Criminal Law Commons^™

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Esg Investing Breaches Erisa Fiduciary Duties? A Closer Look At Spence V. American Airlines, Inc., Eric Chin-Ru Chang

Seattle University Law Review

In Spence v. American Airlines, Inc., the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas found that American Airlines breached its fiduciary duties due to BlackRock’s ESG investing practices. Contrary to some reports suggesting that the ruling prohibits ESG investing under ERISA, a closer look at the ruling shows that the court only targeted American Airlines’ failure to manage conflicts of interest appropriately, rather than the legality of ESG investing itself. In light of the intensifying ESG backlash in the United States, this Article cautions against further restrictive measures on ESG investing. Such measures would exacerbate the widening …

A Conversation With Danielle Sassoon, Former Interim U.S. Attorney For The Southern District Of Ny, Jacob Burns Center For Ethics In The Practice Of Law, Criminal Law Society, Jessica A. Roth, Danielle Sassoon

2025–2026 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Forfeiture Takings, Police Power, And Necessity Destruction, Shelley Ross Saxer

University of Miami Law Review

Civil forfeiture laws allow law enforcement to seize property when there is probable cause it has been used or possessed in violation of legal rules, often before an owner has a chance to contest the government’s seizure in court. In the criminal context, forfeiture is typically an in personam action that requires a criminal conviction and is part of a defendant’s sentence. In the civil context, however, forfeiture is an in rem proceeding brought against the property derived from or used to commit an offense––not against the person who committed the offense. As such, a civil forfeiture may not require …

Brewbaker And The Undermining Of Criminal Antitrust Enforcement, Itiel J. Wainer

University of Miami Law Review

In United States v. Brewbaker, a Fourth Circuit panel overturned a criminal conviction under § 1 of the Sherman Act, holding that a bid-rigging conspiracy between direct competitors constituted a hybrid “dual distribution” arrangement subject to the rule of reason rather than per se illegality. The court’s rationale rested on the existence of a separate vertical relationship between the parties, even though that relationship served only as consideration for the horizontal agreement to rig bids.

This Comment argues that Brewbaker rests on three doctrinal errors: misclassifying established bid-rigging tactics as a “new” restraint simply because the payoff took a …

Law School News: Seeing Justice Up Close 10-22-2025, Alli-Michelle Conti

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

A Conversation With Danielle Sassoon, Jacob Burns Center For Ethics In The Practice Of Law, Cardozo Criminal Law Society, American Constitution Society (Acs), Danielle Sassoon, Jessica A. Roth

2025 Event Invitations

Danielle Sassoon is currently a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Prior to her appointment as Interim U.S. Attorney in January 2025 by President Trump, Ms. Sassoon served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York for over eight years. Among her notable cases as an Assistant U.S. Attorney were the prosecution of Lawrence Ray for racketeering conspiracy, extortion, forced labor, and sex trafficking, related to his abuse and exploitation of his daughter’s college roommates and others. She also investigated and prosecuted Samuel Bankman-Fried and others for the multi-billion-dollar fraud on customers of FTX.com. In …

Law School News: Rwu Law Student And Alum Honored By Justice Assistance For Their Commitment To Justice 10-22-2025, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

United States V. Minor: Two Major Issues, Hemangi Patel

Texas A&M Law Review

This Note analyzes a 2024 Fifth Circuit opinion concerning two issues: “(1) whether the district court erred by applying the career-offender enhancement when calculating Minor’s . . . range” under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (“Guidelines”), and “(2) if so, whether that error was harmless.” In United States v. Minor, the Fifth Circuit first held that the district court erred by applying the career-offender enhancement when calculating Minor’s Guidelines range because the defendant’s prior marijuana convictions no longer qualified as predicate offenses under the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”). Second, the court held that the error was not harmless because …

Pardon Me Please: Evaluating Clemency For Marijuana Offenders, Mitchell F. Crusto

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Since 2012, several states and municipalities have decriminalized the non-violent use and possession of small amounts of recreational marijuana by adults. These criminal law reforms raise the issue of whether individuals who were convicted in the past should be exonerated retroactively by way of pardons or clemency. Consequently, many past marijuana offenders remain in state prisons for committing acts that are no longer deemed illegal in many states. Furthermore, these prisoners, as well as persons who were formerly accused or imprisoned, suffer from the stigma and negative collateral consequences of their alleged criminality. In response to these injustices, many governors …

The Trial Of Musammat Kelee: Widowhood, Infanticide, And Colonial Justice In Early Twentieth Century India, Rashmi Banerjee

Socio-Legal Review

This article examines the 1920 trial of Musammat Kelee, a Hindu widow from Ajmer-Merwara, accused of drowning her illegitimate infant son in a lake. Drawing on extensive trial records, police reports, and official correspondence, it reconstructs the procedural history of her case and situates it within broader colonial debates on female sexuality, widowhood, and infanticide. Kelee’s conviction under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, despite weak evidence, hinged on judicial emphasis on her widowhood and the perceived illegitimacy of her child as proof of motive. Yet her subsequent pardon by the Viceroy’s office reflected a contradictory administrative impulse that …

Prosecutorial Interviewing Reform: Applying Victim-Centered Practices For Trauma-Informed Justice, Ana J. Prata

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

No abstract provided.

Structurally Harmless: Why Brecht Should Apply On Collateral Review Of Structural Errors, Jaden M. Lessnick

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

Even when a prisoner has overcome all of AEDPA’s requirements and the Supreme Court’s equitable bars to relief, the writ of habeas corpus may issue only as “law and justice” require. The Court has recognized in recent Terms that the habeas statute thus confers on courts discretion to deny relief notwithstanding the satisfactions of the statutory and equitable preconditions. This discretion, the Court has said, is not boundless. A judge may grant the writ only after considering the principles of finality and federalism. Whatever else that includes, the Supreme Court has made clear that a judge must apply Brecht’s …

What Is Trump Immunity?, Carlos M. Vázquez

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

By definition, the immunity of a former President is not an immunity ratione personae, as this sort of immunity applies only to current officeholders. It is an immunity ratione materiae extending only to certain types of acts. The Court in Trump made clear that the immunity a former President enjoys is at least an immunity from judicial proceedings. It is for this reason that she is entitled to an immediate appeal from the denial of a motion to dismiss the claim against her. The Court left unclear whether the President’s immunity is also an immunity from primary obligations or an …

Making Youth Matter, Kimberly Ambrose

Washington Law Review

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States. The harm caused by this public health crisis falls disproportionately on Black and Brown youth. While it is broadly accepted that children are less blameworthy than adults for their criminal behavior, what does this mean when they have access to and use guns? The Supreme Court held that youth matters when juveniles face life without parole sentences because children are different from adults—they fail to appreciate risks and consequences; are more impulsive; more susceptible to peer and family influence; less able to remove themselves …

Another Broken Promise: The Mmiwg2s Crisis And The Violation Of The Federal Indian Trust Obligation, Marley Forest

Washington Law Review

Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people go missing and are murdered at rates nearly ten times the national average in the United States. This disproportionate epidemic of violence has been labeled the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) crisis. Several factors exacerbate this crisis. First, European colonizers used violence against Native people, especially women and Two-Spirit people, as a tactic of control and domination since first contact in the 1600s. Second, nearly two hundred years of legislative actions and case law have effectively stripped Native Nations of all criminal jurisdictional power over crimes committed on their land …

Look What You Made Me Do, Russell M. Gold

Washington and Lee Law Review

We have understood for centuries that crime is both the product of social forces and individual choice. We know now that crime is affected by economic deprivation, addiction, trauma, and mental health issues. But American criminal legal processes hide this reality by coercing defendants into expressing a profoundly simple narrative: crime is solely individual choice to do wrong. This coerced narrative finds defendants during a plea colloquy standing up in court saying that they are pleading guilty because they are guilty and for no other reason. A defendant who goes off-script to tell the judge that they have been repeatedly …

A Call For Canceling Compassionate Release And Restoring Federal Parole, Honorable Chief Judge C.J. Williams

Washington and Lee Law Review

The current federal sentencing scheme is a patchwork quilt of provisions that grant judges virtually unfettered and unreviewable discretion imposing sentences on the front-end and in granting compassionate release on the back end. It was not designed in the beginning to be this way. The advisory-only sentencing guidelines scheme we have now resulted from the Supreme Court’s finding that mandatory guidelines violated the Constitution. The recent sentencing reform movement—of which compassionate release is a significant part—has sought to find ways of ameliorating what is seen as the draconian result of the war on drugs. The question is whether granting Article …

The Presumption Against Extraterritoriality And Wire Fraud, L. Jackson Howell Jr.

Fordham Law Review

As globalization and technology increasingly blur geographic boundaries, federal prosecutors have turned to the wire fraud statute as a powerful tool for targeting transnational misconduct. Despite its popularity in international fraud prosecution, the statute’s application to foreign conduct continues to raise unresolved and pressing questions under the presumption against extraterritoriality. Specifically, courts have struggled to identify when a domestic wire communication is sufficient to bring a largely foreign fraudulent scheme within the reach of U.S. law. With the U.S. Supreme Court silent on the wire fraud statute directly, and zigzagging in its extraterritoriality jurisprudence more generally, lower courts are split …

Misuse Of Financial Services For The Sexual Exploitation Of Children: A Socio-Legal Study In Indonesia, Ahmad Sofian

The Indonesian Journal of Socio-Legal Studies

This paper discusses children in the online space who are entrapped in interactions across various social media applications and digital platforms and became victims of sexual exploitation practices and how this sexual exploitation is facilitated by the availability of diverse financial service providers that allow for transactions between perpetrators and victims as well as distributors and producers. In view of ongoing efforts by the Indonesian government to formulate more relevant and effective regulations for child protection, this study is crucial for our understanding of the realities of sexual exploitation in the context of children’s use of social media and may …