Law and Politics Commons^™

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 …

Christian Lawyers In The Public Interest And Outside The Political Right, Jennifer Lee Koh

BYU Law Review

This Article provides an empirically based portrait of a population that is typically hidden from the public eye and has received scant attention in legal scholarship: Christian lawyers who engage in public interest work that falls outside the political right. Throughout the legal profession, lawyers who treat their Christian faith as a component of their professional identity and who actively endorse a politically conservative worldview are visible and active. With such lawyers’ increased prominence, growing political polarization, and reports of shifting levels of religiosity in the United States, the prospect of Christianity being perceived as synonymous with political conservatism seems …

Symposium Introduction, David Orentlicher

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Threats And Political Violence, J. Richard Broughton

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Line Warming: Improperly Influencing Voters Or Mitigating The Effects Of Voter Suppression?, Elizabeth Ellen Gordon

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Of, By, And For, Steven L. Winter

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

President Or King? What The United States Can Learn From Brazil’S Conviction Of Former President Jair Bolsonaro, Emma Al-Angurli Peltzer

Journal of Law and Policy

In the United States, January 6, 2021, became a defining moment. President Donald Trump’s conduct and the lack of consequences have been indelibly etched into the nation’s political memory. In Brazil, January 8, 2023, marked a similar political rupture, but one that sealed former President Jair Bolsonaro’s fate in a very different legal order. Through a comparison of the Unites States Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States and Brazil’s criminal conviction of former President Bolsonaro, this Note demonstrates how two presidential democracies took sharply different paths when confronted with attacks on their constitutional order. Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, shaped …

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 …

The Administrative Law Of Mccarthyism, Nicholas Handler

Faculty Scholarship

This Article recovers the largely overlooked legal and administrative history of the federal loyalty-security program, and argues that it played a formative role in the development of modern civil service protections and administrative law. During the McCarthy era, the United States Civil Service Commission (CSC), under pressure from Congress, implemented a sweeping loyalty program aimed at rooting out purportedly disloyal federal employees. Though often remembered as a moment of political overreach and civil liberties violations, this Article shows that the loyalty program simultaneously catalyzed a surprising expansion in procedural rights for government workers—both through internal reforms initiated by the CSC …

Aggregation And The “Universal” Injunction, Portia Pedro, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we begin with a brief summary of the CASA decision’s holding regarding the availability of “universal” injunctions. Part II discusses the relationship between remedies and judicial review and the important role that such injunctions play in that regard. Part III explores how class actions could serve as an alternative path for federal courts, after engaging in judicial review, to make their decisions meaningful by requiring officials to comply with the law and to cease illegal actions or policies. We also respond to several objections to the use of class actions in this context. The final Part addresses …

The Supreme Court Under Threat: Early Lessons In Judicial Self-Protection, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores how the U.S. Supreme Court, despite being vulnerable to defiance of its decisions and political retaliation, has developed tools of judicial self-protection to preserve its institutional authority and thus its capacity to sustain the Constitution and the rule of law. Arguing that the Court performs not only a legal role that requires interpretation of the law but also a political one that demands institutional preservation, the Essay examines how the Court has historically navigated political threats by using a range of tools—including avoidance, delay, narrow rulings, strategic dicta, and rhetorical appeals. The Essay focuses on three nineteenth-century …

The Martha Wright-Reed Act: How The Fcc Took One Step Forward For Communication Equality For Deaf Individuals In Correctional Facilities And How It Could Be Expanded, Ashley Seebold

Seattle University Law Review

For decades, phone companies preyed on incarcerated individuals and their loved ones due to the lack of regulation of jail phone calls.2 In 2021, the average cost of a fifteen-minute jail phone call was about $3.3 In 2022, the average cost rose to $5.74, while some individuals faced an extreme charge of $24.82 for the same amount of time.4 In the early 2000s, consumer advocate and concerned grandmother Martha Wright-Reed called upon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to fix the imbalance so she could speak to her incarcerated grandson.5 Eventually, in 2023, the FCC answered her call to action and …

Communicative Administration: The Administrative State Beyond Legal Administration, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

On many dimensions, the administrative state is at the nadir of its power. The Supreme Court has tightened administrative law controls on agency power, and the Trump Administration has stormed the bureaucracy in an unprecedented blitz designed to kneecap agency capacity and independence. For better or worse, many agencies and their civil servants are being sidelined as meaningful actors in the administration of government. Yet this familiar account doesn’t tell the entire story. At the same time that agencies are being stripped of the power to implement law—what this Article calls “legal administration”— they are steadily accumulating extensive and largely …

Owning Geothermal Energy, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Geothermal energy holds vast potential for decarbonizing the U.S. energy system, yet the sector remains significantly underdeveloped, supplying only 0.4% of the nation's electricity. A principal barrier to growth is the fragmented and ambiguous legal landscape currently governing ownership of geothermal resources: thirty-three states lack any clear statutory or common-law framework identifying who owns subsurface thermal energy. This Article examines the physical characteristics of geothermal energy, recent developments in the U.S. geothermal sector, and the principal doctrinal approaches that might govern ownership of subsurface heat, including the ad coelum doctrine, common-pool and open-access frameworks, the rule of capture, and public …

Making The Party Presentation Principle Safe For Originalism, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court sometimes adheres to what it calls the “party presentation principle”—terminology that dates back to 2008. Although judicial articulations of the principle have been inconsistent and imprecise, the gist is the familiar notion that courts should resolve cases on the basis of the issues and reasons presented by the parties to the dispute. Conversely, questions not properly raised by the parties should be avoided by the Court. Thus, the Court has on several occasions declined to address arguments outside the scope of the questions raised by the parties in their petition for certiorari.

For originalists, the importance of …

Enemies To Lovers: An Unsuspecting Friendship In The Journey To Save The Endangerment Finding, Sophie Ballah

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Popular Constitutionalism In A Populist Age, Thomas G. Donnelly

BYU Law Review

Popular constitutionalism burst onto the scene as a challenge to the constitutional authority of the Supreme Court. Decades later, popular constitutionalists remain susceptible to one of the earliest (and most potent) critiques of their project—the charge that they have done far too little to explain how their theory might work in practice. With the rise of modern populism, it’s also fair to ask whether popular constitutionalism is an approach that’s capable of meeting the challenges of the current constitutional moment. In this Article, I offer a new vision for popular constitutionalism—one that shows how the theory might work in practice, …

Plutocratic Public Safety, Erin Collins

Texas A&M Law Review

Recent political events have laid bare the ways that the United States functions like a plutocracy, in which the ultra-wealthy exert influence over core governance functions. The criminal system is not immune from this influence. Big Capital shapes the operation of the criminal system in highly visible ways through its investments in policing technology, electronic monitoring systems, and correctional and detention systems. This Article shows how the economic elite shape the operation of the criminal system in a less obvious way: through philanthropic giving. Big Philanthropy provides another—albeit seemingly benevolent—avenue through which the ultra-wealthy can advance a vision of public …