Estates and Trusts Commons^™

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

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 …

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 …

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

In Guns We Trust: Nfa Firearm Trusts And Silencing The Hazards Of Nfa Firearm Ownership, Carter Horton

Arkansas Law Review

Individual ownership of firearms has been one of the storied rights of our country. During the Founding Era, firearms were plentiful among the colonists, providing them with protection and the means to hunt for food to sustain their communities. With a rebellion brewing against Great Britain, the ill-equipped colonial governments primarily relied upon the personal arms of their people for defense. Arguably, this fundamental right to bear arms played an important role in sparking the American Revolutionary War at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, in which the British attempted to seize an arms cache from the colonists. The subsequent …

Save The Date: Surrogate Court Judge Panel, Cardozo Trusts And Estates Law Society

2025–2026 Flyers

Welcoming  Hon. Rita Mella, Hon. Brandon Sall and Hon. Sara McGinty  on  a panel to discuss T&E in the courtroom!

Property Law For Positive Externalities: Carving New Sticks For The Bundle, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman

William & Mary Law Review

Property law has long confronted a troubling puzzle: Why does doctrine focus so much on eliminating harms flowing as negative externalities from uses of property—curbing pollution, nuisances, and other harmful land uses—while largely ignoring the potential to encourage positive externalities? Why such a strong focus on preventing bads instead of promoting goods? Using a case of a natural capital resource and the ecosystem services of flood control, water purification, and pollination it provides, this Article explains how and why existing doctrine fails to recognize these benefits as distinct property interests, leading to systematic underinvestment in conservation and service provision. We …

Modernising Wills For A Smart Nation, Hang Wu Tang, Edward Ti

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Lee Kong Chian Professor of Law Tang Hang Wu and SMU Associate Dean (Undergraduate Curriculum and Teaching) and Associate Professor of Law Edward Ti highlighted that Singapore has digitalised almost everything around the will, but not the will itself. Prof Tang and Assoc Prof Ti noted that the current legislation insists that the will itself remains a paper ritual, which is not just an inconvenience but also risks Singapore’s competitiveness. They argued that Singapore should modernise without compromising on steps to prevent fraud and undue influence. They highlighted that the law should be modernised so that …

Fbi National Stolen Art File: Lost Artifacts And Missing Data, Allison N. Arnold

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This data exploration project studies the FBI’s National Stolen Art File (NSAF). The NSAF is a repository for information on stolen artistic and cultural objects. By design, the objects in the NSAF should have distinguishing features and some monetary value, with a present minimum of $5,000 USD. As a public awareness tool, the objects in the NSAF should have a reasonable chance of being identified and potentially restituted in the future.

Using object data taken from the NSAF on August 25, 2024, my data exploration work includes a narrative of the data preparation process and a series of data visualizations. …

Policing Agency Data Trusts, Barry Friedman

Northwestern University Law Review

Policing agencies are indiscriminately collecting, retaining, and using vast quantities of personal data from people who are suspected of no unlawful conduct whatsoever. This has caused expressions of concern or caution from many quarters, including—notably—the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). In a declassified report, the Office of the DNI stated that massive amounts of data are being collected “on nearly everyone that is of a type and level of sensitivity . . . that could be used to cause harm to an individual’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.”

This practice of universal data collection presents a conundrum. As many …

Taxing Dynasties, David Gamage, Brian D. Galle, Bob Lord

Faculty Publications

The estate tax and the broader wealth-transfer-tax system are even more broken than is commonly understood. Over the past two decades, researchers and policy experts have identified a handful of key tactics that mega-rich families use to pass wealth from generation to generation without paying tax. These tax dodges are notorious enough to be known by their acronyms, such as the IDGT and the GRAT. Scholars and policymakers have proposed reforms to block these tactics, or at least to make them more difficult.

In this Article, we present new analysis, backed by new empirical findings, to show that these proposed …

The Dead Hand And Frozen Lives: Embryonic Personhood And The Disruption Of Property Interests, Emma Miloglav

Fordham Law Review

Advances in assisted reproductive technology and the expansion of fetal personhood laws are colliding with a body of property doctrine built on assumptions about reproduction that no longer hold. In LePage v. Center for Reproductive Medicine, P.C., the Supreme Court of Alabama held that extrauterine embryos—fertilized and frozen in a laboratory—are “children” under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. LePage represents a dramatic extension of fetal personhood.

This shift carries profound consequences for trusts and estates. If frozen embryos are treated as legal persons, they may qualify as heirs under intestacy statutes and as beneficiaries of wills, …

A Personal Take: An Argument In Favor Of Adopting The Uniform Partition Of Heirs Property Act In Rhode Island, Isiah Dipina, Natasha Varyani

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.