Digital Commons Network^™

Are Embryos Or Fetuses Brain Dead? Implications For The Abortion Debate, Greer Donley

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Most state abortion definitions exclude the removal of a dead fetus, attempting to distinguish miscarriage and abortion care. But what does “dead” mean at the earliest stages of potential life? There is a consensus at the end of life that death not only encompasses the cessation of cardiac activity, but also brain death. This symposium essay considers whether life can exist before brain life begins and how that might impact the abortion debate. The most rudimentary brain waves cannot be detected in an embryo before roughly the eighth week of pregnancy; the capacity for feeling and consciousness begin much later. …

Centralizing Pharmaceutical Innovation, Sapna Kumar

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The United States has a mostly decentralized system for promoting new medicine development. By offering patents and regulatory exclusivities, the government incentivizes pharmaceutical companies to invent and bring to market new medicines. Although this development model offers benefits for promoting innovation, it comes at a cost: Market-based incentives lead companies to prioritize research and development (“R&D”) for medicines that offer a safe path to profitability, as opposed to those that offer the greatest social benefit. In particular, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in R&D for critically-needed antibiotics and infectious disease vaccines—both of which are difficult to develop and provide …

Legal Endearment: An Unmarked Barrier To Transforming Policing, Public Safety, And Security, Emmanuel Mauleón

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The problems of racialized policing have come into renewed focus over the past decade. The advent of viral bystander videos has not only forced a popular confrontation with moments of both routine and extraordinary policing violence but also sparked protests, uprisings, and grassroots movements to challenge current practices in policing and determine what must be done to transform it. And yet, even after the mobilization of one of the largest racial justice movements in American history, transformative change remains elusive. This Article offers an answer to this puzzle by foregrounding White people’s collective relationship with policing and describing how this …

The Next Generation, Jeremiah Chin

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What would the law look like if we let children remake it? Laws govern, classify, and circumscribe children who inherit the law and its consequences. Discourses of power invoke children as rhetorical strategies to gain political favor or obviate a position—yet children are uncritically excluded from participating in the systems that control them. Children are subjected to the laws and objects of legislation, but denied the rights, autonomy, or authority to participate in the making of law and policy. Even the conceptualization of the constitutional rights of children is treated as an assumption, ill-defined and under theorized by traditional legal …

Light And Dark Mode: A Comparison Between Android And Ios App Ui Modes And Interviews With App Designers And Developers, Sarah Andrew, Chelsea Bishop, Garreth W. Tigwell

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Mobile app light and dark modes offer improved usability within different contexts (e.g., dark mode for easier night reading). Yet, little research has investigated the prevalence of light and dark modes across platforms, the intricacies of UI color changes, and challenges in the design and development process. Our investigation focused on comparing light and dark mode designs. We carried out a manual inspection of 120 popular Android and iOS apps to find that only 55\% (Android) and 48\% (iOS) of the apps included any modes. We also found significant variability in how many UI elements changed between modes. We interviewed …

Race, Racial Bias, And Imputed Liability Murder, Perry Moriearty, Kat Albrecht, Caitlin Glass

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Even within the sordid annals of American crime and punishment, the doctrines of felony murder and accomplice liability murder stand out. Because they allow states to impose their harshest punishments on defendants who never intended, anticipated, or even caused death, legal scholars have long questioned their legitimacy. What surprisingly few scholars have addressed, however, is who bears the brunt.

This Article is one of the first to explore the racialized impact of the two most controversial and ubiquitous forms of what we call “imputed liability murder.” An analysis of ten years of murder prosecutions in the state of Minnesota reveals …

Research Access To Social Media Data: Lessons From Clinical Trial Data Sharing, Christopher J. Morten, Gabriel Nicholas, Salomé Vilgoen

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For years, social media companies have sparred with lawmakers over how much independent access to platform data they should provide researchers. Sharing data with researchers allows the public to better understand the risks and harms associated with social media, including areas such as misinformation, child safety, and political polarization. Yet researcher access is controversial. Privacy advocates and companies raise the potential privacy threats of researchers using such data irresponsibly. In addition, social media companies raise concerns over trade secrecy: the data these companies hold and the algorithms powered by that data are secretive sources of competitive advantage. This Article shows …

Disability And The Ongoing Federalism Revolution, Karen M. Tani, Katie Eyer

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The Supreme Court’s “new federalism” revolution remains one of the most important developments in recent U.S. legal history. The Court revitalized “states’ rights” doctrines under the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments, rendering states partially or wholly immune from many types of federal litigation. Simultaneously, the Court retrenched the authority of national legislators—and aggrandized its own authority—by limiting what Congress may do under its Commerce Clause, Spending Clause, and Fourteenth Amendment powers. But one important facet of this “new federalism” revolution has gone unappreciated: the load-bearing role of earlier disability-related cases. In the 1970s and 1980s, this Feature shows, the Court used …

The Critical Role Of History After Dobbs, Serena Mayeri

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The Dobbs majority’s reliance on a flawed and impoverished account of “history and tradition” to deny fundamental freedoms today may tempt us to despair of appealing to the past as a source of constitutional rights or principles. But the problem with Dobbs is not its discussion of history per se; rather, it is how and for what purposes the Court looks to the past. History need not preserve archaic values; it can counsel against past errors and justify affirmative approaches to protecting rights and combating inequality. This essay explores critical roles for history in legal, constitutional, and political arguments about …

The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement And Transformative Change: Promise, Power And Solidarity, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

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In 2023 the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement marks its twenty-fifth anniversary. For many the Agreement projects a global image of a successfully concluded end to conflict. However, key aspects of the agreement remain under-enforced or simply undelivered: in particular, provisions related to significant and wide-ranging guarantees addressing human rights and equality of opportunity. As a result, socio-economic and cultural deficits persist, undermining the capacity to achieve a ‘positive peace’. In this article we address the question of how transformative the Agreement and associated reforms have been in addressing the root causes of the conflict and the structures that underpinned it. …

Platform Unions, Charlotte Garden

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How should we regulate social media platforms to prevent harmful treatment of users? Regulators, advocates, and scholars have grappled with this problem for years. Many proposed solutions, ranging from improving privacy disclosures, to promoting competition between platforms, to requiring platforms to pay users for their data, are at best incomplete.

This Article begins from the premise that platform problems are collective problems and proposes a collective solution: empowering users to organize platform unions. Much like labor unions give employees a say in in their working conditions even when they lack individual bargaining power, platform unions would facilitate collective bargaining over …

A Review On Machine Learning Methods For Customer Churn Prediction And Recommendations For Business Practitioners, Awais Manzoor, M. Atif Qureshi, Etain Kidney, Luca Longo

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Due to market deregulation and globalisation, competitive environments in various sectors continuously evolve, leading to increased customer churn. Effectively anticipating and mitigating customer churn is vital for businesses to retain their customer base and sustain business growth. This research scrutinizes 212 published articles from 2015 to 2023, delving into customer churn prediction using machine learning methods. Distinctive in its scope, this work covers key stages of churn prediction models comprehensively, contrary to published reviews, which focus on some aspects of churn prediction, such as model development, feature engineering and model evaluation using traditional machine learning-based evaluation metrics. The review emphasises …

"With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility": Improving Your Feedback And Hallmarks Of Effective Feedback, Randall Ryder

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Effective feedback can change a law student’s trajectory in law school and beyond. The feedback-centric nature of experiential learning courses allows law students to both develop their skills and personal lawyering style. However, many experiential instructors are from a different generation, with different expectations and communication styles than today’s law students. This article highlights hallmarks of effective feedback for the modern law school classroom. As the field of law continues to evolve, law schools will need to as well.

This article discusses four key hallmarks: (1) provide feedback in multiple formats,(2) help each student develop their personal style, (3) explain …

A Critical Race Theory Analysis Of Critical Race Theory Bans, Caroline Mala Corbin

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A majority of state legislatures have introduced bills prohibiting public schools from teaching certain "divisive concepts" attributed to critical race theory (CRT), with at least fifteen states successfully enacting them. This Article applies a critical race theory analysis to these critical race theory bans, finding that the bans embody white privilege and especially its companion, white fragility.

After providing a primer on critical race theory, Part I explains how the state bans profoundly misunderstand critical race theory, which focuses on how systems and institutions reproduce racial inequality. These bans, however, assume that racism is individual, intentional, and rare, and that …

"Trans Talk" And The First Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

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The rights of transgender youth and their families have increasingly come under attack. In addition to barring transgender youth from participation in sports teams, from accessing bathrooms that match their gender identity, and from receiving gender-affirming healthcare, states are increasingly restricting speech and expression related to transgender issues. Courts and scholars have begun addressing the First Amendment implications of some of these restrictions, including the removal of books related to transgender issues; restrictions upon teachers' classroom speech regarding such issues; school discipline imposed upon students whose social transition includes forms of gender expression that differ from their assigned sex at …

Assemblages And Actor Networks In The Borderlands - The Apposition Of Reproductive Rights Along The Mexican-American Border, Madeleine M. Plasencia

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In 1971, Sarah Weddington argued Roe v. Wade as a class action on behalf of pregnant women living in Texas, many of whom, including herself had to flee the State to obtain an abortion in Mexico. In 2021, Texas enacted S. B. 8, otherwise known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, which created a private cause of action for injunctive relief and statutory damages awards against any person assisting in and any physician accused of performing an abortion, thus reigniting the cross-border flows that historically have made Mexico a haven for runaway enslaved people and pregnant persons heading south to freedom. …

Politicizing Antisemitism Amidst Today's Educational Culture Wars, Lili Levi

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The traditional narrative of American Jewry emphasizes American exceptionalism with respect to antisemitism. But there have been clear signs of a resurgence of public antisemitism in the United States even before the massive rise in antisemitic expression and incidents associated with the Israel-Hamas war of fall 2023.

One of the notable aspects of the rise and normalization of antisemitic expression is the deployment of antisemitism as a political tool. For example, in addition to Democrats and Republicans accusing each other of complicity in antisemitism, both federal policy since the Trump era and state anti-antisemitism legislation have targeted campus antisemitism in …

An Analysis Of The Public Participation Processes Employed For An Urban Greenway Project, Maeve O'Connell

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The purpose of this study is to examine the public participation mechanisms employed for a proposed new infrastructure project. Public participation is a core characteristic of a contemporary democratic society as policy makers are increasingly encouraged to engage with citizens for learning and legitimacy. Participation is a loose concept with many forms and interpretations. This study explores the key characteristics of public participation formats, challenges to and the criteria for success. This analysis is then applied to the proposed local infrastructure consultation process. An additional survey is designed and its role in the public participation process is assessed. The processes …

Enhancing Inclusive Entrepreneurial Activity Through Community Engagement Led By Higher Education Institutions, Emma O'Brien, Thomas M. Cooney

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While supporting entrepreneurship through government intervention has become a global phenomenon, the OECD (2021) has identified that several communities (including women, youth, seniors, unemployed and immigrants) remain under-represented in terms of entrepreneurial activity. Inclusive entrepreneurship policies seek to enhance economic and social inclusion and emphasise the significant contribution that people from within these communities could make to local and regional development if appropriate support was offered. The purpose of this study is to examine how higher education institutions (HEIs) can co-create inclusive entrepreneurial training initiatives with local communities that support economic and social inclusion.

Prosecutorial Data Transparency And Data Justice, Perry Moriearty

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The U.S. criminal legal system is notoriously racialized. Though Black and Latinx people make up less than 30% of U.S. residents, they constitute more than 50% of the nearly two million people currently in U.S. prisons and jails. For decades, research has indicated that one group of decision-makers has had an outsized influence on these numbers: prosecutors. From whom to charge to what sentences to recommend, no actor plays a greater role in determining who goes to prison in this country. Highly subjective and lacking in formal guidance and accountability, prosecutorial decisions are especially vulnerable to racial bias. They are …

Workplace Implications For Female Leaders: Exploration Of Stereotype Threat Within Video Conferencing., Roisin Donnelly, Anthony Ryan

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A significant body of research has documented the effect to which stereotype threat can be triggered by both the physical environment and by the use of various technology media. However, there is a dearth of research exploring the relationship between stereotype threat, defined here as “the concrete, real-time threat of being judged and treated poorly in settings where a negative stereotype about one’s group applies” (Steele, Spencer & Aronson, 2002, p.385), and video conferencing software features - specifically virtual backgrounds. This literature review suggested that this feature might, in certain circumstances, negatively affect the performance of groups not stereotypically associated …

Writing With Ai: University Students’ Use Of Chatgpt, Nikola Crcek, Jakob Patekar

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Background: ChatGPT, a chatbot based on a large language model, captured global attention toward the end of 2022. With its potential to generate comprehensive texts of a variety of genres based on a string of straightforward prompts, it was soon perceived as a threat by many in various fields, including – and in particular – education. Schools across the world began banning its use as instructors started to receive suspiciously well-written essays and assignments from their students.

Aim: This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of use of ChatGPT among university students for written assignments, explore the ways students utilize …

Tech Supremacy: The New Arms Race Between China And The United States, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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In the brewing tech war between the United States and China, the quest for tech supremacy is in full force. Through enacting a series of laws and policies, China aims to reach its goal of tech supremacy. If China succeeds, U.S. corporations will face a daunting task in competing against Chinese products and services in core industries and in sectors where artificial intelligence and technological breakthroughs reign. This Article is the first to identify and analyze China’s 2022 Law on Science and Technology Progress, Personal Information Protection Law, Made in China 2025, National Intellectual Property Strategies, and digital currency e-CNY; …

Corporate Democracy And The Intermediary Voting Dilemma, Jill E. Fisch, Jeff Schwartz

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Corporate governance is changing. For the past two decades, the focus of shareholder voting and engagement was deconstructing impediments to shareholder power and increasing managerial accountability. The goal of these interventions was to increase firm value by reducing agency costs. Increasingly, however, environmental and social issues have risen to the fore. This new focus is arguably more about values than value. This Article is the first to argue that, because of this shift, institutional intermediaries—namely, pension and mutual fund managers—can no longer vote and engage on the affairs of their portfolio companies without seeking the input of the pension-plan participants …

Walking The Walk: Ex-Prisoners, Lived Experience, And The Delivery Of Restorative Justice, Allely Albert

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Although the role of prisoners and ex-prisoners has recently received significant attention in restorative justice research, the literature typically treats them as the ‘offending’ party within restorative justice processes. This article instead focuses on ex-prisoners as facilitators of restorative justice, highlighting their ability to lead such programmes. Using a case study from Northern Ireland, the article examines the way that experiences of incarceration have directly influenced practitioners’ skills and their ability to uphold restorative justice principles. It is contended that qualities developed and honed in the prison environment ultimately translate to unique characteristics that can improve the restorative process. As …

Promoting Corporate Diversity: The Uncertain Role Of Institutional Investors, Jill Fisch

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Two developments are having an impact on corporate decisions. One is the increased engagement by institutional intermediaries, and a shift in the focus of that engagement from corporate governance to environmental and social issues. The other is a heightened societal awareness of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues, particularly the importance of diversity in corporate leadership. This Article considers the intersection between the two. It describes how institutional investors have focused their attention on increasing diversity in corporate leadership, the potential motivations for that focus, and the impact of that focus, to date. It highlights the tensions that result from …

Perspectives On Practice: Building A Better Environment For All – An Interview With Jane Daly And Siobhán Bourke, Tanya Dean

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In this Perspectives on Practice interview, Tanya Dean speaks to SiobhánBourke and Jane Daly about their work with Irish Theatre Institute in supporting Irish theatre and fostering positive change in the industry. The discussion explores how the purpose of Irish Theatre Institute has evolved, and how it has adapted to and reflected the changes and challenges facing Irish theatre over the decades

Amazon's Pricing Paradox, Rory Van Loo, Nikita Aggarwal

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Antitrust scholars have widely debated the paradox of Amazon seemingly wielding monopoly power while charging low prices to consumers. A single company's behavior thereby helped spark a vibrant intellectual conversation as scholars debated why Amazon's prices were so low, whether enforcers should intervene, and, eventually, how the field of antitrust should be reformed. One of the main sources of agreement in these and other scholarly conversations has long been that Amazon charges low prices. This Article challenges that assumption by demonstrating that Amazon customers may pay significantly higher prices than is commonly understood due to strategies that do not necessarily …

Disentangling Sex Differences In Ptsd Risk Factors: A Systematic Overview And Multiple Mediation Analysis The The Aurora Study, Stephanie Haering, Antonia V. Seligowski, Sarah Linnstaedt, Vasiliki Michopoulos, Stacey L. House, Francesca Beaudoin, Xinming An, Thomas C. Neylan, Gari Clifford, Robert A. Swor

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No abstract provided.

“Social Workers By Day And Terrorists By Night?” Wounded Healers, Restorative Justice, And Ex-Prisoner Reentry, Allely Albert

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Common to many post-conflict societies, former political prisoners and combatants in Northern Ireland are often portrayed as security threats rather than as potential contributors to societal peacebuilding processes. This distrust limits their ability to contribute to the transitional landscape and additionally hinders desistance processes during their reentry from prison. Drawing from the work of Maruna, LeBel, and others on “wounded healers,” this article critically examines the restorative justice work of ex-prisoners who have become involved in leadership roles within community based restorative justice. It is argued that such practitioner work can help former combatants overcome many of the challenges typically …