Digital Commons Network^™

Antisocial Innovation, Christopher Buccafusco, Samuel N. Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Innovation is a form of civic religion in the United States. In the popular imagination, innovators are heroic figures. Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, and (for a while) Elizabeth Holmes were lauded for their vision and drive and seen to embody the American spirit of invention and improvement. For their part, politicians rarely miss a chance to trumpet their vision for boosting innovative activity. Popular and political culture alike treat innovation as an unalloyed good. And the law is deeply committed to fostering innovation, spending billions of dollars a year to make sure society has enough of it. But this sunny …

Social Welfare Functions And Health Policy: A New Approach, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

The social welfare function (SWF) framework converts the possible outcomes of governmental policy choice into vectors (lists) of interpersonally comparable well-being numbers, measuring the lifetime well-being of each individual in the population of interest. The SWF proper is a rule for ranking these vectors. The utilitarian SWF adds up well-being numbers. A prioritarian SWF adds up well-being numbers plugged into a strictly increasing and strictly concave transformation function. Governmental policies are conceptualized as probability distributions over well-being vectors. A recent literature applies the SWF framework to health policy. This article first provides a brief overview of the SWF framework and …

The Brady Database, Brandon L. Garrett, Adam M. Gershowitz, Jennifer Teitcher

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brady v. Maryland turns sixty this year. The Brady doctrine, which requires the government to disclose favorable and material evidence to the defendant, is one of the most frequently litigated criminal procedure issues. Yet, despite decades of Brady cases in federal and state courts, we still know relatively little about how Brady claims are litigated, adjudicated, and what such claims can tell us about the criminal justice system writ large. Scholars are in the dark about how often Brady violations occur, whether it is primarily the fault of prosecutors or the police, whether violations …

Economic Security And The Separation Of Powers, Kathleen Claussen, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” but today the exercise of the foreign commerce power resides primarily with the executive branch. That transfer of control is partly the result of significant delegations of responsibility for managing foreign commerce from Congress to the executive. It is also, however, the result of the securitization of foreign commerce. The executive branch asserts that foreign commerce issues fall under its constitutional powers over foreign affairs, and, thus, that it enjoys authority over foreign commerce that exceeds the scope of congressional delegations.

This Article makes three contributions. First, …

A Codified Liability Regime To Stimulate Greater Investment In Subpatentable Innovation, Jerome H. Reichman, Ana Santos Rutschman

Faculty Scholarship

The global intellectual property system rests on a distinction between exclusive property rights and free competition. Exclusive rights vary in strength and intensity, but the opposite of protection is almost always free competition. Distinctions of intensity are drawn in terms of the length of protection given to different subject matters plus variable lists of exceptions and limitations to exclusive rights. But the bottom line is that, when protection is not available under the existing system, free competition prevails, and vice-versa (i.e., where there is exclusivity, free competition is deferred for a specified period of time).

This Article departs from a …

The Sense Of Safety Theoretical Framework: A Trauma-Informed And Healing-Oriented Approach For Whole Person Care, Kurt C. Stange

Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: This research describes four aspects of the development of the Sense of Safety Theoretical Framework for whole person care: exploring the meaning of the phrase “sense of safety”—the whole person language; the range of human experience that impacts sense of safety—whole person scope; the dynamics that build sense of safety—the healing goals; and the personal and cross-disciplinary trauma-informed practitioner skills and attitudes that facilitate sense of safety. Methods: This qualitative participatory study was conducted in two phases. Researchers iteratively explored the concept of sense of safety using focus groups and semi-structured interviews. Overarching research questions were: “Does the transdisciplinary …

Next Generation Microfluidics: Fulfilling The Promise Of Lab-On-A-Chip Technologies, Umut A. Gurkan

Faculty Scholarship

Microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies enable the analysis and manipulation of small fluid volumes and particles at small scales and the control of fluid flow and transport processes at the microscale, leading to the development of new methods to address a broad range of scientific and medical challenges. Microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip technologies have made a noteworthy impact in basic, preclinical, and clinical research, especially in hematology and vascular biology due to the inherent ability of microfluidics to mimic physiologic flow conditions in blood vessels and capillaries. With the potential to significantly impact translational research and clinical diagnostics, technical issues and incentive mismatches …

Fabrication And Validation Of Sub-Cellular Carbon Fiber Electrodes, Yu Huan, Hillel J. Chiel

Faculty Scholarship

Multielectrode arrays for interfacing with neurons are of great interest for a wide range of medical applications. However, current electrodes cause damage over time. Ultra small carbon fibers help to address issues but controlling the electrode site geometry is difficult. Here we propose a methodology to create small, pointed fiber electrodes (SPFe). We compare the SPFe to previously made blowtorched fibers in characterization. The SPFe result in small site sizes (105.4 ± 20.8μm²) with consistently sharp points (20.8 ± 7.64°). Additionally, these electrodes were able to record and/or stimulate neurons multiple animal models including rat cortex, mouse retina, …

Disability, Race, And Health Beyond The Carceral State, Benjamin Barsky, Craig Konnoth, Michael A. Stein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dance Of The Biologics, Robin Feldman, Gideon Schor

Faculty Scholarship

From COVID-19 vaccines to cancer treatments, biologic medicines are gaining importance in the U.S. health care system. Their high price tags, however, make these medications difficult for many Americans to afford. The Biosimilars Act, enacted in 2010, aimed to reduce costs and increase access to biologic medications by encouraging follow-on competition. The legislative effort followed in the footsteps of its predecessor, the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984.

Although the Hatch-Waxman system succeeded in creating a landscape of more affordable and widely used generic drugs, the Biosimilars Act has failed to live up to its promise. Biologic drugs in the United States …

Innovative Approaches To On-Demand Continuing Legal Education Ethics Training: A Case Study, Tigran W. Eldred, Molly J. Walker Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

In the ongoing discussions about continuing legal education (CLE), concerns have been raised about the quality of programming that is created and delivered. Critics have emphasized the weaknesses in mandatory programs, arguing that requiring annual training on topics such as legal ethics tends to fall short of stated goals.¹ Too often, it is said, such programs fail to deliver content in an engaging manner that is likely to improve competence.² The picture conjured up is of the bored lawyer, sitting in the back of a room flipping through a newspaper or some other distraction, as CLE instructors passively …

Revisioning Algorithms As A Black Feminist Project, Ngozi Okidegbe

Faculty Scholarship

We live in an age of predictive algorithms.¹ Jurisdictions across the country are utilizing algorithms to make or influence life-altering decisions in a host of governmental decision-making processes—criminal justice, education, and social assistance to name a few.² One justification given for this algorithmic turn concerns redressing historical and current inequalities within governmental decision-making.³ The hope is that the predictions produced by these predictive systems can correct this problem by providing decision-makers with the information needed to make fairer, more accurate, and consistent decisions.⁴ For instance, jurisdictions claim that their turn to risk assessment algorithms in bail, …

Structural Sex Discrimination: Why Gynecology Patients Suffer Avoidable Injuries And What The Law Can Do About It, Christopher Robertson, Annabel Kupke, Louise P. King

Faculty Scholarship

The nearly four million Americans who undergo gynecological surgeries each year suffer avoidable lifelong, painful, and disabling injuries. This Article diagnoses the root cause in our legal framework for healthcare finance and identifies legal solutions.

America’s public-private system for reimbursing healthcare pays for procedures rather than outcomes, and it pays substantially more for work on male rather than female anatomies. This disparity is due to the federal government’s reliance on a secretive industry committee to set those rates, and the committee’s reliance on junk science surveys, allowing self-interested and gender-biased responses, contrary to objective measures.

As payors disvalue the bodies …

Beyond "Hard" Skills: Teaching Outward - And Inward-Facing Character-Based Skills To 1ls In Light Of Aba Standard 303(B)(3)'S Professional Identity Requirement, Marni Goldstein Caputo, Kathleen Luz

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we share some ways in which we have adjusted our teaching to comply with Standard 303(b)(3) by addressing professional identity formation through the vehicles of outward-facing and inward-facing character-based skills. We believe that if law students do not intentionally start *811 exploring their professional identities as soon as they step foot into law school, they run the risk of believing that legal education and practice are somehow separate from their inner, personal identities as lawyers when, of course, they are, and ought to be, enmeshed. By injecting skills into the 1L curriculum that force both the development …

Rethinking Foundations And Analyzing New Conflicts: Teaching Law After Dobbs, Nicole Huberfeld, Linda C. Mcclain, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

This Article draws on our diverse and complementary areas of scholarly expertise and teaching experiences across law school and public health curricula to offer a multidisciplinary model for teaching in a variety of courses after Dobbs. Teaching reproductive rights and justice poses extensive challenges in the wake of Dobbs' overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, upending a half century of precedents protecting a constitutional right to abortion, and returning the issue to "the people" and the states. This Article offers theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on teaching courses in Reproductive Rights and Justice, as well …

Public Primacy In Corporate Law, Dorothy S. Lund

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the malleability of agency theory by showing that it could be used to justify a “public primacy” standard for corporate law that would direct fiduciaries to promote the value of the corporation for the benefit of the public. Employing agency theory to describe the relationship between corporate management and the broader public sheds light on aspects of firm behavior, as well as the nature of state contracting with corporations. It also provides a lodestar for a possible future evolution of corporate law and governance: minimize the agency costs created by the divergence of interests between management and …

New York Environmental Legislation In 2023, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

In 2023, New York enacted laws to aid the state in achieving the renewable energy and greenhouse gas emissions reduction mandates of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).The state also now has new laws to reduce exposure to lead in drinking water and paint; to ban natural gas furnaces and stoves in new buildings; to restrict neonicotinoid pesticides; and to encourage “nature-based solutions” for stabilizing tidal coastlines. These and other new and amended environmental and energy laws—as well as notable vetoes—are discussed in this article.

Comment On Part 4 Essays: Goodwin And Dailey And Rosenbury, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Professors Michelle Goodwin and Anne Dailey and President Laura Rosenbury have written two compelling essays on Part 4 of the Restatement of Children and the Law, dealing with Children in Society. Goodwin’s essay, She’s So Exceptional: Rape and Incest Exceptions Post-Dobbs, focuses on § 19.02 of the Restatement, dealing with the right of minors to reproductive health treatments. This Section was approved by the American Law Institute before the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade. In her essay, Goodwin explores the harms that will follow if minors’ right of access …

Syndromic Antibiograms And Nursing Home Clinicians' Antibiotic Choices For Urinary Tract Infections, Brigid M. Wilson, Taissa A. Bej, Robin L.P. Jump

Faculty Scholarship

Importance: Empirical antibiotic prescribing in nursing homes (NHs) is often suboptimal. The potential for antibiograms to improve empirical antibiotic decision-making in NHs remains poorly understood. Objective: To determine whether providing NH clinicians with a urinary antibiogram improves empirical antibiotic treatment of urinary tract infections (UTIs). Design, Setting, and Participants: This was a survey study using clinical vignettes. Participants were recruited via convenience sampling of professional organization listservs of NH clinicians practicing in the US from December 2021 through April 2022. Data were analyzed from July 2022 to June 2023. Interventions: Respondents were randomized to complete vignettes using a traditional antibiogram …

Historic Redlining And Health Outcomes: A Systematic Review, Noa T. Kraus, Sarah Connor, Krista Shoda, Scott Emory Moore, Elliane Irani

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: The purpose of this systematic review was to synthesize the existing literature on the associations between historic redlining and modern-day health outcomes across the lifespan. Method: This review searched PubMed and CINAHL for peer-reviewed, data-based articles examining the relationship between historic redlining and any health outcome. Articles were appraised using the JBI critical appraisal checklist. The results were synthesized using a narrative summary approach. Results: Thirty-six articles were included and focused on various health outcomes, including cardiovascular outcomes, breast cancer incidence and mortality, firearm injury or death, birth-related outcomes, and asthma outcomes. Most of the included articles (n = …

Self-Calibrated Subspace Reconstruction For Multidimensional Mr Fingerprinting For Simultaneous Relaxation And Diffusion Quantification, Jessie E.P. Sun, Ken Sakaie, Mark A. Griswold

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose: To propose a new reconstruction method for multidimensional MR fingerprinting (mdMRF) to address shading artifacts caused by physiological motion-induced measurement errors without navigating or gating. Methods: The proposed method comprises two procedures: self-calibration and subspace reconstruction. The first procedure (self-calibration) applies temporally local matrix completion to reconstruct low-resolution images from a subset of under-sampled data extracted from the k-space center. The second procedure (subspace reconstruction) utilizes temporally global subspace reconstruction with pre-estimated temporal subspace from low-resolution images to reconstruct aliasing-free, high-resolution, and time-resolved images. After reconstruction, a customized outlier detection algorithm was employed to automatically detect and remove images …

Association Of Covid-19 Coinfection With Increased Mortality Among Patients With Pseudomonas Aeruginosa Bloodstream Infection In The Veterans Health Administration System, Leila S. Hojat, Brigid M. Wilson, Federico Perez, Maria F. Mojica, Mendel E. Singer, Robert A. Bonomo

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: Pseudomonas aeruginosa bloodstream infection (PA-BSI) and COVID-19 are independently associated with high mortality. We sought to demonstrate the impact of COVID-19 coinfection on patients with PA-BSI. Design: Retrospective cohort study. Setting: Veterans Health Administration. Patients: Hospitalized patients with PA-BSI in pre-COVID-19 (January 2009 to December 2019) and COVID-19 (January 2020 to June 2022) periods. Patients in the COVID-19 period were further stratified by the presence or absence of concomitant COVID-19 infection. Methods: We characterized trends in resistance, treatment, and mortality over the study period. Multivariable logistic regression and modified Poisson analyses were used to determine the association between COVID-19 …

Amicus Curiae Brief Of The Navajo Nation, Paul Spruhan

Faculty Scholarship

The Navajo Nation Labor Commission ("NNLC" or "Commission") invited the Navajo Nation Department of Justice ("DOJ") to file an amicus brief in this matter. As discussed more fully below, the DOJ recommends that the NNLC hold an evidentiary hearing to gather facts necessary to conduct a full jurisdictional analysis under Montana and determine whether the Northern Apache County Special Healthcare District ("NACSHCD") has sovereign immunity. The fact gathering process is necessary given the fact-intensive analysis under both Montana and Arizona's sovereign immunity laws. As the Navajo Supreme Court has instructed, the proper threshold inquiry is whether jurisdiction exists over the …

The Public Performativity Of Trust, Lynette Hammond Gerido

Faculty Scholarship

Building trust between academic medical centers and certain communities they depend on in the research process is hard, particularly when those communities consist of minoritized or historically marginalized populations. Some believe that engagement activities like the creation of advisory boards, town halls, or a research workforce that looks more like community members will establish or reestablish trust between academic medical centers and racialized communities. However, without systematic approaches to dismantle racism, those well-intended actions become public performativity, and trust building will fail. In this essay, we draw upon foundational ethical principles of trust, distrust, and trust building; apply the concept …

Self-Management Intervention For Reducing Epilepsy Burden Among Adult Ugandans With Epilepsy (Smart-U): Randomised Clinical Trial Protocol, Jennifer B. Levin, Carolyn Still, Christopher J. Burant, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background:Epilepsy is a common chronic brain disorder globally affecting people of all ages, with the majority living in developing countries. The introduction of epilepsy self-management approaches to help people with epilepsy is urgently needed to influence epilepsy-related outcomes. This 2-site randomised controlled trial building on promising preliminary data is intended to explore this further. Methods: A total of 188 adult people with epilepsy (PWE) attending the neurology clinics at Mulago and Mbarara hospitals and consent to participate in the study will be recruited. They will be randomised into intervention versus enhanced treatment control (eTAU) study groups. The intervention group will …

Digital Inclusion For People With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Review Of The Current Legal Models And Doctrinal Concepts, James Hutson, Piper Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: Today, a significant part of professional tasks are performed in the digital environment, on digital platforms, in virtual and other meetings. This necessitates a critical reflection of traditional views on the problem of accessible environment and digital accessibility, taking into account the basic universal needs of persons with disabilities.

Methods: A gap between the traditional legal perspective on special working conditions for persons with disabilities and the urgent need of a digital workplace (digital environment) clearly shows lacunas in the understanding of accessibility, which are identified and explored with formal-legal and doctrinal methods. The multifaceted aspects of …

The Holistic Archival Personality Profiling Model (Happm): Comprehensive Data Integration For Personality Analysis, James Hutson, Pace Ellsworth

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional approach to biographical profiling, predominantly reliant on limited and fragmented datasets, has frequently resulted in superficial personality understandings. This is largely due to an overemphasis on official records and notable events, neglecting the rich tapestry of everyday experiences and personal interactions that significantly shape personalities. To address this shortcoming, this article introduces a multi-disciplinary methodology, The Holistic Archival Personality Profiling Model (HAPPM), which integrates a diverse array of archival materials, including personal correspondences, social media footprints, and family memorabilia. This approach involves digitizing various data forms, including handwritten documents, into machine-readable text, and then semantically classifying this data …

College Major Area And Career Commitment: Rethinking Steam In Educational- Vocational Guidance, James Hutson, Sara Bagley, Colleen Biri

Faculty Scholarship

Objective: The exigency for higher education to exhibit outcomes aligning with career competencies has intensified, driven by external pressures favoring job-specific training. Amidst shifting career tendencies of Generations Y and Z and the advent of artificial intelligence-led automation, the valuation of different college majors has come under scrutiny. This study aims to dissect the prevailing assumptions and explore the satisfaction and career commitment levels among individuals with career-focused degrees.

Methods: Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, the study delves into the relationships among areas of study, career commitment, self-esteem, and self-efficacy among alumni from a private Midwestern liberal arts college. Instruments …

Demystifying Artificial Intelligence (Ai) For Early Childhood And Elementary Education: A Case Study Of Perceptions Of Ai Of State Of Missouri Educators, Kathryn Arnone, James Hutson, Karen Woodruff

Faculty Scholarship

Artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on society have received a great deal of attention in the past five years since the first Stanford AI100 report. AI already globally impacts individuals in critical and personal ways, and many industries will continue to experience disruptions as the full algorithmic effects are understood. However, with regard to education, adopting in disciplines remains limited largely to Computer Science and Information Technology in postsecondary education. Recent advances with technology are especially promising for their potential to create and scale personalized learning for students, to optimize strategies for learning outcomes, and to increase access to …

Changes In Energy Expenditure, Dietary Intake, And Energy Availability Across An Entire Collegiate Women’S Basketball Season: Erratum, Breyannah R. Zanders, Brad S. Currier, Patrick Harty, Hannah A. Zabriskie, Charles R. Smith, Richard A. Stecker, Scott R. Richmond, Andrew R. Jagim, Chad Kerksick

Faculty Scholarship

Erratum