Law and Philosophy Commons^™

Dark Accounting Matter, Colleen Honigsberg

Seattle University Law Review

Physicists calculate that approximately 85% of the matter in the universe is composed of “dark matter” that “does not absorb, reflect, or emit electromagnetic radiation and is therefore difficult to detect.” The S&P 500 currently trades at a price-to-book value of 4.2, suggesting that book value accounts for less than 20% of the S&P 500’s market value. The remaining 80% appears nowhere in these firms’ balance sheets—it is invisible to contemporary accounting techniques and constitutes “dark accounting matter.”

Some “dark accounting matter” is composed of factors commonly described as components of “ESG.” Human capital, for example, is an intangible asset …

The Employees’ Dilemma: Balancing Internal Reporting, Whistleblowing, And Insider Trading Risks, Geeyoung Min

Seattle University Law Review

The Essay examines how recent developments in insider trading regulations and whistleblower reward programs can lead to unintended and counterproductive results of discouraging employees from using internal reporting channels within corporate compliance programs. While the presence of a robust and well-functioning corporate compliance program is a critical factor both in mitigating the level of public enforcement actions against companies and in protecting corporate managers from liability in private litigation, these programs often provide little incentive for employees to report potential misconduct internally.

Corporate compliance programs are designed to promote the upward information flow within the company, which is essential for …

How The Antidiscrimination Law Of Commercial Transactions Really Works, Helen Norton

Seattle University Law Review

A variety of businesses now cite 303 Creative when seeking First Amendment protection for their refusal to serve certain customers based on those customers’ protected class status. How this litigation will play out remains to be seen. But future courts need not, and should not, repeat the 303 Creative Court’s misunderstanding of how the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions actually works.

Part I of this Essay explains the Court’s longstanding understanding of the antidiscrimination law of commercial transactions, and then describes the Court’s failure to engage with this precedent in 303 Creative. Part II then identifies the 303 Creative decision’s …

Dignitatis Humanae, Francis J. Beckwith

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Sixty years ago the Second Vatican Council issued the document Dignitatis Humanae, a declaration on religious freedom. At the time it was considered to be the Catholic Church's most significant concession to the modern world, though the Council argued that the declaration was, given the political and religious realities at the time, a legitimate doctrinal development rooted in the Church's most ancient teachings. Its defense of religious liberty relied on widely held and uncontroversial beliefs about human nature, the common good, and the meaning of religion. But since the beginning of the 21st century those beliefs have been challenged …

An Eye For An Eye Makes A Vigilant Society, Liam C. Preyer

Capstone Showcase

Vigilantism is one of the oldest practices of mankind; for as long as there have been moral and legal laws to govern us and live by, there have been individuals who have sought justice outside these systems. Vigilantism is the response to failures in the justice system, and in the United States in particular, we have seen examples from the Western Frontier to the modern-day digital landscape. This paper will explore the nature of vigilante justice through historical, psychological, media-driven, legal, and digital lenses. We will explore how cultural narratives, media influences, government actions, and psychological motivations have shaped the …

Green Dividends: A Case Study In Green Dividends And The Conditions For Private Ordering Solutions, Anne M. Tucker

Seattle University Law Review

This Essay introduces a novel private ordering solution to facilitate corporate investments in pro-social and environmental initiatives: Green dividends. Green dividends are an optional increase in shareholder dividends that are returned to the company to be reinvested in environmental initiatives or kept by a shareholder.

Green dividends pose an alternative to the current gridlocked debate that corporations can’t, won’t, shouldn’t, and shouldn’t even try to act in pro-social or environmental ways. Turning the common refrains on their head converts each narrative into an element for a successful private ordering solution: authority, accountability, shareholder buy-in, and government- backed enforcement. With Green …

Does Climate Disclosure Work To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions? Emerging Evidence Suggests Cautious Optimism, Cynthia A. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Significant regulatory resources have been spent developing global, voluntary climate and sustainability disclosure standards, such as the TCFD, TNRD, and ISSB’s Sustainability and Climate Disclosure standards, or domestically required disclosures, such as in the EU and in the U.S. Thus, it is important to evaluate whether this disclosure, particularly voluntary, qualitative disclosure, will have the power to shift the allocation of capital, will have a significant effect on the management of climate risk within firms, and ultimately will reduce climate change risk and biodiversity loss.

In this Article, several interrelated questions will be discussed. First, what does the empirical evidence …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

Should Like Cases Be Decided Alike? A Formal Analysis Of Formal Equality, Benjamin B. Johnson, Richard Jordan

UF Law Faculty Publications

The idea of formal equality—the principle that we should treat like cases alike—is a cornerstone of political and legal theory that supporters have placed at the heart of theories of justice since Aristotle. Critics have rejected it as vacuous or a tool of oppression. Despite its central importance, formal equality has received little formal analysis. In this article, we formalize the like-cases maxim and explore its implications. We show that both Aristotle’s principle of proportionality and Dworkin’s principle of integrity can be directly derived from formal equality. It is therefore not vacuous, but formal equality is more demanding than its …

Axiomatic Shifting Paradigms: Wittgenstein’S Language-Games, Gödel’S Incompleteness Theorem, Language, Law, And The Limits Of Formalism, Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln Iv

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

This Article shows how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of “language-games” and Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems mark the outer limits of legal formalism and other leading interpretive theories—textualism, originalism, and purposivism. It begins by tracing Wittgenstein’s progression from a “picture theory” of language to the view that social context drives meaning more than any simple correspondence between words and reality. Gödel’s work on formal systems, suggesting that mathematics—long held as the pinnacle of logical certainty—itself cannot be both consistent and complete, reinforces the notion that purely “logical” approaches cannot capture the full range of linguistic and social nuances at play in law. …

The Method Is The Message: Movement Law And The Social Change Commons, Raymond H. Brescia

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Legal scholars have long sought to understand the relationship between social movements and the law. A new group of such scholars has argued that to better understand this relationship, and to advance social change that is effective, sustainable, equitable, and just, they must engage in dialogue with such movements to generate ideas that will catalyze that change. For those interested in generating ideas that can spark meaningful and lasting social change, such developments in legal scholarship represent an exciting evolution in the relationship between legal scholarship, legal scholars, and social movements: a relationship that appears to be growing stronger, deeper, …

Perceptions And Treatment Decisions For A Drug Offender Based On Social Class, Cocaine Type, Personal Characteristics, And Compassionate Love: A Vignette Study, Yasmin A. Odeh

Theses and Dissertations

Problem: The shift from a focus on rehabilitation to the more punitive, “tough on crime” approach to illegal behavior in the U.S. has been enacted in no small way by policies connected to the use and abuse of drugs. The disparities between crack and powder cocaine—two chemically similar substances—have headlined this shift (Vagins and McCurdy 2006). However, research is scarce on laypeople’s approval of deterrence approaches for drug offenses, including as a function of types (e.g., powder vs. cocaine possession). This study examined people’s perceptions of prosecutorial decisions for drug offenders—whether they are punished, rehabilitated, or both—and whether people perceived …

Being Pregnant In Someone Else's Body, Jennifer S. Hendricks

FIU Law Review

In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning the right to abortion, now is a critical time to re-assess how legal feminism theorizes the pregnant body. Before Dobbs, feminist legal scholarship had blazed a path of anti-maternalism, a stance rooted in liberal, formalist notions of equality that denigrates the “feminine” and too often minimizes the importance of reproductive issues both as tools of sex-based subordination in the present and as foundations for liberation in the future. Anti-maternalism is attractive to legal scholars because it minimizes sex and gender differences and may appear to be gender-inclusive. It has produced arguments that …

An In-Depth Review Of Euthanasia-Related Practices, Arguments For/Against Them, And Proposed Solutions For Their Most Glaring Legal/Ethical Problems, Macon Plecha

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper’s goal is to cover the topic of euthanasia-related practices at great length. Terminology, history, and current programs around the world are discussed first, with the last point covering a wide geographical range: Colombia, Japan, Israel, and Africa, to name a few outside of the Western world standard. Arguments for and against euthanasia-related practices are explored. Within these arguments, several pressing legal and ethical issues arise, and the most severe of these are expanded on through the offering of potential solutions: how to handle stand-alone psychiatric cases, how to improve advanced directives and poor reporting rates, and how to …

The Role Of Tradition In Classical And Contemporary Argument, Laura A. Webb

Law Faculty Publications

Integrating tradition in legal arguments remains an effective persuasive strategy, serving as a source of legitimacy and appeal, fostering the establishment of a shared identity between the speaker and the audience, and cultivating a sense of belonging to a distinct group with defined notions of its identity. This chapter examines the strategic utilization of the concept of tradition in forensic rhetoric. It investigates how communicators shape and influence discourse within forensic settings by leveraging enduring cultural norms, purported intentions and beliefs of esteemed historical figures, and narratives concerning a people's historical trajectory. By examining cases from the popular courts of …

A Wise Latina Or A Wise Judge?: Exploring How Social Identity Shapes Knowledge Acquisition, Maribella Munoz-Jimenez

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the intersection of epistemology and social identity through the contrasting arguments of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice O’Connor’s claim that wisdom is universally accessible contrasts with Justice Sotomayor’s argument that social identities offer unique insights to decision-making. The analysis begins by defining traditional and contrasting it to standpoint epistemology, highlighting how social identity influences knowledge acquisition and supporting Justice Sotomayor’s argument (Chapter 1). It then critiques the potential pitfalls of standpoint epistemology, such as blind deference, through Dror’s weak inversion thesis and Táíwò’s perspective on how we often highlight a subsegment of marginalized voices …

Foreword, Jedediah Britton-Purdy, Justin Deystone

Publications

No abstract provided.

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

Voting Matters: Materiality Considerations And The Shareholder Vote, Renee M. Jones

Seattle University Law Review

For the shareholder franchise to have meaning, shareholders must have access to relevant information to inform their voting decisions. The securities laws’ disclosure requirements play an essential role in informing the shareholder vote.

This Essay focuses on the question of the materiality of information in the context of shareholder voting. It addresses the question of whether ESG-related information is material, positioning the materiality inquiry within the context of shareholders’ voting decisions. It explores the definition of materiality with a focus on the “reasonable investor” concept embedded within the definition. The Essay argues that the implicit expectations of many commentators that …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead