Many of the performers and composers in legacy Black music have never been compensated for their cultural production, despite longstanding acceptance of their formative influence on the music industry. Copyright law doctrine includes formalities that continue to divest what is due to Black artists, widening the racial justice gap in the entertainment industry.

A Yale Law School graduate and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Kevin J. Greene is changing the industry and the legal academy on the issue of racial justice in intellectual property. He is the John J. Schumacher Chair and Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. Prof. Greene has represented artists like George Clinton, Spike Lee, Harry Connick Jr., Bobby Brown and rap group Public Enemy. He has been featured in the Netflix show "Explained" and quoted by media outlets such as Bloomberg, Wired, The Daily Beast and Rolling Stone magazine.

In this episode, Prof. Greene tells us about "The New Copyright Manifesto," a proposal to overturn outdated and unjust practices and appeal to the U.S. Copyright Office to advocate for reparations. He outlines how copyright registrations and copyright terminations divest Black cultural production and explains why this is not just an American copyright law problem, but a global one.

In 2020, the police-involved killings of Manuel Ellis in Tacoma and George Floyd in Minneapolis were two cases among many incidents across the nation which led to the recent establishment of the Office of Independent Investigations (OII) earlier this summer in Olympia. Signed into law by Governor Inslee, the OII is a civilian-led agency that conducts investigations into police-involved incidents of serious harm or death. The agency's creation offers an opportunity to improve public faith in police accountability.

In June 2022, Roger Rogoff became director of the new OII. Rogoff's career in the criminal justice system spans 27 years, including roles as judge in King County Superior Court as well as in the juvenile courts, and as both prosecuting and criminal defense attorney. In addition to serving as assistant U.S. attorney, Rogoff most recently served as legal counsel for Microsoft on matters of data privacy and public safety. As Gov. Inslee stated, "Roger's experiences make him exceptionally suited to lead an agency, independent of law enforcement or the governor's office, to investigate cases."

In this episode, Rogoff details how the OII is working thoughtfully and efficiently to fulfill its mission. He explains the office's priorities for its first six months, law enforcement's response to the agency's creation, the way the OII will work with other parties, employment prospects, and how OII roles like family liaisons and community liaisons address the need for transparency around investigations of police use of force.

Sexual assault affects many Washingtonians, but justice does not always come to survivors and their families. In many cases these violent felonies and sexually motivated offenses become cold cases.

As a participant in the National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), Washington's Office of the Attorney General received multiple grants ꟷ totaling $5.5 million ꟷ from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to address the state's rape kit backlog languishing in the evidence rooms of local agencies, law enforcement's need for trauma-informed training and assistance in identifying and contacting offenders who owe DNA samples as part of their sentence. In 2020, the Office worked with the DOJ to re-purpose nearly $300K to create sub-grants for forensic genetic genealogy testing through which cold cases constituting violent felonies and have been solved. The goal is to test every backlogged rape kit in the state by the end of 2022.

Washington's Attorney General Bob Ferguson serves the people and state of Washington as the 18th attorney general. He was first elected in 2012 and reelected in 2016 and 2020. Prior to serving as attorney general, Ferguson was a member of the King County Council. As the state's chief legal officer, he directs attorneys and professional staff in 27 divisions that provide legal services to more than 230 state agencies, boards and commissions.

The Seattle Mariners have a three-pronged mission: to win championships, create unforgettable experiences for fans, guests and employees, and to serve their communities. In the first episode of Season Five, we take you out to the proverbial ball game for a discussion with Mariners' Executive Vice President/General Counsel Fred Rivera about how the Mariners are delivering on their mission. We hear about the Mariners' new lease at T-Mobile Park, the $80M in the ballpark's capital improvements, and the Club's community programs.

Fred Rivera visited UW Law in the spring as a special guest of our Entertainment Law Association. He shared with students, and now shares with us, how he pivoted to sports law after time as a civil rights lawyer for the Department of Justice and 18 years at Perkins Coie, where he was Managing Partner of the Seattle office.

In 2017, Rivera became the Executive Vice President, Corporate Secretary and General Counsel for the Seattle Mariners. He oversees the club's legal and government affairs department, leads new business initiatives relating to real estate development, and manages the club's external functions like community relations and the Mariners Care Foundation.

Copyright law is written in such a way that suggests copyright is a grant of rights to authors, rewarding them with the commercial advantages of producing original work. However, upon closer examination, consumers who want to build on existing works of authorship also have rights that are protected.

Pamela Samuelson is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California at Berkeley. She is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyber law and information policy. She recently visited UW Law to give the 2022 Toni Rembe lecture on copyright law and consumer protection.

In this final episode of Season Four, Professor Samuelson, also the co-founder and chair of the Authors Alliance, shares how the primary goal of copyright law is to induce people to write and disseminate creative work so the public has access to knowledge. Many people might be surprised that rewards to the author is actually a secondary consideration in the overall goal of copyright law.

Deep systemic issues leading to a culture of punishment in our criminal justice system often seal the fates of children who end up incarcerated. The case of Kimonti Carter, a model prisoner who grew up as a "baby gangster" in the redlined, 1990s neighborhoods of Tacoma, Washington, is a prototype for many others like him. Sentenced two months after his eighteenth birthday to a life without parole, Mr. Carter has transformed inmates' lives through education and his leadership of the Black Prisoners' Caucus. Though he is a counternarrative to his fate, he was viewed as irredeemable and charged as a "super predator."

Dr. Gilda Sheppard, an award-winning filmmaker whose documentary "Since I Been Down" highlights the redemption story of Kimonti Carter and our need for deep systemic change, recently screened the film for UW Law's Public Interest Law Association. Gilda is a member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College's Tacoma Program. She has taught sociology classes in Washington state prisons for over a decade.

In this episode, Dr. Sheppard tells us how "Since I Been Down" creates much-needed discussion around systemic change for children and a call to revisit state sentencing laws. Dr. Sheppard also appeals to the hope and healing which comes with prison-initiated programs.

Public interest attorneys are charged with advancing justice for all, but according to Washington Supreme Court Justice G. Helen Whitener, the practice of public interest law has lost its focus since the 1960s. Solving the intersecting inequities that face underrepresented communities requires that we reckon with our history and commit to creating new solutions together.

Justice Whitener was appointed by Governor Inslee to the Washington State Supreme Court in April 2020 and retained by voters in November 2020. Honored by the American Bar Association with the 2022 Stonewall Award, Justice Whitener uses her lived experiences as a multiple minority to continually raise awareness of matters of race, justice and equity and act as a voice for marginalized communities. In April 2022, Justice G. Helen Whitener gave opening remarks at UW Law's Public Interest Law Association gala in support of the theme, "Personal Identity in Public Interest Law: How Me Becomes We."

In this episode, Justice Whitener shares her poetry and wisdom on the importance of transcending the biases and stereotypes that come with labels, unlocking our individual and collective potential by creating action plans for our dreams, and developing a new movement to solve old problems, so we can move forward as a society.

On March 19, 2022, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission held a second vote regarding a proposed spring bear hunting season, this time deciding 5-4 against the seasonal hunt, after a 4-4 vote in November 2021. Before the March vote, Washington's spring bear hunt was just one of eight in the nation allowed by state environmental agencies. The controversial vote has brought concerns to the surface by both hunters and conservationists.

Claire Davis, managing partner of Animal & Earth Advocates and president of Washington Wildlife First, recently spoke with UW Law students as part of the school's Social Justice Tuesday series. A former journalist turned attorney, Claire brings public interest litigation on behalf of animals and wildlife.

In this episode, Claire Davis explains why the spring bear hunt is a symbolic issue for wildlife policy reform, particularly in that it does not reflect the values and ethics of most of the 7.7 million residents of Washington state, less than 3 percent of whom hunts overall.

The U.S. Supreme Court has endorsed companies' ability to block class actions through mandatory individual arbitration clauses. A recent policy-based critique balances the purely legal, doctrinal perspective of class actions by examining issues through the lens of economics. Depending on circumstances surrounding the interests of consumers, investors and employees, some class actions maximize social welfare whereas others reduce it and actually promote harmful business practices.

Dr. Albert H. Choi, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law, co-authored an update on the subject by addressing class action lawsuits from an economics perspective. A recent speaker in UW Law's 1L Perspectives course, Dr. Choi's research is published in many top economics and law journals. He is the current co-editor of the American Law and Economics Review.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Choi about why we should critique class action waivers on a case-by-case basis. He tells us about new unresolved issues, including those which surfaced during the pandemic, and identifies future challenges for legal scholarship.

As the result of a broad societal shift recognizing the injuries of violence, it's been said that we live in an "age of trauma." Emotional trauma has fueled legal and policy social justice reforms in the three key social justice movements of our time: #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and climate change. However, trauma-centered advocacy and social justice can have negative implications.

Noa Ben-Asher, LLB, LLM, JSD, has taught torts; family law; and gender, sexuality and the law at Pace University in New York since 2009. They hold the 2021-2023 James D. Hopkins Professorship, which recognizes a faculty member for outstanding scholarship and teaching.

In this episode, Professor Ben-Asher warns that, even as we have advanced our understanding of trauma as a modern characteristic of our times, we are in danger of overlooking structural solutions to broader social injustice. They suggest that litigators and laymen alike should take caution in using trauma as the framework for justice as it perpetuates wounded identities and limits our legal and social imagination.