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Tenant Rights Deserve Consumer Protections: The Case for Overturning State v. Schwab
Get PDFTenancy is a precarious housing arrangement—tenants do not own their homes yet depend on housing stability as a foundation for engaging in almost all aspects of life. For more than fifty years, Washington law has decreed it a landlord’s responsibility to maintain safe and secure housing for their tenants. As the Washington State Legislature has declared, “[d]ecent housing for the people of Washington state is a most important public concern.” This strong rhetoric remains at odds with State v. Schwab, the sweeping decision issued by the 1985 Washington State Supreme Court removing tenants from the reach of the Consumer Protection Act—functionally denying them access to meaningful remedies and legally entrenching landlord power over tenants. While state law guarantees landlords the right to ask a court to expeditiously remove a tenant from a rental unit for failing to fulfill their legal obligations, tenants are not similarly empowered to protect their home from a landlord’s unlawful abdication of their duties. This Comment argues that the Court improperly construed the Legislature’s intent in reaching its decision, creating an aberration in Washington’s consumer protection jurisprudence and denying low-income tenants access to meaningful legal remedies
Justifying the Law of Unjust Enrichment: A Confucian Perspective
Get PDFIn a wide range of situations, the law in different jurisdictions requires that a person who has been unjustly enriched at another’s expense make restitution to the other. However, what justifies the liability for unjust enrichment? This fundamental question has perplexed unjust enrichment scholars, especially in the common law world, for decades, with various justificatory ideas being proposed while no consensus has been reached. This article explores the justification of the law of unjust enrichment within the context of China’s historical, legal, and social frameworks for the first time. A historical review reveals that the notion of unjust enrichment has been persistently reserved in China after its transplantation through different historical periods due to its conformity with China’s most influential philosophical tradition: Confucianism. Therefore, this article proposes a rational explanation for unjust enrichment liabilities through a Confucian lens. This innovative Confucian account complements existing Western theories of unjust enrichment
The Symbiotic Model: Leviathan and Behemoths in America
No full textIn the context of rapidly advancing science and technology, particularly artificial intelligence, new monsters distinct from the Leviathan (i.e., the state) are emerging, shaking the foundations of the modern legal system that presumes the dominance of the Leviathan. This series, titled The Monsterizing Platform Power and Law likens global mega-platforms to the Behemoth, a creature depicted alongside the sea monster Leviathan in the Old Testament (chapters 40-41, the Book of Job). It aims to explore the confrontation and control of the powers of Leviathan and Behemoth from a legal perspective, and to foresee the future of freedom and democracy (from Introduction to the Series by Tatsuhiko Yamamoto).https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-chapters/1071/thumbnail.jp
How does a court determine the tax-exempt purposes of an organization?
Get PDFTo determine the tax-exempt purposes of an organization, courts and tax authorities primarily examine whether the organization is both organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes, as required under 26 U.S.C § 501.
This involves a two-part test: the organizational test and the operational test. The organizational test assesses whether the organization\u27s foundational documents, such as its charter or articles of incorporation, limit its purposes to one or more exempt purposes and do not authorize substantial non-exempt activities
Brief of Amici Curiae Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, American Association of University Professors, Center for Civil Rights and Critical Justice, Race and Law Centers, and Civil Rights and Advocacy Organizations in Support of Plaintiff, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP v. Executive Office of the President, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (No. 1:25-cv-000917-RJL)
Get PDFIntroduction
When Fred Korematsu stood in the San Francisco federal district court in 1942 to challenge the constitutionality of a criminal charge that he had violated an exclusion order issued pursuant to Executive Order 9066, he was represented by pro bono counsel funded by the San Francisco office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But just four days after Fred’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss his criminal charges, ACLU director Roger Baldwin—wanting to avoid angering President Roosevelt—conveyed the “national board’s decision to prohibit test cases from challenging Roosevelt’s authority to issue Executive Order 9066.” Instead, local ACLU affiliates could “only argue that [General] DeWitt’s orders were arbitrary because they did not except individuals who were loyal, they covered too wide an area, and they unlawfully discriminated against Japanese Americans.” For cases already filed, the national board “advised defendants … ‘to arrange, if they desire, for counsel who will be free to raise other constitutional issues.’”
In defiance of national ACLU’s orders, Fred’s pro bono counsel appealed his conviction, continuing to argue that the forced exclusion from their homes and incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps were unlawful exercises of executive power: “We undertook to defend Korematsu and we informed him before he accepted our help that in the event he was convicted, we would undertake an appeal, if necessary, because we regarded his as a test case.” Though the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1944, Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), pro bono counsel again raised the failure of justice in his case in 1984—and this time, a federal court agreed, overturning Fred’s wartime conviction, Korematsu v. United States, 584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984). The Supreme Court finally recognized this failure of justice when Chief Justice Roberts, in Trump v. Hawaii, declared that Korematsu had been overruled in the court of history, and that the Government’s treatment of Fred had been “gravely wrong.” 585 U.S. 667, 710 (2018).
Like Fred, countless others have depended on pro bono counsel to defend their constitutional rights. But President Trump’s recent Executive Orders targeting Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (“WilmerHale”) and other law firms, Executive Orders 14230 (the “Perkins EO”), 14246 (the “Jenner EO”), and 14250 (the “WilmerHale EO”) (collectively, the “EOs”), aim to curtail firms’ pro bono work when it conflicts with the Administration’s policy goals. This violates the First Amendment rights of the firms and their clients. As the Supreme Court recently and unanimously held, “[a] government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs . . . . What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 188 (2024)
Brief of Criminal Law Professors Andrea Roth and J.D. King as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner, Lesh v. United States, U.S. Supreme Court Docket No. 24-654
Get PDFQUESTION PRESENTED
Article III of the Constitution provides that “[t]he Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury.” And the Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions,” the accused shall enjoy the right to trial by jury.
The question presented is: Whether the Constitution’s dual guarantee of trial by jury contains an unstated exception for “petty” offenses
Constitutional Futurism as Pedagogy
Get PDFConstitutional Law has transformed from a course on history to a discussion of current events. Cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo reveal that the study of constitutional law is not a static, or even linear, discussion of constitutional text and history. Law is a shifting, changing enterprise that reflects social constructions of power, authority, and identity. How do we teach, learn, and understand constitutional law that is so laden with history, riddled with theories of consistency and adherence to precedent, but ultimately subject to upheaval? In this Article, I suggest that Afrofuturism opens a portal to teaching and learning constitutional law that understands that past, pre-sent, and futures are interlinked, and our role as teachers and learners is to engage in critical thinking, imagination, and empathy. Building on Bennett Capers’s Afrofuturism and constitutional futurism, this Article considers how we might apply principles of Sankofa, change, and positionality to legal pedagogy. Each decision of the Supreme Court presents an opportunity to interrogate how we think, learn, and understand individuals, society, and relationships of power that tie it all together. Constitutional futurism as a pedagogy forces us to think beyond the limitations of conventional constitutional thinking—to teach students to think outside the box we must first define its boundaries and purpose. This Article therefore uses Students for Fair Admissions as a starting point for considering the assumptions, frameworks, and possibilities created by decisions of the Supreme Court, suggesting how we can learn and imagine from decisions that undermine visions of equity and justice