Sexuality and the Law Commons^™

Woke Capital Revisited, Jennifer S. Fan

Seattle University Law Review

Inclusive corporate leadership is now at the forefront of discussions related to corporate governance. Two corporate theories help to explain the rise in prominence of diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) efforts in corporate leadership. First, an expanded definition of corporate purpose which elevated the idea of the importance of stakeholders, contributed to the momentum from business and legal quarters for broader corporate inclusion. Second, the increasing publicness of corporations—the social expectation of how large, typically public corporations should act given their position of power—also led to corporations becoming more active in the DEI space. It is against this backdrop that …

Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin

Seattle University Law Review

Service members in the armed forces are bound by a different set of rules when compared to other U.S. citizens. Some of the normal safeguards and protections that civilians enjoy are much more restrictive for military service members, and this is generally for a good reason. Such restrictions are partly due to the complex demands and needs of the United States military. Congress and the President have entrusted military commanders with special powers that enable them to handle minor violations of law without needing to go through a full judicial proceeding. Non-judicial punishments (NJP), also known as Article 15s, are …

A Synthesis Of The Science And Law Relating To Eyewitness Misidentifications And Recommendations For How Police And Courts Can Reduce Wrongful Convictions Based On Them, Henry F. Fradella

Seattle University Law Review

The empirical literature on perception and memory consistently demonstrates the pitfalls of eyewitness identifications. Exoneration data lend external validity to these studies. With the goal of informing law enforcement officers, prosecutors, criminal defense attorneys, judges, and judicial law clerks about what they can do to reduce wrongful convictions based on misidentifications, this Article presents a synthesis of the scientific knowledge relevant to how perception and memory affect the (un)reliability of eyewitness identifications. The Article situates that body of knowledge within the context of leading case law. The Article then summarizes the most current recommendations for how law enforcement personnel should—and …

The New Pornography Wars, Julie A. Dahlstrom

Faculty Scholarship

The world’s largest online pornography conglomerate, MindGeek, has come under fire for the publishing of “rape videos,” child pornography, and nonconsensual pornography on its website, Pornhub. As in the “pornography wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, lawyers and activists have now turned to civil remedies and filed creative anti-trafficking lawsuits against MindGeek and third parties, like payment processing company, Visa. These lawsuits seek not only to achieve legal accountability for online sex trafficking but also to reframe a broader array of online harms as sex trafficking.

This Article explores what these new trafficking lawsuits mean for the future regulation of …

The Human Environment: Awakening To The Indomitable Cuban Spirit--Government, Culture, And People, Berta Hernández-Truyol

FIU Law Review

My thoughts are to write about The Human Environment. I will address the recent events concerning the increased silencing of dissent and the criminal law reforms that prohibit peaceful gatherings.

Different Countries, Same Homophobia And Transphobia: A Cross-Cultural Survey Of So-Called Conversion Therapy Practices And The Move Toward Legislative Protections For The United States Lgbtq+ Community, Samantha J. Past

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

So-called “conversion therapy” consists of dangerous practices that inflict detrimental, long-lasting effects on its victims. As a form of sexual orientation or gender identity or gender expression change efforts, conversion therapy is fostered by global homophobia and transphobia. Despite formal public rejection and scientific discreditation, conversion therapy providers across the world continue to target LGBTQ+ individuals, predominately under the guise of offering health care services or obeying religious practices. The following piece compares conversion therapy in three countries with recently introduced LGBTQ+ legislation––(1) Ghana; (2) Canada; and (3) the United States (U.S.)–––in order to identify factors furthering conversion therapy and …

Litigation, Referendum Or Legislation? The Road To Becoming The First In Asia To Institutionalize Same-Sex Marriage, Tzu-Chiang Huang

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In the pursuit of same-sex marriage, advocates in each country evaluate the appropriate decision-making process for addressing this highly disputed issue—litigation, legislation, or referendum. The choice may be partially based on the institutional advantages of each approach, but more importantly, the choice is also conditioned by the legal and political context of each country, such as the authority of the court, the framing of public opinion, and the dynamics between movement and countermovement. Uniquely, all three decision-making processes are involved in the course of the institutionalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. This Article, focusing on the experience in Taiwan, examines …

Defining Sexual Orientation: A Proposal For A New Definition, Andrew Park

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation are becoming more common in all parts of the world. Few of these laws provide useful definitions of the term sexual orientation. As a result, the meaning and impact of these laws remains unclear. This Article reviews past and current definitions of sexual orientation according to how well they incorporate current empirical knowledge of sexual orientation, and how their use in human rights laws impacts the dignity, right to equality, and human development of sexual minorities. The Article gives particular attention to the definition of sexual orientation found in the Yogyakarta Principles which …

Disposable Immigrants: The Reality Of Sexual Assault In Immigration Detention Centers, Valerie Gisel Zarate

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Three Observations About Justice Alito's Draft Opinion In Dobbs - Commentary, John M. Greabe

Law Faculty Scholarship

[Excerpt] "There is much to say about Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which was leaked from the United States Supreme Court on May 2 [2022].

Obviously, the most significant direct consequence of the proposed decision, which overrules Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) while upholding the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that outlaws most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, would be the restriction or elimination of abortion services throughout much of the nation. This will have all sorts of attendant consequences, large and smaller, many of which …

Identity Documents For Transgender Texans: A Proposal For A Uniform System For Correcting Gender Markers In Texas, Lydia R. Harris

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Texas’s lack of a codified gender correction process is unjust, illegal, and against public policy. This comment highlights the injustice faced by transgender Texans without gender concordant identity documents. These injustices include discrimination based on gender stereotypes, violation of the transgender individual’s right to privacy, and violations of public policy. This comment explores possible solutions to the injustices faced by transgender Texans due to the lack of a codified uniform way to correct gender markers in Texas modeled on other jurisdictions’ approaches to this problem.

First, this comment traces the history of the recognition of transgender people and transgender rights …

Sexual Profiling & Blaqueer Furtivity: Blaqueers On The Run, T. Anansi Wilson

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

This article has taken some time to recollect. I have been struggling to find the grammar to communicate a phenomenon that is both central to BlaQueer life and beyond BlaQueer living. This difficulty, the silences, the gaps, the nonsensical and agrammatical nature of this phenomena—that of BlaQueer furtivity, the strict scrutiny of Black life and sexual profiling—are central features not only of this project but of the legal, extralegal and social logics and powers that mark, make and remake BlaQueer folks as always, already furtive, subject to strict scrutiny and necessarily sexual profiling. I have been struggling with whether to …

Queer And Convincing: Reviewing Freedom Of Religion And Lgbtq+ Protections Post-Fulton V. City Of Philadelphia, Arianna Nord

Washington Law Review

Recent increases in LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws have generated new conversations in the free exercise of religion debate. While federal courts have been wrestling with claims brought under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment since the nineteenth century, city and state efforts to codify legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in the mid-twentieth century birthed novel challenges. Private individuals who do not condone intimate same-sex relationships and/or gender non-conforming behavior, on religious grounds seek greater legal protection for the ability to refuse to offer goods and services to LGBTQ+ persons. Federal and state courts must determine how to resolve these …

Justice For All? Impeding The Villainization Of Human Trafficking Victims Via The Expansion Of Vacatur Laws, Sarah Devaney

Pepperdine Law Review

It is common for human trafficking victims to acquire a criminal record as a result of the activities they are forced to engage in whilst being trafficked. Once these victims become survivors, their criminal record hinders them from wholly reacclimating to society. The current state of human trafficking laws provides little to no relief for human trafficking survivors in regard to alleviating their criminal records. Accordingly, human trafficking survivors are perpetually victimized by the United States criminal justice system. This Article explores the current state of human trafficking laws and their enduring effect on survivors. Specifically, the Article examines California’s …

Immigration Detention As A Violation Of Transgender Detainees' Substantive Due Process Rights, Emily Torstveit Ngara

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Noncitizens in immigration proceedings are often subject to civil detention pending a final decision on their case. Transgender individuals in immigration detention are at high risk for physical and sexual assault, cruel and degrading treatment, denial of necessary medical care, and protective isolation. The well-documented harms caused to transgender individuals in detention violate Fifth Amendment substantive due process. This Article documents the harms of immigration detention specific to the transgender community, reviews substantive due process jurisprudence in the civil detention context, and analogizes Eighth Amendment claims for transgender prisoners to substantive due process claims. Immigration detention is predicated on the …

Gendered Normativities: The Role And Rule Of Law, Susanne Baer

Book Chapters

In the 21st century, human rights are as present as they are endangered. Specifically, sex/gender equality rights are contested, or actively abridged, which is to be understood as an attack on women and on people who do not fit a ‘normal’ pattern of gender relations. Yet in addition, these are attacks on democratic constitutionalism itself. The article argues that to properly understand the recent contestations of human rights, one must distinguish between critique and attack, and revisit the very form and content of human rights, to deal with law’s ambivalence, such as ‘legal colonialism’, and also take into account critical …

Honor Thyself, Alonzo O. Williams

Dance (MFA) Theses

The black male experience and identity in America are filled with complexity. We struggle to know ourselves. We work to see the way of love and the peace of an unviolated free spirit. We want to engage with ourselves with the highest degree of freedom and comfort, not to continue to question our identity in a life-threatening white patriarchal masculinity ideal. Honoring oneself from the lenses of the Reconstruction era of the United States is essential. Reconceptualizing this history explores the significance of emphasizing Reconstruction in my life as a black male to go through a process of self-discovery and …

Introduction To Julie Bilotta’S Story, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Julie Bilotta’s contribution to this special volume is a straightforward denunciation of prison-based inhumanity and institutionalized misogyny. I write to show solidarity with her and to alert the reader to some of the ways her story exposes intersectional injustice while enlivening feminist abolitionist prison resistance. I write, too, to challenge my own and others’ thinking about whether or how law (litigation, law reform) might contribute to that resistance.

In her essay, Julie offers an intimate glimpse of prisons as sites of reproductive injustice. As this special volume attests, incarceration in Canada and elsewhere produces systematic gendered harms, including lack of …

Stemming The Tide: Social Norms And Child Sex Trafficking, Melissa L. Breger

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Despite decades of attempts to eradicate the industry, child sex trafficking continues to flourish. Arguably, there is debate about whether adults willingly choose sex work, yet there are no arguments supporting the notion that children make any such choice. When children are bought and sold for sexual purposes, it is child sex trafficking.

Academic legal research has focused comprehensively on the identification of child victims and the prosecution of child traffickers, yet there has not been as salient a focus on reducing the market of buyers of trafficked children. It is the reduction of demand where theories of re-norming and …

Law, Criminalisation And Hiv In The World: Have Countries That Criminalise Achieved More Or Less Successful Pandemic Response?, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Schadrac C. Agbla, Marissa Joy, Kashish Aneja, Mara Pillinger, Alaina Case, Ngozi A. Erondu, Taavi Erkkola, Ellie Graeden

O'Neill Institute Papers

How do choices in criminal law and rights protections affect disease-fighting efforts? This long-standing question facing governments around the world is acute in the context of pandemics like HIV and COVID-19. The Global AIDS Strategy of the last 5 years sought to prevent mortality and HIV transmission in part through ensuring people living with HIV (PLHIV) knew their HIV status and could suppress the HIV virus through antiretroviral treatment. This article presents a cross-national ecological analysis of the relative success of national AIDS responses under this strategy, where laws were characterised by more or less criminalisation and with varying rights …

What An Ethics Of Discourse And Recognition Can Contribute To A Critical Theory Of Refugee Claim Adjudication: Reclaiming Epistemic Justice For Gender-Based Asylum Seekers, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Abstract: Using examples drawn from gender-based asylum cases, this chapter examines how far recognition theory (RT) and discourse theory (DT) can guide social criticism of the judicial processing of women’s applications for protection under the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951) and subsequent protocols and guidelines put forward by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). I argue that these theories can guide social criticism only when combined with other ethical approaches. In addition to humanitarian and human rights law, these theories must rely upon ideas drawn from distributive, compensatory, and epistemic justice. Drawing from recent …

Adjudicating Patriarchy In The Nationality Law, Muhammed Samy Ahmed Mr.

Theses and Dissertations

The Egyptian legal structure has long discriminated against women. Taking nationality law as an example, it is obvious that all consecutive nationality laws have ignored women’s right concerning passing on and acquiring nationality. Even after its amendment in 2004, major gender discrimination still exists. This is caused by the fact that the nationality law is only a part of the legal system. Consequently, its essence will not deviate from the patriarchal composition of the overall nature of the legal system. This paper argues that the existing forms of discrimination in the nationality law correlate with the broader legal environment. Hence, …

Modernizing Discrimination Law: The Adoption Of An Intersectional Lens, Marisa K. Sanchez

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Striking The Balance Of Fairness And Inclusion: The Future Of Women's Sports After The Supreme Court's Landmark Decision In Bostock V. Clayton County,Ga, Jacqualyn Gillen

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal (1994 - )

No abstract provided.

Going Global: An International Human Rights Approach To Russian Lgbtq+ Law And Practices, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

The current treatment of LGBTQ+ people in Russia is characterized by a discriminatory withholding of rights and political and societal isolation and endangerment. While this situation is well-documented, the legal analyses of it have been more limited. Those that have been undertaken in the past decade have focused almost exclusively on the regional European Court of Human Rights as the vehicle to address Russian discrimination against its sexual and gender minorities. The scholarship has long ignored an international human rights approach, however, which, through the treaty bodies of the nine core international human rights treaties, has developed a robust set …

Pornography, Its Harms, And A New Legal Strategy: Research And Experience In Japan, Seiya Morita, Caroline Norma

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

In this article we describe pornography’s harms in Japan, which are known about from surveys and research, and from the outreach and consulting activities of Japanese feminist-abolitionist groups. Among these are the Anti-Pornography and Prostitution Research Group (APP) and People Against Pornography and Sexual Violence (PAPS). We then propose a renewed classification scheme for pornography’s harms that centrally considers the experiences of victims in Japan. Lastly, we consider various legal approaches to addressing the myriad harms we describe and suggest possibilities for a new legal strategy. The article’s research comes from Japanese-language materials produced by the above-mentioned activist groups, as …

Sex Discrimination In Healthcare: Section 1557 And Lgbtq Rights After Bostock, Amy Post, Ashley Stephens, Valarie K. Blake

Law Faculty Scholarship

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) banned sex discrimination in health care. In June of 2020, however, the Trump administration finalized a rule that explicitly removed sexual orientation and gender identity from Section 1557’s safeguards. That same month, the Supreme Court held that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination are forms of sex discrimination for purposes of Title VII employment discrimination in Bostock v. Clayton County. Following the Court’s decision in Bostock, this Article argues that sex discrimination under Section 1557 necessarily encompasses gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination.

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

"If Consent Is Bought, It Is Not Freely Chosen": Compromised Consent In Prostituted Sex In Ireland, Ivana Bacik

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article offers feminist arguments for the reconsideration of consent as a legal concept, informed by insights gained through the work of the #MeToo movement and other feminist campaigns. It suggests that consent may be seen as legally compromised in certain contexts of structured gender inequality, such as domestic violence, workplace sexual harassment, and prostitution. The legal understanding of consent in such contexts is antithetical to the conception of consent as “freely and voluntarily” given within a mutual sexual relationship. This understanding of consent underpins the recent introduction of the Nordic model approach into Irish law through the Criminal Law …