Human Rights Law Commons^™

Sffa V. Harvard College: Closing The Doors Of Equality In Education, Ediberto Roman

Seattle University Law Review

The United States Supreme Court’s recent combined decision ending affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina was hailed in conservative circles as the beginning of “the long road” towards racial equality. Others declared that “the opinion may begin the restoration of our nation’s constitutional colorblind legal covenant.” Another writer pronounced, “Affirmative action perpetuated racial discrimination. Its end is a huge step forward.” A Washington-based opinion page even declared: “[T]he demise of race-based affirmative action should inspire renewed commitment to the ideal of equal opportunity in America.” Despite …

Religious Freedom And Diversity Missions: Insights From Jesuit Law Deans, Anthony E. Varona, Michèle Alexandre, Michael J. Kaufman, Madeleine M. Landrieu

Seattle University Law Review

This Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education.

The Class Of Injuries Test: A Unifying Proposal To Determining Duty, Proximate Cause, And Superseding Cause In Negligence Claims, Judge Leonard J. Feldman, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

While there seems to be universal agreement that liability in tort cannot be unlimited, there is widespread disagreement regarding the various tests that courts utilize to limit such liability. We assume here that breach can be proven: the defendant failed to conduct themself in accordance with the salient standard of conduct (for example, failure to exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances). In the ensuing litigation, the court and jury are asked to decide several issues that each limit liability for negligence. Here, we focus on three oft-debated issues: duty, proximate cause, and superseding cause. The tests for each are …

Ai, New Technologies, And Corporate Governance: Three Phenomena, Martin Petrin

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial intelligence (AI) and other new technologies are increasingly influencing the operations, business models, and structures of companies. This Article focuses on three emerging phenomena that impact significant aspects of corporate governance and regulation: (1) perforation and blurring of firm boundaries through the ubiquitous use of externally provided AI services; (2) businesses engaging in strategic access and leveraging of critical resources held by third parties without owning them; and (3) the unusual hybrid role of online platforms between market facilitators and markets themselves. The Article explores how these phenomena challenge traditional views of firms as separate units, with technology leading …

A Meaningful Life: The Future Of Juvenile Justice In Washington After Anderson, Samuel Coren

Seattle University Law Review

Until 2022, Washington’s line of juvenile sentencing jurisprudence gave every indication of continuing along the course set by Miller v. Alabama, as Washington courts recognized that “children are different” and should not be subjected to the harshest punishments available in the criminal legal system. State v. Anderson marked a stark diversion from this course. In upholding the constitutionality of a de facto life sentence for a juvenile, the Washington Supreme Court all but rejected the well-established scientific consensus surrounding juvenile brain development and implicit racial bias. Whether this decision reflects a minor aberration or a broader trend in the court’s …

Reconciling Disjunct Cryptocurrency Securities Enforcement With Purchaser Expectations, Jacob E. Simmons

Seattle University Law Review

The Southern District of New York’s July 2023 decision in SEC v. Ripple Labs, Inc. has been touted as a monumental win for cryptocurrency purchasers and related businesses. The Ripple court held that, except institutional investor transactions, all sales of Ripple’s XRP token were not investment contracts, a class of security subject to federal securities law. The court’s ruling meant that Ripple could not be held liable for the unregistered trading of XRP beyond its sales to institutional investors. Ripple adds new insights to a pervasive policymaking dilemma addressed in this Note: is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) regulatory …

A Blueprint To Reclaim Legal Education From External Rankers, Scott Rempell

Seattle University Law Review

The U.S. News & World Report (U.S. News) law school rankings have impacted the perceptions and behaviors of everyone in the rankings ecosystem for decades. Commentators have almost universally condemned these ordinal rankings, yet they continue to influence the legal education market, often in highly detrimental ways.

The influence of these rankings stems from legitimate market demands, for reasons that the psychology of choice literature makes clear. People want (or need) to efficiently acquire and digest information that could help them make consequential decisions. At a time when consumers of law school information did not have such choice-making assistance, U.S. …

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 …

Conference Proceedings - Symposium Insights And Implications: Advancing Regional Health Governance In The Inter-American System, Uchechukwu Ngwaba, A. M. Viens, Carlos Bernal, Karline Wilson-Mitchell, Michelle Amri, Jake Okechukwu Effoduh, Lisa Forman, Roojin Habibi, Mathieu Poirier, Oghenowede Eyawo, Sarah Fixon-Owoo, Innocent Ntaganira, Aeda Salim, Aminah Haghighi, Saumya Rai, Sandeep Kaur, Samrawit Kebreab, Sekinat Owoyemi, Kateryna Fomina

The Transnational Human Rights Review

This paper presents insights and implications from a two-day research symposium organized by the Regional Health Governance Study (RHGS) in 2024. The symposium examined how a regional approach to health governance within the Inter-American System, which comprises the Commission, the Court and the Pan-American Health Organization, can support the development of an equitable pandemic management system. It also examines the limitations of WHO-led pandemic response measures, identifies regional governance mechanisms, and offers policy recommendations to strengthen pandemic preparedness in the Americas. A qualitative thematic analysis using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) was employed to assess barriers, facilitators, and …

A Haven For Traffickers: How The United States Provides A Legal Safe Haven For Businesses That Rely On Forced Labor In The International Supply Chain, Ramona L. Lampley

Faculty Articles

Congress enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act ("TVPRA" or "Act") in 2000, which, through its amendments, gives victims of human trafficking, including forced labor or slave labor, a private right of action against those who knowingly benefit from the abusive labor practices perpetrated on them. Even though slave labor, particularly child labor, is a perceived evil in the foreign supply chains of many domestic companies, courts appear uncomfortable with the some of the civil-liability provisions of the TVPRA. This Article examines recent cases brought under the TVPRA, and how, in some cases, courts have eviscerated the private right of action …

The Future Of The Christchurch Call To Action: How To Build Multistakeholder Initiatives To Address Content Moderation Challenges, Rachel Wolbers

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

This article explores the challenges the New Zealand Government faced after the events in Christchurch on 15 March 2019, where a violent gunman killed 51 people and live-streamed his attack on social media. The video was viewed millions of times in the days following, even as the tech companies took extraordinary efforts to reduce its virality. To find a long-term solution that ended the proliferation of this violent content while protecting human rights, the New Zealand Government decided to take a non-regulatory approach that worked alongside tech companies and civil society. The result was the creation of the Christchurch Call …

303 Creative Llc, Public Accomodations Law, And The Many Possible Futures Of Rights, Jacob Eisler

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Fair Notice And Criminalizing Abortions, Brian G. Slocum, Nadia Banteka

Scholarly Publications

The principle of legality requires that individuals receive 'fair notice" of conduct that is criminal. Courts enforce this fair notice requirement through various interpretive principles and practices, including the void-for-vagueness doctrine. The void-for-vagueness doctrine remains undertheorized, however, despite its centrality to the interpretation of criminal statutes. We offer a new theory of the void-for-vagueness doctrine that accounts for recent Supreme Court decisions. Specifically, we propose a scalar theory that fair notice is a matter of degree, dependent on various factors. We explore the implications of this theory for anti-abortion statutes post-Dobbs and explain why many of these statutes do not …

"I Can't Breathe": A Comparison Of Racial Inequity And Police Brutality Observed In France And The United States, Jasmine Oesterling

Akron Law Student Publications

This paper explores the unanticipated convergence of human experiences among Black and Brown citizens of France and the United States, despite their historical and legislative differences. Investigating racial inequity and police brutality through a comparative lens, this paper highlights global connections forged by racial and ethnic minorities in their shared anti-racist struggles. Emphasizing the transformative potential of acknowledging and sharing these narratives, this paper navigates linguistic, social, and legislative dimensions, providing insights into legal standings and communal ideologies. Addressing the lasting consequences of racial bias, this paper urges a reevaluation of societal structures and legal frameworks to foster global racial …

Universal Civil Jurisdiction And International Law: A Response To B.S. Chimni, Chimène Keitner

National Law School of India Review

The exercise of various forms of jurisdiction, and the delineation of a political entity’s jurisdictional reach over persons, places, and conduct, can sharpen and entrench inequities within and between states. One can thus aptly characterize certain exercises of jurisdiction, and particularly certain forms of extraterritorial jurisdiction, as assertions of imperial and/or hegemonic power. Importantly, however, jurisdiction can also be invoked to redress certain power inequities by providing access to judicial remedies for conduct that has evaded other forms of regulatory control. In addition, while certain assertions of extraterritorial prescriptive jurisdiction can represent overreaching by powerful states, the practice of disclaiming …

Theorising Extraterritorial Jurisdiction: The Travails Of Twail, Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah

National Law School of India Review

Discussion of extraterritoriality focussing on capitulation theories looks backwards at an historical period. The present need is to study extraterritoriality used by hegemonic states both in an oppressive manner to advance their national interests and in a manner that protects common interests. As hegemonic power of the United States recedes, new actors like China and India will come to use extraterritoriality largely in an offensive manner. Preoccupation with the past is inapposite in a field in which the rapid developments are taking place. A theory must be found that permits defensive extraterritoriality that promotes community interests while curbing the offensive …

Colonialism, Jurisdiction, And Sovereignty In Palestine, Usha Natarajan

National Law School of India Review

Knowledge production is never neutral, and academia – much like international laws and institutions among other social structures – is a key conduit for the efficient operations of power. Israel’s longstanding occupation and settler colonialism in Palestine challenges mainstream accounts of the international laws of jurisdiction, whereas Chimni’s TWAIL analysis better accounts for and predicts the imperial operations of such laws and points to fruitful evolution towards fairness and justice.10 I elaborate by considering firstly the exercise of jurisdiction during occupation and settler colonialism, and secondly the exercise of universal jurisdiction by states. I conclude with some thoughts on jurisdiction …

Human Rights And Jurisdictional Trajectories: Shedding Light On The Colonial Genealogy, Rongeet Poddar

National Law School of India Review

International law’s tryst with colonialism has continued to have a significant bearing on the shifting sands of jurisdiction in relation to human rights enforcement. Even as the apparition of empire loomed large over Third World states, a ‘universal’ yet non- binding catalogue of human rights had become reality with the birth of the UDHR. As recognized in Article 2 of the document, peoples of non-self-governing territories could also not be deprived of their human rights. However, hopes were belied when the ECHR, as the first binding post-War human rights instrument, was accompanied by a restrictive jurisdiction clause. The original Article …

The Success Of Pre-Enforcement Challenges To Antidiscrimination Laws, Alexander Gouzoules

Faculty Publications

Formally, judicial analysis of a challenged statute's validity should be consistent, regardless of the challenge's pre- or post-enforcement posture. A post-enforcement posture arises when an aggrieved party defensively challenges a purportedly unconstitutional statute being enforced against them. Alternatively, a pre-enforcement posture arises when an impacted party strikes first, attacking the statute by asserting a credible threat that the law will be enforced against them in the future. Either way, judicial evaluation of a statute's validity should turn on its content and effect-not on whether it was challenged before or after enforcement.

This Article challenges that assumption, arguing that pre-enforcement challengers …