Other Law Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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. …

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 …

The Impact Of Dissolved Organic Matter On Photodegradation Rates, Byproduct Formations, And Degradation Pathways For Two Neonicotinoid Insecticides In Simulated River Waters, Josephus F. Borsuah, Tiffany L. Messer, Daniel D. Snow, Steven D. Comfort, Shannon Bartelt-Hunt

UK CARES Faculty Publications

The influences of dissolved organic matter (DOM) on neonicotinoid photochemical degradation and product formation in natural waters remain unclear, potentially impacting the sustainability of river systems. Therefore, our overall objective was to investigate the photodegradation mechanisms and phototransformation byproducts of two neonicotinoid pesticides, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, under simulated sunlight at the microcosm scale, to assess the implications of DOM for insecticide degradation in rivers. Direct and indirect photolysis were investigated using twelve water matrices to identify possible reaction pathways with two DOM sources and three quenching agents. Imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, and potential degradants were measured, and reaction pathways identified. The photodegradation …

Locke-Ing Down Nonsense Trademarks: Applying The Property Theory Of John Locke To The Issue Of Nonsense Trademarks, Jake H. Howell

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

In 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office received almost half a million trademark applications. This was the tenth year in a row in which the number of applications received broke the record from the previous year. Since 2015 there has been a marked increase in the number of applications for trademarks that are unusual. These applications are for trademarks that consist of an apparently random string of letters unpronounceable in English and with no meaning in another language. These unusual trademarks have come to be known as nonsense trademarks. Nonsense trademarks are a growing problem in intellectual property. …

The Future Of Art And Copyright In The World Of Ai, Danna Subia Espinoza

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This paper focuses on the interpretive framework embodied in copyright law and its application to art-producing technologies, how this framework has been applied to new technologies in the past, and the issues surrounding the adaption of these old frameworks to the modern concern of AI-created art. The paper also considers how the application of copyright law to modern AI issues reflects the law’s capability, or inability, to evolve and address novel situations, specifically in relation to AI-based technology. Further, it examines what, if any, steps should be taken to promote courts maintaining a firm grip on copyright protections. The issues …

A How-To Guide For When Your Favorite Meme Account Is Defamed: Involuntary Public Figures In Defamation, Privacy, And Intentional Infliction Of Emotional Distress Law, Elizabeth Mcmullen

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The world we live in today has changed infinitely since the inception of our Constitution and early legal doctrine. Our Founding Fathers could never have predicted that we would one day live in a world where anyone living in any corner of the globe could garner millions of followers. Whether someone finds him or herself to be particularly proficient in writing Harry Potter fan fiction or to be the best creator of memes with an American Girl Doll focus, ordinary citizens could find themselves suddenly jolted out of quiet anonymity by one unexpectedly viral post. Despite years of Instagram micro-fame, …

The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino

Seattle University Law Review

U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

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 …

The Business Of Securities Class Action Lawyering, Stephen Choi, Jessica M. Erickson, Adam C. Pritchard

Indiana Law Journal

Plaintiffs’ lawyers in the United States play a key role in combating corporate fraud. Shareholders who lose money as a result of fraud can file securities class actions to recover their losses, but most shareholders do not have enough money at stake to justify overseeing the cases filed on their behalf. As a result, plaintiffs’ lawyers control these cases, deciding which cases to file and how to litigate them. Recognizing the agency costs inherent in this model, the legal system relies on lead plaintiffs and judges to monitor these lawyers and protect the best interests of absent class members. Yet …

The Care Bureaucracy, Yiran Zhang

Indiana Law Journal

The state plays an increasingly crucial role in providing home care as an aging population leads to mounting care needs. The public care system in the United States delivers home care and compensation for care work through an increasingly bureaucratic mode of governance featuring task-list enumeration, documentation, professional supervision, and exacting surveillance. The process adopts a rigid functional approach to define, measure, and regulate care that creates tension with home care’s relational, fluid, and person-centered dimensions. Through the concept of “care bureaucracy,” this Article describes the status quo disciplinary bureaucracy governing public home care, analyzes its political economy context, including …

Valuing Esg, Aneil Kovvali, Yair Listokin

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) commitments promise to make capitalism better. Unfortunately, ESG has become a hotbed of hype and controversy. The core problem is that ESG mixes vague environmental and social goals with a profit maximization goal and does not provide a framework for resolving the conflicts that exist between them. The result is confusion that invites deception and cynicism. This Article proposes a mechanism for resolving conflicts between goals by translating them into the common language of money. Once nonpecuniary environmental or social goals are translated into dollar values, they can provide clear and actionable guidance for …

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 Private Law Of Self-Help, João Marinotti

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Individuals regularly take steps to protect themselves, their property, and their broader legal interests. They carry pepper spray, have guard dogs, and install fences. Such measures are colloquially deemed methods of self-help. Yet, despite its ubiquity, self-help as a legal concept has been chronically understudied. Consequently, American private law is missing a doctrinally coherent and prescriptively useful framework for self-help. As a matter of legal theory, this conceptual void is problematic in and of itself; the doctrinal incoherence stemming from this analytical gap decreases the law’s stability and undermines its predictability.

But the concern is not merely theoretical. The magnitude …

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.

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 …

American Star Chamber: Online Misinformation, Government Intervention, And The Intellectual Matrix Of The First Amendment, Emily E. Burton

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Just as monarchs and clerical authorities struggled to respond to seditious and heretical writings enabled by the invention of the printing press, twenty-first century governments are experiencing a similar information revolution as a result of the digital age and a rising tide of what the United States has labeled online misinformation. Like the printing press, the Internet has enabled the spread of information at an exponentially lower cost and an exponentially higher speed as it extends the ability to publish thoughts and opinions to an increasingly diverse array of individuals. Although this was largely celebrated during the first two decades …