Digital Commons Network^™

Effect Of Head Coverings On Directional Microphone Performance In Modern Hearing Aids: A Kemar-Based Laboratory Evaluation, Zahra Fekri, Mariam Mohamad, Ayasakanta Rout

Faculty Scholarship

Background/Objectives: Directional microphones are an established hearing aid technology for improving speech understanding in background noise. Although researchers have examined the influence of hair, spectacles, and earmold venting on directional performance, no systematic work has addressed head coverings, which people wear worldwide for cultural, religious, occupational, and personal reasons. This study determined whether a cotton head covering alters the directivity index (DI) of highest-level receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aids. Methods: A Knowles Electronics Manikin for Acoustic Research (KEMAR) was positioned in a double-walled, sound-treated booth, and DI was measured for omnidirectional and fixed directional microphone settings, with and without a two-layer …

Beyond Forecast Accuracy: A Responsible Ai Framework For Provenance-Aware Fine Jewelry Retail Planning, Katayoun Kiarsi, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Fine jewelry retailers must reconcile uncertain demand, high-value inventory, complex material histories, and expectations of responsible sourcing. This article develops a responsible artificial intelligence framework that connects demand forecasting, provenance evidence, and governance within retail planning. A conceptual framework-development approach informed by design-science research combines a targeted literature update through October 9, 2026, with descriptive analysis of published market statistics and an external retail forecasting benchmark. The analysis distinguishes original design propositions from empirical findings reported by other researchers; no retailer-level experiment or environmental impact assessment was conducted. Three sourced bar charts illustrate changing gold jewelry consumption and the methodological …

Senate Bipartisan Permit Reform Bill Would Upend Many Environmental Laws, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

On September 26, the Republican chairs and Democratic ranking members of two key Senate committees released the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA). The full Senate is expected to take up the bill on November 9 (a week after the midterm elections). Its future in the House is uncertain.

The bill, the culmination of years of negotiations on permitting reform, is very good for the proponents of many kinds of energy projects (both clean and fossil), especially electricity transmission. It is very bad for environmental groups and other project opponents who want to challenge these projects in …

Empire By Gaslight, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the constitutional law of U.S. colonialism as it applies to Puerto Rico should be understood as a form of collective gaslighting. The United States has been gaslighting Puerto Ricans for a century-and-a-quarter. By defining their constitutional status as a series of contradictions — starting with defining Puerto Rico as “foreign,” but only in a “domestic sense” — the federal government has caused Puerto Ricans to question their capacity to judge their own reality, thereby solidifying U.S. power over the island and undermining Puerto Rican resistance.

Not only has the United States been gaslighting Puerto Ricans since …

Legal Scapegoating Of Transgender People, Democratic Vulnerability, And The Problem Of Judicial Blinders, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past decade, lawmakers have proposed an extraordinary number of restrictions on transgender people across nearly every area of public and private life — bathrooms, health care, athletics, education, identity documents, military service, prisons, and more. This Article argues that these measures are best understood as legal scapegoating, meaning the use of law to galvanize public discomfort and hostility toward a targeted group. While demagogic rhetoric can also galvanize those reactions, the concrete restrictions of a legal scapegoating effort raise two further risks, one for democratic governance and the other for judicial review. First, legal scapegoating normalizes government’s use …

Size-Tunable Tellurium Quantum Dots By Glancing Angle Deposition, S. M. Sayem, Salim Hussain, Fernando Maia De Oliveira, Ranjitha Kumarapuram Hariharalakshmanan, Gregory Guisbiers, Tansel Karabacak

Faculty Scholarship

Tellurium has a unique helical crystal arrangement and pronounced anisotropy that influence its electronic and optical properties at the nanoscale. This study reports the synthesis of pure tellurium quantum dots (Te QDs) on silicon wafer using glancing angle deposition (GLAD). Quasi-hemispherical dots with lateral sizes ranging from 9 to 28 nm and vertical dimensions of 6 to 10 nm were produced as a function of the deposition duration. A comparison of the dot sizes with the Bohr radii of the charge carriers indicated a regime of strong to intermediate confinement. Structural analyses confirmed the polycrystalline nature and trigonal phase of …

Ai Game Melding: Agent-Assisted Reconstruction, Player Co-Creation, And The Future Of Programmable Play, Andrew Allen Smith, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence increasingly mediates game production and player participation, but claims about game merging frequently conflate different technical achievements. This article examines AI game melding as the convergence of agent assisted reconstruction, executable interoperability, and creative recombination. An integrative narrative review connects procedural generation, computational blending, modding, co creation, and decompilation research with public documentation available through October 15, 2026. Cases include meme based and Wii Sports crossovers in World at War Zombies, a Call of Duty and Minecraft hybrid, runtime bridging, and agent assisted reconstruction. The analysis separates creator demonstrations and reported acceleration from independently validated performance. It proposes …

The Case For Cases: From Compelling Stories To Responsible Reasoning And Adaptive Learning, Hashem Elassad, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Examples, stories, and cases connect abstract propositions with situations, yet their pedagogical usefulness does not establish their evidentiary adequacy. This conceptual article examines how case-based learning can support understanding, responsible judgment, and adaptive knowledge use without allowing memorable narratives to substitute for warranted inference. Building on an originating essay about the value of examples, the analysis integrates selected scholarship on case-based reasoning, worked examples, analogical comparison, narrative persuasion, epistemic cognition, and Cognitive Flexibility Theory. The methodology consists of purposive literature selection, conceptual differentiation, comparison of explanatory mechanisms, examination of boundary conditions, and development of an integrative instructional framework; it is …

Legalist Verses Realist Accounts Of United States V. Skrmetti, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Although the Supreme Court is increasingly adopting an understanding of sex discrimination that is biologically focused and/or formalistic, this Article argues that the Court does not consistently apply that conception when doing so benefits transgender Americans. The Court’s conclusion in United States v. Skrmetti that no facial sex classification exists in Tennessee’s law banning gender-affirming care for transgender—but not cisgender—minors is irreconcilable with its conclusion five years earlier in Bostock v. Clayton County that Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination prohibits employers from firing employees just because they are transgender. Perhaps tellingly, only Justice Gorsuch, Bostock’s author, and Chief Justice …

"How Do I Design My Law Course?": A Quick Guide For New Professors, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

How do professors start teaching law? This question is a particular challenge for new law professors, who often lack resources for course design. Written from the perspective of a recently tenured law professor, this Essay offers four major categories of decisions: semester structure, classroom, final exam, and “professorial personality.” It argues that, for each decision, reasonable minds can differ. This Essay also provides some personal reflections on the decision-making to illustrate how one professor might weigh various considerations in course design. A final Appendix is a checklist for new professors.

Fifty Years After Estelle V. Gamble—Where Does Carceral Health Law Go From Here?, James René Jolin, Jenean Docter, Benjamin A. Barsky

Faculty Scholarship

Fifty years ago, the US Supreme Court decided Estelle v.Gamble—a landmark case commonly known for establishing a duty on the government to provide health services to incarcerated people, whether before or after conviction. In this column, we offer a brief critical reappraisal of Estelle by reviewing its demanding legal standard and identifying a set of related litigation barriers that stymie the availability of relief in federal court. Given these constraints, we argue for a carceral health law paradigm that moves beyond the current, dominant focus on litigation.We use Medicaid law and policy as a case study to explore the …

The Threat To Government Ethics, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

That was quite a week. Over seven days in mid-October:

• President Trump hosted a White House dinner for three dozen super-wealthy individuals and representatives of major corporations who pledged funds for his $300 million ballroom.
• The president commuted the sentence of former Congressman George Santos, who had served less than three months of an 87-month term for corruption, and canceled Santos’s obligation to pay restitution to his victims.
• The president fired, without providing a reason or giving the 30 days’ notice required by law, the Inspector General for the Export-Import Bank.
• We learned the president is demanding the Department of …

Judging Fast And Slow, Bert I. Huang

Faculty Scholarship

The federal courts serve as our first responders in conflicts over constitutional rights and the separation of powers. They are called upon to react — fast — to legal challenges to governmental actions. To avert harm before it’s too late, they may rule within weeks, days, or even hours. They have done so in recent cases about free speech, freedom of the press, election law, independent agencies, federal workers, domestic troop deployments, spending and taxation, due process, search and seizure, and more.

The trial judges and appeals courts of the federal judiciary have long been tasked with this kind of …

International Law And Power Politics: On Koskenniemi's Perceptions Of Justice, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Martti Koskenniemi wrote ‘Perceptions of Justice’ against the backdrop of the 2003 Iraq War. The piece draws a stark distinction between American and European conceptions of justice – and approaches to international law. Over twenty years later, his distinction might still (or again) resonate. This retrospective analyses it in light of his other work and more contemporary events, arguing that it is a mix of misguided and confused. The United States and Europe have for decades, if not centuries, been profoundly entwined; each has significantly shaped and been shaped by its relationship with the other. The urgent question now is …

Directing The Absent Tool: Friction Embodiment And Competency Progression In Ai Assisted Creative Learning, Daniel Suarez, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Generative artificial intelligence complicates the relationship between successful creative production and the development of independent disciplinary judgment. Task allocation offers a practical response by identifying operations that learners should protect, perform with support, or delegate, yet the educational value of an allocation depends on conditions that change beyond a single assignment. This article extends a process-centered framework along three connected axes: absence, modality, and time. Constructivist friction describes difficulty encountered when learners must reconstruct judgments previously supplied by an available tool; its educational value depends on subsequent diagnosis, feedback, and transfer rather than difficulty alone. A spatial and embodied extension …

Generative Ai In Art And Design Education: Keeping The Human In The Creative Loop, James Hutson, Daniel Suarez

Faculty Scholarship

Research on generative artificial intelligence in education reveals a persistent divergence between successful assisted performance and the development of independent knowledge, creative judgment, and transferable skill. Studies of art and design additionally identify opportunities for iterative exploration alongside concerns about visual fixation, uncertain authorship, and dependence on generated alternatives. These findings create an instructional problem: educators need to determine which creative decisions should remain with learners, which operations can receive bounded assistance, and which activities can be delegated without bypassing the intended learning. Existing scholarship addresses these questions through research on scaffolding, human-AI collaboration, assessment, and psychological ownership, but these …

Democracy Needs The Administrative State, Gillian E. Metzger

Faculty Scholarship

In public debate, the federal bureaucracy is not typically praised for its democratic credentials. Consisting of a wide array of agencies staffed by a permanent civil service and governed by detailed regulations, the administrative state is more likely to be portrayed as a bastion of red tape and unelected power. To hear members of the Supreme Court tell it, for example, the administrative state’s “unaccountable bureaucrats” and “vast power[s]” pose a dire threat to constitutional democracy that only expanded presidential control can solve. President Trump has offered an even darker view, attacking a “deep state” of entrenched government officials as …

Inequality, Collective Power, And Democratic Renewal, Kate Andrias

Faculty Scholarship

With each passing week since this essay series commenced, American democracy has come under greater threat. Leading political scientists have concluded that the U.S. is now better described as a competitive autocracy rather than a democracy. President Trump’s recent attacks on core institutions and violations of the rule of law — from the use of violent force by ICE to the investigation of the Federal Reserve Chair and the threats involving Greenland — were unimaginable even a few months ago.

The Health Status Of U.S. Democracy, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, a pamphlet that galvanized American public opinion in the aftermath of the colonial confrontations at Lexington and Concord. The disorganized revolt against British authority was largely undecided on next steps, public opinion having failed to coalesce around capitulation to London or revolution against the British government. Paine’s argument for American independence was uncompromising. Prefiguring the Declaration of Independence that put King George III front and center in the emerging conflict, Paine wrote: “In the monarchies, the King is the Law but in America, Law is King.”

Predicting Less, Understanding More: Shifting The Use Of Machine Learning From Individual Prediction To Structural Insights In Systems That Affect Children And Families, Amanda J. Fairchild, Joshua Gupta-Kagan, Andrew Barclay

Faculty Scholarship

Machine learning algorithms have been deeply embedded across domains, valued for their capacity to analyze large-scale data and to support a range of descriptive and predictive tasks. Despite their versatility, most applications to date have focused on individual-level prediction at the expense of broader structural insights. This paper shifts that focus by using comprehensive demographic, juvenile justice, and other key data from child-serving agencies in one southern state to examine how juvenile and family court intake structures shape case outcomes in delinquency referrals. Specifically, we combine machine learning algorithms with a doubly robust, potential outcomes-based modeling procedure to estimate the …

¿Digno Retorno? De La Ciudadanía Cultural A La Ciudadanía Truncada En El Retorno A México, Nancy Plankey-Videla, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter revisits citizenship by drawing on the findings of the Mexican Reintegration Project that interviewed 333 Mexicans that the U.S. deported or who returned to Mexico, and 18 civil society organizations that were part of the study. Many Mexicans in the United States experience a form of belonging, or cultural citizenship, even while being monitored by immigration and law enforcement. Upon returning to Mexico —whether forcibly or “voluntarily” - they experience a truncated citizenship that also complicates their sense of belonging to their own country of origin. They often do not have all the documentation needed to prove their …

Ai Slop, Jessica Silbey, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

The term “AI slop” has become popular to describe the output of generative AI systems seen as voluminous, low quality, or the result of little effort. When AI-generated music and videos flood platforms, they are called slop. Peer-reviewed journals and legal tribunals are drowning in low-quality and low-reliability AI slop submissions.  Employees are seen to be producing mountains of slop in their reports and communications with each other. The term has inertia and heft, and the phenomenon has significant consequences. Most of them are not good.

But the boundaries of “AI slop” and its usefulness in policy discussions are not …

A Conventional Solution To Constitutional Stagnation?, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Our charter of government is stuck. The last time the U.S. Constitution was revised was over 30 years ago, when the “fluky” and largely inconsequential Twenty-Seventh Amendment stole into the text two centuries after it was written. The last time Congress proposed an amendment was almost 50 years ago, when the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment was sent to its demise at the ratification stage. Although state constitutions remain far more dynamic, they too have experienced a declining rate of amendment in recent years.

The Coming Health Insurance Transition, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, the dominant form of private health insurance in the United States—by far—has been employment-based group health insurance. Somewhere in the range of 175 million employees and their families receive health care coverage through a system in which employers serve as financiers, procurers, administrators, and fiduciaries of the health insurance promise. An overwhelming percentage of those health insurance arrangements are governed by ERISA, with little room for state law.

That is going to change.

This Article explains—for the first time anywhere—why and how. Because of the tremendous and as-yet unrecognized power of an obscure-sounding funding arrangement called the Individual …

Police Surveillance And The Perils Of Techno-Solutionism, Prithika Balakrishnan

Faculty Scholarship

This Article charts domestic law enforcement’s use of video surveillance, beginning in the backlash to the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s, continuing through the War on Terror and, more recently, in the context of the post-George Floyd public critiques of policing. The undergirding philosophy of policing’s embrace of surveillance technology is techno-solutionism, the view that all complex social situations can be simplified to measurable data primed for quick-fix, unbiased, algorithmic answers. While technology may have initially been adopted by police to respond to specific problems, it has changed the problems themselves, altered the array of potential solutions, and …

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Diets For Body Weight Reduction, Alan Aragon, Bill I. Campbell, Brad J. Schoenfield, Jeffrey Stout, Douglas Kalman, Paul J. Arciero, Shawn Arent, Richard Kreider, Lem Taylor, Laurent Bannock, Robert E.C. Wildman, Chad Kerksick, Jose Antonio

Faculty Scholarship

The International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) has developed an official position on diets for body weight reduction. This critical analysis of the literature is intended to provide a scientific foundation for practitioners, coaches, and trainees regarding the effects of the major diet types in adults who are generally healthy, physically active, and/or athletic, while drawing from clinical research in those with overweight/obesity, when relevant. This position stand does not address acute dehydration-based weight cutting, pharmacotherapy (i.e. GLP-1RAs), or bariatric surgery. The following 15 points constitute the Position Statement of the Society; the Research Committee has approved them.

1. Diets for …

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Think Twice Before You Sign! An Experiment On A Cautionary Function Of Contractual Formalities, Monika Leszczynska

Faculty Scholarship

Contractual formalities, such as handwritten signatures, have long been viewed as serving a cautionary function that protects individuals from entering ill-considered agreements. With the rise of digital contracting, it is uncertain whether online forms of assent can play the same role. In an incentivized laboratory experiment, four modes of contract confirmation were compared: clicking “OK,” typing one’s name, entering a PIN code (analogous to a qualified e-signature), and handwritten signing. The study examined how these methods affect choices between smaller–sooner and larger–later rewards. Results show that participants were more impulsive when confirming by clicking “OK” or typing their name than …

Connecting Families Through Cash Transfers And An Enabling Environment In Colombia, Mexico, And The Philippines: A Qualitative Study, Johanna K P Greeson, John Gyourko, Sarah Wasch, Kristin Mallory, Lory Fehlig, Cesar Jácome, Nestor David Lara Yanes, Fátima Areli Ruiz Gutiérrez, Dennis Guamos, Adele R. Lehman

Faculty Scholarship

Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty, and almost half of the world’s population lives below the poverty line. Cash transfer programs are increasingly used to address poverty’s effects on family well-being, yet less is known about how families experience programs that combine cash transfers with peer-driven mutual aid. Children International’s (CI) Community Independence Initiative (CII) provides conditional cash transfers and promotes family-led goal setting, mutual support, and shared learning. This qualitative study explored how families in Colombia, Mexico, and the Philippines experienced CII and made meaning of its material and relational components. We conducted focus groups with …

State Legislatures: Guardians Of The Federal Balance, Practical Strategies For Monitoring, Strengthening, And Sustaining American Federalism (Remarks), Christian G. Fritz

Faculty Scholarship

My remarks today are drawn from my book, Monitoring American Federalism: The History of State Legislative Resistance, and from an essay I wrote this year for the Center for the Study of Federalism about the responsibility of state legislators to sound the alarm when the federal government overreaches its constitutional authority.

Lessons Learned For The Independent Panel For Evidence For Action Against Amr From Previous International Science Panels: Stakeholder Views From The 2025 Lagos Workshop, Iruka N. Okeke, Anthony Mcdonnell, Ayodele A. Akinyele, Javier Guzman, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

In September, 2024, the UN General Assembly assigned the Quadripartite Joint Secretariat on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) the task of establishing an Independent Panel for Evidence for Action against AMR (IPEA). To promote stakeholder views and input around the constitution and functioning of this Panel, which could feed into the Quadripartite Joint Secretariat’s consultation process, we independently commissioned seven papers to examine the lessons that could be learned from other high-level scientific panels. We then convened 85 stakeholders, primed with the background papers. The Workshop, held in Lagos, Nigeria in April, 2025, drew representation from around the world, particularly low-income or …