Commercial Law Commons^™

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

From Presumed Intent To Programmed Performance: Smart Contracts And The Future Of Contract Law, Amir Bushansky

Cleveland State Law Review

Smart contracts—self-executing agreements operating on decentralized blockchain networks—challenge the fundamental assumptions underlying traditional contract law. This Article challenges the prevailing scholarly approach that seeks to reshape smart contracts to fit existing doctrinal frameworks. Instead, it argues for adapting contract law itself to better accommodate smart contracts, given their unique advantages in cyberspace. Building on two complementary premises—that contract law primarily operates as “mimicking law,” reflecting the presumed expectations and preferences of contracting parties, and that default rules function as behavioral reference points that shape party behavior—the Article develops a positive theory predicting the expectations and preferences of parties entering into …

Decentralized, But Not Above The Law: Analyzing Dao Governance And Regulation, Nathan Cline

Et Cetera

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are transforming how people collaborate and manage collective ventures, yet the law has lagged behind this innovative form of organization. Because DAOs rely on smart contracts rather than conventional organizational infrastructure, it is often unclear how they fit into existing laws. This paper defines DAOs, outlines the current regulatory frameworks governing them, and demonstrates where those frameworks fall short. It argues that DAOs should be recognized as a distinct form of corporate entity and that a tailored exemption from federal securities laws is necessary for them to operate effectively. The proposed model offers a practical path …

Debt’S Dominion: A New Epilogue, David Skeel

BYU Law Review

This Essay, written for the “Who Governs Debt’s Dominion” symposium, looks back on Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the book’s publication nears. The Essay begins, in Part I, by briefly describing how Debt’s Dominion came about. Part II identifies and seeks to explain a striking decline in optimism about American bankruptcy law since Debt’s Dominion was first published. Part III explores a few of the major recent developments in consumer bankruptcy, small business bankruptcy, and large-scale corporate reorganization that I would have analyzed in the book if it were written today. …

Green Rules, Fragmented Fields: Member-State Approaches To Sustainability In Eu Competition Law, Niccolò Galli, Armando Santoni

Yearbook of Antitrust and Regulatory Studies

This article provides a comparative, normative-evaluative examination of how sustainability is being incorporated into European competition law. Combining doctrinal legal analysis with economic reasoning, it clarifies competing definitions of sustainability, maps the contest between the consumer-welfare paradigm and sustainability proponents, and evaluates the legal and institutional implications of the Commission’s 2023 Horizontal Cooperation Guidelines. Drawing on national initiatives across Member States plus the UK, the study highlights contrasting instruments, from Austria’s statutory environmental exemption to the Dutch soft-law safe harbour and Greece’s experimental sustainability sandbox, and shows how these divergent approaches produce fragmentation and legal uncertainty for cross-border cooperative initiatives. …

Beyond The Genius Act: Regulatory Gaps And Operational Challenges In Stablecoin Adoption, David Krause

University of Miami Law Review

The enactment of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act in July 2025 represents a pivotal shift in the digital asset landscape, providing a federal framework for payment stablecoins and addressing critical issues of transparency and reserve backing. However, this Article argues that the GENIUS Act addresses only a subset of the systemic inefficiencies hindering the transition of stablecoins from speculative instruments to institutional-grade financial tools. Through an analysis of current market data and regulatory gaps, this Article identifies four persistent challenges: fragmented liquidity across geographic corridors, practical spendability constraints rooted in tax and accounting treatment, …

Editorial

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Rules Of The Game: Lessons From Sports To Understand Antitrust Law’S Fairness Foundations, Tara Pincock, Daniel A. Hanley

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Traditionally, courts and practitioners assert that the antitrust laws are simply about protecting competition, not competitors. In essence, these parties perceive competition to be inherently desirable, rather than recognizing that it can be beneficial or harmful depending on its intensity and scope. As a result of this mistaken belief, courts hold that certain conduct is legal under the antitrust laws simply because they determine it to be procompetitive, while conduct deemed anticompetitive is condemned. Courts seldom provide definitive boundaries to this pro-competition trope and instead assert it as if it were a well-established truism and universal societal good.

Without details …

Outbid By Technicality: How Streaming Services Weaken Legacy Media’S Matching Rights, Arthur Yolles

American University Business Law Review

Contracts for large-scale media distribution, such as those between sports leagues and broadcasting companies, often include matching rights—rights which guarantee a media distributor the ability to continue distributing content for as long as they can match the bids of third parties. These rights grant media distributors security in their relationships with rights-grantors, and they deliver a more predictable viewing experience for consumers. However, it is not always clear what constitutes a "match."

With the rise of streaming and big tech’s infiltration into legacy media strongholds such as live sports, the need to define a match is increasingly relevant. This Comment …

Cloudy Oversight: How Administrative Conflict Over International Airline Alliances’ Antitrust Immunity Harms Consumers Of Commercial Air Transportation., Hamin Jeong

American University Business Law Review

Antitrust law governs and guides how regulatory agencies should scrutinize unfair, monopolistic corporate behavior. However, when several different agencies are tasked with enforcing the same legal principles, different interpretations of such principles inevitably arise.

 The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) acts as the main body that enforces antitrust actions in the domestic airline industry, but there is an exception to the general rule. Congress delegated the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) the authority to grant antitrust immunity to international airline alliances, which form when domestic and foreign airlines partner to increase flight services between their respective nations.

However, as codified …

Serendipity And Self-Regulation: The Evolution Of Cryptocurrency-Based Exchange-Traded Products, Onnig H. Dombalagian

American University Business Law Review

Cryptocurrency enthusiasts rejoiced last year when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved the listing of bitcoin-based and ether-based exchange-traded products (ETPs). For over a decade, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs have sought to trade cryptocurrency products on traditional securities exchanges.  Listing bitcoin and ether ETPs gave retail investors an easily accessible, transparent, and perhaps, more cost-efficient means of investing in cryptocurrencies while reducing the credit and custodial risks of dealing with unregistered digital asset exchanges or digital asset intermediaries. The listing of cryptocurrency ETPs may also represent a substantial step toward completing the marketplace for financial transactions in bitcoin and ether.

 There …

Procedural Good Faith In Investment Arbitration—What Is It And What Could It Be?, Meg Kinnear

American University Business Law Review

When I selected the topic of procedural good faith for this lecture, I did not expect it to be as unwieldy as it proved to be. After all, good faith is a fundamental concept for every law student, and it anchors our approach to legal analysis and “thinking like a lawyer.” As counsel, our core belief is that proceedings must be conducted in good faith, and we each have a professional duty to act in good faith in arbitration.

Nonetheless, I am certain that each of you has witnessed conduct during an arbitration—by the opposite party, of course—that struck you …