Disability Law Commons^™

Real-World Consequences For Online Actions: The Case For Expanding Employee Harassment Protection Via Employers’ Rights Of Action, Alexander Barnes

Seattle University Law Review

This Note argues for expanding employers’ access to legal remedies that allow them to recoup the costs of protecting their employees from swatting, doxing, and other online harassment arising from their employees’ professional activity. Part I provides a brief description and history of the online harassment problem and its potentially deadly dangers. Part II describes employers’ legal responsibility to take action to protect their employees from harassment aimed at their employees within the scope of their employment. Part III explores common legal remedies that are currently available to employers, using the state of Washington as an example. Part III also …

Foreseeability And Duty In Washington Negligence Law: Leaving The Road Less Traveled By, Leo Linder

Seattle University Law Review

Washington negligence law is a confusing labyrinth of foreseeability that not even Ariadne’s string could guide plaintiffs out of. Foreseeability is implicated in four distinct analyses, several of which overlap considerably. Doctrines that were once questions of law are now questions of fact, and vice versa. Something needs to change.

Washington has taken the novel approach of bifurcating the duty element into two parts—duty’s mere existence, which is a question of law for the court to determine; and duty’s scope, which is a question of fact handed off to the jury to determine. Foreseeability impacts both of these assessments, but …

Awakening To Activism: Exploring Disability Activism Through The Voices Of University Student Activists, Sophia Hirokawa

West Chester University Master’s Theses

In this study, I explored disability activist identity and activism through one-on-one, semi-structured qualitative interviews with four university activists who shared their personal stories of awakening to disability activism, using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) to explore themes. Each interviewee had a unique form of disability activist identity and a multifaceted process of awakening to that identity. They identified strengths in the disability activist community, such as a supportiveness, persistence, and uniqueness, but they also identified challenges, such as ineffectiveness of laws and policies, discrimination, and a lack of accessibility and awareness. The results of this study illuminate the …

Intimate Relationships And Supported Decision Making, Leslie Francis

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mothers With Disabilities In The Workplace Post-Pandemic & Post-Dobbs, Nicole Buonocore Porter

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Network Capabilities In Land Use And Disability Law, Robin Paul Malloy

American University Law Review

Our communities must be made safe and easy to navigate by people with disabilities and by those who are seeking to age in place. This requires us to do land planning and zoning in a cost-conscious way that empowers a diverse population to readily participate in community life. Accomplishing this goal involves working at the intersection of land use law and disability law. This means we must work at the intersection of competing legal frameworks, one based on the exercise of the sovereign police powers and the other based on the prevention of discrimination under civil rights law.

The fundamental …

Reimagining The Inclusive Jury, Anna Offit

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyday life for many Americans was upended. And yet, the jury trial remained viable — even vital. Faced with an era-defining public health disaster, courts innovated, embracing novel technologies and techniques to reimagine where and how justice might be made. But why did it take a pandemic to spur this kind of institutional creativity? Prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, people who were otherwise eligible to participate as jurors were routinely — and uncontroversially — struck or exempted from service due to limited mobility, vision and hearing loss, and caregiving responsibilities. Recent experience …

The Need For Corporate Guardrails In U.S. Industrial Policy, Lenore Palladino

Seattle University Law Review

U.S. politicians are actively “marketcrafting”: the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act collectively mark a new moment of robust industrial policy. However, these policies are necessarily layered on top of decades of shareholder primacy in corporate governance, in which corporate and financial leaders have prioritized using corporate profits to increase the wealth of shareholders. The Administration and Congress have an opportunity to use industrial policy to encourage a broader reorientation of U.S. businesses away from extractive shareholder primacy and toward innovation and productivity. This Article examines discrete opportunities within the …

Securities Regulation And Administrative Deference In The Roberts Court, Eric C. Chaffee

Seattle University Law Review

In A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court, A.C. Pritchard and Robert B. Thompson write, “Securities law offers an illuminating window into the Supreme Court’s administrative law jurisprudence over the last century. The securities cases provide one of the most accessible illustrations of key transitions of American law.” A main reason for this is that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is a bellwether among administrative agencies, and as a result, A History of Securities Law in the Supreme Court is a history of administrative law in the Supreme Court of the United States as well.

Delegated Corporate Voting And The Deliberative Franchise, Sarah C. Haan

Seattle University Law Review

Starting in the 1930s with the earliest version of the proxy rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has gradually increased the proportion of “instructed” votes on the shareholder’s proxy card until, for the first time in 2022, it required a fully instructed proxy card. This evolution effectively shifted the exercise of the shareholder’s vote from the shareholders’ meeting to the vote delegation that occurs when the share-holder fills out the proxy card. The point in the electoral process when the binding voting choice is communicated is now the execution of the proxy card (assuming the shareholder completes the card …

Capitalism Stakeholderism, Christina Parajon Skinner

Seattle University Law Review

Today’s corporate governance debates are replete with discussion of how best to operationalize so-called stakeholder capitalism—that is, a version of capitalism that considers the interests of employees, communities, suppliers, and the environment alongside (if not before) a company’s shareholders. So much focus has been dedicated to the question of capitalism’s reform that few have questioned a key underlying premise of stakeholder capitalism: that is, that competitive capitalism does not serve these various constituencies and groups. This Essay presents a different view and argues that capitalism is, in fact, the ultimate form of stakeholderism. As such, the Essay urges that the …

The Esg Information System, Stavros Gadinis, Amelia Miazad

Seattle University Law Review

The mounting focus on ESG has forced internal corporate decision-making into the spotlight. Investors are eager to support companies in innovative “green” technologies and scrutinize companies’ transition plans. Activists are targeting boards whose decisions appear too timid or insufficiently explained. Consumers and employees are incorporating companies sustainability credentials in their purchasing and employment decisions. These actors are asking companies for better information, higher quality reports, and granular data. In response, companies are producing lengthy sustainability reports, adopting ambitious purpose statements, and touting their sustainability credentials. Understandably, concerns about greenwashing and accountability abound, and policymakers are preparing for action.

In this …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

The Marijuana Insurgency: Federalism And Social Reframing In Policy Reform, Matthew P. Cavedon

Seattle University Law Review

After fifty years of federal prohibition, marijuana reform efforts have won political and legal success. These victories hold lessons for anyone seeking to resist federal law without being able to directly affect it.

Victory can come from reframing an issue. For marijuana reform, social reframing—not formal legal analysis or material factors—provides the best explanation for how advocates achieved change. Their unconventional political tactics, akin to those used by insurgents in wartime, undercut federal prohibition by winning hearts and minds.

This is an analysis of the sociology of legal change. It is also the story of how ordinary Americans retook personal …

Love, Liberalism, Substituted Judgment, James Toomey

Indiana Law Journal

Under the doctrine of substituted judgment, decision-makers for adults without legal capacity are to make the decision the person in their care would have made. In cases involving irreversible cognitive decline—where substituted judgment is most frequently applied—scholars have struggled to explain it, resorting to mysterious metaphysical claims. These philosophical acrobatics seem necessary because the person for whom the decision is made cannot appreciate it, and, philosophically, they may not be the same person they had been.

This Article offers a novel account of substituted judgment that circumvents these challenges. I argue first that the doctrine is straightforwardly justified in cases …

Disability Benefits And Administrative Vulnerability: Lessons For Canada From The Us's Social Security System, Neil H. Buchanan

UF Law Faculty Publications

The United States federal government's disability insurance system is a leading example of the problems that arise when a social program combines subjective eligibility criteria with an administrative apparatus that cannot handle the inevitable expenses and delays that such criteria create and that are expensive to reverse. In particular, Black, female, and non-English speaking individuals are most likely to be improperly denied benefits under that program. By contrast, Canada is moving in the right direction with its recent enactment of the Canada Disability Benefit Act. That Act, while obviously not perfect, importantly improves access to social support for people …

The Federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act: Statutory Requirements, Regulations, And Need (Especially In Post-Dobbs America), Deborah Widiss

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The federal Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, enacted in December 2022, is landmark legislation that will help ensure workers can stay healthy through a pregnancy. It responds to the reality that pregnant workers may need small changes at work, such as permission to sit periodically, carry a water bottle, relief from heavy lifting, or reduced exposure to potentially dangerous chemicals. Workers may also need schedule modifications or leave for prenatal appointments, childbirth, or post-partum recovery, or accommodations to address medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth.

Previously, federal sex discrimination law and federal disability law sometimes required employers to provide such …

Disability Discrimination By Clinical Algorithm, Elizabeth Pendo, Jennifer D. Oliva

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In response to America’s escalating drug poisoning crisis, the federal government has funded, incentivized, and mandated that states adopt and implement prescription drug monitoring programs (“PDMPs”) to electronically surveil controlled substances and other “drugs of concern.” State PDMPs utilize proprietary, predictive software platforms that deploy algorithms to determine whether a patient is at risk for drug misuse, drug diversion, doctor shopping, or substance use disorder. PDMPs have never been validated by a federal agency or peer review, yet states have mandated their use throughout the health care delivery system.

Research demonstrates that clinical overreliance on the risk scores generated by …

Shareholder Primacy Versus Shareholder Accountability, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

When corporations inflict injuries in the course of business, shareholders wielding environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) principles can, and now sometimes do, intervene to correct the matter. In the emerging fact pattern, corporate social accountability expands out of its historic collectivized frame to become an internal subject matter—a corporate governance topic. As a result, shareholder accountability surfaces as a policy question for the first time. The Big Three index fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, responded to the accountability question with ESG activism. In so doing, they defected against corporate legal theory’s central tenet, shareholder primacy. Shareholder primacy builds …

Verses Turned To Verdicts: Ysl Rico Case Sets A High-Watermark For The Legal Pseudo-Censorship Of Rap Music, Nabil Yousfi

Seattle University Law Review

Whichever way you spin the record, rap music and courtrooms don’t mix. On one side, rap records are well known for their unapologetic lyrical composition, often expressing a blatant disregard for legal institutions and authorities. On the other, court records reflect a Van Gogh’s ear for rap music, frequently allowing rap lyrics—but not similar lyrics from other genres—to be used as criminal evidence against the defendants who authored them. Over the last thirty years, this immiscibility has engendered a legal landscape where prosecutors wield rap lyrics as potent instruments for criminal prosecution. In such cases, color-blind courts neglect that rap …