Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Constraint And Control, Patricia Ayres

Theses and Dissertations

I have long considered themes of the body. Drawing on my knowledge as a fashion designer, I bring materials and hardware from the fashion industry into my artwork transforming and rendering them non-functional. My sculptures relate to stories of isolation, separation, and confinement. The following pages will analyze how the United States penal system controls, constrains and restricts the body through physical and psychological wounds. Furthermore, they will examine how the Catholic Church controls people’s minds and behavior through a ritualistic belief system.

Shared Deliberations: Learning From The Voices Of Social Justice Lawyers On Their Aspirations, Challenges And Roles, Ian Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lawyers in the U.S. who attempt to advocate for social justice issues, often on behalf of those communities most targeted by government institutions and oppressive legal systems, have unique perspectives into the challenges of using the law to create transformative change. This thesis examines the voices of over a dozen attorneys fighting not only on behalf of their clients, but also wrestling with how to best use a set of legal tools not meant for dismantling systems of power. Listening to how these legal advocates navigate their roles inside a system of laws created to consolidate rather than distribute power …

Sexual Misconduct, Religion, And Culture, Alev Dudek

Alev Dudek

Putting Ethnography On The Witness Stand: Review Of Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters, Janet K. Keeler

The Qualitative Report

Lawyer, historian and author Steven Lubet’s Interrogating Ethnography: Why Evidence Matters puts several well-known urban ethnographies on the figurative witness stand and finds that some don’t hold up to legal (and journalistic) scrutiny. The author encourages social science researchers to employ fact-checking techniques to increase the veracity of their work. While Lubet praises social science researchers for their altruistic missions and painstaking data collection in the field he finds follow-up research often lacking. He recognizes that ethnographers do not want to be the adversaries of marginalized subjects but believes that more rigorous vetting of data is crucial to the survival …

Investment Treaties, Investor-State Dispute Settlement, And Inequality: How International Investment Treaties Exacerbate Domestic Disparities, Lise Johnson, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Over roughly the past four decades, government officials from around the world have been erecting a framework of economic governance with major – but under-appreciated – implications for intra-national inequality. The components of this framework are thousands of bilateral and multilateral treaties designed to protect international investment. In many jurisdictions, the treaties have been concluded without public awareness or scrutiny or even much discussion or analysis by government officials – including those officials responsible for negotiating the agreements(Poulsen 2015) – and without an adequate understanding of how these agreements could affect intra-national inequality. Long imperceptible, the size and power of …

College Access For Undocumented Students And Law, Jessica C. Enyioha

Educational Considerations

There are over 32 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and of this population, over 1.5 million are children (Palmer & Davidson, 2011). These children grow up in the US, achieve primary and secondary education, and when they are ready to pursue postsecondary education, it becomes harder for them to achieve. In this paper, undocumented students’ access to postsecondary education in the US is examined: laws that affect their access to postsecondary education, previous cases on access to education for undocumented students, and the difficulties undocumented students often encounter when pursuing postsecondary education are discussed and analyzed. Best practices …

Governments' Adoption Of Native Cryptocurrency: A Case Study Of Iran, Russia, And Venezuela, Rose Mahdavieh

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The emergence of digital currency is becoming prevalent in the age of globalization – specifically, cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain are two recently discovered concepts currently being explored by researchers and developers. Cryptocurrency is a subset of digital currency that encompasses revolutionary technology, shifting political and economic spheres in nation-states. Certain governments are more prone to the adoption of cryptocurrencies and three comparative case study countries, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, have shared attributes that result in adoption. Observed factors that result in the adoption of cryptocurrencies include corruption, GDP level, economic volatility, and Western sanctions. These factors will be applied in …

Harmless Constitutional Error: How A Minor Doctrine Meant To Improve Judicial Efficiency Is Eroding America's Founding Ideals, Ross C. Reggio

CMC Senior Theses

The United States Constitution had been in existence for almost two hundred years before the Supreme Court decided that some violations of constitutional rights may be too insignificant to warrant remedial action. Known as "harmless error," this statutory doctrine allows a court to affirm a conviction when a mere technicality or minor defect did not affect the defendant's substantial rights. The doctrine aims to promote judicial efficiency and judgment finality. The Court first applied harmless error to constitutional violations by shifting the statutory test away from the error's effect on substantial rights to its impact on the jury's verdict. Over …

S02, E02: Eviction Part 2 – The Longer Take, Nia Rodgers, Katheryn Howell, Benjamin Teresa, Donna Coghill

Civil Discourse Podcast

This podcast is a continuation of the podcast Eviction Part 1. It discusses cases of eviction, how the instability of housing impacts individuals and neighborhoods, section eight and how eviction is just the latest form of dispossession of people. It looks at neighborhoods in Richmond that have seen instability in some form over the last 100 years.

Central California's Juvenile/Dependency And Criminal Courts' Treatment Of Parent-Child Contact, Cheryl Oslinker Spano

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Parties to a legal action of child abuse can be prosecuted criminally as well as charged with allegations within the jurisdiction of juvenile/dependency court. This can lead to seemingly conflicting goals regarding contact and visitation between the two parties (victim and defendant; child and parent). In essence, restraining orders or visitation orders from one court can contradict the case goals of another court. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to (a) determine if there is a pattern of inconsistent goals in cases of concurrent jurisdictional child-abuse cases, (b) evaluate the effect of conflicting court orders on each jurisdiction's …

Sexual Mutilation Of Muslim Girls, Today In The United States, Robert Brannon

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Who Runs The World: The Impact Of The Gender Of Clerks On The Legal Profession, Taylor Bernstein

Honors Theses

This paper investigates the role of gender on law clerks from the federal appellate clerks. There has been significant scholarship on the importance of the gender of judges and on the role and influence of law clerks; however, to this date there has been no analysis of how the gender of law clerks may or may not influence the clerkship experience. This honors thesis seeks to address that question and shed light on important aspects of the federal judiciary and the legal profession. I have approached this inquiry through descriptive and qualitative analysis, focusing on law clerks from this millennium. …

Law Students' Perspectives On Interdisciplinary Education: A Qualitative Study, Kellie Lockemer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this study was to explore law school students’ perspectives on interdisciplinary social work education. For this qualitative study, a purposive sample of current law students (n = 11) were invited to participate in a survey to give their perspectives on their current education and thoughts on interdisciplinary education. The results showed that, although the clinic work was helpful, most law students did not think traditional law classes helped prepare them for client interactions. The students also expressed an openness and desire for more trainings on client interactions. This study’s findings suggest a need for interdisciplinary trainings to …