Digital Commons Network^™

Can Nfl Players Be Punished For Kneeling - An Analysis Of The Banter Surrounding The Star-Spangled Banner, Jonathan G. Finck

Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal

This article explores the different punishments frequently used by the NFL to determine whether they can legally be applied to players who kneel during the anthem. Additionally, this article analyzes how the NFL's 2020 collective bargaining agreement can change to narrow its broad power while still allowing the league to punish reprehensible acts. Finally, this article recommends a way forward through the current anthem controversy.

Delay Of Game: Analyzing The Legality Of The Nba And Wnba Eligibility Rules And Their Effects On Top Amateur Basketball Players, Uriah Tagle

Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal

Because of the NBA and WNBA eligibility rules, men are prevented from playing professional basketball in the United States until they are at least nineteen years old and women are prevented until they are at least twenty-two years old. Since these eligibility rules were established pursuant to collective bargaining between the leagues and their respective players unions, it is unlikely that they can be successfully challenged under antitrust law. Consequently, for the time between high school graduation and professional eligibility, men and women can either play NCAA basketball or play professionally internationally. Men can also play in the NBA G-League. …

Why Are Universities Playing Russian Roulette With Their Students - The Ignored Legal And Ethical Duty, David E. Missirian

Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal

This paper examines why colleges and universities sacrifice a group of gifted individuals, student athletes, all for the sake of money and prestige. These universities pay little or no attention to the horrific fate which they are bestowing on their sporting participants. These students are a group who have been promised an elite university education all in return for simply playing the sport that the students enjoy. Yet, despite the blessings the universities purportedly bestow on these athletes, there is a significant price to be paid. The sports they love and for which they are recruited subjects the student athletes …

Ball V. City Of Lincoln, Nebraska, Sean Nm. Winebrenner, Leeann M. Lower

Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal

On March 7, 2015, Larry Ball was cited for trespassing by the Lincoln Police Department when passing out religious leaflets outside the Pinnacle Bank Arena. Ball brought action against the City of Lincoln, Nebraska along with Pinnacle Bank/Spectator Management Group ("SMG"), alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights. More specifically, he claimed SMG violated his constitutional rights by denying his exercise of free speech based upon the premise that public property is a nonpublic forum. The District Court was tasked with evaluating Pinnacle Bank Arena's Exterior Access and Use Policy to determine whether Ball's First Amendment rights were violated. …

Independent Sports & Entertainment, Llc V. Fegan, Nicholas R. Kehr

Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal

Independent Sports & Entertainment, LLC ("ISE") brought a claim against Daniel Fegan ("Fegan") for violating a non-compete clause in an asset purchase agreement in California state court. Fegan removed this action to federal court on the basis that the claim was completely preempted by the Labor Management Relations Act. The United States District Court for the Central District of California (the "Court") correctly concluded that the claim was not preempted by the Labor Management Relations Act, because the claim did not exist solely as a result of the National Basketball Association's ("NBA") Collective Bargaining Agreement ("CBA") nor was the claim …

Narciso Yepes And The Composers Of His Time, Belén Pérez Castillo

Soundboard Scholar

At his peak, Narciso Yepes was one of the most celebrated figures in the guitar world, as evidenced by the quantity and reach of his recordings. While he is well known as a proponent of the ten-string guitar with an innovative chromatic tuning, less attention has been focused on his activity as a commissioner of new works (many of them for the six-string guitar). Yet in this domain, Yepes was extremely productive, premiering works by such composers as Ascencio, Bacarisse, Balada, Maderna, Marco, Montsalvatge, Ohana, Palau, and Ruiz-Pipò, to name a few. Yepes's role as a collaborator varied from one …

Data As Likeness, Zahra Takhshid

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data collection practices pose an ongoing threat to consumers’ privacy. But plaintiffs have struggled to articulate privacy harms associated with data collection in a way that would give them standing to sue. This is a particularly pressing issue given the advances in generative AI and the unauthorized uses of individuals’ personal and biometric data.

This Article revisits the privacy tort of appropriation of likeness and argues that when data are conceptualized as likeness, this tort offers a unique opportunity to protect against the unauthorized collection and use of personal data. Grounding its argument in the historical …

#Dusomething! A Qualitative Exploratory Study To Identify Challenges And Opportunities For Improvement In Du's Response To Sexual Harassment And Assault, Alejandro Cerón, Amanda Cali, Briana Cox, Camille Cruz, Camryn Evans, Cyndal Groskopf, Ashley Joplin, Clayton Kempf, Kēhaulani Lagunero, Jayvyn Jakai Lewis, Aili Limstrom, Gray Messersmith, Cal Quayle, Yadira Quintero, Michael Sze, Aaron Toussaint, Sami Zepponi

Anthropology: Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The purpose of this course-based research project was to identify where DU has made progress in its response to sexual harassment, identifying challenges and opportunities for improvement, with the hope that the results will support the DU community’s efforts to prevent, address, and eradicate sexual harassment.

Childhood Discipline Disparities For African American And Latinx Students, Cierra Townsend

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

African American and Latinx students are disproportionality impacted by punitive discipline models including suspensions, detention, and expulsions. This disproportionality removes students from the education setting creating adverse social emotional, academic, and economic outcomes. Students who are suspended and expelled are more likely to have contact with the juvenile justice system and or to be pushed out of school into alternative settings. Therefore, punitive discipline leads to increased school-based pathways to the juvenile justice system (SPJJ), also known as the school the prison pipeline (STPP). Despite knowledge of these adverse outcomes, schools continue to utilize punitive discipline practices. School psychologists are …

A Time To Create Change: A Case Study Of Culturally Relevant Education, Colleen Kopay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An opportunity gap exists in the United States school system where students of color score lower on standardized tests and have fewer opportunities than their white counterparts. Culturally Relevant Education (CRE) theory attempts to close this gap, and is defined by Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) as

Pedagogy that rests on three criteria or propositions: (a) Students must experience academic success; (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence; and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order (p. 160).

In short, CRE is the use of culture, rigor, and critical …

How Crime Dramas Undermine Miranda, Ian Farrell, Nancy Leong

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In the half-century since the Supreme Court decided Miranda v. Arizona, custodial interrogations have become a mainstay of popular culture. Even casual viewers of police procedurals will be exposed to hundreds of depicted arrests, interrogations, and other law enforcement conduct. It has become commonplace for courts, commentators, and the general public to assert that people learn about their rights from television.

Yet if people do in fact learn about their criminal procedure rights from television, what they are learning is dangerously inaccurate. In a comprehensive content analysis of ten seasons, totaling 229 episodes, drawn from the two most highly watched …

Cross-Institutional Collaboration And Exhibit Making: “On The Gold Mountain: Chinese Mining History And Heritage Of Idaho” At The Idaho Museum Of Mining And Geology, Jordan Kathleen Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Gold Rush, which brought many new immigrant communities to the American West, made a permanent impact on American culture by prompting the development of many Western towns. However, the Chinese immigrant mining population in the Boise, Idaho area has had little museum representation despite the more than 300,000 Chinese people who emigrated to the US between the 1840s and 1880. To rectify this, the Idaho Museum of Mining and Geology (IMMG), in collaboration with members of the Payette National Forest, the Asian American Comparative Collection, Boise State University/US Army Corps of Engineers, and the University of Denver, developed an …

The Rpl Effect, Rashmi Goel

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court, The First Amendment, And The Erosion Of Public Employer Managerial Authority, Anne Marie Lofaso, Martin H. Malin

Denver Law Review

For nearly two centuries, public sector employment in the United States was governed by the privilege doctrine, also known as the right-privilege distinction, which stripped public employees of their citizenship rights by denying them protection against adverse employment actions retaliating against their exercise of those rights. In 1967, in Garrity v. New Jersey, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed course and found, in the context of a government investigation of state police officers who allegedly fixed traffic tickets, that the state could not coerce those officers to waive their constitutional right to remain silent during the investigation by threatening to fire …

A Rpl In Time: A Brown Buffalo's Observations On The Ongoing Struggle Of Civic And Racial Nationalism In Higher Education - Circa 2023, Tom I. Romero Ii

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Whiteboard To Statement Of Principles: The Development Of The Rocky Mountain Collective On Race, Place & Law's Principles, Katherine Steefel

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of Proportionality In State Civil Rulemaking, Miyoko T. Pettit-Toledo

Denver Law Review

In the wake of the 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP)—particularly with the perceived constriction of discovery through the revised federal proportionality standard in Rule 26(b)(1)—a wave of critics quickly emerged. Some commentators highlighted how procedural reforms heightened barriers to accessing federal courts, sharply limited claim development through discovery, and impeded opportunities for trial. Others detailed well-founded concerns about federal rulemakers’ potentially nefarious motivations, given their mostly conservative, Republican, pro-corporate defense backgrounds. Still others rightly worried that the federal proportionality standard (with its six factors), when applied by certain federal judges, would potentially stifle discovery, thereby …

Rpl, Crt, & Latcrit: "Finding The 'Me' In The Legal Academy", Roberto L. Corrada

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

From A Rpl In The Classroom To A Wave In The World: Coursework Focused On Race, Place & Law, Lindsey Webb

Denver Law Review

No abstract provided.

Natural Resource Conflict And Socioenvironmental Resistance In Arctic States: Assessing Domestic Risks To Circumpolar Security, Jen Evans

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does climate change contribute to domestic natural resource conflict and socioenvironmental resistance in the Arctic? The literature assumes that developed Arctic nations possess sufficient state capacity to overcome risks of domestic conflict and unrest posed by regional development and environmental change. Arctic policy correspondingly focuses on natural resource competition, disputes, and conflict at the international level. The mechanisms and processes of domestic natural resource conflict and socioenvironmental resistance in the Arctic have thus been largely ignored in the literature, even though 27 cases of contention have occurred since the ‘shock’ sea-ice melt of 2007.

In this study, I draw …

From Gods To Google: How Religious Speech Cases May Fortify The Deregulatory First Amendment, Rebecca Aviel, Margot E. Kaminski, Toni M. Massaro, Andrew Keane Woods

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Court’s extraordinary solicitude for religious expression, manifested across a series of cases involving free exercise, free speech, and establishment clause principles, has been the subject of sustained scholarly attention. Much of that research has focused on evaluating whether the Court is drawing an appropriate balance between the rights of religious believers and government regulatory objectives. In this Article we observe that the Court’s most recent set of moves in this arena, which diverge considerably from decades of speech jurisprudence, will have ramifications that go well beyond the claims of conscience that have so animated the Court’s sympathies. The range …

Misgivings In Measuring Happiness, Sudhanva Char

International Review of Business and Economics

According to a resolution of the UN General Assembly (Resolution 66/281), March 20^th is observed annually as International Day of Happiness. A nation’s overall success is measured by people’s happiness, the litmus test. The World Happiness Report (WHR) states there is consensus about measuring happiness, whereas, happiness is idiosyncratic and its connotation differs from culture to culture, language to language, and even person to person. Personal ‘space’ in all spheres matters, and so do democracy or dictatorship, all factors leading to mismeasures of happiness scores. And so, there are paradoxes in happiness rankings in WHR. Economists have yet to …

Wearable Ai, Bystander Notice, And The Question Of Privacy Frictions, Zahra Takhshid

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

With the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) technology and the widespread availability of large language models (“LLMs”), wearable AI devices and designs for new hardware have surged like never before. While wearable AI was traditionally marketed for health and fitness purposes, many of the emerging products are multifunctional. These features can jeopardize the privacy of bystanders in addition to the consumers. Product designers are thus facing a dilemma: ensuring third-party privacy or guaranteeing convenience and a user-friendly design. This Article argues for mandating “privacy frictions” to function as both bystander notice and consent for wearable AI devices with audiovisual …

Confusion Over Trademark Extraterritoriality…And Beyond, Timothy R. Holbrook, Anshu Garg

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court had afforded the Lanham Act extraterritorial reach over seventy years ago in Steele v. Bulova, but its recent extraterritoriality jurisprudence called that decision into question.

This Article explains the history of trademark extraterritoriality and the splits that emerged among the circuit courts of appeals. It then canvases all of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on the presumption against extraterritoriality and their effort to reinvigorate and standardize the law in that regard.

We then provide a detailed exploration of the Abitron decision. Next, we critique the decision and explore its implications not only for trademark law but also …

Relative And Absolute Patentability, Timothy R. Holbrook, Mark D. Janis

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, we define and interrogate a new typology for patentability rules. In our typology, some such rules are predominantly relative inquiries—meaning that they entail the use of discrete comparators—whereas others are predominantly absolute in that they lack this core comparative methodology. Selected patentability rules blend the characteristics of both relative and absolute inquiries in complex ways.

We leverage our relative/absolute typology in this Article to make two sets of contributions to the literature. First, we use our typology to craft a new descriptive account of the patentability doctrines. We show that the requirements of novelty and nonobviousness are …

Pleading Failures In Monell Litigation, Nancy Leong, Katelyn Elrod, Matthew Nilsen

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The doctrine of municipal liability in cases brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 has been extensively criticized, with widespread agreement that municipal liability claims are difficult for plaintiffs to win. Commentators generally blame stringent doctrinal and pleading standards for plaintiffs’ low rates of success.

This Article reveals another important contributing factor: the poor quality of many pleadings filed on behalf of civil rights plaintiffs. We present original empirical research documenting widespread pleading failures, or omissions of basic doctrinal elements. Our research demonstrates that pleading failures are common: an analysis of the complaint in every case that resulted in a federal …

College Athlete Unionization, Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston has opened the door to serious consideration of the potential for college athlete unionization and collective bargaining. The ruling, highlighted by Justice Kavanaugh's concurring opinion, suggests collective bargaining as a potential solution to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's ("NCAA's") antitrust vulnerabilities. This Article delves into the initial legal and strategic questions surrounding the prospect of unionization, focusing particularly on NCAA Division I football and basketball, due to their significant revenue generation making them prime candidates for unionization efforts.

The National Labor Relations Board ("NLRB" or "Board") is positioned to …

Rpl, Crt, & Latcrit: "Finding The 'Me' In The Legal Academy", Roberto L. Corrada

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

The idea of a colorblind society and constitution is a dream, not reality. Importantly, the idea of colorblindness has been used to hijack laws and constitutional provisions specifically created to right societal wrongs against minoritized persons, especially Black persons. Take for example, the recent controversy surrounding affirmative action in higher education.The Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, both created to secure the rights of Black citizens, have been co-opted to instead deprive them of opportunities. The latest example of this is a Supreme Court case decided this past summer—Students …

Existential Advocacy: Lawyering For Ai Safety And The Future Of Humanity, John Bliss

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers have played a central role in a wide range of social movements aiming to provide legal voice to marginalized communities. How might this tradition of social-change lawyering apply to the protection of future generations— a population that cannot advocate for themselves? This is a pressing question in the movement to mitigate “existential risk,” which refers to events that would foreclose a meaningful existence for future generations either through human extinction or irreversible trajectories of human suffering. Over the past two decades, an Oxford-based academic community has been researching existential threats that could arise from emerging technology, such as advanced …

Human Rights: A Twailblazer Critique, Makau Mutua

Denver Journal of International Law & Policy

No abstract provided.