Digital Commons Network^™

Beyond Subsidies And Mandates: Testing A Simple Behavioral Mechanism To Drive Health Insurance Coverage, Wendy Netter Epstein, Hansoo Ko, Christopher Robertson, Kevin Wilson, David Yokum

Faculty Scholarship

Uninsured individuals face reduced access to care, financial risk, and higher mortality. Although public programs and private subsidies have lowered uninsurance, these mechanisms remain incomplete and politically unstable. We evaluate whether a low-cost outreach intervention can increase health insurance enrollment without altering plan prices. Using a randomized field experiment involving 16,477 uninsured Maryland households, we assigned households to a no-contact control or to receive email and postcard outreach featuring affordability messaging alone or combined with responsibility or community framings. Outreach increased qualified health plan enrollment by 0.699 percentage points and total coverage by 0.967 percentage points relative to control. The …

Left Behind In Lockdown: A Scoping Review Of Covid-19’S Impact On The Lives Of Transition-Age Foster Youth, Johanna K P Greeson, Sarah Wasch, John Gyourko, Antonio R. Garcia, Hannah Bennett, Kate Greco, Liya Cha

Faculty Scholarship

This scoping review asked: What is known about the scope and nature of research on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on older youth with foster care experience in the United States, including the types of studies, samples and outcomes examined? Guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute framework and PRISMA-ScR, we searched 11 databases and grey literature sources (October2024 to January 2025). Eligible studies were United States based, published from 2020 onward and included primary data on foster youth or relevant professionals. Thirty-two studies met inclusion criteria. Most studies were descriptive or cross-sectional, reflecting early phases of the pandemic. Mapping …

Communicative Legitimacy: The Supreme Court's Hidden Cultural Binaries In The U.S. Civil Sphere, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

How does the U.S. Supreme Court establish its legitimacy? Over the last two hundred years in U.S. society, the Court has interpreted the U.S. Constitution on watershed issues such as slavery, segregation, and marriage equality. And yet the Constitution is just 7,591 words. A puzzle thus emerges: how does the Court intelligibly interpret this short text for U.S. society? This article develops a new theoretical and empirical cultural sociological account of such Supreme Court decision-making, which it calls “communicative legitimacy.” According to this theory, which draws on Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory, the Court consistently and inevitably draws on a …

Effects Of A Carbohydrate + Caffeine Beverage On Game Performance, Blood Glucose And Perceived Effort In Collegiate Women Soccer Players, Andrew Jagim, Abby Ambrosius, Makenna Carpenter, Joesi Krieger, Lochlan Charley, Jennifer Fields, Margaret T. Jones, Chad Kerksick

Faculty Scholarship

Carbohydrate availability and caffeine ingestion have been shown to elicit improvements in performance independently of one another. The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of a carbohydrate + caffeine beverage on performance and perceived effort in soccer players. Forty-three collegiate women’s soccer athletes were recruited to participate during a single day of simulated match play, in which each team played once. Athletes consumed either a carbohydrate + caffeine (Experimental) beverage or a control (Control) beverage (flavored water) during half-time in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized control trial design. Prior to and after each game, Ratings of Perceived Exertion …

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Effects Of Dietary Antioxidants On Exercise And Sports Performance, Drew E. Gonzalez, Broderick L. Dickerson, Brandon M. Roberts, Jennifer A. Kurtz, Hunter S. Waldman, Adam M. Gonzalez, Matthew J. Mcallister, Jeffery L. Heileson, Richard J. Bloomer, Shawn M. Arent, Darren G. Candow, Jeffrey R. Stout, Karen A. Hecht, Bill Campbell, Chad Kerksick, Douglas Kalman, Jose Antonio, Richard B. Kreider

Faculty Scholarship

Following a comprehensive review, the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) has developed an official position on the role of dietary antioxidants in exercise and sport. Antioxidants play a complex, context-dependent role in vivo; they can facilitate recovery from exercise but may also hinder training adaptations when consumed at supraphysiological doses. While endogenous antioxidant systems can effectively maintain redox balance, dietary sources, particularly whole foods, can help mitigate excessive oxidative stress following intense/heavy training or inadequate recovery. The influence of dietary antioxidants depend on timing, dosage, type, and individual factors. The ISSN’s official position encompasses the following: (1) Redox balance …

Exploring Slow Librarianship As An Intervention To Support Library Workers With Adhd, Valerie Linsinbigler, Liana Bayne-Lin

Faculty Scholarship

While scholarly conversations about supporting library patrons who are neurodivergent have grown in the past years, conversations about library workers who are neurodivergent lag behind. As it becomes easier to encourage students to destigmatize their neurodivergence, share their experiences, and seek formal and informal accommodations in university spaces, when, and how, will it become easier for neurodivergent library workers to do the same?

Perhaps slow librarianship is one answer to this question. Following in the footsteps of Jocelyn Swick-Jemison (2023), this chapter is part autoethnography, in which two early-career librarians will share their perspective of learning how to be liaison …

Priority Without Progress: The Fda's Neglected Tropical Disease Voucher Program After 18 Years, Maple Goh, Kevin Outterson, Aaron Kesselheim

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: To incentivize drug and vaccine development for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), US Congress created the Priority Review Voucher (PRV) program in 2007. Sponsors that obtain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for an eligible product receive a voucher redeemable to accelerate review of another product.

Methods: We reviewed the program’s public health impact by examining all 14 vouchers awarded for NTD products between 2007 and 2024, including the timing of FDA approval relative to World Health Organization (WHO) Prequalification, Essential Medicines List inclusion, first use in endemic countries, and voucher disposition.

Results: Eight (57%) achieved WHO …

Comparative Authoritarian Law, Madhav Khosla, Benjamin L. Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, comparative constitutional lawyers have turned their attention to the study of democratic backsliding. However, such scholarship is yet to draw on the now extensive literature on traditional authoritarian systems. The bifurcation of regime type that has structured comparative legal research for decades — for comparative constitutional lawyers and for scholars of specific authoritarian regions — is now under strain. With the global rise of authoritarianism and the growing use of law by authoritarian states, the world is harder to neatly separate into two camps than it once might have been. This Article reflects on how we might …

Does Law Constitute Society?, Jeremy K. Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The resistance of capitalist inequality to legal reform has led a growing number of scholars to reconsider the explanatory virtues of Marxist legal thought. But what are those virtues? Some scholars hold that what makes Marxist legal thought special is its ability to explain the development of legal relationships in terms of the development of extra-legal relationships — specifically, the relations of production as they adapt to changes in the productive forces. Other scholars argue that this focus on the causal process by which extra-legal change (or stasis) drives legal change (or stasis) is too reductive. They contend that Marxist …

The Poly Problem In Zoning: Redefining "Family" For A Changing Society, Aric K. Short, Tanya Pierce

Faculty Scholarship

Single-family zoning has long dictated not only where people may live but also with whom. Although extensively critiqued for perpetuating racial and economic exclusion, these laws also privilege relationships defined by blood, marriage, or adoption and marginalize nontraditional families. This Article focuses on a particularly overlooked group: polyamorous families who often face legal uncertainty, social exclusion, and housing discrimination due to restrictive zoning definitions of “family.”

As polyamory gains cultural visibility and increasing legal recognition—through West 49th Street, LLC v. O’Neill and municipal reforms in cities like Somerville and Cambridge—now is the time to examine zoningÊs role in reinforcing outdated …

Transforming Blood Management Systems In Developing Countries Through Technological And Artificial Intelligence-Driven Innovations, Sandeep Bhargava, Shaun Aaron Abram, Srividhya Ragavan

Faculty Scholarship

It is critical to ensure the safe and quality supply of blood among various stakeholders; however, this remains a significant challenge in today’s world, especially in developing countries. These countries face severe problems, including blood shortages, fragmented regulatory frameworks, and inconsistent quality control measures. To tackle these challenges, countries like India are trying to implement the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its derivative platforms to transform blood collection, testing, storage, and distribution by enabling interoperability, real-time compliance monitoring, automated donor screening, optimized inventory management, and advanced component separation. The article argues that developing countries must adopt both regulatory reform …

The Exactions Illusion: Sheetz’S Missing Dissent, Lee Anne Fennell, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2024, the Supreme Court unanimously handed down Sheetz v. County of El Dorado, a land use exactions case billed as narrow, inevitable, constitutionally compelled, and obviously correct.  It was none of those things. Sheetz instead ushered in an open-ended shift of policy control over the built environment from state and local legislatures to courts. By its terms, the holding extended the Court’s stringent “exactions” test—which requires the government to prove nexus and proportionality between development conditions and development impacts—beyond its original context of parcel-specific administrative bargains to reach an unspecified set of legislated property conditions. Yet the decision’s …

Drug Scheduling As Institutional Design, Matthew B. Lawrence, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Controlled Substances Act (CSA), U.S. drug law has simultaneously fueled mass incarceration, inhibited needed access, and enabled an opioid crisis. To make better choices, this Article argues that the CSA’s institutional design must account for three distinctive features of psychoactive drugs: the prohibition problem (drug bans tend to backfire when demand is inelastic), the pharma problem (drug companies have supercharged incentives to manipulate markets and exploit consumers), and the pluralism problem (drug policy involves irreducibly political questions that no expert discipline can answer). On their own, each of these problems calls for reform to the CSA. Taken together, they call …

Women In Nursing Leadership In Saudi Arabia: A Narrative Review In The Context Of Vision 2030, Amal Arishi, Ali Hudays, Joyce J. Fitzpatrick

Faculty Scholarship

Despite women comprising the majority of the nursing workforce in Saudi Arabia, they remain under-represented in leadership roles. This narrative review explores the barriers and facilitators to women's advancement in nursing leadership within the framework of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030. Key challenges include cultural norms, gender bias, limited recognition, and lack of leadership training. Facilitators such as national mentorship programs, leadership academies, and public image reforms offer promise. The review underscores the need for targeted nvestments in education, structured leadership pathways, and adaptation of international models to empower Saudi female nurses and support inclusive health system transformation.

Private Equity, Public Utility, Kristen Van De Biezendos, Melissa Powers

Faculty Scholarship

The explosion of investment in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies has spurred a data center boom, with politicians jostling to attract companies to build data centers in their states. The potential financial windfall from these data centers has also attracted the attention of private equity firms, which are seeking to capitalize on the potential riches to be made in supplying these projects with electricity by buying regulated public electric utilities. These utilities are unusual in our capitalist system, in that they are subject to both state and federal regulation regarding their duties to serve the public and the amount they can …

Women In Law And The Draft, Thomas Helgerman, Benjamin David Pyle

Faculty Scholarship

Between 1964 and 1973, women’s representation in full-time law school programs rose fivefold, from 3.7% to 20.1%. This paper examines whether Vietnam War draft policy contributed to this increase. In 1968, men enrolled in law school lost eligibility for 2-S student deferments, threatening law schools’ tuition revenues and incentivizing schools to admit more women to stabilize enrollment. To test this mechanism, we construct a school-by-year dataset of enrollment counts split by women/men and full-time/part-time status. Using a uniform adoption difference-in-differences design, we find that women’s representation rises by 2 percentage points in full-time programs relative to part-time programs (which were …

The Spectrum Of Bipolar Disorder In Older Adults, Hui Xin Ng, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

The absolute number and relative proportion of individuals with older-age bipolar disorder (OABD) is expected to rise due to the global aging of the population, necessitating a greater understanding of the unique characteristics of OABD and the trajectory of aging with BD in order to improve the health span of people with BD. This review summarizes current knowledge on OABD, examining its clinical presentation, neurobiology, and treatment, as well as identifying key gaps and future directions for research. OABD is characterized by relatively greater cognitive impairment and somatic burden, despite potentially reduced mood symptom severity compared to younger-age bipolar disorder …

Microfluidic Capillary Transit Velocity As A Functional Measure For Sickle Cell Disease And In Vitro-Derived Red Blood Cells, Solomon Oshabaheebwa, Yuxuan Du, Christopher L. Wirth, Zoe Sekyonda, Zoe Sekyonda, Bryan L. Benson, Payam Fadaei, Yusang B. Ley, Michael A. Suster, Pedram Mohseni, Umut A. Gurkan

Faculty Scholarship

Emerging therapies in sickle cell disease (SCD) aim to restore healthy red blood cell (RBC) function, but they often yield heterogeneous cellular responses. There are no proven techniques to evaluate restored rheological functionality and heterogeneity in these RBCs. We present a biomimetic microcapillary network, high-speed imaging, and computational algorithms to analyze RBC capillary velocity profiles of the entire sample population at single-cell resolution. Using peripheral RBCs from SCD patients and healthy donors, we showed that RBC capillary transit velocity correlated with cell shape, hydrodynamic adaptability, and elongation index. Healthy RBCs exhibited a velocity distribution skewed toward higher values, whereas RBCs …

Barriers, Attitudes, And Solutions For Brain Health Research Training In Lmics: A Trainee Cross-Sectional Study In Uganda, Mark Kaddumukasa, Carla M. Conroy, Christopher J. Burant, Shirley Moore

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Neurological disorders remain a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa, with limited expertise and credible research data to guide interventions and disease prevention. Training the next generation of clinical researchers requires a focused and concerted effort to stem the growing neurological disease burden. The US National Institute of Health (NIH) research training funded through the Fogarty International Center (FIC) Global Brain Disorders Research program gave trainees an opportunity to participate in mentored neurology research and training for 1–2.5 years. We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional study among mentees of 2 FIC research programs to assess the training experience and inform program refinement. …

Untangling Ai Openness, Parth Nobel, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Chinmayi Sharma

Faculty Scholarship

The debate over AI openness—whether to make components of an artificial intelligence system available for public inspection and modification—forces policymakers to balance innovation, democratized access, safety and national security. By inviting startups and researchers into the fold, it enables independent oversight and inclusive collaboration. But technology giants can also use it to entrench their own power, while adversaries can use it to shortcut years and billions of dollars in building systems, like China’s Deepseek-R1, that rival our own. How we govern AI openness today will shape the future of AI and America’s role in it.   Policymakers and scholars grasp the …

Unwanted Medical Treatment Harms Patients: Taxonomy Of Healthcare Consent Infractions, Thaddeus Pope

Faculty Scholarship

Patients in the United States are subject to an ever-growing “avalanche” of unwanted medical treatment (UMT).  This is ethically, economically, and legally wrong. First, UMT constitutes a serious violation of patient autonomy and self-determination.  Second, it is waste (and often fraud or abuse) of scarce healthcare resources.  Third, but for rare exceptions, administering UMT contravenes settled legal rules and principles around consent and battery.

This article describe four types of unwanted medical treatment and how the law addresses (or fails to address) them.  The four types of UMT are (1) treatment over patient objections, (2) treatment with zero consent, (3) …

The Anonymous Officer, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

(Forthcoming 2026) Masked, plainclothes immigration agents in unmarked vans have terrorized communities in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and beyond. The indiscriminate violence committed by federal officers who at times appear indistinguishable from paramilitary units has forced immigrants into hiding and left lawmakers scrambling to address a growing and largely legal anonymity crisis in law enforcement. This Article explores the undertheorized implications of anonymous law enforcement, situating the rise of masked policing within a larger project of democratic retrogression and executive aggrandizement. Anonymity in policing and immigration enforcement frustrates core democratic norms of transparency, accountability, and legitimacy, providing the opacity needed …

Trump's War On Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion, Nancy C. Marcus

Faculty Scholarship

Among the many head-spinning developments that have occurred from the first days of President Trump’s second presidency are his attacks on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), including anti-DEI edicts targeting educational institutions. This article provides a chronology and analysis of the early 2025 Trump administration’s attacks on DEI targeting schools nationwide, the resulting harms, and responses thereto, including litigation. A discernible refrain in the early litigation challenging President Trump’s anti-DEI attacks targeting educational institutions across the country has been how those attacks cross a clear constitutional line: the prohibition of unconstitutionally obscure governmental mandates. At its core, the void-for-vagueness doctrine …

Police Reform As System Justification, Shawn E. Fields

Faculty Scholarship

System Justification Theory (SJT) provides a useful lens through which to critique recent police reform efforts. SJT posits that members of society tend to justify and maintain existing social and political systems even when those systems disadvantage them, because the predictability of the status quo provides palliative, epistemic, and existential comfort in what otherwise appears to be an unjust and inequitable societal structure. Contrary to “false consciousness” theories, SJT claims that disadvantaged groups may intentionally rationalize what they know to be an unfair status quo, because doing so reduces social anxiety and threat while providing much desired order and meaning …

Neuroaesthetic Frequency Tuning For Neurodivergent Populations: A Network-Informed Theory Of Music For Emotional Memory And Cognitive Regulation, Piper Hutson, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

Neuroaesthetic frequency tuning posits that deliberate selection of musical parameters can modulate large-scale neural systems to support emotional memory retrieval and cognitive regulation in neurodivergent populations. Drawing on contemporary evidence from network neuroscience, cognitive musicology, and affective science, the article synthesizes how rhythmic, harmonic, and lyrical structures align with Default Mode (DM), fronto-parietal control, salience, motor, and limbic systems, and how these alignments can be targeted to balance internally oriented mentation with task engagement. The theory further integrates autonomic and cellular mechanisms, describing how tempo and spectral energy shift arousal and heart rate variability, and how astrocytic ensembles contribute to …

The Eighth Amendment And Prison Staff-To-Sentenced Prisoner Sexual Violence, Matthew Lyskawa

Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I provide the first comprehensive account of lower federal courts’ Eighth Amendment prison conditions jurisprudence regarding prison staff-to-sentenced prisoner sexual violence. I show that lower federal courts are systematically misunderstanding and misapplying Supreme Court case law in this context. The result is that sexually victimized prisoners must meet extremely burdensome doctrinal standards unique to sexual violence claims. Lower federal courts would faithfully follow Supreme Court precedent if they applied the excessive force standard to sexual assault claims and the conditions of confinement standard to sexual harassment claims. However, a faithful application of Supreme Court case law does …

Antitrust & The Immoral Energy Economy, Kristen Van De Biezendos

Faculty Scholarship

The age of climate change is upon us, but regulations and programs intended to decarbonize the electricity sector have been effectively stymied by utilities defending their monopoly power. The lack of robust antitrust enforcement against the utilities to date is a result of the belief that regulation is sufficient to police monopoly anticompetitive activity, that the natural monopoly structure of utilities makes them a poor fit for antitrust principles, and that the utilities are immune from Sherman Act claims under the state action exemption. But these rationales reflect a misunderstanding of the purpose of public utility law and its preference …

Retrenchment, Segregation, And Public Education: A Five-Year Analysis Of State Exclusionary School Discipline Legislation, Thalia Gonzalez, Will Martel

Faculty Scholarship

Notwithstanding the decision in Brown v. Board of Education formally ending educational segregation and more than two decades of state reform, the legislative landscape protecting minoritized children from the structural violence of exclusionary school discipline has dramatically shifted in less than five years. From the passage of state “Teacher’s Bills of Rights” to mandatory expulsions, rescissions of prior protections, and new categories of removal, a retrenchment of anti-inclusion legislation—and its corollary, educational carcerality— has occurred. While studies of other forms of legislative retrenchment in K–12 public schools, such as anti-Critical Race Theory and Don’t Say Gay laws, literacy bans, and …

Impact Of Powdered Tart Cherry Supplementation On Performance Recovery Following Repeated Sprint Exercise, Anthony M. Hagele, Kyle S. Levers, Kevin F. Holley, Alex C. Schrautemeier, Joesi M. Krieger, Joshua M. Iannotti, Connor J. Gaige, Ralf Jäger, Chad Kerksick

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Due to its high polyphenol content and purported capability to mitigate post-exercise muscle soreness and promote recovery, tart cherry (TC) supplementation has been proposed to enhance recovery and athletic performance. This study examined the effects of powdered TC supplementation on various recovery and performance metrics following a repeated sprint exercise protocol in physically active young adults.

Methods: 40 (18 M, 22 F) healthy, active participants (24.6 ± 5.5 yrs, 171.5 ± 11 cm, 71.7 ± 14.5 kg, 24.2 ± 3.1 kg·m−2) participated in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel study design. Placebo (PLA) or powdered TC supplementation (500 …

Critical Lawyering Pedagogy: Transformational Legal Education, Carolyn Grose

Faculty Scholarship

In an era marked by democratic backsliding, systemic inequality, and widespread disillusionment with legal institutions, traditional legal education has proven not merely inadequate, but actively complicit in reproducing the institutional norms, professional identities, and hierarchies that have enabled democratic erosion and the misuse of law as a tool of exclusion and domination.

This Article describes a comprehensive, justice-oriented framework that reimagines the structure, content, and outcomes of legal education to better meet those needs. Critical Lawyering Pedagogy (CLP) draws from Critical Pedagogy, Narrative Theory, and Critical Lawyering and challenges the entrenched hierarchies and exclusionary norms that dominate most law schools …