Evidence Commons^™

Evidence And Assessing Verbatim Transcription Quality Of Black English And Standard American English, L. Alexander Walker Iii

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores the accuracy of private transcription services when transcribing Black English and Standard American English. Courts and lawyers in the US regularly rely on transcripts from such services, but third-party verification of their accuracy, especially with respect to their quality when faced with nonstandard language varieties, is lacking. This study draws on experimental methods to contrast the quality of transcription services offered by transcribers and AI route. The quantitative results show that transcription by humans and AI resulted in more mistakes when transcribing Black English than when transcribing Standard American English. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis reveals that these …

Marked For Prosecution: The Use Of Tattoo Recognition Technology In Criminal Trials And The Case For Evidentiary Limits, Marc Consalo

Mercer Law Review

In recent years, tattoos have taken on a new and largely overlooked role in our criminal trial system. Once viewed primarily as personal or cultural expression, tattoos are now treated by law enforcement as biometric data which can be analyzed, codified, and then searched by artificial intelligence (“AI”). Police departments and prosecutorial offices have begun using tattoo recognition software to identify suspects, assume gang membership, and establish guilt based on imagery or symbols. Yet, despite the rapid growth of this technology, its use in the courtroom has received almost no scholarly attention and even less judicial scrutiny.

This Article seeks …

Can The Uk, Australia, And India Master The Defence Against Dark Patterns? A Comparative Study Of Jurisdictional Approaches, Swetha Meenal Ananthapadmanaban, Jeannie Marie Paterson

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This paper examines how the United Kingdom (the ‘UK’), Australia, and India approach the regulation of one of the most pressing issues in contemporary digital markets – Dark Patterns. Taking the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (‘DMCC’) in the UK as a potential benchmark, it evaluates the structural strengths and shortcomings of Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023, in India and the proposed grey list of unfair trading practices in Australia. Through case studies of Amazon Audible’s subscription cancellation flow and Epic Games’ in-app purchase design, the paper illustrates how identical practices receive uneven legal …

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

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 …

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 …

The Brady Materiality Standard, Brandon L. Garrett, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

The Brady doctrine requires prosecutors to disclose all favorable and material evidence to the defense. To effectuate that rule, the U.S. Supreme Court has defined materiality as a “reasonable probability” that the evidence would have affected the outcome at trial. But apart from that definition, the Court has resisted offering any further guidance to lower courts. While far too little is known about how Brady materiality claims are actually adjudicated, there is strong evidence that courts often reject Brady claims involving withheld evidence on the grounds that the evidence was not significant enough to be material.

To examine how Brady …

Reliance, Misplaced: Restoring The Text Of The Antifraud Provisions Of The Federal Securities Laws In Sec Enforcement Actions, Christopher R. Mills

University of Miami Business Law Review

The antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws are statutory sledgehammers. Those who violate them can face severe sanctions, including ruinous monetary penalties and others that can effectively bar firms and individuals from the securities industries. The Securities and Exchange Commission is authorized to enforce these provisions with the full weight of the federal government. And the SEC does so vigorously.

Even though the antifraud provisions target fraud, for decades lower courts and the Commission have held that the Commission can establish violations of them without any evidence that anyone was misled. They have done so by concluding that, unlike …

Derivative Attorney-Client Privilege In Organizations, Douglas R. Richmond

University of Miami Business Law Review

A lawyer and client must be able to communicate about the client’s legal affairs in confidence for the lawyer to be able to meaningfully advise the client, hence courts’ recognition of the attorney-client privilege. Fundamentally, the very term “attorney-client privilege” seemingly requires a lawyer’s participation in a communication for the privilege to attach. But, in fact, lawyers need not always participate in client communications for the attorney-client privilege to shield the communications from discovery. Clients or their employees’ confidential conversations among themselves with respect to legal matters sometimes deserve privilege protection. This derivative application of the privilege can be crucial …

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 …

Editorial

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.