Law Commons^™

Making Rules Vs Ruling, Ramsi Woodcock

Law Faculty Popular Media

In an effort to fight inflation, the Federal Open Market Committee raised interest rates to 20% over the course of 1980 and 1981, triggering a recession that threw more than 4 million Americans, many in well-paying manufacturing jobs, out of work.

As it continues to do today, the committee met in secret and explained its rate decisions in a handful of paragraphs.

None of the millions of Americans thrown out of work—or the many businesses driven to bankruptcy—sued the FOMC. No one argued that the FOMC’s power to disrupt the American economy was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority. No …

Antitrust Can't Tame Inequality, Let Alone Inflation, Ramsi Woodcock

Law Faculty Popular Media

The Biden administration’s plans to take antitrust action to head off inflation are splitting progressives, with some openly rejecting the notion that monopolies are to blame for surging prices and others arguing that even if the initiative fails to tame inflation, more antitrust enforcement can only be a good thing.

What both sides should be questioning is not whether applying antitrust to inflation is too much of a good thing, but whether antitrust is good for progressives at all. Because, as I explain in a recent paper, an inconvenient truth about competition is that it breeds inequality — something economists …

The Influence Of The Federalist Society On Judical Politics And Law In The United States, Peter S. K. Lynch

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

This dissertation examines the Federalist Society, which is a network of conservative and libertarian attorneys, judges, law professors, and law students. The organization was founded by law students at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School in 1982, and has, over the last four decades, come to play a central role in law and politics in the United States. Individuals affiliated with the Federalist Society influence the law through a variety of avenues.

Federalist Society-members advance the goals of the conservative legal movement in a variety of capacities—by writing amicus curiae briefs providing the …

Conceptualizing Attorney Motivation: A Study Of The Representatives For Parents And Children In The Child Welfare System, Shannon Moody

Theses and Dissertations--Social Work

Background. Attorneys who represent parents and children in dependency, neglect, and abuse (DNA) proceedings are key in influencing the outcomes of the cases they carry. These influences include the length of time a child spends in the custody of the state or the necessity for foster care, visitation with family members, length of time to reunification, and recommended services for the child and parents (Courtney & Hook, 2012; Goldman, 1993; Thornton & Gwin, 2012; Zinn & Peters, 2015). The American Bar Association’s analysis is that there are “four constants: high caseloads, low compensation, inadequate training, and lack of supervision” …

News Treatment Of The Supreme Court: Language Selection, Ideological Directions, And Public Support, Alexander Denison

Theses and Dissertations--Political Science

In an increasingly diverse media landscape, how much of the ideological trends seen in current news reporting affect coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court? This work examines two different aspects of the Court's activities, their decisions and the confirmation hearings of Court nominees, analyzing what factors, if any, lead to differences in coverage language. Finally, through the use of a survey experiment, I analyze whether these differences in language, in combination with positive symbolic imagery, affect attitudes toward the institution. This work provides a novel consideration of whether the Court is subject to the same ideological slant found in coverage …

Community-Oriented Policing: Building Trust And Collaborative Relationships With The Black Community, Tunice M. Cole

DSW Capstone Projects

Black people die at the hands of police at a disproportionate rate. In the United States, Black citizens are three times more likely to be killed by police than White citizens. This, along with other factors, has caused a lack of trust, legitimacy, and relationships between police and the Black community. Examining this problem from a socio-ecological and social constructivist perspective suggests that the solution encompasses the use of community feedback and experiences to build and develop a model of community-oriented policing that addresses the issues of the community being served.

Product one of this capstone was a systematic literature …

Toxic Public Goods, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Everybody loves public goods. After all, they are a perpetual utility machine. Obviously, we want as many of them as possible. But what if the consumption of a public good actually decreases net social welfare? I refer to this kind of public good as a "toxic public good." In this essay, I discuss three kinds of potential toxic public goods: trolling, pornography, and ideology, and I reflect on how we might make the production of toxic public goods more efficient.

How To Sell Nfts Without Really Trying, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Something is happening and we don’t know what it is. Suddenly last summer, the internet went nuts for “non-fungible tokens” or “NFTs.” In a matter of months, NFT sales swelled from a sleepy slough of the blockchain to a thundering cataract that shows no sign of slaking. Special NFTs sell for millions of dollars, and some are even securitized. It’s a big business that’s only getting bigger.

But no one seems to know why. Objectively, NFTs are useless, meaningless, and worthless. So why are people willing to pay millions of dollars for them, even begging for the opportunity? Maybe it …

Are Cryptopunks Copyrightable?, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Larva Labs’s CryptoPunks NFTs are iconic. Created in 2017, they were among the first NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. Four years later, they are among the most valuable, selling for anywhere from $200,000 to millions of dollars.

The CryptoPunks collection consists of 10,000 NFTs, each of which is associated with a unique CryptoPunks image. Everyone knows who owns each CryptoPunks NFT. The Ethereum blockchain provides indelible proof. But people disagree about who owns - and who should own - the copyright in the CryptoPunks images. Most CryptoPunks NFT owners believe they should own the copyright in the image associated with …

After Copyright: Pwning Nfts In A Clout Economy, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Copyright is a means to an end, not an end in itself. We created copyright because we wanted to encourage the creation and distribution of works of authorship, not because we wanted to enable copyright owners to control the use of the works they own. We stuck with copyright because it was the best tool we had, despite its flaws. Was copyright ever efficient? No. But marginal improvements matter.

Technology has changed the copyright calculus. Distribution of works of authorship gradually got cheaper and cheaper. And then the Internet made it free. But creation remained costly, even though technology helped …

The Language Of Power: An Investigation Of How The Macropolitics Of Education Policy Affects The Micropolitics Of Schooling English Learners, Catherine E. Vannatter

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

The population of English Learners (ELs) continues to increase across the United States, and these students persistently perform below their native English-speaking peers in measures of academic achievement. Federal government leaders passed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015, which modified how state and local educational agencies identify, instruct, assess, and reclassify ELs and revised what funding EL programming could receive. In this multiphase study, I investigated how the macropolitics of federal and state policy became enacted in the micropolitics of a mid-sized school district in Kentucky. Through an initial phase of document review followed by a mixed methods …

Facultas Marginem: Assessing Disability Data And Public Aau Universities’ Affirmative Action Plans For Systemic Barriers Facing Faculty With Disabilities, Joseph Carlton Barry

Theses and Dissertations--Education Sciences

This dissertation contributes to education equity scholarship produced by academics seeking to develop understandings of disability, Persons with Disabilities (PWD), and how both are situated amongst faculty in institutions of higher education. As such, this dissertation centers on a study of public US universities belonging to the Association of American Universities (AAU). This study looks for institutional level associations between respective rates by which college and university faculty with disabilities (FWD) are employed, certain aspects of disability policy drawn from each institution’s 2020 Affirmative Action Plans (AAP), and various other instances of empirical disability data (EDD).

While this study contributes …

The Real Monopoly Is In The Boardroom, Ramsi Woodcock

Law Faculty Popular Media

We have always thought of the problem of monopoly as a problem of size or of markets. We say that Facebook is a monopoly because it is too big, or because it is in the nature of networked markets to reward scale.

But what if the problem of monopoly were really a problem of firm governance?

We don’t hate monopolies in themselves; we hate them for what they do. They charge us higher prices or deliver us lower-quality products. They pay us less or make our jobs harder.

But what a monopolist does is determined not by its size …

"Reasonable Expectations," Takings Law Analysis And Administrative Decisions In Light Of Rith V. United States, C. Phillip Wheeler Jr.

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (Mtbe): A Certification Problem, Trevor Graves

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Pronsolino V. Nastri And Tmdls For Nonpoint Sources, Christina L. Casey

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Adverse Health Impacts Of Grandfathered Power Plants And The Clean Air Act: Time To Teach Old Power Plants New Technology, Rachel H. Cease

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

The Clear Skies Initiative: Changing The Climate Of Environmental Policy, Heather H. Bruser

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Green Versus Green: When The Economic Needs Of Minority Communities Clash With Environmental Justice Concerns, Rhoda J. Yen

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

A Twisted Mosaic: The Ninth Circuit's Piecemeal Approval Of Environmental Crime In Kasza V. Browner, Shannon Vibbert

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Boise Cascade Corp. V. State Of Oregon:Signaling The End Of Sovereign Immunity As A Shield For Environmental Regulation, Mark W. Starnes

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Lack Of Subject Matter Jurisdiction Or Political Deferral: An Analysis Of Bragg V. West Virginia Coal Association, Crystal Moore

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

The Revitalization Of Qui Tam Actions: The Statutory And Constitutional Significance Of The False Claims Act In Environmental Litigation, Katherine Zimmerer

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

The Dischargeability Of Environmental Claims In Bankruptcy: Resolution To Diametrically Opposed Goals, Jason V. Stitt

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

When Worlds Collide: Science And Policy At Odds In The Regulation Of Virginia's Private Forests, Michael J. Mortimer, Harry L. Haney Jr., Jonathan J. Spink

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

The Choice Of Law Issue For Corporate Successor Liability Under Cercla In North Shore Gas Company V. Salomon, Inc.: Another Opinion Sidesteps The Issue, Jay W. Warren

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Trash In The Courtroom: The Problem Of Solid Waste Control Ordinances After Huish Detergents, Inc. V. Warren County, Benjamin D. Allen

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Technological Trash: Should We Regulate The Disposal Of Cathode Ray Tubes In Waste Facilities?, Kenneth Clay Ratley

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Sunshine Patriot Or Cold War Casualty?: An Examination Of Wrongful Exposure Suits Brought By Nuclear Complex Employees, Christopher S. Turner

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

The Wto And The Environment: The Shrimp Case That Created A New World Order, Laura Yavitz

Journal of Natural Resources & Environmental Law

No abstract provided.