Legal Education Commons^™

The Class Of Injuries Test: A Unifying Proposal To Determining Duty, Proximate Cause, And Superseding Cause In Negligence Claims, Judge Leonard J. Feldman, Julia Doherty

Seattle University Law Review

While there seems to be universal agreement that liability in tort cannot be unlimited, there is widespread disagreement regarding the various tests that courts utilize to limit such liability. We assume here that breach can be proven: the defendant failed to conduct themself in accordance with the salient standard of conduct (for example, failure to exercise reasonable care under all the circumstances). In the ensuing litigation, the court and jury are asked to decide several issues that each limit liability for negligence. Here, we focus on three oft-debated issues: duty, proximate cause, and superseding cause. The tests for each are …

A Meaningful Life: The Future Of Juvenile Justice In Washington After Anderson, Samuel Coren

Seattle University Law Review

Until 2022, Washington’s line of juvenile sentencing jurisprudence gave every indication of continuing along the course set by Miller v. Alabama, as Washington courts recognized that “children are different” and should not be subjected to the harshest punishments available in the criminal legal system. State v. Anderson marked a stark diversion from this course. In upholding the constitutionality of a de facto life sentence for a juvenile, the Washington Supreme Court all but rejected the well-established scientific consensus surrounding juvenile brain development and implicit racial bias. Whether this decision reflects a minor aberration or a broader trend in the court’s …

Sneakers, The Shoes That Talk The Talk And Walk The Walk: How Jack Daniel’S Properties, Inc. V. Vip Products Left Its Footprint On Trademark Law And The Sneaker Industry, Nitya Tolani

Seattle University Law Review

As the fashion industry—including the sneaker industry housed within it—continues to go through the motions of collectively flocking out, and then collectively flocking again to the newest innovations in the world of wearables, the landscape of laws to protect and promote those innovations expands as well, mainly in the area of intellectual property law. Although copyright, trademark, and patent law can cover innovations in the fashion industry, this Note centers its analysis on trademark law. Trademark law has been through notable change in recent years because of the United States Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Jack Daniel’s Properties, Inc. v. …

The First Amendment To The Constitution, Associational Freedom, And The Future Of The Country: Alabama’S Direct Attack On The Existence Of The Naacp, Helen J. Knowles-Gardner

Seattle University Law Review

Sixty years ago, on Wednesday, April 8, 1964, Professor Harry Kalven, Jr., gave the second of three lectures at The Ohio State University College of Law Forum. These lectures were published two years later in a book entitled The Negro & the 1st Amendment. In the second lecture, Kalven distinguished between direct and indirect threats to the associational freedom of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Kalven categorized the 1958 decision in NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson as an indirect effort to control the NAACP.

With the benefit of material obtained from numerous archival sources, …

What Is In Your Tampon? Increasing Transparency In Menstrual Products, Elianna Spitzer

Seattle University Law Review

The average person who menstruates will bleed for an average of five days, every twenty-four to thirty-eight days, over several decades and could use thousands of disposable menstrual products in their lifetime. Menstrual products line retail shelves. They can be found in homes, bags, and bodies—but until 2021, manufacturers were not required to disclose the ingredients used to make these products to consumers at all. In fact, they still are not federally required to disclose menstrual product ingredients on product packaging. Instead, in recent years, changes to menstrual product labels have largely been the result of state legislation. In 2019, …

Why Equity Follows The Law, Adam J. Macleod

Faculty Articles

Renewed attention to equity in higher education is welcome because true equity helps us to reason together well. When administered correctly, the jurisprudence of equity models civil discourse and, therefore, can teach us how to carry out civic engagement reasonably. Equitable interpretation of the law teaches us how to understand each other charitably. And equity’s deference to law teaches us how to reason well together about our practical problems. Law is the practical reasoning that we do together. Equity serves the ends of justice by serving law, rather than undermining it. These functions of equity in adjudication point toward a …

Language Models, Plagiarism, And Legal Writing, Michael L. Smith

Faculty Articles

Language models like ChatGPT are the talk of the town in legal circles. Despite some high-profile stories of fake ChatGPT-generated citations, many practitioners argue that language models are the way of the future. These models, they argue, promise an efficient source of first drafts and stock language. Others make similar claims about legal writing education, with a number of professors urging the acknowledgment of language models. Others go further and argue that students ought to learn to use these models to improve their writing and prepare for practice. I argue that those urging the incorporation of language models into legal …

Abolish The Mpre, Michael Ariens

Faculty Articles

In nearly every jurisdiction, applicants to the bar must pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). Its purpose, according to its owner, the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE), is "to measure candidates' knowledge and understanding of established standards related to the professional conduct of lawyers." It does test whether an examinee has kept in short-term memory the rules and exceptions that make up part of the understanding of what it means to serve as a lawyer. However, success (or initial failure) on the MPRE has not been correlated with ethical conduct or misconduct. For example, the Texas Board of …

Navigating Legal Ethics And Law School Curricula: Attempting To Find Technology Competency Without A Compass, Jessica De Perio Wittman, Kathleen (Katie) Brown

Faculty Articles and Papers

Comment 8 of Model Rule 1.1 of the Professional Rules of Conduct requires attorneys to be ethically accountable for technology competence. However, the drafting of the language of Rule 1.1 is vague. As a result, attorneys, law firms, and law schools apply Rule 1.1 differently and emphasize topics they deem most important. Per American Bar Association (ABA) Standard 301, law schools must maintain a rigorous program of legal education that prepares their students for effective, ethical, and responsible participation as members of the legal profession. Law schools have summarily responded to Rule 1.1 and Standard 301 by adding and offering …

Helping Students To Organize Their Thoughts About The Erie Doctrine, William Casto

Indiana Law Journal

This little Essay presents a framework for teaching the Erie Doctrine. It is not a grand analysis of the federal courts’ puzzle. It does not even offer a wondrously insightful vision of one of the puzzle’s colorful pieces. Rather, the purpose is quite modest. The essay simply aims to help students to organize their thoughts about whether a particular legal issue is governed by state or federal law. Given the Essay’s limited and wholly heuristic purpose, the usual endless parade of all possible cases and the careful rehearsal of exquisite and finely-tuned factors and considerations are eschewed.

Gender And Incivility In A Law School Moot Court Competition, Frank Rosenblatt, Irene Victoria Massimino

Journal Articles

The authors recently coached a team in a law school moot court competition that featured troublesome behavior from several male judges towards the female participants. This post first describes the competition and what happened. It then considers how this example speaks to larger truths about gender and incivility in litigation particularly, and the legal profession generally.

American Association Of Law Libraries Academic Special Interest Section White Paper On Continuing Status And Tenure Of Law Librarians, Aall Special Interest Section On Academic Law Libraries Subcommittee On Continuing Status And Tenure, Stephanie Davidson, Cindy Hirsch, Caroline Osborne, Brian Quigley, Jessica Whytock

Faculty Publications

In 2023 the ALL-SIS Continuing Status/Tenure Committee was charged with developing a white paper to provide information on the status, rights, and responsibilities of academic law librarian positions. The information provided in this paper is intended to allow law librarians to make informed career choices, increase knowledge of the rights and obligations of librarian positions, and ensure the development of necessary skills and education for future new positions. Clarity on how positions are structured, their required skills, and credentials is essential at all levels of experience for planning and development for future career growth.

This White Paper does not advocate …

Lists In Legal Drafting: How Brain Science Can Help Student Drafters Produce Documents That Are Easier To Read And Comprehend, Karin Mika

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

Lists play an important role in legal drafting of every type. A list helps the reader break down larger pieces of information, and a well-constructed list's visuals can aid in comprehension. A good list can also head off future legal disputes by making it easier for all parties to read and understand its contents. But a list, in and of itself, is not beneficial unless it is organized in such a way that the brain can easily group like items. By understanding the basics of how the brain processes information, the legal writer can better understand how to group pieces …

Standard 303 And The Development Of Student Professional Identity: A Framework For The Intentional Exploration Of The Profession's Core Values, Neil Hamilton, Jerome M. Organ, David Grenardo, Louis D. Bilionis, Barbara Glesner Fines, Kendall L. Kerew

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Brown Now: The Surprising Possibility Of Progressive Reform, Louis Michael Seidman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For four decades, the Supreme Court has engaged in a determined, systematic and successful effort to transform and tame Brown v. Board of Education. But in this article, written for a symposium on Brown at 70, I suggest a surprising counterweight to the standard narrative. If one takes modern doctrine seriously -- a big if, I concede-- it has the potential to support some progressive goals.

In particular, modern doctrine might provide progressives answers to three questions:

1. Are race-conscious but facially neutral means of increasing diversity at state institutions of higher education constitutional?
2. Are legacy admissions to state run institutions …

Holdings As Hypotheses: Teaching Contextual Understanding And Enhancing Engagement, Lisa M. De Sanctis

UF Law Faculty Publications

When the Pinball Wizard asked his well-timed question, he not only lit up the 1L classroom with a cacophony of opinions but also illuminated deep confusion about the meaning of, and distinctions between, “rules” and “holdings.”

The practice of both oversimplifying and conflating the parts of a judicial opinion, particularly rules and holdings, is common among law professors, law school success materials, and, to an extent, even legal writing texts. Coupled with the novice law student’s search for right answers and found meaning, 1Ls often find themselves understandably frustrated and confused. This Article argues that the resulting confusion about rules …

Attributing Ai Authorship: Towards A System Of Icons For Legal And Ethical Disclosure, Joseph J. Avery, Patricia S. Abril, Alissa Del Riego

Articles

Over the past year, the pervasive role of large language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence (Al) in text generation has precipitated concerns about ethical usage, authorship, and transparent attribution. This has been true in legal practice, academia, and the corporate world, as well as in countless other arenas. In this Article, we identify the gap that has opened between those demanding proper disclosure (we should know when and to what extent Al is an author) and those struggling to respond to these demands. Part of the problem is that there is no system in place, no lingua franca, no set …

What I Talk About When I Talk About Charity Scott, Elizabeth Weeks

Scholarly Works

This essay pays tribute to Professor Charity Scott’s transformative impact on health law, legal education, and medical-legal partnerships. Reflecting on personal experience and Scott’s pioneering work, It highlights Scott’s integrity, compassion, and dedication to improving individual and community well-being through law. Scott’s role in establishing the Health Law Partnership (HeLP) and advancing the medical-legal partnership model is situated within the broader evolution of health justice, social determinants of health, and interprofessional collaboration. The essay underscores her legacy as a scholar, mentor, and innovator whose work continues to shape health law and inspire future generations of advocates, educators, and practitioners

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 …

How To Interpret The Securities Laws?, Zachary J. Gubler

Seattle University Law Review

In discussions of the federal securities laws, the SEC usually gets most of the attention. This makes some sense. After all, it is the agency charged with administrating the securities laws and regulating the industry as a whole. It makes the majority of the laws; it engages in enforcement actions; it reacts to crises; and it, or sometimes even its individual commissioners, intervene publicly in policy debates. Often overlooked in such discussion, however, is the role of the Supreme Court in shaping securities law, and a new book by Adam Pritchard and Robert Thompson demonstrates why this is an oversight. …