Jurisdiction Commons^™

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 …

An Unconstitutional Band-Aid: The Practice Of Sitting By Designation In The Federal Judiciary, Michaela Conley

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Petition For Writ Of Certiorari - Roberson V. State Of Mississippi, Frank Rosenblatt

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

"Major Questions" Malarkey: An Arbitrary And Capricious New Doctrine For Vetoing Controversial Agency Rules, Lars Noah

UF Law Faculty Publications

In 2022, in West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court officially adopted the “major questions” doctrine. Commentators have already spilled plenty of ink trying to make sense of what this might portend, but so far seemingly everyone has accepted at face value the Court’s framing of the issue that it confronted in that case. This symposium contribution offers a slightly different perspective on the decision and suggests that closer attention to the precise nature of the question posed therein might reveal a distinctive flaw at the heart of the majority’s newfangled clear statement rule—it only sows confusion to …

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 …

Congress And Shifting Sands In Administrative Law., Christopher J. Walker

Articles

In recent years, we have seen an anti-administrativist turn in the federal judiciary, with the Supreme Court limiting agency power in important respects. These shifting sands in administrative law seem to be motivated, at least in part, by the Court’s perception of the rise of presidential administration and decline in legislative activity. As part of the Widener Commonwealth Law Review Judging in Administrative Law Symposium, this Essay assesses how the Court has responded to concerns about over-presidentialism and then sketches out several ways Congress can respond to reassert itself in federal lawmaking.

The State Of Our Republic: State Constitutions’ Role In Creating A More Perfect Union, Caroline Bullock

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis situates state constitutionalism in the modern context of federal constitutional paralysis. By tracing patterns of state constitutional development, we find that states were always the fundamental setting of democracy, and there has always been critical action happening at state legislatures, in state courts, and through state constitutional change. State constitutions provide an active means to achieve progress and protect rights not federally enshrined (and thus, endangered by the political process). The use of state constitutions to prescribe ways of life, protect individual and specialized rights, and to limit local governments has always occurred, but with the current federal …

The Right To Remove In Agency Adjudication, Christopher J. Walker, David Zaring

Articles

In SEC v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court will decide the constitutional future of agency adjudication, especially in the context of agency enforcement actions and the imposition of civil penalties. If the Court agrees with the Fifth Circuit on any of its three independent reasons for unconstitutionality, agency enforcement and adjudication schemes across the federal regulatory state will be severely disrupted, in ways that are detrimental to both the regulator and the regulated. In this Essay, we propose a path forward: In certain circumstances, the regulated party should have a right to remove an enforcement action from an in-house agency adjudication …

Problem-Solving Courts And The Outcome Oversight Gap, Erin R. Collins

Law Faculty Publications

Drug courts-and the litany of other problem-solving courts that soon followed in their wake-began as a series of small-scale judicial experiments in criminal punishment reform. They were earnest efforts by criminal court judges to redress an issue that they were well-equipped to see: many people were returning to their courtrooms time and again, often for low-level drug charges, and at a time when court dockets were ballooning because of tough-on-crime arrest and prosecution policies. Early drug court judges combined their power to punish with their authority to control their dockets to create specialized court calendars aimed at providing substance abuse …

We Shall Overcome: The Evolution Of Quotas In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of Samba, Stella Emery Santana

Seattle University Law Review

When were voices given to the voiceless? When will education be permitted to all? When will we need to protest no more? It’s the twenty-first century, and the fight for equity in higher education remains a challenge to peoples all over the world. While students in the United States must deal with the increase in loans, in Brazil, only around 20% of youth between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four have a higher education degree.

The primary objective of this Article is to conduct an in-depth comparative analysis of the development, implementation, and legal adjudication of educational quota systems within …

Pacific Islands And The U.S. Military: The Legal Borderlands Of The Environmental Movement, Sonia Lei

Seattle University Law Review

Climate change remains an urgent, ongoing global issue that requires critical examination of institutional polluters. This includes the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum: the United States military. The Department of Defense (DoD) is a massive institution with little oversight, a carbon footprint spanning the globe, a budget greater than the next ten largest nations combined, and overly generous exemptions to environmental regulations and carbon reduction targets. This Comment examines how this lack of accountability and oversight plays out in the context of three Pacific islands that have hosted U.S. military bases for decades. By considering the environmental impact of …

Supplemental Jurisdiction And § 1367: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Wendy Perdue

Law Faculty Publications

Among the outstanding accomplishments of Judge Joseph F. Weis, Jr. was his work chairing the Federal Court Study Committee. Appointed by Chief Justice Rehnquist at the direction of Congress, the committee undertook a fifteen month study of the problems in the federal court system. The final report was issued in 1990 and made a series of recommendations addressing a broad range of topics including tax jurisdiction, narcotics prosecutions, habeas cases, sentencing reform, disability adjudications, and diversity jurisdiction, which the committee recommended eliminating entirely...

Beyond The Reach Of Legal Process – Lessons From United States V Rafiekian, Vivian M. Williams

Publications and Research

The influence of foreign agents on the domestic affairs of countries is now a major issue in global affairs. This issue gained significance after foreign influence was blamed for a massive protest demanding fair election, rocked Moscow in 2011. It has been amplified after Russian involvement was cited for Donald Trump’s surprised election as President of the United States in 2016. There is now great anxiety among nations that foreign actors could influence electoral outcomes. Consequently, the past decade has seen a proliferation of laws regulating the operation of foreign agents within a country. Aggressive enforcement of Foreign Agents laws …

The Consumer’S Choice To Boycott, Agnes Bresee

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of employees losing their jobs upon voicing their political opinions concerning Israel, Harvard and Columbia law students’ job offers being rescinded upon expressing support for Palestine, and the names and social media profiles of individuals who support Palestine being collected and listed on Canary Mission, such backlash may leave many Americans wondering what form of resistance to settler-colonialist apartheid is acceptable in the twenty-first century. Recently, the movement to collectively boycott brands like Starbucks, which sued its Worker’s Union for a tweet expressing support for Palestine; Disney, which donated money to Israel; and McDonald’s, where a location …

The Rise Of General Jurisdiction Over Out-Of-State Enterprises In The United States, Peter Hay

Emory International Law Review

In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court continued its revision of personal jurisdiction law, in this case by refining, thereby perhaps expanding, the law of when a court may exercise general personal jurisdiction – that is, jurisdiction over all claims – over a non-resident person or an out-of-state enterprise. In Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., it held in a 4+1:4 decision that, when a state requires a non-resident company to register to do business in the state and such registration constitutes consent to jurisdiction over all claims against it, such exercise is permitted. In reaching its conclusion, the Court …