Digital Commons Network^™

After Be & K: The Difficult Constitutional Question Of Defining The First Amendment Right To Petition Courts, Carol Rice Andrews

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No abstract provided.

Constitutional Reform In Alabama: A Necessary Step Towards Achieving A Fair And Efficient Tax Structure Working Papers, Susan Pace Hamill

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No abstract provided.

Bridging The Gap Between International Law And Foreign Policymaking, Daniel H. Joyner

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No abstract provided.

The Wages Of Crying Wolf Revisited: The Essential Consanguinity Of Lochner, Roe, And Eastern Enterprises Symposium: The Eleventh Amendment, Federalism, And Judicial Activism: Questions And Answers: Answer, Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr.

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No abstract provided.

Objects For Lexical Analysis, Bernd Kuhl, Axel-Tobias Schreiner

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This paper presents a new idea for lexical analysis: lolo (language-oriented lexer objects) is strictly based on the object orientation paradigm. We introduce the idea behind the system, describe the implementation, and compare it to the conventional approach using lex[1] or flex[2].lolo[3] extracts symbols from a sequence of input characters belonging to the ASCII or Unicode sets. lolo scanners can be extended without access to the source code: symbol recognizers can be derived by inheritance and an executing scanner can be reconfigured for different contexts. Recognizer actions are represented by objects which may be replaced at any time. Recognizers need …

Data-Efficient Methods Applied To General Spectral Image Capture, Mitchell Rosen, Francisco Imai, Mark Fairchild

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Commercialization of spectral imaging for color reproduction will require low bandwidth but highly accurate spectral image acquisition systems. Self-adapting systems are proposed as potential solutions. Such systems perform spectral content analysis on an encountered scene, reacting to the analysis by configuring efficient high quality spectral reconstruction. An experiment is reported comparing scene-derived spectral estimation transforms to static global transforms in multi-channel imaging simulations. For noisefree simulations, the adaptive approach showed clear benefit in terms of colorimetric and spectral statistics. When noise was added, the adaptive method continued to be superior in terms of spectral evaluations, but colorimetric degradation for the …

Deaf Individuals Find Hope At Hanson House, Mavis Sullivan

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No abstract provided.

A Theoretical Analysis Of Habitat Conversion And Biodiversity Conservation Over Time And Under Uncertainty, Amitrajeet A. Batabyal

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We exploit the known links between natural habitats and biodiversity to pose and study the biodiversity conservation question as an optimal stopping problem. We extend the extant literature on this question by studying the role that autonomous and nonautonomous policies play in the decision to conserve biodiversity over time and uncertainty. We first construct a dynamic and stochastic model of decision making in the context of biodiversity conservation. Next, we use this model to analyze the expected utility of a social planner when this planner uses, respectively, autonomous and nonautonomous policies. Finally, we compare and contrast the properties of autonomous …

The Impact Of Internet Commerce And Trade Exchanges On Business Productivity, John Simon, Jack Cook

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According to some studies, the growing investment in information technology did not raise productivity in the 1980s - this observation was dubbed the productivity paradox. However productivity did rise in the 1990s - which could be a delayed effect, or due to the growth in networking. In this paper we address the impact of Internet commerce and trade exchanges on business productivity.

Intrafamilial Phenotypic Variability In Friedreich Ataxia Associated With A G130v Mutation In The Frda Gene, Dominick Mccabe, Nicholas Wood, Fergus Ryan, Michael Hanna, Sean Connolly, David Moore, Janice Redmond, David Barton, Raymond Murphy

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Background: Most patients with Friedreich ataxia (FA) have a GAA trinucleotide repeat expansion in intron 1 of the FA gene (FRDA) on both arms of chromosome 9. However, some patients are compound heterozygotes and harbor a GAA expansion on one allele and a point mutation on the other. Compound heterozygous patients with FA who have a GAA expansion and a G130V mutation have been reported to have an atypical phenotype with a slow disease progression, minimal or no ataxia, or gait spasticity. Objective: To describe intrafamilial phenotypic variability in a GAA expansion/G130V mutation compound heterozygous family with FA. Setting: Tertiary …

The Bill For Rights, Carl E. Schneider

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Where today is legislative ingenuity lavished more bountiully than on the titles of statutes? And where has that ingenuity been better exercised than in the name "patients' bill of rights"? Do not our dearest liberties flow from the Bill of Rights? And who more deserves similar protection than patients in the hands of an angry Managed Care Organization? And behold, both Democrats and Republicans, both President Clinton and President Bush, have summoned us to arms. The patients' bill of rights is an idea whose time has seemed to have come for several years, and only conflicts among the numerous proposals …

Banking For The Unbanked, Michael S. Barr

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The consequences of not having access to mainstream financial services can be severe. Fim, the "unbanked" face high costs for basic financial servies. For example, a 2000 Treasury [U.S. Treasury Department] study found that a worker eaming $12,000 a year would pay approximately $250 annually just to cash payroll checks at a check cashing outlet, in addition to fees for money orders, wire transfers, bill payments, and other common transactions. Regular payments with low credit risk that could be directly deposited into bank accounts, with significantly lower payment systems costs, form the bulk of checks cashed at these check cashing …

Property In Writing, Property On The Ground: Pigs, Horses, Land, And Citizenship In The Aftermath Of Slavery, Cuba, 1880-1909, Rebecca J. Scott, Michael Zeuske

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In the most literal sense, the abolition of slavery marks the moment when one human being cannot be held as property by another human being, for it ends the juridical conceit of a "person with a price." At the same time, the aftermath of emancipation forcibly reminds us that property as a concept rests on relations among human beings, not just between people and things. The end of slavery finds former masters losing possession of persons, and former slaves acquiring it. But it also finds other resources being claimed and contested, including land, tools, and animals-resources that have shaped former …

The Conundrum Of Children, Confrontation, And Hearsay, Richard D. Friedman

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The adjudication of child abuse claims poses an excruciatingly difficult conundrum. The crime is a terrible one, but false convictions are abhorrent. Often the evidence does not support a finding of guilt or innocence with sufficient clarity to allow a decision free of gnawing doubt. In many cases, a large part of the problem is that the prosecution's case depends critically on the statement or testimony of a young child. Even with respect to adult witnesses, the law of hearsay and confrontation is very perplexing, as anyone who has studied American evidentiary law and read Supreme Court opinions on the …

Narrative Relevance, Imagined Juries, And A Supreme Court Inspired Agenda For Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

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This paper has its roots in Old Chief v. United States, a case the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1997. I will begin by describing this case; then comment on its implications for the Supreme Court’s conception of the jury, and conclude by examining the agenda one may draw from it for empirical jury research. Old Chief arose when Johnny Lynn Old Chief was charged not only with assault with a dangerous weapon and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence, but also with violating a law that forbids convicted felons from possessing …

Welfare Entitlements In The Era Of Devolution, Christine N. Cimini

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In 1996, the Republican Congress and Democratic President enacted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), ushering in a new era of public benefits. This 1996 act’s fundamental change to the administration and substance of public benefits called into question the applicability of a substantial body of procedural due process doctrine. As a result, unanswered questions remain regarding the applicability of established due process doctrine in the welfare reform context. This Article analyzes whether public law entitlements exist in the context of PRWORA’s first order devolution from the federal to state governments as well as some states’ second …

The New Contract: Welfare Reform, Devolution, And Due Process, Christine N. Cimini

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This Article analyzes the due process implications of the change in welfare administration from a federal statutory entitlement model to the devolved contractual model and posits that, despite the changes, due process protections still exist. These protections arise from the private law of contracts on two different levels. The first level is the macro, or implied, contract, that I refer to as the social contract between the government and the populace. The existence of this social contract is evidenced in numerous sources including: political theories that explore the use of governmental authority; foundational democratic legal sources, such as the Declaration …

Textual Imagination, Mary D. Fan

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Textualism's revival illuminated the judicial imagination at play behind the search for congressional intent through legislative history. The Supreme Court’s decision in Buckhannon Board & Care Home v. West Virginia Department of Health & Human Resources shows the Supreme Court’s mounting disregard for legislative history and concomitant attempt to erect replacement canons of statutory construction to guide textual interpretation. The opinion privileged a canon of statutory construction over the legislative record of congressional intent. Of more imminent and practical impact, Buckhannon invalidated the catalyst theory of awarding plaintiff’s fees to “prevailing parties” under statutes authorizing private attorneys general to bring …

The Fallacy Of The Sovereign Prerogative To Set De Minimis Liability Rules For Sexual Slavery, Mary D. Fan

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Although several treaties prohibited slavery by the early twentieth century, forced prostitution was treated as distinct from slavery and considered a domestic issue on which each sovereign state could legislate independently. The article explores the sovereign's prerogative to determine whether to set property or liability rules for sexual slavery. May bodies -- typically women's bodies -- be taken by force with compensation set ex post in liability rules by the state? Or do property rules prohibit such conscription? The article argues that while historically, it was the sovereign's prerogative to set property or liability rules, an international property rule protecting …

Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

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Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.

The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …

Corporate Complicity: From Nuremberg To Rangoon - An Examination Of Forced Labor Cases And Their Impact On The Liability Of Multinational Corporations, Anita Ramasastry

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Part I of this article outlines various levels of corporate complicity as a way of understanding the spectrum of conduct for which MNCs have been criticized.This provides a necessary background for examining how courts have treated corporate actors with respect to their alleged involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. This also helps to delineate where on this continuum MNC conduct should give rise to accomplice liability.

Part II of this article examines the post-World War II trials of German and Japanese civilian businessmen for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The war crimes prosecutions provide an important starting …

Taxes Vs. Fees: A Curious Confusion, Hugh D. Spitzer

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Provides an analytical framework for categorizing varoius types of taxes and user charges and distinguishing between them, applying both economic and legal concepts.

Probability And Statistics In The Legal Curriculum: A Case Study In Disciplinary Aspects Of Interdisciplinarity, Michael Townsend

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This Article considers interdisciplinarity and the legal curriculum in the context of probability and statistics. Section D of Part II begins the discussion by sketching some multidisciplinary, pluridisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Part III is the workhorse of this Article. The particular example used here is the well-known jury discrimination case of Castaneda v. Partida as described in Section A. This "case study" provides the basis for a crossdisciplinary experience that offers students an opportunity to think about law as a discipline. It is difficult for students to step back and look at law as a discipline when there is …

Cyberproperty And Judicial Dissonance: The Trouble With Domain Name Classification, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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The nature of cyberspace continues to be woven into the fabric of our daily existence. Not surprisingly, cyberspace and the expansion of e-commerce pose challenges to existing law, particularly the legal definition of cyberproperty domain names. The nature of cyberspace allows many e-companies to possess no traditional assets such as buildings and inventories. Some e-companies own few computers, often using service providers to maintain their web sites. In the virtual space that e-companies inhabit, the primary assets that e-companies own are intangibles such as domain names, customer information, and intellectual property that includes business method patents, copyrights, and trademarks.

Domain …

Commercial Law Collides With Cyberspace: The Trouble With Perfection – Insecurity Interests In The New Corporate Asset, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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The recent downturn in the economy, particularly in the e-commerce sector, reveals many e-companies heading toward bankruptcy with cyberassets, such as domain names, as their most valuable corporate assets. Lending institutions and other creditors that have extended loans to such e-companies obviously want to get their hands on these bankrupt estates. Which creditor will have priority in the new cybercollateral of domain names? The answer to creditor priority questions may depend on whether domain names are intangible property for purposes of secured transactions. If so, should security interests in domain names be perfected under the Uniform Commercial Code or under …

Atlantic Salmon, Pacific Bound: Initiative, Defiance, Courage, And Indian Tribes In Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

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I want to address my remarks to the students of the University of Maine School of Law who will face a great deal of unfinished legal business on the topics of salmon, Indian tribes, and environmental law.

Elsewhere, I have derived what I describe as the five virtues of effective action (genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, courage). People of achievement, lawyers or otherwise, are familiar with these virtues and display them in many creative forms.

Next, I will peer through this lens of effective action at some key moments in the history of Atlantic-Pacific Salmon Interactions. This coming together has been …

American-Style Justice In No Man's Land, Peter Nicolas

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This Article seeks to fill the gap in the existing literature by exploring the constitutional limits on federal court subject matter jurisdiction in the context of civil disputes arising in Indian Country and civil disputes arising elsewhere involving Indian tribes, tribal entities, and tribal members.

Part II of this Article catalogues the universe of "no forum" and "biased forum" jurisdictional quagmires with respect to civil disputes arising in Indian Country or those arising elsewhere involving Indian tribes, tribal entities, and tribal members, examining the existing legal obstacles that prevent federal, state, and tribal courts from exercising jurisdiction over the "no …

Commentary: Convergence As Movement: Toward A Counter-Hegemonic Approach To Corporate Governance, Kellye Y. Testy

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No abstract provided.

The Beginning Of Herstory For Corporate Law, Kellye Y. Testy

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In The Gender Implications of Corporate Governance Change, Janis Sarra presents what has until now seemed oxymoronic to many: a feminist economic analysis of corporate governance in the global marketplace. In so doing, she joins a growing chorus of corporate governance scholars who are seeking to advance an alternative vision to the neoclassical, shareholder-centered model that is not only dominant in the United States, but is also widely exported-even to nations that do not share similar institutional configurations that support such a model. This diverse group of scholars--whose approaches have been labeled variously as "progressive," "communitarian," and "socio-economic,"--do not …

Rethinking The United States First-To-Invent Principle From A Comparative Law Perspective: A Proposal To Restructure § 102 Novelty And Priority Provisions, Toshiko Takenaka

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This Article first examines the novelty and priority provisions of first-to-file countries, and then compares them with U.S. counterparts to identify major differences and determine why these differences result. The Article discusses the origins of the complex structure adopted by § 102 to define prior art and the difficult interpretation given to terms used in the novelty definition. This Article then reviews the USPTO's practice of the novelty examination and the priority determination in interference proceedings. This review confirms the first-to-file patent professional's perception that the United States, in fact, follows the first-to-file principle, although it also provides an exception …