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Seattle University Law Review

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Seattle University Law Review

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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 …

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: …

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 …

Corruption In The Service Of The Common Good: The Legitimation Of Traditional Practitioners In Cameroon, Victorine Oyane Ossah

Journal of Law and Public Policy

This article shows how health law and public policy, in seeking to regulate traditional medicine, without fully recognising it, paradoxically end up producing the very social conditions for the corruption that they are supposed to combat. The aim is to identify, based on the experience of traditional healers, the various factors that contribute to establishing corruption not as a moral choice, but as a pragmatic strategy for preserving their knowledge, resources, and place in the healthcare system. The analysis presented is based on a qualitative survey of 30 traditional medicine practitioners in Yaoundé and Douala between 2021 and 2026, in …

Dentistry And The Law: Is A Lake Of Understanding Of Billing Procedures Fraud?, Daniel Schulte Jd

The Journal of the Michigan Dental Association

This legal column addresses whether improper dental billing resulting from misunderstanding plan requirements constitutes fraud. The author explains the legal elements necessary to establish fraud, including knowledge, intent, and damages. The article distinguishes billing errors and contract violations from fraudulent conduct and encourages dentists to review participation agreements and billing policies to minimize compliance risks.

Paediatricians' Liability To Patients' Parents For Negligent Genetic Testing, Anthony Sangiuliano

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has recently held that a paediatrician might owe a duty of care to a patient’s parents when performing genetic testing on the patient and communicating test results to the parents. The parents may be able to claim damages against the paediatrician for breach of this duty if, in reliance on a miscommunication about the test results, they conceive a subsequent child who is later born with a disability. I call the tort alleged by the parents in these circumstances a subspecies of “paediatric triangular torts.” In this article, I demonstrate the conceptual feasibility of …

Privacy, Paternalism, And Standing In Health Professions Regulation, Anthony Sangiuliano

Dalhousie Law Journal

When investigating whether a doctor has behaved unethically while treating a patient, professional regulatory colleges may search patients’ confidential medical records without patients’ consent. I argue that this practice is not paternalistic, nor does it usurp patients’ standing to decide for themselves whether to sacrifice their privacy to hold the doctor to account for professional wrongdoing. College investigations that non-consensually invade patient privacy do not express disrespect for patients’ agency because they aim to mitigate harm to the broader public. Unlike criminal prosecutions of doctors which uphold moral values pervading the public at large, college investigations enforce ethical standards within …

A New Prescription: Arkansas Law On Pharmacy Benefit Managers, Emilee Webb

Arkansas Law Review

Seven thousand pharmacies have closed throughout the United States since 2019. This number includes both local pharmacies and larger chains. The effect of both types of closures, though, is the same—pharmacy deserts. A pharmacy desert can occur in all types of areas; it simply means that consumers lack “reasonable access” to a pharmacy. The usual standard is a pharmacy located more than one mile away in urban areas, two miles away in suburban areas, and ten miles away in rural areas. However, an objective mile range is not always dispositive of a pharmacy desert. Even if a pharmacy is located …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

How The Dod Discourages Military Families From Seeking Mental Health Counseling, Christina Welch

Seattle University Law Review

The Department of Defense’s (DoD) administration of the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) presents significant barriers to mental health care access for military spouses and children. This paper explores how the EFMP, though designed to support military families with special needs, inadvertently creates barriers to mental health treatment. Military family members often do not seek mental health treatment to avoid the program's mandatory enrollment requirements. Military family members often view enrollment in the program undesirable because enrollment can restrict the pool of potential future duty assignment locations that are available to service members.

The lack of comprehensive data collection by …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

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 …

Mr. Trump Goes To Washington Part Ii: A Review Of Richard Delgado's 2025, Kevin Johnson

Seattle University Law Review

Richard Delgado’s The Rodrigo Chronicles have captivated a generation of law students and legal scholars.  Mapping the terrain of race, racism, and Critical Race Theory (CRT), the skillful, and long-running narrative series stands as a testament to Delgado’s dedication to justice for all.

The Rodrigo Chronicles are simply one of Delgado’s many intellectual contributions and part of an unparalleled scholarly legacy.  As one of the founders of CRT, he produced a landmark body of scholarship –authoring the field's primary text,  making the argument for the regulation of hate speech,  forcefully challenging the Black/white binary of civil rights that long dominated …

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 …

Ai In Healthcare: Regulatory Guidelines And Judge-Made Negligence Principles For Ai Implementers, Gary K. Y. Chan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare may, notwithstanding its potential benefits, result in harm to patients from allegedly negligent acts or omissions by hospitals and medical doctors. In such circumstances, how should the principles in the tort of negligence (duty of care, breach, causation, remoteness of damage, and defences) respond to AI innovations in healthcare? In particular, how may the standard of care expected of hospitals and medical doctors be informed by regulatory guidelines? We refer to case law precedents and regulatory guidelines on the roles and responsibilities of doctors and hospitals as AI implementers. Importantly, they prompt …