Jurisprudence Commons^™

A Global Reconstruction: Black Internationalism And The Human Rights Regime, Britta Redwood

Seattle University Law Review

Black American advocates for civil, political, and economic rights have long taken an internationalist approach and fostered connections with international organizations and transnational movements. This engagement has also been a generative force and played role in shaping international law. Beginning in the early years of the twentieth century, Black intellectuals and leaders, spearheaded by the NAACP and the UNIA, focused on human rights as a means for addressing and repairing the harms wrought by slavery, Jim Crow, and racism. From the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention, and the drafting of …

The Gap: Addressing The Missing Piece In HawaiʻI’S Anti-Discrimination Laws On Credit And Lending, Wendy Mun

Seattle University Law Review

This author addresses the significant gap in Hawaiʻi’s anti-discrimination laws, specifically the lack of explicit protections for LGBTQ+ individuals against credit and lending discrimination. Although federal laws like the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) and recent interpretations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) extend some protections, they remain vulnerable to shifting federal priorities and interpretations. The author explores how other states, particularly California and Washington, have enacted robust statutory protections that clearly prohibit credit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. They argue that Hawaiʻi, despite its large LGBTQ+ population, must amend its credit protection laws to reflect …

The U.S. Drug Policy Hamster Wheel: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Seattle’S New Drug Ordinance, Hallie Conyers-Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

The author critically examines Seattle’s new drug ordinance using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to reveal how legislative language influences the policy's actual effect. Although the ordinance claims to prioritize diversion and community health, the use of permissive language such as “may” and “shall” grants broad discretionary power to law enforcement and undermines the stated intent. The author situates the ordinance within a broader historical context, highlighting how drug policy in the United States has consistently been shaped by racialized and stigmatizing narratives. Additionally, the author argues that meaningful reform requires reframing the discourse around substance use to support public health …

Something Concrete: How Labor Advocates Can Best Respond To The Ambiguity Of Glacier Northwest, Ateş Serifsoy

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court’s much-anticipated decision in Glacier North-west, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local No. 174 (Glacier) marked a critical moment for workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the longstanding practice of Garmon preemption. Yet, initial fears of a significant rollback of workers’ rights, driven by sensational headlines, were met with an unexpectedly narrow Court opinion. This Comment examines Glacier’s implications for Gar-mon preemption and the right to strike. It offers the historical background of the doctrine of labor law preemption before Glacier; presents a detailed analysis of Glacier itself, including its …

A New Exclusionary Rule To Protect Bodily Integrity And Discourage Pretext Stops, Josephine Ross

Seattle University Law Review

The author proposes a novel state-level exclusionary rule to reduce racial profiling and protect bodily autonomy during police encounters. The current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to deter pretextual stops and frisks because the exclusionary rule often turns on officer fault and "good faith," allowing racially motivated practices to go unchecked. As federal rollbacks on diversity and data collection hinder efforts to track racial bias, the author argues for a statutory evidentiary rule that automatically excludes drug evidence found during (1) traffic stops, (2) pat-downs for weapons, and (3) consent searches, regardless of an officer’s intent or the legality of the …

Navahine V. HawaiʻI Dept. Of Transportation: The Keiki Will Lead Us, Catherine Smith

Seattle University Law Review

The author analyzes the landmark case Navahine v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation, which culminated in the world’s first constitutional climate settlement. Catherine Smith, serving as an expert for the youth plaintiffs, situates the case within Hawaiʻi’s legal tradition of prioritizing children’s rights and intergenerational equity. She explores the evolution of children’s constitutional protections, contrasting Hawaiʻi’s progressive jurisprudence with the dominant adult-centric legal framework on the mainland. She critiques four recurring analytical missteps in U.S. courts that marginalize children’s interests and highlights Hawaiʻi’s public trust doctrine and cultural values, such as the Aloha Spirit, as models for addressing climate-related harms. …

Constitutional Futurism As Pedagogy, Jeremiah Chin

Seattle University Law Review

Constitutional Law has transformed from a course on history to a discussion of current events. Cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo reveal that the study of constitutional law is not a static, or even linear, discussion of constitutional text and history. Law is a shifting, changing enterprise that reflects social constructions of power, authority, and identity. How do we teach, learn, and understand constitutional law that is so laden with history, riddled with theories of consistency and adherence to precedent, but ultimately subject …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Can The Law Protect My Craft? How Gaps In Copyright Of Knitting Patterns Symbolize A Greater Struggle For Protecting Traditionally Feminine Forms Of Intellectual Property, Kysa Walzer

Seattle University Law Review

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the application of intel-lectual property rights within the context of copyright protection of knit-ting patterns. The article will discuss the underutilization of copyright pro-tection for knitters and crafters and its larger impact upon craft and indus-try traditionally comprised of women. Part I introduces knitting patterns and a short history of copyright protections. Part II discusses the specific areas within knitting patterns and the knitting community which give rise to legal grey areas for copyright protection. Part III discusses the larger implications of copyright and intellectual property in spaces where women traditionally make …

Unmasking A New Dialect Of Deception: Leveraging The Federal Trade Commission To Combat Deceptive And Exploitative Corporate Policies, Hani Baltagi

Cleveland State Law Review

Corporate social responsibility initiatives have transformed fair labor policies into powerful marketing tools, but the gap between the public promise to embrace ethical labor practices and actual corporate compliance with such practices has widened. This has the effect of not only impeding the average consumer’s purchasing decision, but perpetuating—if not catalyzing—labor exploitation across the world. The existence of this paradigm thus necessitates additional, heightened intervention by none other than Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The FTC’s three-pronged test for deception—previously created to combat other forms of deceptive practices—provides an accountability framework for deceptive marketing claims that utilize unfollowed, self-adopted corporate fair …

Wither, Religious Liberty, Amanda Harmon Cooley

BYU Law Review

During the oft-deemed Constitutional Revolution of 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court effected a significant sea-change in its substantive due process liberty analysis. In West Coast Hotel v. Parrish, the Court held that the Due Process Clause’s liberty provision does not protect absolute freedom of contract, signaling the demise of the Lochner era. Almost a century later, the current Supreme Court’s supermajority bloc is now infamous for its own seismic shift in liberty analysis. This Court’s incontrovertible Constitutional Revolution of 2022 was not limited to only substantive due process, which the Court shifted with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s …

Two Concepts Of Judicial Deference To Religious Claims, Chagai Schlesinger

BYU Law Review

Religious exemptions from general laws are everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court is expanding its exemption doctrine, systemically preferring religious needs over conflicting considerations. This ignites an ongoing debate between those celebrating religious liberties and those fearing their societal costs. Assessing this judicial trend, as this Article highlights, requires noticing how it is facilitated by a broad deferential approach to religious claims, refraining from evaluating their content.

This Article argues that this broad expression of judicial deference is analytically flawed and normatively implausible. The problem lies in the failure to distinguish between two types of religious claims when deferring to them: …

Brief Of Law Professors As Amici Curiae In Support Of Plaintiff-Appellees, Ira P. Robbins

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

INTRODUCTION: The Executive Order at issue in these appeals targets a small and uniquely vulnerable minority of transgender women—those currently housed in federal women’s prisons—by commanding the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to transfer them immediately to men’s facilities. Amici file in support of Plaintiffs-Appellees (hereinafter “Plaintiffs”), to address two procedural arguments made by Defendants-Appellants (“the government”). First, Congress has not eliminated federal court jurisdiction to decide Plaintiffs’ challenge to the transfer provisions of the Executive Order. Second, the government overreads the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA); Plaintiffs’ lawsuit is not improper or premature under that statute’s exhaustion requirement because …

From One Stolen Generation To Another: Replicating Trevorrow In American Courts, Jennifer Grubman

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note examines the historical injustices of Indian boarding schools in the United States and argues that survivors may assert fiduciary duty claims under the Indian Tucker Act to seek redress for the government’s mismanagement of tribal funds and the cultural trauma caused by these institutions. It critiques the lack of a nationwide reparations scheme and highlights the challenges posed by the statute of limitations in pursuing legal remedies. The analysis draws parallels to the Stolen Generations in Australia and emphasizes the need for a multifaceted approach to address the intergenerational harm inflicted by these policies.

Bodies Are Not Battlegrounds: Sexual And Gender-Based Violence As A War Tactic: A Ukrainian Case Study, Marina Coriale

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The note examines the use of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) as a weapon of war, with a focus on conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in Ukraine. It highlights the legal frameworks and precedents established by international courts and tribunals, such as the Rome Statute, the ICTY, and ICTR, to prosecute CRSV as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The analysis underscores the challenges faced by survivors in seeking justice and the importance of addressing root causes like gender inequality. It advocates for strengthened legal mechanisms, accountability, and reparations to promote healing and deter future atrocities.

Civilian Enforcers, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the largely unexplored phenomenon of militant civilians engaged in efforts to police and silence activism that challenges entrenched American power systems and economic distributions placing whites atop the social hierarchy in the United States. I argue that this civilian enforcement is an unregulated vessel for state-sponsored violence meant to silence the contestation of the existing racial hierarchy. While scholars, myself included, have written about the many ways police confront and silence racial justice activists on the streets at least since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, the role law enforcement plays in silencing racial …

Making The Margins Visible: Dignity At Work And The Promise Of Puttaswamy—Review Of Gendered Bodies And Worlds Of Labour: Reconceptualizing Dignity After Puttaswamy Vs Union Of India, Shreya Shree

National Law School Journal

This review examines Kalpana Kannabiran and Devi Jagani’s reimagination of dignity as a framework for securing justice in gendered labourscapes. By centering a broad and dynamic understanding of dignity as a right, an inherent characteristic, and an enabling condition for rights-talk, the book advances new ways of articulating rights-claims through an intersectional and interdisciplinary reading of the Indian Constitution. The review highlights the significance of this approach in renewing understandings of the worker, labour, discrimination, and rights, while exploring its possibilities and limits in confronting violence and injustices embedded in gendered labour relations within the domestic sphere and beyond.

The Instrumentalization Of The Unprivileged Combatants By Western Countries Aimed To Oppress National Liberation Wars, Fares Mahmoud Def-Allah Abdelhamid

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) is purported to be the humanization of wars. Nonetheless, the atrocities committed in wars and the war criminals’ impunity suggest the failure of IHL. Notwithstanding, some voices call for reforming and developing IHL. In contrast, this thesis argues that IHL should be rejected entirely since the distinction between privileged and unprivileged combatants indicates that IHL is biased against anti-colonizers. It is biased in three senses. Firstly, IHL, particularly the distinction between privileged and unprivileged combatants, is dominated by Western rationality, which can be noticed in the domination of the civilization concept with its …

Keynote Address: The Future Of Environmental Enforcement, David M. Uhlmann

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.

Panel 1: Environmental Enforcement Under New Administrative Law Principles, Sommer H. Engels, Jeffrey W. Mccoy, Melissa A. Scacchitti, David M. Uhlmann

Villanova Environmental Law Journal (1991 - )

No abstract provided.