Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Pathways To Justice: Positive Rights, State Constitutions, And Untapped Potential, Dustin Coffman

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Positive rights, as a concept, are nothing new. Though they may not have always had such a deceptively unequivocal name, positive rights have existed in various forms and mediums throughout history. They've been utilized, underutilized, and, in some cases, outright ignored. At their core, positive rights are the imposition of an obligation upon the state to fulfill some declared right or benefit. One basis for this imposition is that because citizens give up certain rights by being parties to the "social contract," they should be entitled to certain positive protections guaranteed by the state created by way of said "contract." …

Corporate Governance And Gender Equality: A Study Of Comply-Or-Explain Disclosure Regulation, Aaron A. Dhir, Sarah Kaplan, Maria Arabella Robles

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Nasdaq Stock Market filed a proposal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking permission to adopt a board diversity-related disclosure requirement for its listed companies. In 2021, the SEC approved the proposal, thus entrenching Nasdaq’s position as the most significant stock exchange to date to mandate listing rules that reflect the intention of diversifying corporate boardrooms. Nasdaq’s movement into the diversity space is not the first attempt to address homogeneous boards in the U.S. In 2009, the SEC adopted a rule requiring publicly traded firms to report on whether they consider diversity in identifying director nominees. …

Judicial Ethics And The Eradication Of Racism, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court entrusted the legal community with working to eradicate racism from its legal system. Soon after, Washington’s Commission on Judicial Conduct (hereinafter the Commission) received a complaint about a bus ad for North Seattle College featuring King County Superior Court Judge David Keenan. Along with a photo of Judge Keenan’s face, the ad included the following language: “A Superior Court Judge, David Keenan got into law in part to advocate for marginalized communities. David’s changing the world. He started at North.” The Commission admonished Judge Keenan for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct, in part …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Why Corporate Boards Should Include Lgbtq+ People, Jeremy Mcclane, Darren Rosenblum

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate boardrooms sit at the heart of most of society’s most consequential decisions but fall far short of the diversity of our society. The current movement toward board diversification aims to remedy the underrepresentation of marginalized groups on corporate boards. More recently, some efforts have included LGBTQ+ people, even though the basis for their inclusion on corporate boards remains largely unstated. This Article examines both the normative and instrumental bases for LGBTQ+ inclusion in board diversity initiatives, articulating unspoken assumptions and linking LGBTQ+ people to the broader inclusion effort. In so doing, it begins to surface the unique issues LGBTQ+ …

Investment Bankers And Inclusive Corporate Leadership, Afra Afsharipour

Seattle University Law Review

Few major deals happen without the engagement and advice of investment bankers. Whether a company is undertaking an initial public offering or engaging in a large merger or acquisition deal, investment bankers play a central role in advising corporate executives. Successful investment bankers are devoted to cultivating relationships with executives. And these relationships place bankers in a position to earn tens of millions in fees for their advisory and service roles in connection with corporate dealmaking. Investment bankers’ constant endeavors to nurture relationships with executives, while also maximizing their own ability to enhance fees, commonly leads to allegations of double-dealing, …

Selective Patronage, Omari Scott Simmons

Seattle University Law Review

Contemporary academic corporate governance narratives have a blind spot. They focus on institutions, rules, regulations, processes, procedures, intermediaries, and market forces. Yet, missing in this narrative, is the impact of corporate leadership. Ignoring the “black box” of corporate leadership, particularly individual actors, renders an incomplete descriptive assessment as well as potential miscalculations. The examination of key historical figures and their corporate activism provides an important lens through which to identify potential challenges and opportunities related to the contemporary ESG movement.

Generally, this essay examines corporate leadership’s potential to address socio-political issues through the prism of Civil Rights Movement activism. Specifically, …

Reframing The Dei Case, Veronica Root Martinez

Seattle University Law Review

Corporate firms have long expressed their support for the idea that their organizations should become more demographically diverse while creating a culture that is inclusive of all members of the firm. These firms have traditionally, however, not been successful at improving demographic diversity and true inclusion within the upper echelons of their organizations. The status quo seemed unlikely to move, but expectations for corporate firms were upended after the #MeToo Movement of 2017 and 2018, which was followed by corporate support of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement in 2020. These two social movements, while distinct in many ways, forced firms to rethink …

Women In Shareholder Activism, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Even a cursory review of the history of American environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) shareholder activism reveals the presence of women leaders. This Article sketches some of this history and interrogates the role of women in the shareholder activism movement. That movement typically has involved claims by minority shareholders to corporate power; activists are nearly always on the margins of power, though minority shareholders may, collectively, represent a majority interest. This Article ascribes women’s leadership in shareholder activism to their longstanding position as outsiders to corporate organization. Women’s participation in shaping corporate policy—even from the margins—has provided women with …

#Metoo And The Corporation In Popular Culture, Brenda Cossman

Seattle University Law Review

#MeToo’s initial virtual explosion in the fall of 2017 was very much about Hollywood, with famous actresses speaking out against famous producers, media moguls and celebrities, exposing the ubiquity of sexual harassment and sexual violence in and around the entertainment industry. Since then, #MeToo has made its way into Hollywood representations without much irony. Films and television shows have explicitly taken up the #MeToo themes, exploring issues of sexual harassment and violence and its afterlives. Many television shows, from the relaunched version of Murphy Brown to Brooklyn Nine-Nine to The Good Fight have incorporated #MeToo themes into episodes exploring the …

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 …

A Critical Jeffersonian Mind For A Community Reinvestment Bind, Chaz Brooks

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ("CRA") primarily sought to remedy decades of government sanctioned disinvestment in so-called “redlined communities.” Through the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and later the Federal Housing Administration, the United States of America created from whole cloth a structure that encouraged and subsidized the explosion of homeownership in white American households. Following decades of racialized wealth generation, the United States had a change of heart. Congress determined that financiers needed a gentle push to invest fairly. Additionally, Congress wanted one thing clear in the drafting of this remedy—it must not allocate credit.

This essay considers how …

Optimizing Disaster Preparedness Planning For Minority Older Adults: One Size Does Not Fit All, Omolola E. Adepoju, Luz E. Herrera, Minji Chae, Daikwon Han

Faculty Scholarship

By 2050, one in five Americans will be 65 years and older. The growing proportion of older adults in the U.S. population has implications for many aspects of health including disaster preparedness. This study assessed correlates of disaster preparedness among community-dwelling minority older adults and explored unique differences for African American and Hispanic older adults. An electronic survey was disseminated to older minority adults 55+, between November 2020 and January 2021 (n = 522). An empirical framework was used to contextualize 12 disaster-related activities into survival and planning actions. Multivariate logistic regression models were stratified by race/ethnicity to examine the …

Balancing Testator Freedom With Reproductive Rights In A Post-Dobbs Illinois, Mary Webb

SLU Law Journal Online

When creating a trust, a grantor may attach conditions that beneficiaries must meet before receiving an inheritance. Some conditions can become so restrictive that they contravene public policy and are unenforceable by courts. In this article, Mary Webb balances Illinois public policy on testamentary and reproductive freedom to determine whether an Illinois court would uphold a beneficiary restriction clause that restricts a beneficiary's reproductive rights.

Cle Working Paper No. 3/2022--What Is The Test For Interlocutory Injunctions Affecting Homeless Encampments? A Critique Of Vancouver Fraser Port Authority V Brett And Associated Case Law, Stepan Wood

Centre for Law and the Environment

Vancouver Fraser Port Authority v Brett (VFPA v Brett), decided in 2020, marked a new low in judicial responses to the intersecting crises of housing, homelessness, poverty, toxic drugs, mental health, racism and colonialism. By dropping to the ground the already low bar for granting interlocutory injunctions to evict homeless encampments from publicly owned land i n BC, this decision invites a critical assessment of BC courts’ approach to homeless encampment injunctions. In this paper I present the first comprehensive survey of 21st century BC homeless encampment interlocutory injunction applications, which shows that they have an extremely high …

Confronting State Violence: Lessons From India's Farmer Protests, Smita Narula

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In December 2021, following a year of sustained mass protests, farmers in India forced the repeal of three controversial Farm Laws that attempted to deregulate India’s agricultural sector in service of corporate interests. Farmers feared that the laws would dismantle price supports for key crops, jeopardize their livelihoods, and facilitate a corporate takeover of India’s agrarian economy. This Article situates India’s historic farmer protests in the context of the country’s longstanding agrarian crisis and the corporate capture of agriculture worldwide. I argue that the protests arose in response not only to the Farm Laws, but also to decades of state-sponsored …

Creating Broadband Equity In Rural Wisconsin, Brian T. Coe

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Over 430,000 people throughout the state of Wisconsin cur-rently do not have access to the internet. This "digital divide" is even more prominent in rural communities where broadband is either too slow, too expensive, or simply not available. Wisconsin state law cur-rently restricts local governments from providing this vital utility to their residents. The purpose of this Comment is to help readers un-derstand the impact of Wisconsin law surrounding local government public broadband programs, and how they can be changed to offer a more equitable menu of internet access to rural communities. This Comment will discuss the restrictive statutes that …

No Leave To Grieve: How Misfit Frameworks And America's "Grief Tsunami" Require Better Bereavement Policy, Katherine S. Hanson

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic fueled America’s recent death surge: 2021 has become the deadliest year on record in the United States. Scholars and commentators claim that the American workplace re-mains unprepared for the impending “grief tsunami” in the wake of such pervasive loss. Likewise, American law is ill-equipped for workplace grief. Bereavement, while medically “normal,” lacks a substantial foothold in workplace benefits and in the law. Currently, organizations bear the burden of developing their own policies—and where available, these policies remain insufficient to accommodate the myriad logistical and emotional complexities associated with the loss of a loved one. In the event …

Certified Fair Wage®: Utilizing Certification Marks In The Fight Against Wage Theft, Anne E. Parrish

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

This paper argues utilizing certification marks in the fight against wage theft is a powerful consumer-side approach to the wage theft crisis, building public attention, fostering a social norm against wage theft, bolstering current approaches to the crisis, and spurring meaningful political action. Current approaches to the wage theft cri-sis are floundering, and certification marks, a subset of trademarks “used to show . . . goods and[] services . . . meet certain standards,” offer a unique approach to the problem. By highlighting certification marks’ unique attributes, showcasing other labor movements’ suc-cessful adaptation of certification marks, and utilizing a hypothetical …

Equal Opportunity In Remote Learning, Teramie Hill

Marquette Benefits and Social Welfare Law Review

Students with disabilities have always been a marginalized group. During the Covid-19 pandemic, this group was even more vulnerable to discrimination because many students simply could not receive services required to ensure equal opportunity in education. While Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act in order to ensure students with disabilities are fairly treated in the educational system, remote learning has created complications and more complex issues. Making this issue even more complex, many parents are demanding the end of remote learning while others …

Can Affordable Homes Be Healthy? Legal Strategy, Socio-Legal Studies And Activism In Indonesia, Santy Kouwagam

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

This article uses two Constitutional Court decisions in Indonesia to exemplify the importance of analysing legal strategies. These decisions declared a rule barring developers from building and selling tiny houses to be unconstitutional and invalid. The article shows that ‘justice’ in legal procedures still needs further definition, and that judges’ elaboration of decisions and their legal reasoning still needs improvement. The article will first discuss the cases, using Legal Strategy analysis. It will then highlight problems with the commoditisation of houses. Finally, it will argue that the problem of unhealthy and unaffordable housing in Indonesia can be resolved, by bringing …

No Pact With The Devil: Defending & Strengthening New York City’S Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (Pact) - P3, Madeline Martinez

Journal of Law and Policy

Faced with the dual threats of a federal receivership and a growing deficit of federal appropriations, in 2018, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio enrolled the New York City Housing Authority (“NYCHA”) into the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (“PACT”). PACT would allow NYCHA to convert its federal Section 9 funding streams into federal Section 8 vouchers and permit the local public housing authority to enter public-private partnerships with private developers. This move would infuse NYCHA with an additional $12.8 billion in funding to counteract its roughly $31.8 billion deficit. However, immediately after the mayor unveiled his plans to pursue PACT, …

Administrative Deference And The Social Security Administration: Survey And Analysis, Nicholas M. Ohanesian

Journal of Law and Policy

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of administrative deference when decisions of the Social Security Administration are reviewed by federal courts. The concept of administrative deference to administrative agencies in federal courts goes back to the 1930’s during the rise of the New Deal­­—with the high-water mark reached by the Supreme Court in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council. Since this point, there has been a growing chorus calling to re-examine or outright roll back the deference owed to these agencies when their decisions are reviewed in federal court. Prior to rewriting the standards, this article …

America’S Constant Crisis Of Care: The Case For Passing A National Direct Care Ratio For Nursing Homes, Marissa Espinoza

Journal of Law and Policy

For decades, the conditions in America’s nursing homes have been the subject of bombshell media reporting, governmental investigations, and public outrage. Longstanding issues—such as chronic staffing shortages and inadequate infection control measures—were laid bare as the COVID-19 pandemic tore through nursing homes, exposing society’s most vulnerable populations—the elderly and the sick—to appalling living conditions. Amid horrifying media reports documenting life inside nursing homes, and in response to mounting public outrage, legislators sprang into action. The most aggressive policy proposed was a direct care ratio, which caps the profits that nursing home owners can extract from facilities by mandating a minimum …

Online Legal Help-Seeking For Victims Of Intimate Partner Violence During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Christina S. Walker

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Legal, court, and criminal justice professionals regularly navigate court procedures and processes through online portals. They know where to locate applicable court rules, such as a specific section on a court website or a departmental contact. However, these tasks can be extremely daunting for laypersons seeking court assistance, especially for victims of violence who have limited time away from the abuser. To determine how state judicial branches make information available about protective order procedures and general information to a layperson, especially to victims of intimate partner violence, this study assessed court websites of five states where intimate partner violence (IPV) …

Down And Dirty: Remedies And Reparations For Intersected Environmental And Reproductive Justice, Mickaela J. Fouad

Brooklyn Law Review

Pollution is a rampant issue in the United States, ranging from smog-filled air to infertile soil to contaminated water. Yet despite the pervasive nature of pollution, its harms are not equally distributed amongst society. Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) communities disproportionately bear the burden of pollution and consequently suffer more harms because of it. Many of the health consequences from pollution are reproductive in nature: proximity to pollution can compromise fertility, cause difficulty in carrying a pregnancy to term and result in birth defects, disabilities, and reproductive cancers. This note focuses on the reproductive consequences of pollution and relies …

A Mile Away, A World Apart: Life Expectancy Inequality In The United States, Scott A. Budow

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.

No Justice, No Peace: The Need For A State Version Of § 1983 In Response To The Movement For Black Lives, Madison N. Heckel

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

No abstract provided.