Law and Race Commons^™

Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: Display Boards, Natasha Nandlal Varyani

Institute for Race and the Law

These slides are quotes by the contributors to the book “Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: A Collection of Personal Narratives from the Day and What Followed, edited by Professor Natasha Nandlal Varyani, Director of the Institute for Race and the Law. The slides were displayed at the program “September 11th: 25 Years After, Remembrance, Reflection & Community,” held at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on Friday, September 11, 2026. The Roger Williams University Institute for Race and the Law, the Boston Bar Association, and the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston co-sponsored this program. The book …

Twenty-Five Years After September 11, 2001: A Collection Of Personal Narratives From The Day And What Followed, Natasha Nandlal Varyani

Institute for Race and the Law

This book is a collection of personal reflections on 9/11, edited by Professor Natasha Nandlal Varyani, Director of the Institute for Race and the Law, printed and distributed at the program “September 11th: 25 Years After, Remembrance, Reflection & Community,” held at the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse on Friday, September 11, 2026. The Roger Williams University Institute for Race and the Law, the Boston Bar Association, and the South Asian Bar Association of Greater Boston co-sponsored this program. A collection of quotes from the contributors is also available in the collection.

Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Converting Buildings Is Hard: Why Seattle’S Municipal Government Should Streamline Commercial-To-Residential Conversions, Tyler M. King

Seattle University Law Review

The conversion of commercial buildings into housing is a promising solution to the growing housing crisis in many urban areas. However, despite its potential benefits, the process of repurposing commercial spaces is often stymied by complex zoning codes, high conversion costs, and bureaucratic hurdles. This Article argues that the local and state governments in Seattle should adopt more streamlined policies and offer greater incentives to developers to facilitate these conversions. By reforming zoning regulations and providing targeted financial support, municipalities can reduce the barriers to conversion and unlock the potential of underutilized commercial properties. This article examines the legal and …

Legal Malpractice In Washington: Use Of The Rules Of Professional Conduct, Angelo Tadrous

Seattle University Law Review

Legal malpractice claims are difficult to prove. They are difficult to prove because many jurisdictions require that a plaintiff prove that, but for the lawyer’s misconduct, the client would have fared better. Thus, in a malpractice suit, a plaintiff must try a case within a case. Despite this difficulty, many jurisdictions prohibit the use of the Rules of Professional Conduct when litigating a malpractice case. Washington State is one of these jurisdictions. The Washington Supreme Court held in Hizey v. Carpenter that the Rules of Professional Conduct may not be referred to during trial. This Note argues that this prohibition …

Who Decides The Dead? Interpreting Washington’S Disposition Of Remains Statute, Wyatt Young

Seattle University Law Review

Washington’s disposition-of-remains statute, RCW 68.50.160, is designed to honor a decedent’s expressed wishes regarding the control and disposition of their body after death. Yet recent litigation reveals a critical gap between the statute’s intent-centered design and its practical enforceability. In Larotonda v. Blackburn, a trial court acknowledged that irreparable harm would occur if a decedent’s burial wishes were ignored but nonetheless denied relief on the grounds that the individual designated to carry out those wishes lacked standing. The result was a legal paradox: a statute that recognizes decedent autonomy in theory but withholds any meaningful mechanism for its enforcement …

Getting Money Out Of Politics By Putting Money Into Politics: A Few Modest Proposals To Reform Seattle’S Democracy Voucher Program, Decker O’Donnell

Seattle University Law Review

Seattle’s Democracy Voucher Program offers an unconventional response to the growing influence of money in American elections: rather than restricting political spending, it seeks to amplify the participation of ordinary voters by providing publicly funded vouchers that residents may assign to participating candidates. This Article examines the program’s development, operation, and constitutional foundation within the modern campaign-finance framework established by Buckley v. Valeo and subsequent Supreme Court decisions. It argues that democracy vouchers provide a constitutionally viable means of broadening participation in campaign financing while mitigating the influence of wealthy donors. The Article identifies two weaknesses in the current system: …

Race, Sex, And Age Disparities In Homicide Clearance Rates In Tennessee: An Intersectional Approach, Teliyah Cobb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Demographic factors can influence homicide solvability. This study examines the relationship between victim characteristics and homicide clearance rates in Tennessee from 2001 to 2023. Using an intersectional approach, it assesses whether victim characteristics both individually and in combination are related to case solvability. Variables of interest include: (1) victim race, age range, and sex; (2) year the case was reported; (3) crime type; (4) whether the case was cleared; and (5) the circumstances leading to clearance. A total of 11,534 homicide cases from the Tennessee Incident-Based Reporting System were analyzed.

Findings indicate that individual victim characteristics do not significantly predict …

From Vulnerability To Justice: Reframing Indigenous Disaster Recovery Through A Human Rights-Based Lens, Portia Ozioma Chigbu

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

Indigenous populations regard their cultural identity as central to their way of life, and their traditional lifestyles often place them in remote areas, isolating them from mainstream society. This isolation creates a unique set of human rights challenges, such as limited access to healthcare, restricted political representation, housing insecurity, and poor living conditions, making them especially vulnerable compared to other groups. In the context of climate change and the rising frequency of natural disasters worldwide, these vulnerabilities become more protracted and intensified. Since Indigenous populations already face structural disadvantages before disasters strike, such events deepen their vulnerabilities, increase their risk …

Analyzing The Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence To Racially Inclusive Democracy, Spencer Overton

Utah Law Review

Over the past two decades—as the United States has grown more ethnically diverse—the U.S. Supreme Court has dismantled key voting rights protections, and state legislatures have erected a record number of voting restrictions. Largely oblivious to this growing gap in legal protections, several artificial intelligence (“AI”) optimists have claimed that AI can help usher in a more inclusive, participatory, and unbiased democracy. Such an outcome, however, is far from guaranteed. This Article is the first to comprehensively examine the extent to which AI—and the legal frameworks that regulate it—can advance racially inclusive democracy. It responds to the AI optimism literature …

Until The Cages Are Empty: Transgender Criminal Defense As A Necessary Tactic Of Prison-Industrial Complex Abolition, Lark Mulligan

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

This article is a practical guide in the fight to abolish the prison-industrial complex as well as institutionalized transphobia and cissexism. Focusing specifically on the practice area of criminal defense, this article proposes a model that must be replicated across jurisdictions wherever transgender people are criminalized. By instituting an interdisciplinary team approach that is non-hierarchical, strengths-based, trauma-informed, community focused, holistic, harm-reductionist, and abolitionist, practitioners will find their role in this movement as one of consensus building, knowledge sharing, community empowerment, institutional navigation, and access distribution. As discrimination and violence against trans people continues to rise, practitioners must learn to not …

Racial Privacy I: The Quest For Whiteness By European Immigrants In America, Najarian R. Peters

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

Privacy law scholars have disregarded and under-theorized racial privacy practices, meaning racial/ethnic passing, in the United States of America. This article is a defining first step in conceptualizing racial passing as an indispensable privacy protection practice, that affirmed the following individual and group privacy rights of European immigrants, who became White in America: (1) the right to be let alone, (2) the right to erasure of stigmatized racial identity, and inherent in that right, (3) the right to forget an assigned racial identity, burdened by socio-economic deprivation and predation. Whiteness was required to access citizenship for the vast majority of …

The Joy And Privilege Of Social Justice Lawyering: Fulfillment Through Integrating Work And Life, Ascanio Piomelli

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Masthead

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Grace Perez

UC Law Journal of Race and Economic Justice

No abstract provided.

The Weight Of Discretion: Examining Perceptions, Decision-Making, And Overrepresentation In Canada's Youth Criminal Justice System, Adrienne Graham

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

The Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA) has changed the way that youth encounter Canada’s criminal justice system. While the reintegration and rehabilitation goals of the YCJA have decreased overall youth custody rates, Black and Indigenous youth continue to be treated differently than other youth. This paper examines the overrepresentation of Black and Indigenous youth in the criminal justice system, the impact of poverty on police oversurveillance, various policing practices, and the role of extrajudicial measures. Through discussing youth perceptions on police legitimacy alongside police perceptions of youth, this paper will demonstrate that in order to further the principles …

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

Veiled Justice: Secularism And The Hijab Across Democracies, Mohamed ‘Arafa

Seattle University Law Review

For much of 2022, Iran was gripped by widespread protests led by women who openly challenged the regime’s authority, particularly its compulsory veiling laws, following the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody. Women around the globe came around and showed solidarity with the women in Iran. However, in non-Islamic countries and societies, one can still make out many prejudices and stereotyping connected to the question of whether and to what extent veiling is mandatory for women according to Shārīe’ā law. Is wearing the hijab a choice, or rather, an essential religious practice that religious Muslim women need to obey? …

Rewriting The Playbook: The X’S And O’S Of The House Settlement And The Future Of Student-Athletes’ Voice In Their Compensation, Matthew K.V. Glazer

Seattle University Law Review

Since the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the 1900s, collegiate athletes (student-athletes) have been prohibited from using their own name, image and likeness (NIL) for profit. But on July 1, 2021, the NCAA changed course and began allowing student-athletes to profit from their own NIL. In the past few years, U.S. college athletics have undergone significant changes, most notably introducing monetary compensation for student-athletes’ NIL. While these changes were long overdue and ultimately beneficial, they have significantly disrupted the landscape of college sports, giving rise to numerous challenges that some experts have compared to the “Wild …