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From Winans to Wallahee: Treaties, the Washington State Supreme Court, and the Pursuit of a More Just Rule of Law
No full textThe relationship between the United States federal government, the states, and Native Nations has long been at the core of federal Indian law. From the earliest decades of its jurisprudence, for example, the United States Supreme Court struggled in its efforts to analyze and define the rights, authorities, and interactions of Native Nations within and in relation to the evolving structure of constitutional federalism. Treaties between the United States and Native Nations were central to those decisions and provided a necessary, constitutional check against state interests intent on eliminating sovereign Native Nations. Those constitutional and structural implications thus go well beyond federal Indian law and provide important—but often overlooked—insight into the health and stability of fundamental aspects of our legal system as a whole and, therefore, the rule of law itself. Here in Washington, the Washington State Supreme Court developed its own approach to analyzing and interpreting treaty rights, which, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, largely ignored or dismissed treaties and rights reserved thereunder in favor of state interests. More recently, however, the state’s highest court has embarked on an effort to reassess and reckon with its role in perpetrating and perpetuating historical injustices. That effort has resulted in a series of decisions reconsidering the Court’s own treaty-related jurisprudence and, therefore, offers a timely and critically important opportunity to consider the potential and promise of this work. In the spirit of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the University of Washington School of Law and the centennial volume of Washington Law Review, this Article considers the fundamental issues posed by treaty-related questions and aims to draw lessons from the Washington State Supreme Court’s recent efforts to address historical injustices that might inform other, similar efforts across the country. Situating that assessment within the context of treaty rights and the sovereignty of Native Nations illustrates the power of this work to catalyze a deeper and broader reckoning with crucial questions of justice and the rule of law
Tax in Law Schools
Get PDFAt the 2023 Association of American Law Schools Tax Section meeting, professors discussed their impressions of a decline in the number of JD students studying tax. Their impressions were consistent with declines that have been documented in similar fields. Between 2011 and 2021, U.S. accounting programs saw an 18% drop in students, while new CPA candidates declined 39% from 2010 to 2022. In the United Kingdom, the number of law schools that teach tax has diminished by 43% since 2002. This Article examines tax education in 40 U.S. law schools, focusing on course offerings and enrollment trends from 2012 to 2022.
There is good news. All 40 U.S. schools studied offered an introductory Federal Tax course, with 35 offering at least one advanced course and 20 offering two or more. The number of law professors who teach tax has remained steady in recent years. Enrollment in advanced tax courses remained stable, with steady percentages of students enrolled in Partnership Tax, Corporation Tax, and Business Entities Tax.
But there is bad news. Enrollment in advanced tax courses has declined due to shrinking student populations, with mean enrollments dropping in Corporation Tax and Business Entities Tax. Percentage-wise, Federal Tax enrollment fell significantly, from 24% of second and third-year JD students to 18%, with mean enrollments dropping from 89 to 56 students. This decline risks diminishing general familiarity with tax law and jeopardizing future advanced course offerings
GENDERING THE NEW INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON CYBERCRIMES AND NEW NORMS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
Get PDFThe trifecta of the Digital Global Compact (2024), the UN General Assembly Resolution on AI for Sustainable Development (2024) and the new Cyber Crime Convention (2025) come at a time of what seems to be an inexorable march of new technology. It is also at a time of transborder disruption caused by data breaches and cyber threats, that binding international norms can respond to global challenge. However, it must be emphasized that digital violence, developer bias, and data bias are not new phenomena, they have existed since the origins of the internet. Data that is used to train machine-learning algorithms have encoded inequities and reproduced historical patterns of discrimination, causing the algorithm to perpetuate inequitable treatment. These new and evolving historic normative frameworks are struggling to keep pace with the breakneck pace of technological development and the equally rapid pace of gendered forms of technology-facilitated discrimination and violence. This Article critically examines the role of gender in these burgeoning frameworks as pivotal elements in a rapidly changing digital ecosystem. While the current global normative foci overlook important aspects of gender equality, they also elide the rise of ChatGPT and other Generative AI and their impact on gender. In the final analysis, the primacy of gender equal participation in digital and cybersecurity governance should be a pillar of the new global digital order
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, Susan Godfrey LLP v. Executive Office of the President, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Docket No. 1:25-cv-01107-LLA)
Get PDFDemocratic Lawyering: Upending the Hidden Curriculum to Prepare New Lawyers for a New World
Get PDFMultiple heightening crises reveal the deficiencies and contradictions of legal education, in particular the values it imparts. Perpetuating myths about U.S. democracy and rule of law, the enduring formalist, liberal legalist cast of law school is increasingly at odds with students’ lived experiences. As liberal democracy and the rule of law falter, no longer is relying on the “hidden curriculum” or the historically nebulous and mythical narratives of the law and our legal system sufficient to prepare tomorrow’s lawyers for the challenges faced by our profession. Instead, with a boost from ABA Standard 303, this article draws on the tradition of democratic lawyering as a well from which to continue to propagate an approach to professional-identity development. This approach— democratic lawyering—makes explicit its orientation: training legal professionals rooted in and committed to multiracial democracy. Only by clearly and intentionally recentering the project of legal education to embrace and spring from this tradition can the legal profession meet the challenges ahead
What\u27s Important to Write About? A Century of Washington Law Review Topics
Get PDFThis Article examines the topics of all lead articles in Washington Law Review during its past ninety-eight years of publication. The analysis illustrates the changing interests of legal academics, student editors, and the working lawyers and judges who have read and used the articles over a century. For its first fifty years, the journal focused on general topics of interest to practitioners, Washington law matters, business and tax law, and government regulation. Other topics, such as legal and judicial system reform, constitutional law, and comparative and international law, were present in modest numbers. In its second half century, Washington Law Review’s content reflected the conscious decision of the University of Washington School of Law’s leadership to make that institution a more national one and the decision of faculty and student editors to turn Washington Law Review into a nationally recognized publication. This yielded a stark reduction in the earlier focus on general law and Washington law articles of interest to legal practitioners. During the past half century, there was a marked increase in lead articles dealing with issues of social justice, the environment, Native American rights, constitutional law, and criminal law. This corresponds to the evolution of the student editors’ concerns as well as the interests of the law school’s legal academics and law professors from around the nation and the world who today publish in Washington Law Review’s pages
Breaking the Black Box: The Impact of the 2023 Changes to the Japanese Penal Code on Rape
Get PDFIn 2017, the Japanese penal code was amended to broaden protections for victims of sexual assault. However, pressure mounted for further protections after several decisions on cases involving rape shocked the nation in 2019. In 2023, the penal code was amended again including to raise the age of consent to 16 and broaden the definition of rape to include nonconsensual sexual acts. This comment examines the history of rape law in Japan, introduces challenges that victims of sexual assault face when trying to seek justice, and analyzes the first cases determined under the amended code. Finally, it looks to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany on how to improve access to justice for victims of sexual assault in Japan. Ultimately, Japanese courts appear to be recognizing previously unrecognized psychological factors that victims of sexual assault face. However, it is too early to tell whether the code changes alone will greatly improve how the rate of rapes that are reported and prosecuted
