then collectively flocking again to the newest innovations in the world of wearables, the landscape of laws to protect and promote those innovations expands as well, mainly in the area of intellectual property law. Although copyright, trademark, and patent law can cover innovations in the fashion industry, this Note centers its analysis on trademark law. Trademark law has been through notable change in recent years because of the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The First Amendment To The Constitution, Associational Freedom, And The Future Of The Country: Alabama’S Direct Attack On The Existence Of The Naacp, Helen J. Knowles-Gardner

Seattle University Law Review

Sixty years ago, on Wednesday, April 8, 1964, Professor Harry Kalven, Jr., gave the second of three lectures at The Ohio State University College of Law Forum. These lectures were published two years later in a book entitled The Negro & the 1st Amendment. In the second lecture, Kalven distinguished between direct and indirect threats to the associational freedom of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Kalven categorized the 1958 decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson as an indirect effort to control the NAACP.

With the benefit of material obtained from numerous archival sources, …

A Blueprint To Reclaim Legal Education From External Rankers, Scott Rempell

Seattle University Law Review

The U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) law school rankings have impacted the perceptions and behaviors of everyone in the rankings ecosystem for decades. Commentators have almost universally condemned these ordinal rankings, yet they continue to influence the legal education market, often in highly detrimental ways.

The influence of these rankings stems from legitimate market demands, for reasons that the psychology of choice literature makes clear. People want (or need) to efficiently acquire and digest information that could help them make consequential decisions. At a time when consumers of law school information did not have such choice-making assistance, U.S. …

Prejudice Standards In Washington’S Appellate Courts, Andrew B. Van Winkle

Seattle University Law Review

When an appellate court finds an error to have occurred during a proceeding, the error is not yet subject to correction. In order to merit a remedy, the error must have been sufficiently prejudicial to the aggrieved party’s case. Drawing the line between correctable and non-correctable errors is not an easy task, for it often requires guessing at what was in the minds of jurors and trial judges. To cope with this task, courts have devised various rules and tests for deciding whether an error was likely prejudicial or not. These standards often go by names such as “harmless error,” …

Real-World Consequences For Online Actions: The Case For Expanding Employee Harassment Protection Via Employers’ Rights Of Action, Alexander Barnes

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues for expanding employers’ access to legal remedies that allow them to recoup the costs of protecting their employees from swatting, doxing, and other online harassment arising from their employees’ professional activity. Part I provides a brief description and history of the online harassment problem and its potentially deadly dangers. Part II describes employers’ legal responsibility to take action to protect their employees from harassment aimed at their employees within the scope of their employment. Part III explores common legal remedies that are currently available to employers, using the state of Washington as an example. Part III also …

Foreseeability And Duty In Washington Negligence Law: Leaving The Road Less Traveled By, Leo Linder

Seattle University Law Review

Washington negligence law is a confusing labyrinth of foreseeability that not even Ariadne’s string could guide plaintiffs out of. Foreseeability is implicated in four distinct analyses, several of which overlap considerably. Doctrines that were once questions of law are now questions of fact, and vice versa. Something needs to change.

Washington has taken the novel approach of bifurcating the duty element into two parts—duty’s mere existence, which is a question of law for the court to determine; and duty’s scope, which is a question of fact handed off to the jury to determine. Foreseeability impacts both of these assessments, but …

Clark Memorandum: Fall 2023, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Five Ways Law School Contributes to Life’s True Purpose
• Faith in Law: A Q&A with President Dallin H. Oaks
• Personal Religious Conviction and the Practice of Law

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Horace Binney (1780–1875): A Philadelphia Legend, Joel Fishman

Law Faculty Publications

Horace Binney was the leading lawyer of Philadelphia during the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century. As a practitioner before the State and Federal Courts, including the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors (the Girard Will Case) in the U.S. Supreme Court (1844), and for his numerous civic activities and legal writings, Binney was one of the most accomplished lawyers that ever graced the Philadelphia bar. This article will review his life and works.

New Firstgen Student Organization Uniting Path-Breaking Students, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Barbara Bernal Monnroy arrived in the United States from her native Venezuela at the age of 16, with no practical English language knowledge or skills. “Generation Zero,” as she puts it. Though she was a year behind because of the language barrier, Monnroy worked tirelessly to succeed, eventually graduating from a Florida high school with strong enough credentials to earn a place at Davis & Elkins College. She succeeded there, too, in rural West Virginia, earning valedictorian honors and serving as the college’s graduation speaker.

Louisville’S Cj Ryan To Join Indiana Law In January, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Adding to an already impressive list of new faculty, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law is pleased to announce CJ Ryan, of the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, will join the Law School for the start of the spring 2024 semester.

In addition to his role on the Brandeis faculty, Ryan is an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation.

Meet Our New Faculty: Jenn Oliva, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Professor Jenn Oliva joined Indiana Law earlier this summer as a professor of law and as Val Nolan Faculty Fellow. Prior to joining the IU Maurer Law faculty, Professor Oliva served as Professor of Law and Co-Director of the UCSF/UC Law Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy at the University of California College of Law, San Francisco. She has also served as Associate Dean for Faculty Research & Development and Director of the Center for Health & Pharmaceutical Law at Seton Hall University School of Law where she was selected as the law school’s 2021 Professor of the Year …

Meet Our New Faculty: Yvette Butler, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Associate Professor Yvette T. Butler joined the Indiana Law faculty this summer. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris, and her law degree from The George Washington University Law School.

Ochoa, Big Ten Law Deans Pledge Support For Diversity Ahead Of Scotus Affirmative Action Ruling, The Indiana Lawyer

Christiana Ochoa (7/22-10/22 Acting; 11/2022-)

s the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hand down a decision that could fundamentally alter affirmative action, a group of law school deans — including Dean Christiana Ochoa of the Indiana University Maurer School of Law — has issued a statement affirming the deans’ commitment to diversity.

The group of 15 deans represent Big Ten law schools, including IU Maurer. In their statement — which IU Maurer posted to its official Facebook page — the deans say they are “joining together to affirm our commitment to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through legally permissible means, regardless of the outcome of …

Committee Chaired By Maurer Professor To Complete Its Analytical Review Of Hanford Nuclear Reservation Waste Options, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

A committee chaired by an Indiana University Maurer School of Law professor will complete next week its five-year charge to review the analysis performed by a team investigating how best to treat and dispose of low-level waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington.

John Strait Applegate, the James L. Calamaras Professor of Law, has served as chair of the 13-member National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee since 2018. The committee will conclude its work with a public meeting in Richland, Washington, on June 6. Applegate had previously chaired a prior review of the waste disposal issue …

Announcing New Faculty Chairs, Professorships, And Fellowships, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

The Indiana University Maurer School of Law announced today (May 24) that 14 of its faculty members—including three new additions to the school’s faculty—have been awarded new chairs, professorships, and fellowships beginning this summer.

From Natchitoches To Nuremberg: The Life Of Legal Pioneer Lyria Dickason, Todd C. Peppers

Scholarly Articles

Lyria was one of a small handful of women who graduated from a Louisiana law school in the 1930’s. Despite the employment barriers facing female attorneys, she went on to become one of the first female law clerks in both the federal and state judiciary. To date, Lyria’s story has not been told. I have recently discovered, however, that Lyria’s children and grandchildren preserved her letters to her family. They are a treasure trove of information about a woman whose career took her from rural Louisiana to Louisiana’s highest court as well as the post-war ruins of Nazi Germany. The …

2023 Academy Of Law Alumni Fellows Induction Ceremony Program, Maurer School Of Law - Indiana University

Academy of Law Alumni Fellows

The Academy of Law Alumni Fellows was established in 1985 to recognize alumni whose careers are defined by exceptional personal achievement and dedication to the highest standards of the profession.

Academy Fellows are part of an elite group that includes US senators, federal judges, successful business leaders, and distinguished practitioners. A committee of anonymous alumni selects each year’s Fellows from among many deserving candidates. To be named an Academy of Law Alumni Fellow is to receive the very highest honor that the Maurer School of Law can bestow.

This year, we are honored to recognize four alumni whose remarkable contributions …