Internet Law Commons^™

Period-Proofing Your Data, Sofia Makepeace

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Menstrual cycle tracking apps and their accompanying wearables, collectively known as FemTech, promise women health insights in a healthcare system that often fails to treat problems that primarily affect women. FemTech lets users map their cycles, recognize symptoms, experience non-hormonal birth control, and contribute to long-overdue research on conditions like endometriosis, PCOS, and perimenopause. But after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the same datasets that empower users have also become valuable in criminalizing abortion-related crimes. Because most FemTech privacy policies fall outside HIPAA, intimate logs of bleeding, sex, mood, and biometric signals can now be criminal evidence in …

The Algorithmic Collusion Problem: A Judicial Framework For Analyzing Algorithms Under § 1 Of The Sherman Act, Rix Ryskamp

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Courts are increasingly seeing Sherman Act Section 1 claims that involve AI and other software algorithms at the center of alleged conspiracies to unreasonably restrain trade—often called algorithmic collusion claims. Adjudicating these claims can involve complex analyses of how algorithms interact with alleged conspiracies. However, most of the Section 1 case law stems from traditional agreements and can be hard to apply to algorithmic collusion scenarios. This Article provides a framework that judges and other adjudicators might use to analyze the role of an algorithm in an alleged conspiracy without becoming bogged down in technical details early in the case. …

Stacking The Deck: Ai, Jury Selection, And The New Batson Problem, Alexandria Serra

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

Generative artificial intelligence has infiltrated jury selection right under our noses. What began as a passive data mining experiment has evolved into AI-powered jury selection tools that profile potential jurors by scoring, ranking, and recommending which citizens to exclude from jury service. Although these tools promise objectivity, they risk encoding the same racial and gender biases that Batson v. Kentucky sought to eliminate. Courtroom AI is here to stay. But when lawyers delegate peremptory strikes to statistical models trained on biased data, Batson becomes obsolete. No court can detect algorithmic bias that lacks discernible intent. No judge can analyze whether …

The Data Broker Loophole: Medicare’S Version, Ana Wacker

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

U.S. consumers participate in the exchange of less data privacy for the benefit of cheaper pricing, innovative services, and the illusion of choice. However, consumer choice at the expense of minimal data privacy has encouraged data broker markets to thrive on pure profit incentives. Seniors participating in Medicare enrollment feel the impact of these profit motives acutely. The Medicare enrollment process is littered with Third Party Marketing Organizations (TPMOs) who use lead generators to target seniors. With no consent, lead generators target Medicare eligible individuals and forward their personal information to insurance agents for a fee. The lead generators operate …

Masthead

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

No abstract provided.

Regulating Manipulative Design Is Not Preempted By Cda 230 Or The First Amendment, Brett Frischmann, Peter Ormerod

Faculty Publications

For over two decades, there has been a heated debate among legal scholars, activists, judges, and others about the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A persistent theme in those debates has been hyperbolic claims about the necessity of immunity from state laws for digital tech platforms and fearmongering that anything less than maximum immunity will destroy the Internet.

This Article argues that states retain considerable discretion to regulate digital platforms’ design and engineering decisions. We argue that manipulation, engineered behavior, and even habituation and normalization of engineered behavior by digital platforms are content-agnostic harms attributable to …

Courts, Science, And The Problem Of Accountable Knowledge: A Review Of Judicial Policy Making, Empirical Data And Scientific Evidence: Can Courts Manage The Twenty-First Century?, Rishabh Kachroo

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This review reads Rob van Gestel, Jurgen de Poorter, and Edward L. Rubin’s edited volume titled Judicial Policy Making, Empirical Data and Scientific Evidence: Can Courts Manage the Twenty-First Century? as a timely intervention into the evidentiary and institutional demands placed on contemporary courts. It argues that the volume’s key contribution lies in treating courts as knowledge institutions and its strongest suit lies in showing the limits of judicial intuition, anecdote, and inherited legal categories in dealing with such disputes. While the volume is left wanting in its account of knowledge accountability, it would nonetheless be important for scholars of …

Litigating The Youth Mental Health Crisis: Mechanisms To Regulate Addictive Social Media Design, Talia Elliott

Washington and Lee Law Review

While social media offers real benefits to users, such as providing access to information and facilitating the free exchange of ideas, excessive social media use is associated with increases in anxiety, depression, and other serious mental-health harms. Social media platforms are designed to maximize profit by capturing user attention, resulting in interfaces that are dangerously addictive and prone to exposing users to harmful content. Currently, social media users alone bear the burden of navigating the dangers of social media. This is untenable. Young users, whose less developed brains leave them more vulnerable to addictive design features, find self-regulation especially challenging. …

Learning From Lochner: When Children Are Harmed By Technological Revolutions, Brooke Hodson Davies

Utah Law Review

Drawing on parallels from child labor reform in the Second Industrial Revolution, this Note argues that stopping Big Tech’s harm to children in the Fourth Industrial Revolution requires Congressional legislation and judicial avoidance of Lochnerian approaches to the Constitution. Like its Big Business predecessors, today Big Tech maximizes profits by harming kids, necessitating government intervention of this market failure. Despite noble attempts, state-based efforts have been rendered relatively ineffective due to legislative non-uniformity, interstate competition, and enforcement limitations. Likewise, federal regulations currently in place fall short and even shield Big Tech from liability. Consequently, Congressional action is urgently needed. Critically, …

Governing Algorithmic Attention: Attention Safeguard Models And The Cognitive Attentional Standard As System Level Interventions In Human Computer Interaction, Behavioral Economics, And Artificial Intelligence, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Algorithmic recommendation systems and interface designs shape attention by combining visually salient cues with uncertain reward timing and low friction interaction. These conditions can sustain anticipatory checking, extend time on task, and reduce natural disengagement points through patterns such as infinite scrolling and autoplay. This paper synthesizes research across neuroscience, human computer interaction, behavioral economics, and artificial intelligence to argue that attention capture is a predictable outcome of incentive driven design rather than an individual failure of self regulation. It advances the Attention Safeguard Models and the Cognitive Attentional Standard as system level interventions that regulate exposure conditions, pacing, and …

Can Technology Augment Order Writing Capacity At Regulators?, Natasha Aggarwal, Amrutha Desikan, Bhavin Patel, Satyavrat Bondre, Dipyaman Sanyal

Indian Journal of Law and Technology

This article critically examines the opportunities and challenges of using technology, in particular Large Language Models (‘LLMs’), to assist regulatory order writing in quasi-judicial settings in India. It proposes augmenting rather than replacing human decision-makers, aiming to improve regulatory order writing practice through responsible use of LLMs. This article identifies the core principles of administrative law that must be upheld in these settings and analyses how inherent limitations of LLMs may undermine these principles. The article reviews international frameworks and case studies from various jurisdictions, highlighting common design principles. It proposes a comprehensive Problem-Solution-Evaluation ('PSE') framework for responsibly integrating LLMs …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Reimagining Legal Education: The Transformative Power Of Small-Group Instruction, Michael I. Meyerson

Seattle University Law Review

Legal education is failing its students. Those entering their first year of law school have greater anxiety and less developed reading and writing skills than ever before. The traditional large Socratic class, which was never the most effective teaching method, has become increasingly counterproductive.

This Article contends that small-group instruction provides the opportunity for superior teaching, especially for first-year law students. Recent scholarship in active learning, educational psychology, and students’ mental health demonstrates the limitations of the traditional large Socratic class experience. Building on that theoretical foundation and informed by sustained classroom experience, this Article argues that small-group pedagogy more …

Land Without Legacy: The Case For Market-Based Appraisals On Hawaiian Home Lands, Alexis C. Owens

Seattle University Law Review

The Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 (HHCA) was enacted to restore Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands and promote long term economic self-sufficiency. More than a century later, that promise remains unfulfilled. This Note argues that a central but overlooked barrier lies in the HHCA’s mandated use of the replacement cost appraisal method, which systematically undervalues homestead properties by excluding market forces. In one of the most expensive housing markets in the United States, this approach suppresses home equity, the primary means of intergenerational wealth building, and restricts beneficiaries’ access to credit and financial stability. By severing the connection between …

International Law’S Forgotten Refugees—Palestinian Refugees In Egypt

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines the legal and humanitarian crisis facing Palestinian refugees who have fled to Egypt amidst the ongoing violence in Gaza. While escaping active conflict, these refugees face systemic barriers to employment and education, rendering their living conditions precarious and unsustainable. The unique legal status of Palestinian refugees stems from the fact that they have been excluded from the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, leaving them without any meaningful international protection. This exclusion is rooted in the political complexities of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and reflects a fragmented legal framework that prioritizes limited humanitarian aid over …

How The Dod Discourages Military Families From Seeking Mental Health Counseling, Christina Welch

Seattle University Law Review

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) administration of the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) presents significant barriers to mental health care access for military spouses and children. This paper explores how the EFMP, though designed to support military families with special needs, inadvertently creates barriers to mental health treatment. Military family members often do not seek mental health treatment to avoid the program's mandatory enrollment requirements. Military family members often view enrollment in the program undesirable because enrollment can restrict the pool of potential future duty assignment locations that are available to service members.

The lack of comprehensive data collection by …

2025, Richard Delgado

Seattle University Law Review

"In a cutting and provocative social critique in one of the more extended Rodrigo Chronicles, Richard Delgado in 2025 employs skillful narrative—one of CRT’s many contributions to legal scholarship —to tell a gripping story of just how far the nation has descended into darkness with President Trump’s re-election. In Delgado’s vision, law professors—along with other political opponents of the President: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, women, the underserved—have targets on their backs."

-excerpt from Kevin Johnson's review of 2025

The Preventative Care Gap: Completing The Aca’S Vision For Health, Abby Nagaich

Seattle University Law Review

This Note examines the preventive care mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the legal, political, and practical challenges that threaten its effectiveness. While the ACA significantly expanded access to no-cost preventive services, gaps remain—particularly in behavioral health, obesity management, and equitable service delivery. Ongoing litigation, potential administrative rollbacks, and shifting political leadership further destabilize this critical component of public health policy.

This Note argues that for the ACA to fulfill its original promise—and for any health framework to succeed—preventive care must be redefined as a comprehensive, early intervention approach grounded in both systemic access and patient education. It …