Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons^™

Letters From A Fragmented Democracy, Maureen Edobor

Scholarly Articles

This piece confronts the stakes of our current trajectory by looking to the future. It presents six fictional letters to illustrate where today’s ominous currents could lead. In this imagined tomorrow, contemporary voting restrictions, judicial erosion, and administrative manipulation have gradually hollowed out the franchise, transforming formal democracy into little more than an empty spectacle. Each letter voices a different facet of democratic erosion: a voter disenfranchised by bureaucratic hurdles, a candidate’s voice hijacked by deepfake technology, a neighbor ensnared by punitive voting laws, a community erased by gerrymandering, a campaign drowned in dark money, and even a corporate memo …

The Witchcraft Act And The Cost Of Inaction: Afchpr On The Persecution Of Persons With Albinism, Aly Orvis

Human Rights Brief

On February 5, 2025, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“AfCHPR”) issued a landmark ruling in Centre for Human Rights and Others v. United Republic of Tanzania, holding that Tanzania had violated the rights of persons with albinism (“PWA”) by failing to protect them from systematic discrimination, violence, and ritual killings. The applicants, a human rights organization advocating for PWA, argued that the Tanzanian government’s inaction and weak legal framework fostered an environment of impunity for attacks against PWA, including violations of Article 2, the right to non-discrimination, of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“ACHPR”). …

Quota Reform, Repression, And The Fight For Human Rights In Bangladesh, Noreen Tareque

Human Rights Brief

On June 5, 2024, the High Court of Bangladesh ruled against the government’s decision to cancel the country’s quota system, stating that the decision to cancel the system in 2018 was invalid. This meant the country would go back to using the quota system to assign government jobs to students after they had completed their higher education. The quota system established that 30% of Bangladesh’s government jobs were reserved for the children and family members of freedom fighters who lost their lives during the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 against Pakistan.  Additionally, the quota system reserved 10% for women affected …

Through A Glass Darkly: How Securities Disclosures Give A Distorted View Of The Economy, Gerald F. Davis

Seattle University Law Review

Our understanding of the American economy often relies on stylized facts derived from mandatory disclosures by listed corporations. Data vendors like Standard & Poor’s vacuum up 10Ks and proxy statements into databases, and scholars distill these into tentative maps. This may have been adequate for a postwar economy centered on asset-heavy manufacturers, but it is increasingly out of step with an information-based economy. Companies listed on the stock market are fewer in number and less representative than they were, light in tangible assets and people, and heavy on IP. Basic facts such as what industry they are in are increasingly …

The Tenth Anniversary Of Marriage Equality: How Traditional Marriage Law Led To Constitutional Protection For Same-Sex Marriage, Joanna L. Grossman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This essay explores how the history of interstate marriage recognition law was central to the Supreme Court’s recognition of constitutional protection for the right of same-sex couples to marry. Prior to the 1990s, there were essentially no laws on same-sex marriage in the United States. That changed in the 1990s, when the Hawaii Supreme Court issued a ruling in Baehr v. Lewin that made authorization of same-sex marriage seem inevitable in that state. The threat fueled the adoption first of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996 and then mini-DOMAs in most states. Those laws were broad and …

Blood Cobalt: Unmasking And Charging Corporations For Involvement In International Law Violations In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Bolu Jegede

American University International Law Review

Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) is a legal doctrine developed by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to hold participants in a criminal enterprise equally liable for all results of the group’s criminal actions, even if the individuals were not directly involved in committing the crimes. While traditionally used to prosecute individual criminal actions, JCE provides a legal pathway to hold corporations criminally liable for their actions that further international law violations. Although corporations currently do not have specific, listed responsibilities under international law, they are required to respect human rights and ensure their activities do not perpetrate …

Housing Sexual Harassment: A Department Of Justice Case Study, Rigel C. Oliveri

Faculty Publications

Sexual harassment in housing-when tenants or prospective tenants are sexually harassed by their landlords, housing providers, or other people associated with their housing-is a clear national problem. In 2019 the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced an initiative to bring attention to this issue, as well as a shared commitment to increased enforcement against harassers.

This enforcement push provides an opportunity for study. In particular, there are now a significant number of complaints and other litigation documents posted to the DOJ's website that provide a convenient and robust sample for analysis. The …

303 Creative, Exclusive Private Enforcement, And Blue-State Revenge, Charles W. "Rocky" Rhodes, Howard W. Wasserman

Faculty Publications

Red states have made exclusive private enforcement schemes targeting locally unpopular but constitutionally protected conduct a cornerstone of culture-war legal strategy. Laws such the Texas Heartbeat Act (“S.B. 8”) in 2021 and anti-“WOKE” laws forego public enforcement in favor of private enforcement; this precludes federal rights-holders from vindicating their rights through pre-enforcement offensive litigation in federal court against the government or government officials responsible for enforcing the law. This threatens rights-holders with defending a state-court wave of costly and burdensome litigation to adjudicate the law’s constitutional validity.

Blue states and liberal scholars and advocates have sought a progressive counterpart targeting …

An Ethnography Of Love Jihad: The Governance Of Interfaith Marriages In Times Of Hindutva, Snehal Sharma

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

My doctoral research focuses on the violations of human and citizenship rights of women and religiously marginalized communities (based on religious differences) in the backdrop of right-wing movements in India. I assess the Hindu nationalist propaganda named “love jihad” to demonstrate the way it weaponizes religious exogamy. This propaganda legitimizes violence against Indian religious minorities and women as it claims that marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men are acts of terrorism against Hindus with the sole aim of increasing the Muslim population using Hindu women's bodies. I have used ethnographic research methods to explore the legal process of interfaith …

Gen Y More Black Corporate Directors, Chaz Brooks

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Corporate diversity has been in the spotlight for decades. Recent efforts have followed years of legal scholarship, arguments on the business rationale for greater diversity, and more recently, the racial unrest during the summer of 2020. Called by some, a “racial reckoning,” the summer of 2020 catalyzed many corporate declarations on the importance of diversity, and more to the point of this article, the necessity of righting the economic disadvantages of Black Americans. This article looks specifically at one intervention by a corporate player following summer 2020, Nasdaq’s volley to increase corporate diversity through required disclosure. This article reviews the …

Poison! An Africana Legal Studies Investigation Into Enslaved Africans And Their Deadly Roots, Angi Porter

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This article is a murder investigation.

And a strange one, as the victims might be the suspects, and the suspects might be the victims. Or, even stranger, who we are calling the victims might be the enforcers of an entirely different justice system we did not initially see.

This is a cold case: we are investigating African people enslaved in the Province of Maryland during the eighteenth century. It is really a collection of cases—all cases of poisoning. These enslaved Africans were poisoning their enslavers. The incidents are described in legal records and newspapers. But what do these poisonings really …

Forward Progress: The Rooney Rule And Its Post-Sffa Relevance, N. Jeremi Duru

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In 2003, the National Football League (NFL), which had long struggled with racial inequity both on and off the field, implemented a policy known as the Rooney Rule, requiring that any league club searching for a head coach interview at least one person of color before making a hire. In the over two decades since, employers of all sorts seeking to increase opportunities for people of color and women have adopted a form of the Rule. Indeed, it has gained traction from coast to coast. Hundreds of American employers utilize the Rooney Rule or a policy derived therefrom. In the …

Title Ix And Athlete Compensation In The Postamateurism Era, Erin Buzuvis

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Church Autonomy, Textualism, And Originalism: Scotus’’S Use Of History To Give Definition To Church Autonomy Doctrine, Carl H. Esbeck

Marquette Law Review

Church autonomy is a First Amendment doctrine altogether distinct from the more familiar causes of action brought under the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The principle of church autonomy was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in the post-Civil War case Watson v. Jones, holding that civil courts must not be drawn into resolving religious questions or settling disputes over church polity. And early this century, in the unanimous decision Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the theory of church autonomy took on its most fully developed form as a constitutional immunity …

Shrines Of Discrimination: A Comparative Exploration Of American And Indian Approaches To Balancing Religious Freedom And Equal Rights, Sree Vedala

MC Law Review

Religious freedom and equality, foundational human rights, often clash in legal contexts, particularly when religious practices justify discriminatory actions. The U.S. judiciary has grappled with this tension, as exemplified in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and Yeshiva University v. YU Pride Alliance. These cases reflect opposing judicial tendencies: deference to religious beliefs versus prioritization of equality. However, neither case established a clear framework for balancing these rights. This article examines India’s "essentiality test," which assesses whether a religious practice is integral to a faith, as a potential model for resolving such conflicts. By comparing U.S. and Indian …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Corporate Scenarios: Drawing Lessons From History, Madison Condon

Seattle University Law Review

As corporations are increasingly pressed to reveal information about their exposure to climate-related risks, they are often asked to undertake and disclose the outcome of “scenario analysis.” In this exercise, corporations, including financial institutions, examine how their business would fare under different pathways the future may take. One oft-used scenario, for example, is the International Energy Agency’s “Net-Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Energy Sector.” This Essay presents a history of the use of scenarios as a corporate planning tool, particularly in the oil industry, arguing that it is key for understanding our present moment and the role of …

Shareholder Expression In A Time Of Heightened Political Tension, Aaron A. Dhir

Seattle University Law Review

In this article, I provide context for my forthcoming research project on shareholder proposals and racial equity audits. Since the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020, progressive shareholder actors have increasingly used the proposal mechanism to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice-related goals. These proposals have frequently gone beyond requesting the usual corporate fare of diversity trainings, intersectionality workshops, affinity groups, etc. Instead, a more ambitious type of proposal asks corporate America to conduct racial equity audits, defined as “an independent, objective and holistic analysis of a company’s policies, practices, products, services and efforts to combat systemic racism …

Corporate Governance Speech, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

The State has always regulated the intra-firm communications that make corporate governance possible, most commonly by mandating disclosures of information by a corporation to its shareholders. Some such laws are labeled “securities regulation,” but securities regulation is a broad category that extends to speech by actors who are outside the corporate enterprise as well. Also, the conventional securities regulation category does not capture all such laws; other examples, including informationforcing mandates, can be found in state corporate law. This Article uses the term “corporate governance speech” to describe the communications among shareholders, directors, and officers through which corporate governance is …

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …