Other Law Commons^™

Beyond Marvin V. Marvin: How Washington Leads The Way In Protecting Unmarried Cohabitants, Karen Boxx, Terry Price, Joseph Janes

Washington Law Review

“Wholly unrelated to . . . marriage, courts have recognized the existence of meretricious relationships, which this court has determined to be stable, cohabiting relationships.”1 In the nearly twenty-five years since Pennington, Washington courts have developed a robust jurisprudence regarding these relationships, now called committed intimate relationships (CIRs). The equitable doctrine developed by Washington courts is groundbreaking in recognizing property rights of persons in unmarried relationships, particularly in light of the demise of common law marriage. As of 2019, more than seventeen million people, representing seven percent of American adults, were cohabitating, but economic protection of those cohabitants varies significantly …

What's Important To Write About? A Century Of Washington Law Review Topics, Hugh Spitzer

Washington Law Review

This Article examines the topics of all lead articles in Washington Law Review during its past ninety-eight years of publication. The analysis illustrates the changing interests of legal academics, student editors, and the working lawyers and judges who have read and used the articles over a century. For its first fifty years, the journal focused on general topics of interest to practitioners, Washington law matters, business and tax law, and government regulation. Other topics, such as legal and judicial system reform, constitutional law, and comparative and international law, were present in modest numbers. In its second half century, Washington Law …

Barlow V. Washington: Judicial Hesitancy And Sexual Violence At Universities, Elizabeth G. Porter

Washington Law Review

Sexual violence among university students—most frequently, violence against women—is a well-known and pernicious problem. But the liability of universities for failing to prevent such violence is exceedingly rare. Courts remain hesitant to impose a duty on universities to prevent sexual violence, even in situations where they are in by far the best position to do so. This Article examines that judicial hesitancy in the context of a claim by Madeleine Barlow, who sued Washington State University (WSU) after she was raped at an off-campus party in her first week of college by a student with a record of past sexual …

Washington's Implementation Of Legalized Cannabis: A Model For Other States And The Federal Government, Bruce Turcott, Daniel Shortt

Washington Law Review

This Article examines the process and outcomes of cannabis legalization in Washington State, offering insights for other states and potential federal legalization schemes. It begins with an overview of the campaign that led to the passage of Initiative 502 (I-502), detailing the initiative’s structure, which draws from liquor licensing laws. The Article then explores the establishment of a recreational cannabis market from scratch, focusing on agency structure, federal responses such as the Cole Memorandum, and the state’s regulatory framework aimed at preventing adverse outcomes.

Additionally, this Article highlights Washington’s efforts to promote social equity, emphasizing that I-502 was framed as …

Adverse Elements: How Requiring An Adverse Employment Action Element In Ada Failure-To-Accommodate Claims Hinders Disability Rights, Ava Jadwiga Wallace

Washington Law Review

Individuals with disabilities are continuously marginalized by a world tailored to the able-bodied. One of the most visible areas where this marginalization manifests is employment. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) attempts to combat this with its extensive legislation to resolve and mitigate disability discrimination in employment contexts. In this attempt, the ADA mandates that employers provide disabled employees with reasonable accommodations—employment modifications necessary for many disabled employees to perform their jobs and feel included in the workplace. Jurisprudence reflects a series of decisions where courts read the ADA narrowly, strictly, and from an able-bodied perspective, resulting in …

Abdication Of Power: Arizona V. Navajo Nation And Judicial Refusal To Enforce The Federal Trust Relationship, Jessica Yin

Washington Law Review

Over 150 years ago, the federal government signed a treaty promising the Navajo people a permanent home within the bounds of their ancestral homeland. To this day, that promise remains unfulfilled because the Navajo people face a severe water access crisis. When the Navajo Nation brought the United States to the Supreme Court to enforce its promise, the Court declined to hold the federal government accountable.

This Comment analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. Navajo Nation through the lens of the judiciary’s historical approach to the federal trust relationship. The Court has traditionally defined the federal trust relationship …

Client Confidentiality As Data Security, Jonah E. Perlin

Washington Law Review

The duty of confidentiality has been a cornerstone of the attorney-client relationship for more than four centuries. Historically, this duty was not difficult to discharge. All a lawyer had to do to comply was not affirmatively share client information in public without consent. But that has all changed. The same technologies that provide unprecedented benefits of authorized access by lawyers and their clients create unprecedented risks of unauthorized access by others. As a result, although the duty of confidentiality was once synonymous with a duty to keep client confidences secret, today the duty necessitates that lawyers keep client confidences secure …

Transportation Racism And State-Created Danger: A Civil Rights Litigation Strategy For Pedestrians Harmed By Traffic Violence, Riley Freedman

Washington Law Review

Pedestrian fatality rates in the United States are markedly high compared to peer nations and are on the rise. The distribution of these deaths shows an alarming racial gap: Black pedestrians are twice as likely to be killed compared to white pedestrians. One significant factor that explains the disparity is the greater presence of wide, high-speed roads—built to move traffic quickly at the expense of pedestrian safety—in Black neighborhoods. In some cases, there is evidence that governments intentionally placed roads through and around Black neighborhoods for racially discriminatory reasons.

This Comment argues that a pedestrian harmed or killed by a …

The Shortseller Enrichment Commission? Whistleblowers, Activist Short Sellers, And The New Privatization Of Public Enforcement, Alexander I. Platt

Washington Law Review

Two developments have transformed the detection of corporate fraud in the last decade: the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Whistleblower Bounty Program (WBP) and the rise of activist short sellers. The WBP offers up financial bounties to individuals who bring forward actionable information about securities fraud. Activist shorts conduct due diligence to identify overvalued public companies, take short positions, reveal the negative information, and then enjoy trading profits if and when the stock tanks. Considered separately, these institutions are widely regarded as socially valuable innovations that help deter fraud.

But, it turns out, they are not fully separate. Activist shorts have …

The Consumer Bundle, Shelly Kreiczer-Levy

Washington Law Review

Can property law have a consumer protection purpose? One of the most important consumer law concerns today is the limited control consumers have over the digital assets and software-embedded products they purchase. Current proposals for reform focus on classifying the transaction as either license or sale and rely mostly on contract law and consumer protection regulation with a few calls for restoring ownership rights. This Article argues that property law can protect consumers by establishing a minimum bundle of rights for consumers: the “consumer’s bundle.” Working with property theory and an analysis of property values, this Article explains the importance …

Surprises In The Skies: Resolving The Circuit Split On How Courts Should Determine Whether An "Accident" Is "Unexpected Or Unusual" Under The Montreal Convention, Ashley Tang

Washington Law Review

Article 17 of both the Montreal Convention and its predecessor, the Warsaw Convention, imposes liability onto air carriers for certain injuries and damages from “accidents” incurred by passengers during international air carriage. However, neither Convention defines the term “accident.” While the United States Supreme Court opined that, for the purposes of Article 17, an air carrier’s liability “arises only if a passenger’s injury is caused by an unexpected or unusual event or happening that is external to the passenger,” it did not explain what standards lower courts should employ to discern whether an event is “unexpected or unusual.” In 2004, …

Donor Advised Funds: Charitable Spending Vehicles For 21st Century Philanthropy, Roger Colinvaux

Washington Law Review

The donor advised fund (DAF) is changing longstanding giving norms in United States philanthropy. DAF contributions now account for around 8.4% of giving by individuals in the U.S. Over half of those contributions go to national DAF sponsors that have relationships with large commercial investment firms like Fidelity, Vanguard, and Schwab. This Article seeks to advance the understanding of the donor advised fund and to address two of the main policy questions: whether to require a mandatory distribution of funds by DAFs and their sponsoring organizations and how to respond to the increased use of DAFs for noncash charitable contributions. …

Reputation Through Litigation: How The Legal System Shapes Behavior By Producing Information, Roy Shapira

Washington Law Review

The law affects our behavior not only directly by imposing legal sanctions, but also indirectly, by providing information that shapes the reputations of individuals and organizations. This Article is the first to fully flesh out the reputation-shaping aspects of the law. The Article’s first major contribution is in explaining how reputation works. Legal scholars are increasingly recognizing that reputation matters: reputational concerns are touted as an important factor that shapes our behavior across a wide range of phenomena, from product safety to corporate governance to international relations. Yet so far the literature has stayed remarkably silent on how exactly reputation …

Letting Bayous Be Bygones: Should Louisiana Be Allowed To Mandate Use Of The Pre-Socialist Vietnam Flag?, Nami Kim

Washington International Law Journal

The State of Louisiana recently enacted S.B. 839, a state law that mandates the use of the flag of the former Democratic Republic of Vietnam at all state-sponsored public functions and public schools where Vietnam is to be represented. S.B. 839 has added further tension to the relationship between Vietnam and the United States, which is already strained by the unresolved issue of American prisoners of war ("POWs"), those missing in action ("MIA") in Vietnam, and the recent opening of Vietnam's economy to the rest of the world. Although fifty-nine cities and three other states in the United States have …

Admitting Opinions And Conclusions In Evaluative Reports: The Trustworthiness Inquiry—Beech Aircraft Corp. V. Rainey, 109 S. Ct. 439 (1988), Cheryl Musselman-Brown

Washington Law Review

In Beech Aircraft Corp. v. Rainey, the United States Supreme Court held that opinions and conclusions in evaluative reports are within the scope of the federal public records hearsay exception if trustworthy. Washington's public records hearsay exception excludes opinions and conclusions in evaluative reports. This Note analyzes the trustworthiness requirement under the federal rule and proposes that Washington adopt the federal rule.

Crime Compensation, Richard Cosway

Washington Law Review

Washington has adopted a system of compensation for innocent victims of crimes, the eleventh state to do so. The principal characteristic which distinguishes the new Washington Act from other present and proposed programs is the connection between it and Industrial Insurance, more commonly known as Workmen's Compensation. This connection has at least three significant consequences: (1) Because the victim is equated with an on-the-job injured employee, the amount of an individual's award is geared to the amount an injured workman or dependents of a deceased workman would receive; (2) the administration of the new program is assigned to the Department …

Statutory Limitation Of Innkeepers' Liability, George M. Martin

Washington Law Review

Many of the earliest cases of which reports are extant deal with the liability of the innkeeper to his guest, and the earliest known Roman law gave an action against the innkeeper if the baggage of the guest was in any way damaged, lost or stolen. At common law the innkeeper was the insurer of the baggage of his guest. He was under an absolute liability unless he could prove that the loss was caused by an Act of God, the public enemy, by the act of the guest or of the guest's servants. This absolute liability was extended to …

The Limits Of Congressional Investigating Power, Jack Gose

Washington Law Review

Of recent years much publicity has been given to the activities of congressional investigating committees At the present time such a committee is engaged in examining witnesses and taking evidence concerning the operations of munitions manufacturers. About a year ago a similar investigation of much publc interest was held coneerning the matter of air mail contracts. In the decade immediately preceding, the scandals arising out of the Harding administration formed the subject of similiar inquiries. Many like rncidents within present-day memory might be cited, but the mention of any single recent investigation should not create the impression that congressional activity …