Digital Commons Network^™

An “Essential” Solution: Reworking The Essential Facilities Doctrine To Address Big Tech’S Harm To The Marketplace Of Ideas, Kaleb Byars

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Google’s mission statement is undoubtedly altruistic. The Internet overflows with information, and users could not navigate the Internet if an entity did not logically organize that information. On the other hand, should democratic societies accept the convenience that Google and the other Big Tech firms provide if that convenience impairs the marketplace of ideas? Big Tech censorship is at the forefront of current news and congressional consideration. At both ends of the political spectrum, parties agree

Big Tech censorship harms the marketplace of ideas. Republican congresspersons argue Big Tech supports liberal ideas and censors conservative voices, websites, and advertisements. Democratic …

Forecasting Covid-19 Cases Using Dynamic Time Warping And Incremental Machine Learning Methods, Luis Miralles-Pechuán, Ankit Kumar, Andres L. Suarez-Cetrulo

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The investment of time and resources for developing better strategies is key to dealing with future pandemics. In this work, we recreated the situation of COVID-19 across the year 2020, when the pandemic started spreading worldwide. We conducted experiments to predict the coronavirus cases for the 50 countries with the most cases during 2020. We compared the performance of state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, such as long-short-term memory networks, against that of online incremental machine learning algorithms. To find the best strategy, we performed experiments to test three different approaches. In the first approach (single-country), we trained each model using data …

Maintaining Connections During The Pandemic: Rural Arts Festivals And Digital Practices, Enya Moore, Bernadette Quinn

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During the COVID lockdowns of 2020/21, the transmission of live or recorded concerts grew exponentially as festival makers embraced digital technologies to a greater degree. Investigating how this digital pivot interrupted festival-making practices is now important given that online and hybrid modes will potentially be used in conjunction with in-person events in the future. This task has relevance for rural areas where digital infrastructures can be under-developed. Yet, place-based, community-organised festivals can play a significant role in sustaining local communities. In this context, we explore the recent digital programming practices of music festivals in West Cork, Ireland. Methodologically, the study …

The World Of International & Comparative Law Journals, Kathleen Claussen

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No abstract provided.

Imi 2023 Digest, Padmaja Sankaridurg, David A. Berntsen, Mark A. Bullimore, Pauline Cho, Daniel Ian Flitcroft, Timothy J. Gawne, Kate Gifford, Monica Jong, Lisa A. Ostrin Lisa A. Ostrin, Jacinto Santodomingo-Rubido, Christine Wildsoet, James S. Wolffsohn

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Myopia is a dynamic and rapidly moving field, with ongoing research providing a better understanding of the etiology leading to novel myopia control strategies. In 2019, the International Myopia Institute (IMI) assembled and published a series of white papers across relevant topics and updated the evidence with a digest in 2021. Here, we summarize findings across key topics from the previous 2 years. Studies in animal models have continued to explore how wavelength and intensity of light influence eye growth and have examined new pharmacologic agents and scleral cross-linking as potential strategies for slowing myopia. In children, the term premyopia …

Leniency Inflation, Cartel Damages, And Criminalization, Catarina Marvao, Giancarlo Spagnolo

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We revisit the pros and cons of introducing cartel criminalization in the EU. We document the recent EU “leniency inflation”, whereby leniency has been increasingly awarded to many (or all) cartel members, which softens the “courthouse race” effect. Coupled with the insufficient protection of leniency applicants from damages (2014 Damages Directive), it may have led to a decrease in leniency applications and cartel convictions. Given the current level of fines, criminalization may have to be introduced. We then explore US criminal sanctions (1990–2015) to highlight potential areas of concern for EU policymakers, of which recidivism appears to be a significant …

Putting The Individual And Context Back Into National Human Resource Development Research: A Systematic Review And Research Agenda, Thomas Garavan, Jia Wang, Ciara Nolan Dr, Yanqing Lai, Fergal O'Brien, Colette Darcy, Gerri Matthews-Smith, Gary Mclean

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Conceptualization of national human resource development (NHRD) emphasizes that it is an ongoing development process of the individual that is shaped by context. However, the extant literature has focused primarily on describing and evaluating NHRD policies and interventions in different countries with limited consideration of NHRD across the lifespan and the interaction of life stage with context. Using ecological systems theory (EST) and a lifespan development perspective (LDP), we present a systematic review of the NHRD literature based on 310 sources. We identify key themes and gaps in research across the lifespan and at distinct levels of the ecological system. …

The Use Of Transport Time Scales As Indicators Of Pollution Persistence In A Macro-Tidal Setting, Guanghai Gao, John J. O'Sullivan, Aisling Corkery, Zeinab Bedri, Gregory M.P. O'Hare, Wim G. Meijer

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An understanding of water exchange processes is essential for assessing water quality management issues in coastal bays. This paper evaluates the impact of water exchange processes on pollution persistence in a macro-tidal semi-closed coastal bay through two transport time scales (TTS), namely residence time and exposure time. The numerical model was calibrated against field-measured data for various tidal conditions. Simulated current speeds and directions were shown to agree well with the field data. By considering different release scenarios of a conservative tracer by the refinement of an integrated hydrodynamic and solute transport model (the EFDC), the two TTS were used …

Use Of Inner/Outer Sphere Terminology In Electrochemistry—A Hexacyanoferrate Ii/Iii Case Study, John Cassidy, Rafaela Cristina De Carvalho, Tony Betts

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Salts of hexacyanoferrate II/III anions have been widely used as redox couple probe molecules to determine the characteristics of electrode surfaces. Examples include the assessment of electrocatalysts for energy applications and electrocatalysts for the detection of biological or chemical species, as well as the determination of electrochemically active surface areas. An examination of the electrochemical literature, based largely on cyclic voltammetric investigations, reveals a wide range of peak separation and/or heterogeneous electron transfer rate constants, classified sometimes as inner or outer sphere electron transfer processes. Originally developed for the mechanistic interpretation of inorganic transition metal compounds in solution, this terminology …

Characterisation Of Cartilage Damage Via Fusing Mid-Infrared, Near-Infrared, And Raman Spectroscopic Data, Rubina Shaikh Dr, Valeria Tafintseva, Ervin Nippolainen, Vesa Virtanen, Johanne Solheim, Boris Zimmermann, Simo Saarakkala, Juhu Toyras, Achim Kohler, Isaac O. Afara

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Mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIR), near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR), and Raman spectroscopy are all well-established analytical techniques in biomedical applications. Since they provide complementary chemical information, we aimed to determine whether combining them amplifies their strengths and mitigates their weaknesses. This study investigates the feasibility of the fusion of MIR, NIR, and Raman spectroscopic data for characterising articular cartilage integrity. Osteochondral specimens from bovine patellae were subjected to mechanical and enzymatic damage, and then MIR, NIR, and Raman data were acquired from the damaged and control specimens. We assessed the capacity of individual spectroscopic methods to classify the samples into damage or control …

Review Of The International Play Policies And Their Contribution To Supporting A Child's Right To Play, Fiona Armstrong, David Gaul

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Play is recognised as a fundamental children's right protected by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Despite legal and constitutional requirements for ensuring children's right to play, there are few international policies dedicated to play. This paper seeks to use a critical discourse analysis lens to compare the current international policies dedicated to play and identify examples of good practice and perceived barriers to the successful development and implementation of play policies.

Incidence And Prevalence Of Keratoconus Based On Scheimpflug Imaging, Elsie Chan, Elaine W. Chong, Samantha Sze-Yee Lee, Maria Franchina, Seyhan Yazar, Peter Eastwood, Nigel Mcardle, David A. Mackey, Gareth Lingham

Articles

The prevalence of keratoconus (Belin/Ambrόsio Enhanced Ectasia Display Score ≥2.6 on Scheimpflug imaging) in a longitudinal, community cohort study from Western Australia was 3.4% (n=26/755). Keratoconus incidence over an 8-year period was 2.2% (n=15/669).

Memorizing Trade Secrets, Timothy Murphy

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The earliest trade secret cases recognized that remembered information raised unique issues in trade secret misappropriation claims. However, courts struggled with exactly how to address remembered information, as opposed to information taken in tangible form. The modern trend, according to one case from the Washington Supreme Court, is to ignore the distinction and treat remembered information the same as information taken in tangible form for purposes of trade secret misappropriation claims. However, this case may have prematurely signaled the demise of remembered information's relevance to a trade secret claim. Particularly during the pandemic era, where increased employee mobility is placing …

Horizontal Collusion And Parallel Wage Setting In Labor Markets, Jonathan S. Masur, Eric A. Posner

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Horizontal collusion among employers to suppress wages has received almost no attention in the academic literature, in contrast with its more familiar cousin, product-market collusion. The similar economic analysis of labor and product markets might suggest that antitrust should regulate labor and product markets in the same way. But product markets and labor markets do not operate identically: people behave differently as employees and as consumers. Unlike consumers who can switch products relatively easily, employees face significant frictions in changing jobs. Other labor market frictions are created by the pay equity norm and downward nominal wage rigidity. These and related …

The 2023 Scalia Lecture: Beyond Textualism?, William Baude

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No abstract provided.

The Law Of The Sea And Democracy, Tom Ginsburg

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The law of the sea is not an area of international law generally associated with democracy. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is one of the world’s most broadly accepted and effective treaties, incorporating all kinds of States. The central cleavages among these states— coastal vs. maritime powers, developing countries vs. industrialized nations, landlocked vs. those with access to the seas—have only coincidental links to the global division of democracy and dictatorship. Yet, the law of the sea has surprising connections with democracy in that democratic states are enthusiastic users of the UNCLOS system. Furthermore, …

A Modern Defense Of Simple Rules For A Complex World, Richard Epstein

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My 1995 book Simple Rules for a Complex World articulated a general proposition that, in most situations, simple legal rules perform better in two key dimensions: (1) they are simpler to interpret and enforce, and (2) they generate efficient incentives on the parties to whom they apply. I then applied that view to matters of general legal theory, to matters of environmental law, and to disputes over labor. These principles apply to all forms of legal regulation, but in this Article, I shall limit my analysis to the five articles in this Collection. These are by Richard Revesz on global …

Universities As Knowledge Institutions: A Reply To Professor Jackson, Tom Ginsburg

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No abstract provided.

Hidden Value Transfers In Public Utilities, Aneil Kovvali, Joshua Macey

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This Article describes strategies vertically integrated electric utilities use to transfer value from rate-regulated affiliates to non-rate regulated affiliates. First, regulated utilities directly subsidize non-regulated affiliates by entering into favorable contracts with affiliates that participate in competitive markets. These contractual value transfers include favorable purchase agreements such as long-term contracts to buy coal at above-market prices and cross-affiliate debt guarantees that allow non- rate regulated affiliates to borrow at a discount. Second, utilities receive regulatory authorization to pass costs incurred by their non-rate regulated affiliates onto captive ratepayers. Examples of regulatorily approved value transfers are fuel adjustment clauses that authorize …

Privacy Protection, At What Cost? Exploring The Regulatory Resistance To Data Technology In Auto Insurance, Omri Ben-Shahar

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Regulatory and sociological resistance to new market-driven technologies, particularly to those that rely on collection and analysis of personal data, is prevalent even in cases where the technology creates large social value and saves lives. This article is a case study of such tragic technology resistance, focusing on tracking devices in cars which allow auto insurers to monitor how policyholders drive and adjust the premiums accordingly. Growing empirical work reveals that such “usage-based insurance” induces safer driving, reducing fatal accidents by almost one third, and resulting in more affordable and fair premiums. Yet, California prohibits this technology and other states …

The Political Question Doctrine And International Law, Curtis Bradley

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Under the political question doctrine, some issues are deemed to be inappropriate for judicial resolution. The modern version of the doctrine is typically traced to the Supreme Court’s 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, in which the Court listed six reasons why an issue might be treated as political. Although the doctrine has received significant scholarly attention, most modern commentary has overlooked the historic relationship between the doctrine and international law. As this Essay documents, the political question doctrine emerged in part to allow the political branches, rather than the courts, to make determinations about this country’s—and other countries’—rights and …

How Redundant Are Redundant Encodings? Blindness In The Wild And Racial Disparity When Race Is Unobserved, Jacob Goldin, Lingwei Cheng, Isabel Gallegos, Derek Ouyang, Daniel Ho

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We address two emerging concerns in algorithmic fairness: (i) redundant encodings of race – the notion that machine learning models encode race with probability nearing one as the feature set grows – which is widely noted in theory, with little empirical evidence; and (ii) the lack of race and ethnicity data in many domains, where state-of-the-art remains (Naive) Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG) that relies on name and geographic information. We leverage a novel and highly granular dataset of over 7.7 million patients’ electronic health records to provide one of the first empirical studies of redundant encodings in a realistic …

Interring The Nondelegation Doctrine; Sepultando A Doutrina Da Não Delegação, Eric Posner, Adrian Vermeule

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A large academic literature discusses the nondelegation doctrine, which is said to bar Congress from enacting excessively broad or excessively discretionary grants of statutory authority to the executive branch or other agents. The bulk of this literature accepts the existence of the doctrine, and argues only about the terms of its application or the competence of the courts to enforce it. In this essay, we argue that there is no such nondelegation doctrine: A statutory grant of authority to the executive branch or other agents never effects a delegation of legislative power Agents acting within the terms of such a …

Common Good Gun Rights, Darrell Miller

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No abstract provided.

Spacs, Pipes, And Common Investors, Frank Fagan, Saul Levmore

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Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, or SPACs, have come to play a large role in bringing together small and large investors in the acquisition and expansion of private companies. A pessimistic version of this relatively recent alternative to conventional initial public offerings (IPOs), and other methods of investing in companies ready to expand, is that clever sharks take advantage of overly optimistic and ill-informed small investors. This Article offers a very different view. It shows that common investors need someone to locate good investment opportunities, and then they often benefit if another well-informed party can credibly vouch for the entity that …

The Comparative Constitutional Of Democratic Backsliding: A Report On The State Of The Field, Aziz Huq, Tom Ginsburg

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No abstract provided.

Our Federalism And Our Democracy: Complements Or Foes?, Aziz Huq

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This Essay reflects on the relationship between “federalism” and “national democracy.” More specifically, it considers the way in which the operation of formal state institutions can change the quality of national bodies necessary to democratic politics. State-level action can reduce the quality of national democracy even if it is motivated by national partisan forces. For example, state-level instruments can influence the possibility that national institutions either do or do not experience capture by minority factions, and are instead capable of roughly tracking the ebb and flow of majoritarian preferences over time. Without state institutions, national actors would lack instruments to …

Legal Origins And Human Rights Law, Adam Chilton, Mila Versteeg

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A widely studied topic in comparative law is the extent to which countries’ legal origins—and especially whether they are a civil or common law system—are associated with the substance of their contemporary laws. We contribute to this line of research by using data from a range of sources to explore whether common law and civil law countries have different substantive legal commitments in an area where the enduring influence of legal origins remains unclear: human rights law. We specifically explore differences between common law and civil law countries along five dimensions. We find that, compared to countries with common law …

Private Enforcement In The States, Austin Peters, Diego Zambrano, Neel Guha, Jeffrey Xia

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Scholarship on U.S. litigation and civil procedure has scarcely studied the role of private enforcement in the states. Over the past two decades, scholars have established that, almost uniquely in the world, the U.S. often relies on private parties rather than administrative agencies to enforce important statutory provisions. Take your pick of any area in American governance, and you will find private rights of action: environmental law, civil rights, employment discrimination, antitrust, consumer protection, business competition, securities fraud, and so on. In each of these areas, Congress has deliberately empowered private plaintiffs instead of, or in addition to, government agencies. …

Nonparty Interests In Contract Law, Omri Ben-Shahar, David Hoffman, Cathy Hwang

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Contract law has one overarching goal: to advance the legitimate interests of the contracting parties. For the most part, scholars, judges, and parties embrace this party primacy norm, recognizing only a few exceptions, such as mandatory rules that bar enforcement of agreements that harm others. This Article describes a distinct species of previously unnoticed contract law rules that advance nonparty interests, which it calls “nonparty defaults.”

In doing so, this Article makes three contributions to the contract law literature. First, it identifies nonparty defaults as a judicial technique. It shows how courts deviate from the party primacy norm with surprising …