Digital Commons Network^™

Accommodating Employees With Disabilities: Perceptions Of Irish Academic Library Managers, Anne-Marie O'Neill, Christine Urquhart

Articles

In recent years a significant amount of the literature in the field of librarianship has focused on providing greater access to library facilities to clients with disabilities. There has been constructive debate about accessible buildings, ergonomic design of library facilities, and assistive technologies; but, what of individual people with disabilities who wish to work in libraries? Does the concern for accessibility extend to their employment in the library workplace? What is happening in Irish academic libraries to accommodate them in their employment and achieve equality of opportunities?

Regulation For The Sake Of Appearance, Adam M. Samaha

Articles

Appearance is often given as a justification for decisions, including government decisions, but the logic of appearance arguments is not well theorized. This Article develops a framework for understanding and evaluating appearance-based justifications for government decisions. First, working definitions are offered to distinguish appearance from reality. Next, certain relationships between appearance and reality are singled out for attention. Sometimes reality is insulated from appearance, sometimes appearance helps drive reality over time, and sometimes appearance and reality collapse from the outset. Finally, sets of normative questions are suggested based on the supposed relationship between appearance and reality for a given situation. …

Defining Torture And Cruel, Inhuman, And Degrading Treatment, David Weissbrodt, Cheryl Heilman

Articles

Declaring a “war against terror,” the United States has detained foreign nationals suspected of terrorist activities and has interrogated them at various locations outside the United States. As the United States seeks to bring charges against the detainees, serious questions have arisen regarding the interrogation methods used to obtain evidence. Federal laws enacted to meet the United States' obligations under treaties prohibit the use of evidence obtained through torture or through cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. What legal standards should be applied to determine whether interrogation methods or conditions of confinement constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment? Is …

Optimal Remedies For Bilateral Contracts, Francesco Parisi, Barbara Luppi, Vincy Fon

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Antecedents Of Disputes: Complaining And Claiming, Herbert M. Kritzer

Articles

This paper focuses on the earliest stages of the problem resolution function of law and legal institutions: the emergence of grievances and their communication to a responsible party as complaints and claims. While the literature on this subject is broad, both in terms of methods and in terms of the fairly large number of countries where empirical research on this subject has been conducted, it seems appropriate to ask the question, what do we know and not know about this subject? This paper seeks to answer this question and to suggest fruitful avenues of future inquiry. I first discuss the …

Legal Mechanic: Where Are We Going? The Generalist Vs. Specialist Challenge, Herbert M. Kritzer

Articles

This is a review essay considering two books: 'The Death of the American Trial' by Robert P. Burns and 'Specializing the Courts' by Lawrence Baum. The organizing theme of the essay is the lay jurors represent one end of the spectrum of potential adjudicators with specialized courts and tribunals represent the other end of the spectrum. While Burns does not develop his argument in terms of specialization, a significant aspect of his argument is that there is value to relying on nonspecialist, lay adjudicators. Burns is an advocate for the trials, particularly jury trials; as such, he glosses over evidence …

Why Didn't Subprime Investors Demand A (Much Larger) Lemons Premium?, Claire Hill

Articles

The subprime crisis would never have occurred had investors not been such enthusiastic consumers of subprime securities. The investors now say, somewhat self-servingly (but probably correctly), that they did not understand the securities - securities for which they were willing to pay very high prices. This essay seeks to explain investors’ readiness to pay premium prices for these novel and complex instruments. The most satisfactory explanation lies in the incentives for herding among agents who made investment decisions for others. Investors (and markets) compare investment managers to other investment managers. A manager’s best strategy, therefore, may be to do what …

Women, Vulnerability, And Humanitarian Emergencies, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin

Articles

The catastrophic dimensions of humanitarian emergencies are increasingly understood and more visible to states and international institutions. There is greater appreciation for the social, economic and political effects that follow in the short to long term from such catastrophes whatsoever their causes. Rhetorically too, there is some recognition of the gendered dimensions of humanitarian emergencies in policy and institutional contexts. It is generally acknowledged that women are more visible in the refugee and internally displaced communities that typically result from many humanitarian crises. Women, because of their acute care responsibilities in most societies, also disproportionately bear the brunt of familial …

Regulatory Contrarians, Brett Mcdonnell, Daniel Schwarcz

Articles

This Article explores the role that “regulatory contrarians” can play in promoting more adaptive financial regulation. Such contrarians have several distinguishing features. First, they possess persuasive authority by virtue of their position, access to media and officials, or speaking engagements and reports. Second, they are affiliated with, and enjoy privileged access to, a regulatory entity but are nonetheless independent, as reflected in their budget, staffing, and/or priorities. Finally, they are tasked with studying the regulatory process, policy positions, and the regulated market and in some way reporting on deficiencies and potential improvements. The Article argues that regulatory contrarians can modestly …

Compromised Fiduciaries: Conflicts Of Interest In Government And Business, Claire Hill, Richard W. Painter

Articles

In the present financial crisis, the government has become extensively involved in managing companies, at times undertaking massive bailouts. The results of government involvement in business are at best mixed. Moreover, its involvement has generated significant criticism. But government involvement in managing companies is sometimes inevitable. It is therefore important to consider how it can be improved. One critical reason why government might perform poorly is conflicts of interest. Given the conflicts that arise at multiple levels of decisionmaking in both government and private companies, it should not be surprising that government management of companies is often problematic. In both …

Fame Law: Requiring Proof Of National Fame In Trademark Law, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The public has always been infatuated with fame. Trademark law likewise has a long history of infatuation with fame. Protecting the fame embodied in a trademark against dilutive use by others has not been easy. The difficulty stems from the wording of the statute and judicial failure to understand the “fame” requirement. The fundamental question centers on what level of fame is required for the property-like protection against subsequent uses that dilute the famous trademark. This Article argues for national fame to be the requisite requirement for property-like anti-dilution protection under trademark law. The Article recommends that the proof of …

Surviving (And Thriving) In The First Year Of Trial Practice, Maureen A. Howard

Articles

The substance and procedure of trial practice may vary across different law firms and agencies, but there are certain challenges that all first-year trial lawyers face when starting out. No matter how brilliant and capable a newly minted attorney may be, there are some lessons more indelibly learned on the job than in law school; while these lessons are undoubtedly valuable, they can be painful and embarrassing. Although reading about the possible pitfalls of the first year of trial practice is not as educational as walking through the fire oneself, I have collected over the years a few tips and …

Effective Pre-Trial Motions: Persuading The Judge, Maureen A. Howard

Articles

Victories won in pre-trial motions can significantly affect the direction and outcome of a trial. For this reason, successful trial lawyers prepare for motions with the same thoroughness that they employ for the trial itself. Arguing a motion to a trial judge, however, is different from arguing your case to a jury; to be effective, an advocate needs to be mindful of the difference.

Judges generally resist what they perceive as emotional manipulation, theatrics, or excessive rhetoric. Many judges expect lawyers to cleanly and succinctly argue the facts and the law without employing any appeal to emotion. That being said, …

The Boundaries Of Privacy Harm, M. Ryan Calo

Articles

Just as a burn is an injury caused by heat, so is privacy harm a unique injury with specific boundaries and characteristics. This Essay describes privacy harm as falling into two related categories. The subjective category of privacy harm is the perception of unwanted observation. This category describes unwelcome mental states—anxiety, embarrassment, fear—that stem from the belief that one is being watched or monitored. Examples of subjective privacy harms include everything from a landlord eavesdropping on his tenants to generalized government surveillance.

The objective category of privacy harm is the unanticipated or coerced use of information concerning a person against …

Post-Racial Proxies: Resurgent State And Local Anti-"Alien" Laws And Unity-Rebuilding Frames For Antidiscrimination Values, Mary D. Fan

Articles

Though unauthorized migration into the United States has diminished substantially since 2007, anti-“illegal alien” state and local laws and furor are flaring again. While one of the biggest worries regarding such “anti-alien” laws is the risk of racialized harm, courts invalidating overreaching statutes are relying on structural or procedural grounds, such as preemption and due process doctrines. [PARA] This Article examines how these political and legal trends point to how proxies are used in a post-racial era to dance around race, in constructive, national unity-rebuilding as well as divisive, inflammatory ways. Anti-alien legislation is a proxy way to vent resurgent …

The Environmental Laws Of The 1970s: They Looked Good On Paper, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

This article looks at the "top ten" environmental laws enacted in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It asks: What were the pin-up qualities that made these laws look good on paper? What were the features sponsors bragged about or critics deplored? How were they understood and described at the time of legislative birth? What was thought to be new, different, and better?

We know some of these things about all of these laws. I’ll exercise editorial judgment and declare four common features …

Don't Panic! Defending Cowardly Interventions During And After A Financial Crisis, Brett Mcdonnell

Articles

How should we regulate the U.S. financial system after the financial crisis, when we face the task with a radically inadequate understanding of what went wrong and what effect proposed regulations will likely have? This paper explores three quite different approaches to regulating in the face of severe uncertainty: the libertarianism of Friedrich Hayek, the conservatism of Michael Oakeshott, and the liberalism of John Maynard Keynes. Each thought deeply about the problem of how uncertainty affects human affairs, but each came to quite different conclusions about how to address such uncertainty. The paper outlines the core, immensely useful insights of …

Strategies For An Employee Role In Corporate Governance, Brett Mcdonnell

Articles

One way to make U.S. corporations more sustainable is to broaden the group of stakeholders whose interests are considered in making decisions. This Essay evaluates a number of possible strategies for creating a role for employees in corporate governance. The strategies include: Using areas other than business association law to enhance the legal rights of individual employees; Encouraging officer or director power, hoping that officers and directors will side with employees and other interests more than shareholders; Encouraging shareholder power, hoping that employees agree with shareholders on the need to keep managers accountable; Supporting unions as a source of countervailing …

The Role Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child In Interpreting And Developing International Humanitarian Law, David Weissbrodt, Joseph C. Hansen, Nathaniel H. Nesbitt

Articles

The interaction between human rights law and international humanitarian law (IHL) has received a great deal of scholarly attention. Commentators note the increased presence of IHL in the work of human rights bodies. There remains an interesting gap in the debate, however: while human rights bodies may be referencing international humanitarian law, what are they doing with it? To what extent are they interpreting its protections under a human rights framework? Are they performing substantive or precedential analysis of IHL? This article addresses one measure of that gap by comprehensively examining the work of the Committee on the Rights of …

Speaking For The Dead: Voice In Last Wills And Testaments, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles

I do now hereby give, bequeath, and devise all items of tangible personal property that I own or may own a right thereonto, which includes, but is not limited to, objet d'art, furnishings, automobiles, and silver, to my surviving issue per stirpes.

A will is arguably the most important and personal legal document an individual ever executes. As the language above illustrates, much of the typical language in a will removes all traces of the individual. This personal legal document is ostensibly the individual's-the testator's-document. For a testator, contemplating the creation and execution of a will is the contemplation of …

The Implementation Of Pre-Lecture Resources To Reduce In-Class Cognitive Load: A Case Study For Higher Education Chemistry, Michael Seery, Roisin Donnelly

Articles

This case study describes an effective method to ameliorate the cognitive load caused by new terminology and concepts in lectures. Ten online pre-lecture resources whose design was underpinned by the principles of cognitive load theory were provided to a class of 49 first year university level chemistry students. Each resource introduced a number of key concepts to the forthcoming lecture and included a quiz for students to test understandings and identify misconceptions. The evaluation of the implementation of resources was measured by considering the difference in exam marks for in-semester test and end of module exam. These showed that the …

Using An Adaptive Scenarios Approach To Establish Strategies For Tomorrow’S Workplace, Ruth Saurin, John Radcliffe

Articles

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is important to have a methodological process that is reflexive and flexible to achieve fluid interactions that add rigour and energy to the overall process of a built environment project. Therefore, it outlines three phases of the Prospective Through Scenarios futures process used in a study called the “Workplace of the Future”. It also discusses how and why the methodology evolved during the course of the project with participant feedback as the main source of information for the analysis. Furthermore, novel qualitative futures techniques have been applied to a discipline that is usually …

Geolearn - Multi-Media Resources, Audrey Martin

Articles

This paper examines the potential of pedagogically designed video demonstrations in supporting the learning requirements of students in the Spatial Information Sciences (DSIS). Currently, over three hundred full and part-time students in the College of Engineering and Built Environment undertake a module in Land Surveying each semester and although these students range in discipline and academic level (NQAI 6 - 8), they all share a need for basic information and instruction in the area of practical land-surveying techniques. To accommodate this highly practical subject area, fifty per cent of contact time is normally dedicated to group-based field exercises, the results …

Child Pornography And Community Notification: How An Attempt To Reduce Crime Can Achieve The Opposite, J. J. Prescott

Articles

Community notification laws, designed to reduce the frequency of sex offenses by alerting potential victims to nearby threats and by encouraging citizen monitoring of potential recidivists, may make sense in the context of traditional sex offenses and sex offenders. But child pornography crimes and the individuals who commit them are different, and they differ from archetypal sex crimes and criminals in ways that may unintentionally cause community notification laws to facilitate crime rather than inhibit it. Child porn offenses typically involve money or trade, and their commission hinges on successfully conspiring with others. Markets and information are necessary building blocks …

The Rise In Elder Bankruptcy Filings And The Failure Of U.S. Bankruptcy Law, John A. E. Pottow

Articles

Recent empirical legal scholarship on the consumer bankruptcy system has uncovered a marked rise in the proportion of elder Americans filing for relief under the Bankruptcy Code. But these studies have not probed the reasons behind that rise, an omission this Article seeks to address. Professor John Pottow and colleagues recently assembled the new dataset of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), the largest national sample of consumer debtors in this country, which he uses to explore the sources of elder bankruptcy. The findings are both striking and ominous. While multiple factors, such as health problems and medical debts, contribute to …

Macular Pigment: Its Associations With Color Discrimination And Matching, Peter Davison, Akkali Makunda, James Loughman, Grainne Scanlon, John Nolan, Stephen Beatty

Articles

Purpose

Macular pigment (MP) acts as a pre-receptoral filter which selectively absorbs short wavelengths. It has the potential to alter color vision but the literature is conflicting on whether it does and, if so, to what extent, possibly reflecting differences between color mechanisms and color tests. This study was designed to identify and investigate relationships, if any, between macular pigment optical density (MPOD) and color sensitivity using a battery of techniques to quantify the color vision of color-normal observers.

Methods

Color vision was assessed with the Farnsworth-Munsell 100-Hue test (FM100), Moreland match on the HMC anomaloscope, and a customized SWAP …

Cracks In The Wall, A Bulge Under The Carpet: The Singular Story Of Religion, Evolution, And The U.S. Constitution, Susan Haack

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Move From Protectionism To Outward-Looking Industrial Development: A Critical Juncture In Irish Industrial Policy?, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

Articles

This paper utilises a new framework for examining critical junctures to help us understand whether the changes to Irish industrial policy at the end of the 1950s constituted a critical juncture, breaking cleanly with what came before, or were a continuation of policy pathways previously established. The framework is made up of three elements, which must be identified in sequence, for us to be able to declare a critical juncture. Irish industrial policy is examined here, as it constitutes a core tenet of wider economic policy.

Bayesian Inference For Exponential Random Graph Models, Alberto Caimo, Nial Friel

Articles

Exponential random graph models are extremely difficult models to handle from a statistical viewpoint, since their normalising constant, which depends on model parameters, is available only in very trivial cases. We show how inference can be carried out in a Bayesian framework using a MCMC algorithm, which circumvents the need to calculate the normalising constants. We use a population MCMC approach which accelerates convergence and improves mixing of the Markov chain. This approach improves performance with respect to the Monte Carlo maximum likelihood method of Geyer and Thompson (1992).

Career Success Investigation, Sue Mulhall

Articles

This paper investigates how researchers have responded to requests to encourage a broader definition of career success by conducting research with underrepresented groups. It investigates the sample populations that are researched, and the type of work experience that is studied, by reviewing 89 articles in journals concerned with the construct of career success from 1992 to 2009. The paper finds that such research principally focuses on managers, professionals and administrators, and the work-related experience considered is almost exclusively situated in the domain of paid employment, particularly full-time employment. It argues that the definition of career success tends to only relate …