Litigation Commons^™

Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner

Seattle University Law Review

Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …

The Joy Of The Fight: What Litigators Can Learn From The Martial Arts, Len Niehoff, Tim Lynch

Articles

You walk into a martial arts training studio (in Japanese styles, a dojo) and you scan the room. Everything going on here looks, well, unpleasant. In one corner, you observe a group of students performing kata, choreographed sequences of kicks, punches, and blocks that simulate the experience of fighting multiple opponents. Sweat pours off them. In another corner, you see two students engaged in sparring exercises, or kumite. The sharp, smacking noise of one student striking the protective pads worn by another carries across the room. In a third corner, you notice students doing push-ups, working their muscles until their …

Please, Help Yourself: A Best Practice Model Analysis On The Self-Represented Litigants In America's Legal System, Linnea G. Coltvet

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Comment: Court Adr Analytics, Benjamin G. Davis

Washington and Lee Law Review

For the reasons in my comments below, Jordan Hicks’s note entitled Judicial-ish Efficiency: An Analysis of Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs in Delaware Superior Court is a tour de force. Its content and methodology suggest a fresh approach to thinking about court-annexed Alternative Dispute Resolution (“ADR”) in general and court-annexed mandatory nonbinding arbitration programs in particular. The meticulous analysis of three different eras (1978–2008, 2008–2018, and 2018–present) of the program, with a focus on judicial efficiency (speed, failure rate, and prejudicial concerns), provides an important template for how this work might be expanded to look at programs in other courts …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

The End Of Arbitrage: Recent Chancery Court Decisions Highlight Delaware’S Need To Overturn Transkaryotic, Celia Golod

Emory Law Journal

Appraisal is a legislatively created right that affords a shareholder the ability to seek a judicial ruling on the fair value of their stock when their corporation undergoes a merger that they do not support. While this remedy is intended to protect shareholders from faulty merger negotiating, in the 2010s hedge fund petitioners in Delaware flooded the Delaware Chancery Court to use the remedy to make a profit—a tactic called appraisal arbitrage. While appraisal arbitrage theoretically acts as a back-end market check on controller abuses, appraisal litigation is lengthy and requires court resources. Further, appraisal arbitrage allows hedge fund petitioners, …

SchröDinger’S Dissent: The Hybrid Authority Of A Dissenting Opinion, Christina M. Frohock

Marquette Law Review

A dissenting opinion is the Schrödinger’s cat of authorities: both the law and not the law simultaneously. Courts and scholars often clarify that a dissenting opinion is not binding. Outside the universe of precedent, that authority defies easy description. Emerging from the pen of a judge wearing a black robe and acting in an official capacity, a dissenting opinion exhibits the form of the law. Yet, beneath that lofty sheen, a dissent exhibits the substance of commentary. A dissenting judge writes to undercut the law, providing a case law coda. This Article describes the traditional categories of authority, primary and …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

A Different Approach To Agency Theory And Implications For Esg, Jonathan Bonham, Amoray Riggs-Cragun

Seattle University Law Review

In conventional agency theory, the agent is modeled as exerting unobservable “effort” that influences the distribution over outcomes the principal cares about. Recent papers instead allow the agent to choose the entire distribution, an assumption that better describes the extensive and flexible control that CEOs have over firm outcomes. Under this assumption, the optimal contract rewards the agent directly for outcomes the principal cares about, rather than for what those outcomes reveal about the agent’s effort. This article briefly summarizes this new agency model and discusses its implications for contracting on ESG activities.

Overseeing The Administrative State, Jill E. Fisch

Seattle University Law Review

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has reduced the regulatory power of the Administrative State. Pending cases offer vehicles for the Court to go still further. Although the Court’s skepticism of administrative agencies may be rooted in Constitutional principles or political expediency, this Article explores another possible explanation—a shift in the nature of agencies and their regulatory role. As Pritchard and Thompson detail in their important book, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court was initially skeptical of agency power, jeopardizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)’s ambitious New Deal plan. The Court’s acceptance …

The Sec, The Supreme Court, And The Administrative State, Paul G. Mahoney

Seattle University Law Review

Pritchard and Thompson have given those of us who study the SEC and the securities laws much food for thought. Their methodological focus is on the internal dynamics of the Court’s deliberations, on which they have done detailed and valuable work. The Court did not, however, operate in a vacuum. Intellectual trends in economics and law over the past century can also help us understand the SEC’s fortunes in the federal courts and make predictions about its future.

A Hard Pill To Swallow: The Abysmal Mental Health Standards Of Detained Immigrant Children In The United States, Rama Bankesly

Seattle University Law Review

After setting foot into the U.S., unaccompanied children must learn to navigate academic and legal systems while receiving little support and carrying the heavy burden of effects of trauma on their mental health. They need access to mental health care from qualified professionals, but as this Comment will explain, they systematically fail to receive care, as can be seen in cases like Doe v. Shenandoah Valley Juv. Ctr. Comm’n. In Shenandoah, an unaccompanied child arrived in the U.S. and was placed in a facility that failed to provide remotely adequate mental health care and in fact was subjected …

Students For Fair Admissions: Affirming Affirmative Action And Shapeshifting Towards Cognitive Diversity?, Steven A. Ramirez

Seattle University Law Review

The Roberts Court holds a well-earned reputation for overturning Supreme Court precedent regardless of the long-standing nature of the case. The Roberts Court knows how to overrule precedent. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Court’s majority opinion never intimates that it overrules Grutter v. Bollinger, the Court’s leading opinion permitting race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Instead, the Roberts Court applied Grutter as authoritative to hold certain affirmative action programs entailing racial preferences violative of the Constitution. These programs did not provide an end point, nor did they require assessment, review, periodic expiration, or revision for greater …

The Perilous Focus Shift From The Rule Of Law To Appellate Efficiency, Elizabeth Lee Thompson

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Among the most significant—and by some estimations the most controversial—transformations of the federal appellate system occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s with effects still felt today: the shift from oral argument for all appeals and the view that study and disposition of each appeal were exclusively judicial tasks to the adoption of a tiered appellate system where the great majority of appeals receive no oral argument and instead summary disposition often involving staff attorneys. These transformative internal efficiency procedures have been subject to intense debate. Proponents have praised their efficiency and ability to avoid a backlog while critics complain …

Review Of Veterans Law Decisions Of The Federal Circuit 2022-2023 Edition, Yelena Duterte, Hugh Mcclean, Stacey-Rae Simcox

American University Law Review

In 2022 to 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“Federal Circuit”) continued its conversation with the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (“Veterans Court”), Department of Veterans Affairs (“VA”), and veterans to help sculpt the jurisprudence coming from the youngest of the federal courts, the Veterans Court. The Federal Circuit’s jurisprudence addressed ten main legal issues: class actions, petitions for writ of mandamus under the All Writs Act, defining standards of proof with the term “results from,” the benefit of the doubt doctrine post-Lynch, education benefits, less than honorable discharges, the rating schedule, implicit denials, equitable …

Climate Change In The Courts: A 2023 Retrospective, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaret Barry

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Drawing from the jurisdictions covered in the Sabin Center's United States (U.S.) and Global Climate Litigation databases, this report offers insights into key developments, emerging themes, evolving legal strategies, and the pulse of climate litigation in 2023.

Underage And Unprotected: Federal Grand Juries, Child Development, And The Systemic Failure To Protect Minors Subpoenaed As Witnesses, Lucy Litt

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Grand juries in the United States were originally intended to protect people from unwarranted criminal prosecution by the government; however, criticism of federal grand juries in the U.S. throughout the past five decades demonstrates that these deliberative bodies protect prosecutors at the expense of the people subjected to their investigations. Worse still, federal grand jury proceedings circumvent fundamental constitutional rights, direct judicial oversight, and many of the procedural protections of criminal trials; they enable prosecutors to strip unaccused individuals subpoenaed solely for witness testimony of their safety, rights, and liberty. Prosecutorial misconduct has received increasingly widespread attention, especially in recent …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Kompetensi Mutlak Badan Penyelesaian Sengketa Konsumen Dalam Sengketa Lelang Barang Gadai: Studi Putusan Nomor 16 Pk/Pdt.Sus-Bpsk/2020, Barus Mario Ari Leonard, Sri Laksmi Anindita

Jurnal Hukum & Pembangunan

The authority of Consumer Dispute Settlement Agency (BPSK) in settling consumer dispute is regulated in a limited cause. In the Verdict No. 16 PK/Pdt.Sus-BPSK/2020, Judges verdict that BPSK has no authority in giving verdict for settling dispute between pawn giver and pawn taker in the case of pawn auction. This happen though the verdict of BPSK has been approved by Judges of first degree court and appellate court. The verdict was analyzed in this writing with the qualitative method. BPSK is alternative dispute resolution board between consumer and business industry. Agreement with pawn company and pawn giver was mainly debt …

The Role Of U.S. Government Regulatioms, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed coverage of information resources on U.S. Government information resources for federal regulations. Features historical background on these regulations, details on the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations, includes information on individuals can participate in the federal regulatory process by commenting on proposed agency regulations via https://regulations.gov/, describes the role of presidential executive orders, refers to recent and upcoming U.S. Supreme Court cases involving federal regulations, and describes current congressional legislation seeking to give Congress greater involvement in the federal regulatory process.

Why Law Isn’T Jazz: A Response, James A. Gardner

The Docket

No abstract provided.

African Courts And International Human Rights Law, John Mukum Mbaku

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and since then, the international community, with the help of the United Nations, has adopted other international human rights instruments designed to recognize and protect human rights. Since international human rights instruments do not automatically confer rights that are justiciable in domestic courts, each African country must domesticate these instruments in order to create rights that are justiciable in its domestic courts. Given the fact that many African countries have not yet domesticated the core international human rights instruments, international human rights law’s ability to positively impact …

The History Of Forensic-Science Evidence In Criminal Trials And The Role Of Early “Success” In Establishing Its Putative Reliability, Carrie Leonetti

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article posits the history of forensic-science evidence plays a significant role in the unquestioning manner of its modern acceptance. It traces early high-profile forensic science “successes” and the public reactions to them. It argues the public perception of the “advances” of forensic science continues to play a role in the lack of scrutiny given to these disciplines in admissibility decisions today. It concludes, when it comes to forensic science, history should play a different role by serving as a critical warning rather than a congratulatory buttress.

Some Thoughts On Reply Briefs, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay provides suggestions for writing reply briefs. It begins with a quick review of the well-understood ways in which an appellate advocate should acquire and review the information needed to write a comprehensive and powerful reply brief.

The essay then turns to the more difficult challenges of crafting the brief, making three key points:

First, don't just go tit-for-tat in responding to one point after another advanced by the appellee. That can be boring and ponderous and often requires you to argue the case on your opponent's terms. Rather, re-frame the case on your client's terms, taking the case …