Digital Commons Network^™

Legally Blind: The Therapeutic Illusion In The Support Study Of Extremely Premature Infants, George J. Annas, Catherine L. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

Physician-researchers follow a protocol to generate generalizable knowledge; physicians have a duty to treat patients in ways they and their patients think best. In both activities, research and treatment, physicians often see themselves simply as physicians, practicing medicine. Sick people have similar perception difficulties, and prefer to think of their physician-researcher simply as their physician, even when their treatment is ² determined by a protocol or the flip of a coin. Almost 20 years ago, in this Journal, one of us suggested that at least some researchers use language "to obscure; to blur or eliminate the distinctions between research …

The Dangerous Law Of Biological Race, Khiara Bridges

Faculty Scholarship

The idea of biological race -- a conception of race that postulates that racial groups are distinct, genetically homogenous units -- has experienced a dramatic resurgence in popularity in recent years. It is commonly understood, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the idea that races are genetically uniform groupings of individuals. Almost a century ago, the Court famously appeared to recognize the socially constructed nature of race. Moreover, the jurisprudence since then appears to reaffirm this disbelief: within law, race is understood to be a social construction, having no biological truth to it at all. Yet upon closer …

Central Falls Retirees V. Bondholders: Assessing Fear Of Contagion In Chapter 9 Proceedings, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

Modern Chapter 9 litigation has been characterized by extraordinary protections for municipal bondholders, and Central Falls is no exception. Although not well understood by politicians, fear of contagion has encouraged the adoption of legal arrangements that have limited the bankruptcy courts’ ability to include bondholders in the cost of restructuring municipal debt. This preference for bondholders (and, by extension, their insurers) has meant increased misery for taxpayers and retirees. Given that all of these actors appear to have been complicit to some degree in the creation and maintenance of the fiscally imprudent conditions that triggered bankruptcy and that evidence of …

Transient And Selective Suppression Of Neural Activity With Infrared Light, Michael W. Jenkins, Hui Lu, Jeffrey M. Mcmanus, Hillel J. Chiel

Faculty Scholarship

Analysis and control of neural circuitry requires the ability to selectively activate or inhibit neurons. Previous work showed that infrared laser light selectively excited neural activity in endogenous unmyelinated and myelinated axons. However, inhibition of neuronal firing with infrared light was only observed in limited cases, is not well understood and was not precisely controlled. Using an experimentally tractable unmyelinated preparation for detailed investigation and a myelinated preparation for validation, we report that it is possible to selectively and transiently inhibit electrically- initiated axonal activation, as well as to both block or enhance the propagation of action potentials of specific …

Andromeda Dwarfs In Light Of Mond. Ii. Testing Prior Predictions, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

We employ recently published measurements of the velocity dispersions in the newly discovered dwarf satellite galaxies of Andromeda to test our previously published predictions of this quantity. The data are in good agreement with our specific predictions for each dwarf made a priori with modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), with reasonable stellar mass-to-light ratios, and no dark matter, while Newtonian dynamics point to quite large mass discrepancies in these systems. MOND distinguishes between regimes where the internal field of the dwarf, or the external field of the host, dominates. The data appear to recognize this distinction, which is a unique feature …

Guantanamo Military Commissions: Reflections From A Legal Observer (Part I, Ii & Iii), Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Education For All (Or More Than Just Lawyers), Carol A. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

Virtually every sector of today's economy would benefit from employing workers with more than superficial knowledge of the law. Fields potentially ripe for the concept include health-care policy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, public affairs, banking, and environmental sciences, to name just a few. An interdisciplinary approach would provide graduates of these new programs with greater access to the job markets of interdisciplinary partners—something that traditional joint degrees based on combining the J.D. program with master's degrees from other disciplines rarely do.

Legal Education For All (Or More Than Just Lawyers), Carol A. Parker

Faculty Scholarship

While the need to acquire a working understanding of our laws and regulations seems only to grow, access to legal information is still largely kept at a premium by legal educators, who provide it almost exclusively through the juris doctor degree.

Only a small percentage of American law schools offer master's-level legal-studies degrees, which are typically equivalent to taking two semesters' worth of law-school courses. These non-J.D. graduate degrees are aimed at students seeking knowledge about law, but combining such programs with subject matter drawn from other disciplines to create discrete programs remains rare.

China's Market Economy Status Under Wto Antidumping Law After 2016, Weijia Rao

Faculty Scholarship

Paragraph 15(d) of China’s Accession Protocol provides that the provisions of subparagraph 15(a)(ii) shall expire in 2016. Subparagraph 15(a)(ii) permits the importing Member to derogate from a strict comparison with Chinese prices or costs when determining the normal value of the products if the producers under investigation cannot clearly show that Market Economy conditions prevail in the industry in question. While a respected commentator argues that, despite the stipulated expiration, the importing Member can still treat China as a Non-Market Economy and use alternative methodologies based on the remaining provisions in the chapeau, this paper takes a different view by …

Punitive Military Strikes On Syria Risk An Inhumane Intervention, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

The 1949 Geneva Conventions do not justify US missile strikes in Syria in response to chemical weapons attacks on the civilian population.

Constructing Constitutional Politics: The Reconstruction Strategy For Protecting Rights, Mark A. Graber

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Gauging The Gender Divide In The Middle East’S Educational System: Causes, Concerns, And The Impetus For Change, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Do Warrants Matter?, Max J. Minzner, Christopher M. Anderson

Faculty Scholarship

We examine traditional criminal wiretaps to determine whether the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement limits law enforcement. We develop a formal model relating law enforcement's decision to pursue a wiretap to its exogenous cost, probability of yielding evidence, and the expected value of that evidence. We use the model to analyze success rates of all traditional federal wiretaps initiated 1997-2004. We find budget constraints cause law enforcement to pursue only taps that are particularly likely to succeed. Thus, eliminating the warrant requirement for traditional wiretaps would matter little, and the significance of a warrant requirement for new investigative programs, such as …

Evaluating High School Students’ Constitutional And Civic Literacy: A Case Study Of The Washington, Dc Chapter Of The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, Maryam Ahranjani, Jeffrey J. Shook, Caleb Medearis

Faculty Scholarship

The United States maintains a reputation as a vibrant, participatory democracy. Yet, paradoxically, formal civics education has essentially disappeared from America’s public high schools, particularly urban public schools serving low-income and minority students. The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project, which is offered at almost zero cost to public schools and districts, developed as a response to the need for civics education in high schools and as a way to train future lawyers in public speaking, leadership, and counseling. In an effort to support the growth of the Marshall-Brennan Project all over the country, the authors of this piece came together to …

Brief For Professors At Unm School Of Law, Griego V. Oliver, New Mexico Supreme Court No. 34,306, George Bach, Max Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Brief on same-sex marriage .

New Mexico's history reflects a deep commitment to equal treatment under the law and the protection of individual liberty. The framers of the New Mexico Constitution created substantial and unique provisions relating to minority rights and individual autonomy that are broader in scope than the corresponding federal law. These include an Equal Protection Clause interpreted more expansively than the Fourteenth Amendment and an Inherent Rights Clause with no federal counterpart. Our state courts have consistently exercised independence and pragmatism in applying these rights guaranteed by the New Mexico Constitution.

A prohibition on marriage for same-sex …

Project Ngage: Network Supported Hiv Care Engagement For Younger Black Men Who Have Sex With Men And Transgender Persons, Dexter R. Voisin

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Young Black men who have sex with men and transgender persons (YBMSMT) aged 13-29 carry the nation's highest burden of new HIV infections. Studies indicate that YBMSMT have poor retention in care, which is associated with reduced medication adherence and increased virologic failure. Objective: Project nGage is a randomized controlled (RCT) trial evaluating the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a brief, dyadic intervention designed to promote adherence to HIV primary care in safety-net clinics. Network visualization is used to identify and engage a support confidant (SC) from participants' social networks. A social work interventionist then meets with the SC …

Get Rid Of Tenure For Law Schools, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Faculty Scholarship

Professors with tenure have job security but no incentive to go above and beyond as a teacher.

Justadvice: Studying Law In Snapshots, Brenda Bratton Blom, Leigh Maddox

Faculty Scholarship

Access to legal services continues to be a critical need in the United States. Clinical programs in law schools are part of responding to the demand for these services, but often face the challenge of filling gaps left by larger programs serving the poor or responding to unique legal needs. JustAdvice was designed to provide limited advice to a broad range of people with legal needs, unbundling those services where possible. The story of the development, implementation and transformation of the program into a teaching, triage and referral system that importantly links multiple organizations and services is the core of …

Just Who Are Humanitarian Workers?, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

On the 19th of August, World Humanitarian Day, we honor the contributions of humanitarian workers around the world, especially those who have lost their lives helping people in war-torn societies.

Tackling Vat Fraud: Thirteen Ways Forward, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

In a May 31, 2006 Communication to the Council, the European Parliament, and the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Commission indicated a need to develop a coordinated strategy to improve the fight against fiscal fraud [COM (2006) 254 final]. Although the Communication considers fiscal fraud broadly (VAT, excise duties and direct taxes) the most pressing need seems to be for a VAT strategy that will effectively deal with carousel fraud.

This paper considers thirteen proposals that deal with missing trader intra-community fraud (MTIC):

(1) Common VAT (origin system) (2) Vanistendael’s foreign tax offices proposal (3) CVAT (Compensating VAT) …

In Defense Of Specialized Theft Statutes, David C. Gray, Chelsea Jones

Faculty Scholarship

This essay is an invited contribution to a symposium hosted by the New England Law Review in celebration of Stuart Green’s important book 13 Ways to Steal a Bicycle. As we note, Professor Green’s argument is so reasonable and executed in such elegant prose, there is little call for anything other than praise. Nevertheless, in the spirit of academic exchange, we challenge Professor Green’s skepticism of specialized theft statutes. Relying on retributivist theories of criminal punishment, we argue that specialized theft statutes have an important role to play in contemporary criminal law by educating the public about the necessary commitments …

Nearing Thirty Years: The Burger Court, Strickland V. Washington, And The Parameters Of The Right To Counsel, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

In Strickland v. Washington, the Court issued a standard for determining when defense counsel's ineffective performance, through no direct fault of the prosecution, law enforcement, public, or judiciary, undermined the fairness of a trial such that a conviction or sentence had to be rendered as a violation of due process. The article's conclusion presents a model for applying the legal history underlying Strickland to ineffective assistance cases.

Recent Proposals To Change The Traditional Military Retirement System To Mirror The Federal Service Retirement: Eroding Discipline And Civil-Military Relations Through Potentially Unlawful And Certainly Questionable Acts, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the potential immediate and secondary effects of retirement reform on military discipline. Part I of this Article presents the most recent proposal, articulated in 2011 by the Defense Business Board ("DBB"), and analyzes its inherent shortcomings. Part II provides an interlocking broad view analysis as to why the conversion of retirements in a 401(k) model could prove disastrous to discipline. This interlocking analysis addresses: (1) the potential for erosion of the civil-military relationship, (2) the relationship between the Takings Clause12 of the Fifth Amendment and military retirements, (3) the principle of detrimental reliance, and (4) the inapplicability …

Mascaras Y Trenzas: Reflexiones. Un Proyecto De Identidad Y Analysis A Traves De Veinte Anos (Masks And Braids: Reflections, A Project On Identity And Analysis Over Twenty Years), Margaret E. Montoya

Faculty Scholarship

This article uses Critical Race Theory and LatCrit methodologies, vocabulary, categories, and pedagogical approaches. In this Section, titled 'On Mascaras,' I am grappling with race (and gender secondarily) in public space -- un/masking my professional persona. In using the word 'wrestle' in the subheading I am referring to this struggle over a re-allocation of the social power that inheres in racial hierarchies, namely, the back-and-forth exchanges involved in changing the racial ambiance by exposing and transforming the presumptions, especially regarding notions of inferiority, that cabin our thinking and restrain our relationships. My original paper was something of an outburst, challenging …

Treaty Interpretation And Constitutional Transformation: Informal Change In International Organizations, Julian Arato

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fighting Cyber-Crime After United States V. Jones, David Gray, Danielle K. Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart

Faculty Scholarship

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …

Originalism Without Obligation, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

I am truly delighted that Boston University School of Law is hosting a conference on Abner Greene’s Against Obligation1 and Michael Seidman’s On Constitutional Disobedience. 2 Both books launch powerful and much-needed broadsides against the idea of a political obligation to obey the U.S. Constitution, and more generally (whether or not the authors embrace these implications) against the very idea of a political obligation to obey state authorities. I fully agree with both authors that the arguments normally made in favor of a duty of obedience to the Constitution, and by extension to state authorities of any kind, are remarkably …

Measuring State-Created Immigration Climate, Huyen Pham, Pham Hoang Van

Faculty Scholarship

The phenomenon of subfederal immigration regulation, in which state and local governments enact laws regulating immigrants within their jurisdictions, has become an enduring part of the American legal landscape. Though still the subject of occasional legal challenges, the focus of the national conversation has shifted from whether to have subfederal immigration regulation, to what form that regulation should take. States have taken widely varying approaches to immigration regulation; some like Arizona and Alabama have enacted restrictive, negative laws, while other states like Illinois and California have enacted laws to benefit the immigrants within their jurisdictions. Thus, in order to understand …

Galaxy Cluster Bulk Flows And Collision Velocities In Qumond, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

We examine the formation of clusters of galaxies in numerical simulations of a QUMOND cosmogony with massive sterile neutrinos. Clusters formed in these exploratory simulations develop higher velocities than those found in ΛCDM simulations. The bulk motions of clusters attain ∼1000 km s -1 by low redshift, comparable to observations whereas ΛCDM simulated clusters tend to fall short. Similarly, high pairwise velocities are common in cluster-cluster collisions like the Bullet Cluster. There is also a propensity for the most massive clusters to be larger in QUMOND and to appear earlier than in ΛCDM, potentially providing an explanation for "pink elephants" …

Designing A Valid Randomized Pragmatic Primary Care Implementation Trial: The My Own Health Report (Mohr) Project, Kurt C. Stange

Faculty Scholarship

Background: There is a pressing need for greater attention to patient-centered health behavior and psychosocial issues in primary care, and for practical tools, study designs and results of clinical and policy relevance. Our goal is to design a scientifically rigorous and valid pragmatic trial to test whether primary care practices can systematically implement the collection of patient-reported information and provide patients needed advice, goal setting, and counseling in response.Methods: This manuscript reports on the iterative design of the My Own Health Report (MOHR) study, a cluster randomized delayed intervention trial. Nine pairs of diverse primary care practices will be randomized …