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Document Automation - Final Presentation
No full textDocument Automation course introduces students to the transformative world of document automation and assembly, a tool that amplifies attorneys\u27 efficiency and precision. Students in this course gain hands-on experience creating automated documents, interviews, and intake forms on topics such as eviction, debt collection, domestic/family law, and expungement
How Generative AI Can be Used to Improve the Legal Field
No full textThe Legal Technology Competency Training course is a self-paced course where students have the opportunity to gain advanced knowledge in the software skills needed by legal practitioners, including word processing, visual communication, cloud computing, document automation, data analytics, and project management
Religious Freedom and Diversity Missions: Insights from Jesuit Law Deans
No full textThis Article is a transcript of a panel moderated by Anthony E. Varona, Dean of Seattle University School of Law. During the panel, Jesuit and religious law school deans discussed what law schools with religious missions have to add to the conversation around SFFA and the continuing role of affirmative action in higher education
THE MISGUIDED USE OF THE HARVARD/UNC RULING TO THWART LAW FIRM AND OTHER PRIVATE EMPLOYER DEI EFFORTS
No full textThis article explores the Harvard/UNC ruling and what, in the author’s view, is the misguided efforts by certain political and well-financed private actors to use that ruling to justify the eradication of private employers and law firm DEI efforts. It is the author’s firm belief that because the Supreme Court’s holding is limited to an analysis of the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause (limited to state actors) and Title VI (covering private actions receiving federal funding), that ruling should not be used by courts to quash DEI programs designed to level the employment playing field for minorities, women and other protected classes in accordance with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and EEOC regulations. On the contrary, where such DEI programs seek to remedy historical discrimination at a particular company, provide mandatory DEI training to personnel, or seek to afford opportunities based on race-neutral, socioeconomic factors such as underrepresentation or economic disadvantage, such DEI programs should be deemed in full compliance with existing law and can and should withstand judicial scrutiny.https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lawjournalonline/1126/thumbnail.jp
Legal Asynchrony: Constitutional “Bridges” Inverting Elemental U.S. Technology
No full textThe 2022 Biden Inflation Reduction Act (“IRA”) and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (“IIJA”), together providing for an unprecedented $1.7 trillion in spending, were enacted to construct a sustainable legal U.S. exit ramp from what the Secretary-General of the United Nations recently described as a “highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.” This Article analyzes a critical legal missing link in these Acts that is now causing the U.S. economy to do the opposite of its intended climate change mitigation, given: • A necessary eight-fold increase in current renewable electric power, requiring adding the entire amount of existing renewable power again every eighteen months; • A shortage of rare-earth and critical minerals now required in quantities ten-to-fifteen times greater to produce one unit of renewable electricity compared to current power; and • How the federal IRA plan is being legally blocked by hundreds of cities in thirty-one states,
notwithstanding the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. The Supreme Court in 2022 announced its new “major questions doctrine” in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency and applied it to limit presidential discretion regarding matters of electric power technology and climate change. States and cities are now deploying their constitutional authority, supported by Supreme Court decisions, to block a sustainable transition. The final two Sections of this Article design an alternative sustainable legal “bridge” within existing U.S. law that does not require any congressional action and that is immediately implementable at lower cost than business-as-usual. This decentralized legal bridge also features more efficient use of energy and can be implemented immediately by local governments, state governments, and the federal government. This legal bridge can span the widening gap between these new laws’ asynchronous and rapidly increasing electric demand compared to available interconnected zero-carbon renewable power supply until these two become re-synchronized. This legal bridge sustainably operates without worsening climate change
Partisanship Creep
No full textIt was once well settled and uncontroversial—reflected in legislative enactments, Executive Branch practice, judicial doctrine, and the broader constitutional culture—that the Constitution imposed limits on government partisanship. This principle was one instantiation of a broader set of rule of law principles: that law is not merely an instrument of political power; that government resources should not be used to further partisan interests, or to damage partisan adversaries.
For at least a century, each branch of the federal government has participated in the development and articulation of this nonpartisanship principle. In the legislative realm, federal statutes beginning with the 1883 Pendleton Act have dramatically limited the role of partisanship in federal employment decisions. Since 1939, the Hatch Act has reflected a related constitutional principle: just as most federal workers should not be selected or terminated on the basis of partisanship, neither should they be permitted to use their positions, once attained, for partisan pursuits. Executive Branch law and practice have long reflected a similar set of principles in the employment realm and beyond. The Supreme Court has also enforced a nonpartisanship principle across a range of cases, including the political patronage cases, in which the Court has announced and elaborated a constitutional requirement that most local government hiring, firing, and other employment decisions be made independent of partisanship.
But these settled understandings, across institutions and bodies of law and practice, have come under attack in recent years. Over the course of his term in office, President Donald Trump grew increasingly willing to challenge nonpartisanship principles directly, culminating in his issuance of an executive order that would have given him the authority to reclassify large swaths of the federal workforce as outside of the civil service—an effort he has pledged to revive if given the chance. In perhaps less obvious ways, the nonpartisanship principle has been undermined by recent decisions of the Roberts Court. Across a range of cases—involving gerrymandering, public corruption, campaign finance, and manipulation or abuse of the political process—the Court has begun to evince a degree of sympathy for partisan political motives, either holding or at least suggesting that the Court is limited in its ability to prevent government officials from pursuing partisan ends. At the same time, the Court has increasingly emphasized the importance of presidential control over Executive Branch actors, a growing body of law that may represent yet another threat to long-standing principles of government nonpartisanship.
Upending the long-standing constitutional settlement in favor of nonpartisanship could have dramatic consequences for both constitutional theory and constitutional practice—and could radically change the face of American governance
Minding the MAID Gap: Issues in Expansion of Medical Aid in Dying to Sole Underlying Conditions of Mental Illness in U.S. States
No full textPowerless Beings: Solitary Confinement of Humans and Nonhumans in America
No full textEvery day, thousands of humans and millions of nonhumans endure solitary confinement. Human prisoners held this way are confined for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day for weeks, months, or even years on end in cells the size of a parking space. For these humans, the experience is tortuous. Captive animals held in solitary confinement similarly spend much of their lives locked into tiny spaces, isolated, and deprived of the types of interactions and environment essential to their wellbeing. And, like humans, they are driven mad. In human and nonhuman settings, the agony of solitary is chillingly alike and harmful. And, in neither setting is it justifiable or necessary.This Article uses a comparative format to examine the moral, penological and scientific shortcomings of solitary confinement across species. Part I describes how solitary confinement is used in human and nonhuman settings and shows the deep wounds that it inflicts in both. Part II examines why the legal structures under which solitary confinement is imposed (on humans and nonhumans) offer inadequate protections from its depredations. Part III argues that incarcerated beings have no legal protections because they are powerless and invisible. In Part IV, the authors write individually. The author with expertise in prison law (Mushlin) describes how solitary confinement would end in penal facilities if prisoners were empowered and their rights protected. Next, the author with expertise in animal law (Cassuto) explains why solitary confinement for animals in zoos, aquariums and laboratories should and could be abolished. The authors conclude with a call to empower creatures subjected to solitary confinement. If all vulnerable beings are adequately protected, the unnecessary suffering inflicted by solitary confinement will finally end