Law Commons^™

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Media Coverage Of The Golden State Killer, Lasherica Thornton

Honors Theses

This thesis focused on the media’s extensive coverage of serial killers and, thus, how it could propel them to a state of fame. It discusses that no matter a serial killer’s circumstance, the media typically finds a story. For example, a serial killer can be on a rampage or can be dormant, but in subsequent stories, the media will center a story around the killer’s first and/or recent crimes, his identity, or his possible next move. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times coverage of the Golden State Killer frames the analysis of this manuscript. The purpose was to …

Community-Based Research Methods To Inform Public Health Practice And Policy: The Case Of Lead In The Mississippi Delta, Mary Alexandra Fratesi

Honors Theses

Environmental health issues are complex and require interdisciplinary and community engagement approaches to better understand them and inform policy. As one example, lead exposure has a number of dangerous neurological effects, including developmental delays and learning deficits. Potential lead exposure through drinking water and paint are areas of concern. In a 2018 document, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that up to 20% of lead exposure comes from drinking water alone. By using a type of engagement research called community-based research (CBR), this project began to address this major public health issue. CBR can be used to connect residents, their …

Social Class And Elementary Education: The Elementary Education Act Of 1870, Cameron Lowry

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

Deference To Deference: Examining The Relationship Between The Courts And The Political Branches Through Judicial Deference And The Chevron Doctrine, Christopher Yao

Honors Theses

Judicial review of agency rulemaking sits atop a nexus between all three branches of American government, the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. Chevron v. NRDC (1984), a landmark case in administrative law, and its resulting doctrine of strong judicial deference to agencies in their interpretations of statute, are paradoxical in their creation. Although Chevron was decided at the height of Reagan-era deregulation, it greatly enhanced the power of administrative agencies, allowing them to reinterpret the meaning of their statutory directives as needed to justify changes to regulations with less scrutiny from the courts. It is only in recent years …

The New York City Watershed: Improving Relations Using Environmental Policy, Colby Richardson

Honors Theses

From 1837 until the early 1970s, New York City constructed a total of 19 reservoirs in the Catskill/Delaware region to meet growing demand for clean drinking water. This historically strained relationship between upstate and New York City officials due to involuntary land acquisition has positively progressed since reservoir construction. However, as New York City has utilized regulations and additional land acquisition to avoid billions of dollars in water filtration expenditures, tensions have again risen. Through interviews with watershed and state officials, this research study has found a more cooperative and trusting relationship can be built with more targeted land acquisition, …

Impact Of 2001 - 2016 Supreme Court Establishment Clause Cases, Nicole Cumming

Honors Theses

This study will look at United States Supreme Court Establishment Clause cases from 2001-2016. During those 16 years, the Court decided 1,276 cases. Only 10 of those cases dealt with the establishment clause.

At an absolute minimum, the Establishment Clause was intended to prohibit the federal government from declaring and financially supporting a national religion, which existed in many other countries at the time of America's founding. This idea has become vital to the values Americans hold dear. Throughout history, religious freedom and tolerance have been celebrated, and most of that is due to the Establishment Clause. However, there is …

Avoiding Deadlock: Proposed Solutions To Original Jurisdiction Divides, Nathan Hogan

Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

The Holy Trinity: Religion, Identity, And International Law In Egypt, Henry Owen Stonnington

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the contradiction between Egypt's international legal obligations to protect religious freedom and its state practice. Chapter 1 gives a brief history of the relationship between religious freedom and state authority in the Roman, Islamic, and Holy Roman Empires and the early formations of international legal protections of freedom of religion in the wake of the Thirty Years War and then WWI centuries later. Chapter 2 looks at the formation and content of the current international standards of religious freedom, focusing on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political …

Child Sexploitation: A Study Of Machismo And The Commercial Sexual Exploitation Of Children In Latin America, Courtney M. Cone

Honors Theses

This thesis attempts to explore how the inextricable relationship between machismo and poverty connects to the commercial sexual exploitation of children in Latin America through predatory behaviors in order to provide insight to anti-trafficking campaigns. The overt Latin American culture of machismo contributes to the discrimination of women and children, enhancing their inherent dependency on men for economic survival. The inevitable pattern of dependency on patriarchal figures out of vulnerability to societal constructions is evident in economic, political and social structures. The pervasiveness of dependency is seen through patterns of violence against women, patterns of child abuse, and patterns of …

Is It A Dragon? No, It's A Salamander. The Supreme Court's Effort To Slay The Partisan Gerrymander, Tim Harris

Honors Theses

The Supreme Court sits on the precipice of undertaking major action to limit the strength and scope of partisan gerrymandering. The Court has never struck down a partisan gerrymander. Although the Court appears to possess the authority to invalidate an unconstitutionally discriminatory districting plan, it has never decided on what indicates unconstitutional discrimination in districting. It has never settled on a workable standard to judge whether or not a specific partisan gerrymander is unconstitutional. In November 2016, a lower court in Wisconsin struck down a partisan gerrymander and put forward what it claims is a workable standard to judge the …

Keeping Gideon's Promise: An Evaluation Of Indigent Defense In The State Of Mississippi, Andie Beth Netherland

Honors Theses

The United States Constitution awards its citizens rights that many other countries do not. One such right is the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial along with the assistance of counsel. Since the Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright, the responsibility of providing effective counsel has been pushed on each state. States throughout the nation have fragmented systems of indigent defense that fail to meet their responsibility, and thus many citizens have been denied their Sixth Amendment rights. For many decades, this denial of a constitutional right has been a topic of discussion. Some states have taken steps to …