Digital Commons Network^™

Bind Me More Tightly Still: Voluntary Restraint Against Gun Suicide, Angela Selvaggio, Fredrick E. Vars

Articles

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Learning Outcomes For Msc Programs In Network And System Administration, Charles Border, Kyrre Begnum, Niels Sijm

Articles

What is the essence of a graduate-level system administration education? What skills and abilities of the candidate should educators focus on when developing a new program? This paper investigates the learning outcomes from three MSc graduate programs in network and system administration. We use a tournament-based game as a survey to establish a ranking of all the outcomes from the programs. Our results show a clear emphasis on security and the ability to create working solutions based on abstract descriptions.

Current Key Perspectives In Video Gaming And Religion: Theses By Owen Gottlieb., Owen Gottlieb

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Current Key Perspectives in Video Gaming and Religion: Theses by Owen Gottlieb. Based on AAR 2015 panel with Ian Bogost, Gregory Grieve, Rachel Wagner, Michael Waltemathe, Jason Anthony, Xenia Zeiler, Kerstin Radde Antweiler. Heidi Campbell (presiding) Michael Houseman (respondent) Gamevironments, (Issue 3, 2015) http://www.gamevironments.org/ Universität Bremen. Includes paper (thesis), transcript, and audio file

Ionic Liquids As Additives Of Coffee Bean Oil In Steel-Steel Contacts, James Grace, Solomiya Vysochanska, Jeffrey Lodge, Patricia Iglesias

Articles

Environmental awareness and ever-growing restrictive regulations over contamination have increased the need for more environmentally-friendly lubricants. Due to their superior biodegradability and lower toxicity, vegetable oils are a good alternative to replace currently-used mineral oils. However, vegetable oils show low oxidation and thermal stability and poor anti-wear properties. Most of these drawbacks can be attenuated through the use of additives. In the last decade, ionic liquids have emerged as high-performance fluids and lubricant additives due to their unique characteristics. In this study, the tribological behavior of two phosphonium-based ionic liquids is investigated as additives of coffee bean oil in steel-steel …

Impact Of Urban Form On Energy Use In Central City And Suburban Neighborhoods: Lessons From The Phoenix Metropolitan Region, Subhrajit Guhathakurta, Eric Williams

Articles

Urban form, land use patterns, and the type of structures significantly influence a city's energy needs, and consequently, its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study aims to clarify connections between urban form and its use together with the associated energy demands for infrastructure (buildings and paved surfaces) and transport. The model is tested through case studies of two Phoenix sub-areas, one in downtown Phoenix, which is undergoing redevelopment towards higher density housing and the second, a low-density suburban area at the edge of Phoenix, which has undergone significant growth in the last two decades. The results indicate that older inner …

Ingress Well-Played: City As Mmo, Elizabeth L. Lawley

Articles

This paper describes player experience for Ingress, a geo-local, mobile augmented reality game created by Google’s Niantic Labs. Ingress incorporates aspects of both pervasive, alternate reality (ARG) and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. However, unlike many ARGs, Ingress is not focused on a specific time-limited period, or linked to a single real-world event or location. And unlike a typical MMO, play in Ingress is geo-spatially limited; players must be physically proximate to game elements in order to interact with them. Using game mechanics similar to those of many MMOs, Ingress provides for a range of gameplay, based both on …

Basis For Calculating Cross Sections For Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spin-Modulated Polarized Neutron Scattering, Michael Kotlarchyk, George M. Thurston

Articles

In this work we study the potential for utilizing the scattering of polarized neutrons from nuclei whose spin has been modulated using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). From first principles, we present an in-depth development of the differential scattering cross sections that would arise in such measurements from a hypothetical target system containing nuclei with non-zero spins. In particular, we investigate the modulation of the polarized scattering cross sections following the application of radio frequency pulses that impart initial transverse rotations to selected sets of spin-1/2 nuclei. The long-term aim is to provide a foundational treatment of the scattering cross section …

Introducing Marijuana Law Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Howard Bromberg, Mark K. Osbeck

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Interest in marijuana law continues to grow, due in large part to the complicated and rapidly evolving landscape of marijuana laws in the United States. Nearly every day, newspapers report on new or proposed legislation and the legal controversies that have arisen with regard to this evolving landscape. There are now several marijuana-law blogs on the Internet, Congress is considering sweeping legislation that would essentially grant significant deference to the individual states, and public opinion continues to move in favor of increased legalization. For the last two years, Newsweek magazine has published special editions devoted exclusively to marijuana law and …

Portmanteau Ascendant: Post-Release Regulations And Sex Offender Recidivism, J. J. Prescott

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The purported purpose of sex offender post-release regulations (e.g., community notification and residency restrictions) is the reduction of sex offender recidivism. On their face, these laws seem well-designed and likely to be effective. A simple economic framework of offender behavior can be used to formalize these basic intuitions: in essence, post-release regulations either increase the probability of detection or increase the immediate cost of engaging in the prohibited activity (or both), and so should reduce the likelihood of criminal behavior. These laws aim to incapacitate people outside of prison. Yet, empirical researchers to date have found essentially no reliable evidence …

Back To 1913?: The Ryan Blueprint And Its Problems, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah

Articles

From the Revolutionary War to the late 19th century, the federal government was financed primarily through regressive tariffs on imported goods. The exception was the income tax enacted during the national emergency of the Civil War, which was allowed to expire in 1872. The rise of an industrial economy in the post- Civil War era led to significant increases in inequality, which the tariffs exacerbated by falling primarily on the working class. ‘‘Robber barons’’ like J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller did not consume most of their income, and their intangible wealth avoided state-level personal property taxes as …

Compensation's Role In Deterrence, Russell M. Gold

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There are plenty of noneconomic reasons to care whether victims are compensated in class actions. The traditional law-and-economics view, however, is that when individual claim values are small, there is no reason to care whether victims are compensated. Rather than compensation deterring wrongdoing is tort law's primary economic objective. And on this score, law-and-economics scholars contend that only the aggregate amount of money that a defendant expects to pay affects deterrence. They say that it does not matter for deterrence purposes how that money is split between victims, lawyers, and charities. This Article challenges that claim about achieving tort law's …

The End Of An Era? Federal Civil Procedure After The 2015 Amendments, Adam N. Steinman

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The recent amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were the most controversial in decades. The biggest criticisms concerned pleading standards and access to discovery. Many feared that the amendments would undermine the simplified, merits-driven approach that the original drafters of the Federal Rules envisioned and would weaken access to justice and the enforcement of substantive rights and obligations.

This Article argues that the amendments that came into effect on December 1, 2015, do not mandate a more restrictive approach to pleading or discovery. Although there was legitimate cause for alarm given the advisory committee's earlier proposals and supporting …

"Ideology" Or "Situation Sense"? An Experimental Investigation Of Motivated Reasoning And Professional Judgment, Dan M. Kahan, David Hoffman, Danieli Evans, Neal Devins, Eugene Lucci, Katherine Cheng, Katherine Cheng, Katherine Cheng

Articles

This Article reports the results of a study on whether political predispositions influence judicial decisionmaking. The study was designed to overcome the two principal limitations on existing empirical studies that purport to find such an influence: the use of nonexperimental methods to assess the decisions of actual judges; and the failure to use actual judges in ideologically-biased-reasoning experiments. The study involved a sample of sitting judges (n = 253), who, like members of a general public sample (n = 800), were culturally polarized on climate change, marijuana legalization and other contested issues. When the study subjects were assigned to analyze …

Empirical Methods And Critical Race Theory: A Discourse On Possibilities For A Hybrid Methodology, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Realigning The Governmental/Proprietary Distinction In Municipal Law, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

Lawyers and judges who deal with municipal law are perpetually puzzled by the distinction between “governmental” and “proprietary” powers of local governments. The distinction is murky, inconsistent between jurisdictions, inconsistent within jurisdictions, and of limited use in predicting how courts will rule. Critics have launched convincing attacks on the division of municipal powers into these two categories. Most articles have focused on problems with the distinction in specific areas of municipal law. In contrast, this article provides a comprehensive analysis of the governmental/proprietary distinction in seven specific doctrinal areas: legislative grants of municipal authority, government contracts, torts, eminent domain, adverse …

What Should Tribes Expect From Federal Regulations? The Bureau Of Land Management's Fracking Rule And The Problems With Treating Indian And Federal Lands Identically, Monte Mills

Articles

On March 26, 2015, the Bureau of Land management (BLM) published its Final Rule regarding Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands (Final Rule). Work on the Rule had begun nearly four and a half years earlier as a way to update the agency’s outdated regulatory scheme to account for new fracking technology and growing public concern over the practice and potential safety concerns related to fracking.

The Final Rule amassed a number of procedural and substantive requirements for fracking operations and proposed to apply these standards uniformly to both public lands and lands held in trust by the Federal …

New Approaches To Energy Development In Indian Country: The Trust Relationship And Tribal Self-Determination At (Yet Another) Crossroads, Monte Mills

Articles

Energy development in Indian country exists at the crossroads of tribal self-determination and the federal government's trust responsibility. This article reviews the foundations of this crossroads, describes recent developments, and analyzes pending proposals that may enhance both tribal sovereignty and energy development in Indian country.

Branding Taxation, Xuan-Thao Nguyen, Jeffrey A. Maine

Articles

Branding is important not only to businesses,but also to the economy. The intellectual property laws and tax laws should thus further the legitimate goals of encouraging and protecting brand investments while maintaining a sound tax base. Intellectual property protections for branding depend on advertisement and enforcement, both of which demand significant amounts of private investment by firms. Although one would expect similar tax treatments of both categories of investment, the categories are actually treated as vastly different for federal income tax purposes. Additionally, tax distinctions also exist within each category. The result is that some branding investments are expensed and …

Fundamental Rights In A Post-Obergefell World, Peter Nicolas

Articles

In this Article, I identify and critically examine three substantive criticisms raised by the dissents in the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down state laws and constitutional provisions barring same-sex couples from marrying within the state or having their out-of-state marriages recognized by the state. First, that the majority improperly framed the right at issue broadly as the right to marriage instead of narrowly as the right to same-sex marriage, conflicting with the Court's holding in Washington v. Glucksberg that in fundamental rights cases the right at issue must be framed narrowly, and in …

Bringing Demonstrative Evidence In From The Cold: The Academy's Role In Developing Model Rules, Maureen A. Howard, Jeffry C. Barnum

Articles

To this day, judges and advocates struggle with the definition and use of "demonstrative evidence." The ambiguity of this term (or its close cousins "illustrative evidence" and evidence offered "for illustrative purposes only") infects the judicial process with uncertainty, hindering advocates when preparing for trial and, in some cases, producing erroneous verdicts. For example, the Seventh Circuit recently reversed a case for improper use of a demonstrative exhibit, and on retrial the result swung from a defense verdict to an $11 million plaintiffs victory. Uncertainty about the admission and use of demonstrative evidence has festered for decades. Lawyers innovate in …

Creative Capitalism And Human Trafficking: A Business Approach To Eliminate Forced Labor And Human Trafficking From Global Supply Chains, Dana Raigrodski

Articles

A great amount of revenue generated by businesses in the global economy can be linked to the trafficking and enslavement of human beings. Yet, the current discourse on human trafficking fails to recognize the magnitude of benefit consumers, businesses, and economies gain from the work of forced and trafficked labor. Moreover, the limited efforts that seek to address this situation have focused on ways to encourage businesses to voluntarily adopt more socially responsible practices. These measures have had only limited success, and are generally believed to be in tension with the for-profit purposes of businesses.

Hence, the task of convincing …

Uncertain Futures In Evolving Financial Markets, Anita K. Krug

Articles

Today's publicly offered investment funds, including mutual funds, have ever more diverse investment strategies, as they increasingly invest in financial instruments that, in earlier years, had been the province of only the most sophisticated investors. Although the new landscape of investment possibilities may substantially benefit retail investors, one financial instrument attracting increasing amounts of retail investors' assets is acutely troublesome: the commodity futures contract. Futures originated as a means for farmers and other producers of agricultural commodities to ensure that their products could be sold at reasonable prices. Early on, the goals of futures regulation centered on one particular risk …

Robots As Legal Metaphors, Ryan Calo

Articles

This Article looks at the specific role robots play in the judicial imagination. The law and technology literature is replete with examples of how the metaphors and analogies that courts select for emerging technology can be outcome determinative. Privacy law scholar Professor Daniel Solove argues convincingly, for instance, that George Orwell's Big Brother metaphor has come to dominate, and in ways limit, privacy law and policy in the United States. Even at a more specific, practical level, whether a judge sees email as more like a letter or a postcard will dictate the level of Fourth Amendment protection she is …

Visual Rulemaking, Elizabeth G. Porter, Kathryn A. Watts

Articles

Federal rulemaking has traditionally been understood as a text-bound, technocratic process. However, as this Article is the first to uncover, rulemaking stakeholders—including agencies, the President, and members of the public—are now deploying politically tinged visuals to push their agendas at every stage of high-stakes, often virulently controversial, rulemakings. Rarely do these visual contributions appear in the official rulemaking record, which remains defined by dense text, lengthy cost-benefit analyses, and expert reports. Perhaps as a result, scholars have overlooked the phenomenon we identify here: the emergence of a visual rulemaking universe that is splashing images, GIFs, and videos across social media …

Controlling Presidential Control, Kathryn A. Watts

Articles

Presidents Reagan and Clinton laid the foundation for strong presidential control over the administrative state, institutionalizing White House review of agency regulations. Presidential control, however, did not stop there. To the contrary, it has evolved and deepened during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Indeed, President Obama’s efforts to control agency action have dominated the headlines in recent months, touching on everything from immigration to drones to net neutrality.

Despite the entrenchment of presidential control over the modern regulatory state, administrative law has yet to adapt. To date, the most pervasive response both inside and outside the …

On Legal Scholarship: Questions For Judge Harry T. Edwards, Ronald K.L. Collins

Articles

The life of Judge Harry T. Edwards is one very much steeped in writing. His passion dates back at least to his years at Uniondale High School when he was the editor of the school newspaper. In the legal realm, that passion traces back to 1964 and his days on the Michigan Law Review when he published two student Notes. In the half-century since then, Judge Edwards has authored six books and more than 90 scholarly articles or essays. As a lawyer, educator, administrator, arbitrator, and now jurist, Harry Edwards has put his ideas into print concerning an array of …

Challenging The "Criminal Alien" Paradigm, Angélica Cházaro

Articles

Deportation of so-called “criminal aliens” has become the driving force in U.S. immigration enforcement. The Immigration Accountability Executive Actions of late 2014 provide the most recent example of this trend. Even for immigrants’ rights advocates, conventional wisdom holds that if deportations must occur, “criminal aliens” should be the first to go. A voluminous “crimmigration” scholarship notes the ever-growing entwinement of criminal and immigration enforcement, but does not challenge this fundamental premise.

This Article calls for a rejection of the formulation of the “criminal alien”—the figure used to increasingly justify the preservation and expansion of a harmful immigration regime. It thus …

Police Stories, Helen A. Anderson

Articles

As lawyers and judges know, the facts, and the stories created with those facts, make the law: “[A] case well stated is more than half argued.” The police narrative is one of the most common narratives in legal writing, simply because there are so many criminal cases, as well as numerous civil cases, involving police. For the most part, these narratives tell the familiar story of the hardworking, careful police officer in a challenging situation with dangerous criminals.

These narratives do much of the work of an appellate argument, just as Chief Justice Robert’s story about Officer Devlin makes the …

Reasons For Counseling Reasonableness In Deploying Covenants-Not-To-Compete In Technology Firms, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Some states ban the enforcement of employee covenants-not-to-compete (“non-competes”) but most enforce them to the extent they are reasonable. As such, “reasonableness” provides the touchstone for enforceability analysis. The academic literature commenting on the reasonableness of non-competes is large and growing. Scholars usually direct their comments to judges, legislators, and other scholars.

Rarely do they address practicing lawyers. That omission is particularly unfortunate because practicing lawyers, more than judges, legislators, and scholars, can affect whether non-competes work both fairly and effectively. This Article fills that void by providing reasons, directed to practicing lawyers, for deploying non-competes in a reasonable manner. …

Sovereignty And Subsistence: Native Self-Government And Rights To Hunt, Fish, And Gather After Ansca, Robert T. Anderson

Articles

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed in 1971 to extinguish aboriginal rights of Alaska Natives and provide compensation for those rights extinguished. Instead of vesting assets (land and money) in tribal governments, Congress required the formation of Alaska Native corporations to receive and hold these assets. A major flaw in the settlement was the failure to provide statutory protections for the aboriginal hunting, fishing, and gathering rights extinguished by ANCSA. Moreover, while ANCSA did not directly address Alaska Native tribal status or jurisdiction, the Supreme Court interpreted the Act to terminate the Indian country status of ANCSA …