Litigation Commons^™

The Alarming Legality Of Security Manipulation Through Shareholder Proposals, Artem M. Joukov, Samantha M. Caspar

Seattle University Law Review

Shareholder proposals attract attention from scholars in finance and economics because they present an opportunity to study both quasidemocratic decision-making at the corporate level and the impact of this decision-making on firm outcomes. These studies capture the effect of various proposals but rarely address whether regulations should allow many of them in the first place due to the possibility of stock price manipulation. Recent changes to shareholder proposal rules, adopted in September 2020, sought to address the potential for exploitation that some proposals create (but ultimately failed to do so). This Article shows the potential for apparently legal stock price …

Neither Safe, Nor Legal, Nor Rare: The D.C. Circuit’S Use Of The Doctrine Of Ratification To Shield Agency Action From Appointments Clause Challenges, Damien M. Schiff

Seattle University Law Review

Key to the constitutional design of the federal government is the separation of powers. An important support for that separation is the Appointments Clause, which governs how officers of the United States are installed in their positions. Although the separation of powers generally, and the Appointments Clause specifically, support democratically accountable government, they also protect individual citizens against abusive government power. But without a judicial remedy, such protection is ineffectual—a mere parchment barrier.

Such has become the fate of the Appointments Clause in the D.C. Circuit, thanks to that court’s adoption—and zealous employment—of the rule that agency action, otherwise unconstitutional …

Unpacking Third-Party Standing, Curtis A. Bradley, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

Third-party standing is relevant to a wide range of constitutional and statutory cases. The Supreme Court has said that, to assert such standing, a litigant must ordinarily have a close relationship with the right holder and the right holder must face obstacles to suing on their own behalf. Yet the Court does not seem to apply that test consistently, and commentators have long critiqued the third-party standing doctrine as incoherent. This Article argues that much of the doctrine’s perceived incoherence stems from the Supreme Court’s attempt to capture, in a single principle, disparate scenarios raising distinct problems of both theory …

Beyond Qualified Immunity, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review Online

I never watched the video. The descriptions themselves have always felt like enough. Traumatizing enough. Invasive enough. George Floyd, father of two, laying on the ground, as an unfazed officer kneeled on his neck for at least eight minutes and forty-six seconds. He pleaded for his life and cried out to his deceased mother until he met his inevitable death. His name should be said for the record before saying almost anything else. The recording of the chilling final minutes of his life is, in all probability, one of the impetuses for this multi-journal Reckoning and Reform Symposium.

Civil Rights, Access To Counsel, And Injunctive Class Actions In The United States, Maureen Carroll

Book Chapters

According to a familiar story about class actions in the United States, aggregation promotes access to counsel by increasing the amount of money from which counsel fees can be taken. Courts usually award class counsel a percentage of the monetary recovery obtained on behalf of the class, and class treatment can turn a $30 case into a $3 million case. But what about class actions that do not involve monetary relief at all? Some civil rights plaintiffs seek to stop a violation, rather than to obtain compensation for past harm, and therefore choose to pursue only an injunction or declaratory …

A New Approach To Executory Contracts, John A.E. Pottow

Book Chapters

Few topics have bedeviled the bankruptcy community as much as the proper treatment of executory contracts under section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code. The case law is "hopelessly convoluted" and a "bramble-filled thicket." While many have struggled in the bootless task of providing coherence to the unwieldy corpus of case law and commentary, all would agree Jay Westbrook has been at the modern vanguard of this Sisyphean task. (1 assign Westbrook to the "modern" forefront, thereby relegating Vern Countryman, whose legacy in this domain rightly persists, to the annals of history, choosing as my perhaps arbitrary dividing line the adoption …

The Demise Of The Law-Developing Function: A Case Study Of The Wisconsin Supreme Court, Skylar Reese Croy

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Abortion: If Roe V. Wade Is Overturned, Can The Right To Choose Be Upheld Under The Arguments Used To Establish An Individual’S Right To Physician-Assisted Suicide?, Jennifer Mccoy

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Seventh Circuit Upholds Buffer-Zone Ordinances To Protect Women Entering Healthcare Facilities From Sidewalk Counselors—Price V. City Of Chicago, 915 F.3d 1107 (7th Cir. 2019), Jamie Wells

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Housing Law—Not Over This Threshold: The Crisis Of Continued Housing Discrimination Against Queer Americans—Smith V. Avanti, 249 F. Supp. 3d 1194 (D. Colo. 2017), Cayla Keenan

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Narrowly Reading Law Enforcement Activity Exception To Privacy Act In Favor Of Privacy Rights—Garris V. Fbi, 937 F.3d 1284 (9th Cir. 2019), Megan Ryan

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Law—Third Party Cross-Examination During Campus Misconduct Hearings Satisfies Due Process Requirement Under Fourteenth Amendment—Haidak V. Univ. Of Mass.- Amherst, 933 F.3d 56 (1st Cir. 2019), Kori Dean

Suffolk Journal of Trial and Appellate Advocacy

No abstract provided.

Big Pharma, Big Problems: Covid-19 Heightens Patent-Antitrust Tension Caused By Reverse Payments, Hannah M. Lasting

Seattle University Law Review

In the wake of COVID-19, pharmaceutical companies rushed to produce vaccinations and continue to work on developing treatments, while the tension caused by reverse payments intensifies between patent and antitrust law. Lawmakers must address this tension, and the current pandemic should serve as a catalyst to prompt reform at the legislative level. By amending the Hatch-Waxman Act, lawmakers can ease the increasing strain between patent and antitrust policy concerns. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court attempted to resolve this tension in its landmark decision, F.T.C. v. Actavis, but the tension remains as lower courts struggle to produce a uniform standard …

Collective Wisdom: When To Impeach With An Inconsistent Statement, A. J. Bellido De Luna

Faculty Articles

The recognition of multiple goals of cross-examination is nothing new. Despite early emphasis on cross-examination as being needed to expose “mendacity,” Dean Wigmore viewed cross-examination as the essence of the trial and truth-seeking process in the United States. He viewed it as capable of serving two ends: proving untruths and completing the story by eliciting facts that “remained suppressed or undeveloped” on direct examination, including “the remaining and qualifying circumstances of the subject of testimony, as known to the witness.” Precisely because of the presence of dual objectives, timing is everything. Said differently, assume a witness has information useful to …

28 Usc § 1782 In Aid Of Foreign Arbitration: "A Tribunal By Any Other Name", Attilio M. Costabel

St. Thomas Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Clumsy Couple: The Problem Of Applying Model Rule 1.7 In Transactional Settings, Katelyn K. Leveque

Indiana Law Journal

The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct (“Model Rules”) have long addressed conflicts of interest, with fluctuating degrees of stringency.1 For as long as the rules have been in place, legal scholars have grappled with how lawyers can work within the confines of the rules to serve their clients best, as well as how the rules might better align with what clients seek and expect from their legal representation. In their current form, the Model Rules address conflicts of interest in Rule 1.7. However, both this rule and the Model Rules more generally are not one size fits …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents and Special Thanks.

Appellate Courts And Civil Juries, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

In federal civil litigation, decision-making power is shared by juries, trial courts, and appellate courts. This Article examines an unresolved tension in the different doctrines that allocate authority among these institutions, one that has led to confusion surrounding the relationship between appellate courts and civil juries. At base, the current uncertainty stems from a longstanding lack of clarity regarding the distinction between matters of law and matters of fact. The high-stakes Oracle-Google litigation—which is now before the Supreme Court—exemplifies this. In that case, the Federal Circuit reasoned that an appellate court may assert de novo review over a jury’s verdict …

Precedent As Rational Persuasion, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

The ways that judges and lawyers make and justify their arguments and decisions have profound impacts on our lives. Understanding those practices in light of theories of reasoning and argumentation is thus critical for understanding law and the society it shapes. An inquiry that explores the very foundations of all legal reasoning leads to a broad, important question: How do lawyers and judges use cited cases in their legal arguments? It turns out there is practically no empirical research to suggest the answer. As the first step in a comprehensive empirical effort to answer this question, this article performs a …

Are We There Yet? Discovery For The New Litigator, Erin Rhinehart, Leonard M. Niehoff

Articles

If the road is life, then discovery is litigation. It is how we reach our destination. Unfortunately, discovery is like getting there with someone in the backseat.

Anyone who has ever traveled with passengers, especially children, knows how it plays out. In the beginning, everybody is excited. Everyone gleefully piles into the car, eager to launch. No one has any trouble amusing themselves. A couple hours in, a bathroom break and gas station snack later, it hits. The adrenaline wears off and the tedium kicks in. And then you hear the dreaded cry coming from the rear: Are we there …