Digital Commons Network^™

How The European Union Should Respond To Trump's Tariffs, Ignacio García Bercero, Petros C. Mavroidis, André Sapir

Faculty Scholarship

President-elect Trump has threatened to increase United States tariffs to 60 percent on imports from China and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other trading partners, including the European Union. In doing so the US would be ignoring its World Trade Organisation commitments and would also rollback the substantial liberalisation that has taken place during the past 80 years, with a potentially major negative impact on the world economy.

In response to this threat, the EU should pursue a three-pronged strategy.

First, the EU should engage bilaterally with the US to seek to avoid the imposition of tariffs. …

A Sticky Mess—Are Moisturizers Overused In Dermatitis Care?, Susan Nedorost

Faculty Scholarship

Microbial dysbiosis is increasingly understood to influence allergic sensitization and skin barrier defects in dermatitis. Occlusion, such as from moisturizers, fosters microbial dysbiosis, and increases itch in many patients with dermatitis. Nevertheless, use of moisturizers in dermatitis remains part of dermatologic guidelines. This is a review of the evidence of benefits and adverse effects of moisturizers in dermatitis and a proposal for moderation in their clinical use.

Psychological Distress Among Family Caregivers Of Persons With Alzheimer’S Disease And Related Dementias In Uganda, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) present growing global health challenges, especially in aging populations, such as Uganda. In Uganda, familial caregiving, predominantly undertaken by female relatives, is the primary form of support provided to patients with ADRD. Cultural stigma around dementia and limited access to support services amplify caregivers' challenges. This study examined psychological distress, depression, and quality of life (QoL) among family caregivers of patients with ADRD in Wakiso District, Uganda. Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 90 caregivers from three sub-counties in Wakiso, selected through purposive sampling to capture diverse experiences. Participants included caregivers aged 18 years …

Water, Rosario Sanchez, Gabriel E. Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

As the new US administration begins its term in January 2025, its ability to address complex, interconnected challenges will shape the future of US-Mexico relations. From economic cooperation and migration to shared security concerns, the new president’s leadership will be pivotal in navigating these critical issues and strengthening bilateral ties between Mexico and the United States. Effective collaboration will be vital to building a more prosperous and stable North America.

To support this effort, the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute has prepared a comprehensive booklet as a practical roadmap for the incoming administration. This publication offers actionable recommendations across six priority …

Do Small Dollar Loans Increase Low Income And Minority Homeownership? Evidence From The Usda Section 502 Lending Program, Luke Petach

Faculty Scholarship

This paper investigates the impact of small dollar mortgage lending on housing affordability and homeownership in the United States. Using data on small dollar mortgage lending at the state level from the USDA Section 502 Lending Program and data on housing affordability and homeownership at the household level from the American Community Survey, I show that an increase in the number of small dollar mortgage loans per-capita at the state level is positively associated with homeownership and housing affordability, particularly for low income households and non-white households. For Black, non-Hispanic households, doubling the number of USDA Section 502 loans per …

Interactional Ordering: Reconstructing Lon Fuller's Theory Of Private Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

While Lon Fuller is best remembered for his contributions to the fields of general jurisprudence and contract law, his work in each has long been seen as unrelated to the other. This Article shows that in a significantly underappreciated body of work, Fuller did connect the two and, in the process, developed the outlines of a robust theory of private law, best characterized as “interactional ordering.” Driven by Fuller’s efforts to develop a jurisprudence of form that was derived from conventionalism and natural law thinking, interactional ordering sees all normativity as originating in horizontal interactions between individuals in society, seeking …

The Right To Inequality: Conservative Politics And Precedent Collide, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

The “end of affirmative action” is the beginning of this story. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA), the Supreme Court struck a near fatal blow to race-consciousness. Many institutions have since pivoted to “race neutral alternatives.” This is a natural turn. But one that faces immediate headwinds.

The same entities that demanded Harvard pursue racial diversity through colorblind means have sued public high schools for doing just that. These litigants assert a “right to inequality”—a theory that would pit the equal protection clause against equality itself. Even if normatively jarring, a right to inequality might seem a …

Just Fix The Damn Payment System!, Frances H. Miller

Faculty Scholarship

This piece takes as a given that we are stuck with our fragmented, inefficient, multi-payor health care system for at least the short run. It then analyzes the deficiencies of three payment mechanisms whereby regulators (including Congress) have invited private sector providers to help ameliorate perceived problems. The first concerns an inadequate supply of nursing home beds in the early ‘70s, the next focuses on Medicare Advantage as a supposedly superior cost containment alternative to traditional Medicare, and the final one involves the ‘devil’s bargain’ struck with the pharmaceutical industry to get prescription drug coverage added to Medicare. All three …

Transplantation And Immortality: A Selective History Of Boston University’S Center For Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The celebration of the anniversary of the Center for Health Law, Ethics & Human Rights (the “Center”) provides an opportunity to reflect on what defines the field of health law, as well as its conjoined twins of bioethics and human rights. The related fields are vast, and the subjects they encompass are ever-expanding. It is probably impossible to lay out a summary that does justice to their expansive, interdisciplinary scope. Instead, my discussion of the Center examines a subject that barely existed when the Center was formed in 19581 and that continues to make headlines more than sixty–six years later …

Colonizing By Contract, Emmanuel Hiram Arnaud

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1898, Puerto Rico has been a territory of the United States, meaning that Congress wields plenary power over the Island. Although scholars have highlighted the history and some modern manifestations of this power, conversations about how plenary power affects the territories have largely ignored constitutional criminal procedure.

This Article is the first to center the territory’s criminal legal system within the broader debate over the exercise of plenary power. In doing so, it fills significant gaps in the constitutional and criminal law literature on the territories by uncovering how the federal government’s plenary power affects local criminal adjudication. This …

Health Law And Democracy, Wendy K. Mariner

Faculty Scholarship

Current political divisions are destabilizing existing laws affecting the health field. Major changes in the field of health law have one thing in common: changes in who holds political power ‒ Congress and state legislatures, governors, presidents, judges, and agency officials. The laws that structure financial, economic, educational, and health care systems, environmental conditions, and civil society are primarily the product of elections that populate our political institutions. These structural determinants of health in turn create laws that influence how ‒ and how well ‒ we live and whether our society functions fairly under the rule of law. Thus, who …

Regulating Social Media Through Family Law, Katharine B. Silbaugh, Adi Caplan-Bricker

Faculty Scholarship

Social media afflicts minors with depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, addiction, suicidality, and eating disorders. States are legislating at a breakneck pace to protect children. Courts strike down every attempt to intervene on First Amendment grounds. This Article clears a path through this stalemate by leveraging two underappreciated frameworks: the latent regulatory power of parental authority arising out of family law, and a hidden family law within First Amendment jurisprudence. These two projects yield novel insights. First, the recent cases offer a dangerous understanding of the First Amendment, one that should not survive the family law reasoning we provide. First Amendment jurisprudence …

Contesting And Controlling Abortion In China’S Courts, Molly Bodurtha, Benjamin L. Liebman, Li Chenquian, Xiaohan Wu

Faculty Scholarship

The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has brought renewed global attention to how legal systems protect and restrict women’s reproductive autonomy. Central themes have included how the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States coincides with the judiciary’s embrace of a broader “jurisprudence of masculinity” and the relationship between abortion restrictions and authoritarianism, as multiple countries have enacted restrictive measures while undergoing democratic backsliding.

Yet, the scholarly conversation on abortion, democracy, and how courts reflect and entrench gender disparities entirely omits China — the largest authoritarian state and a country …

Framing Indian Federalism, Madhav Khosla

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on a set of historical and contemporary developments in Indian constitutionalism that implicate the question of democracy and the question of federalism. Its goal is to connect the design and application of federal powers with what many regard as an important telos of federalism, namely, the promotion of democracy. Towards this end, it holds up for consideration India’s federal model, which, it is suggested, focuses on the presence of a subnational demos rather than the political identity of subnational units. Such an understanding of federalism de-emphasizes the territorial aspect of federalism and allows federal design to accommodate …

The Equal Right To Exclude: Religious Speech And The Road To 303 Creative Llc V. Elenis, Kate Redburn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explains how speech became the constitutional vehicle for the right to discriminate on religious grounds in places of public accommodation. It argues that cause lawyers for the New Christian Right cobbled together a right to exclude from a surprising doctrinal source: the egalitarian tendencies within the First Amendment. Using extensive original archival research, case materials, and little-known accounts of key figures, I reconstruct the New Christian Right’s legal strategy to obtain speech coverage for service denial. By strategically co-opting the progressive free speech legacy, innovative lawyers in the religious wing of the conservative legal movement convinced liberal jurists …

Ai Regulation Has Its Own Alignment Problem: The Technical And Institutional Feasibility Of Disclosure, Registration, Licensing, And Auditing, Neel Guha, Christie M. Lawrence, Lindsey A. Gailmard, Kit T. Rodolfa, Faiz Surani, Rishi Bommasani, Inioluwa Deborah Raji, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Colleen Honigsberg, Percy Liang, Daniel E. Ho

Faculty Scholarship

Calls for regulating artificial intelligence (“AI”) are widespread, but there remains little consensus on both the specific harms that regulation can and should address and the appropriate regulatory actions to take. Computer scientists propose technical solutions that may be infeasible or illegal; lawyers propose regulation that may be technically impossible; and commentators propose policies that may backfire. AI regulation, in that sense, has its own alignment problem, in which proposed interventions are often misaligned with societal values.This Article assesses the alignment and technical and institutional feasibility of four dominant proposals for AI regulation in the United States: disclosure, registration, licensing, …

Association Between Spinal Manipulation, Butalbital Prescription, And Medication Overuse Headache In Adults With Tension-Type Headache: Retrospective Cohort Study, Robert J. Trager, Pratheek S. Makineni, Lindsay H. Morris

Faculty Scholarship

Background and Aims: Butalbital is an acute headache medication commonly prescribed for tension-type headache (TTH), although discouraged by guidelines due to a risk of medication overuse headache (MOH). Considering spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) may reduce TTH frequency and intensity, we hypothesized adults with TTH receiving chiropractic SMT would be less likely to receive a butalbital prescription over 2 years versus matched controls not receiving SMT. We secondarily compared likelihood of MOH between cohorts. Methods: We searched a United States medical records database of patients attending academic medical centers for adults with TTH, from 2013 to 2024, excluding those diagnosed with …

A Patent And A Prize, Keith N. Hylton

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines a simple and old question: should innovators receive a patent or a prize? The answer I provide is equally simple: they should receive both. The literature on patents versus prizes has proceeded mostly under the assumption that there should be a choice between a regime of patents and a regime of prizes in which patents fall into the public domain upon award of the prize. There are significant “public choice costs” under the prize plans. By this I mean there are risks of inappropriate transfers to patentees – that is, looting – and of confiscation of patentees, …

The Association Of Zero Walking Cadence Minutes With Sleep Quality In Adults 18 – 65, Trent A. Hargens, Matthew C. Scott, Meghan Peterson, Kimberly C. Bennett, Timothy Thome, Elizabeth S. Edwards

Faculty Scholarship

Purpose Physical activity (PA) guidelines suggest a link between PA, sedentary time, and sleep quality (SQ). Step cadence is an emerging proxy for PA intensity, with zero cadence (ZC) indicating sedentary time. No research has explored the relationship between ZC and SQ. This study examines the relationship between ZC and SC, compared to traditional PA and sedentary metrics, all measured via accelerometry. Methods Sleep and PA was assessed in 138 adults (53 male, 85 female, age = 23.5 ± 8.0 year.) via accelerometry. Sedentary, light, moderate, vigorous intensity PA, and ZC minutes per day were measured. SQ variables included sleep …

Administration Patterns Of Magnesium Sulphate For Women With Preeclampsia And Immediate Newborn Outcomes In Kawempe National Referral Hospital-Uganda: A Cohort Study, Christopher J. Burant, Shirley Moore, Carol Blixen, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Preeclampsia is the second leading cause of maternal death in Uganda. WHO recommends using magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) to prevent and treat preeclampsia with severe features (PEC) and eclampsia. MgSO4 is used to prevent eclampsia and treat women who experience an eclamptic convulsion to avoid severe maternal/infant illnesses and death. We set out to assess MgSO4 administration patterns in women with PEC or eclampsia and the immediate newborn outcomes of neonates. Methods: This was an analytical observational cohort study at Kawempe National Referral Hospital in Uganda. Two hundred ten pregnant mothers with PEC or eclampsia were recruited in the study …

Abortion Costs And The Language Of Torture, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org., several states imposed significant restrictions on abortion. Some of these states established medical exceptions that would allow a pregnant person to receive an abortion only if they face "a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced." This language highlights the extreme pain and suffering that pregnant people must experience to qualify for an abortion …

Chevron Deference Is Dead, Long Live Deference, Jack M. Beermann

Faculty Scholarship

The demise of Chevron deference standing alone may turn out to be much less important for the future of administrative law and agency regulation than many believe. The Court explicitly approved of deference under the Skidmore factors, which instruct reviewing courts to “resort for guidance, even on legal questions” to “the interpretations and opinions of the relevant agency, made in pursuance of official duty and based upon specialized experience.”8 Further, the Court had already created numerous limitations to the reach of Chevron deference and, as the Court noted, it had not deferred under Chevron in nearly a decade. Chevron deference …

Examining Ptsd Prevalence Among Underserved Populations In The Integrated Community Mental Health Setting 2019 To 2022, Siran Koroukian, Stephen Zyzanski, Kurt C. Stange

Faculty Scholarship

Background: The prevalence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has been rising since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and affects females, sexual and gender minorities, and individuals with social risks at higher rates. Objective: This study examines if the prevalence of PTSD increased from 2019 to 2022 among patients who received care in a national network of safety-net, community-based health centers with integrated behavioral health programs that serve patients at high risk for PTSD. Methods: We analyzed electronic health record data from patients with 1 or more behavioral health visits during 2019 to 2022 using repeated cross-sectional data to …

Opening Brief For Plaintiff-Appellant, Roe V. Marshall University Board Of Governors, Ryan M. Donovan, J. Zak Ritchie, Madeline H. Meth, Gregory Bowe, Erin Hunter, Sarah Monahan

Faculty Scholarship

Issues Presented:

Title IX prohibits schools from responding with deliberate indifference to student-on-student sexual harassment that interferes with, or threatens to interfere with, a victim’s education. It also prohibits schools from retaliating against students who engage in Title IX protected activity, such as reporting an assault. Here, another Marshall student sexually assaulted Roe at an offcampus residence near Marshall’s campus. Roe reported the assault and other instances of student-on-student relationship abuse. In the assault’s aftermath, Roe missed classes and limited her time on campus because she was afraid of encountering her assailant. Her grades suffered. Marshall did not address the …

Comparing Two Transitioning Strategies To Paliperidone Palmitate Once-Every-6-Months, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background A double-blind, randomized, active-controlled, parallel-group, noninferiority trial (NCT03345342) demonstrated that paliperidone palmitate once-every-6-months (PP6M) was noninferior to paliperidone palmitate once-every-3-months (PP3M) in preventing relapse in clinically stable adults with schizophrenia. This post hoc analysis assessed efficacy and safety following transition to PP6M from paliperidone once-monthly (PP1M) versus PP3M. Methods Adults with schizophrenia who were clinically stable on moderate/high doses of PP1M or PP3M were randomly assigned 1:2 to dorsogluteal PP3M or PP6M treatment for 12 months. The primary efficacy measure was time to relapse during the 12-month DB phase. Secondary endpoints included change from DB baseline to endpoint in …

Sensitivity Of Wavelet-Based Optical Flow Velocimetry (Wofv) To Common Experimental Error Sources, Bryan E. Schmidt, Gauresh Raj Jassal

Faculty Scholarship

The influence of several potential error sources and non-ideal experimental effects on the accuracy of a wavelet-based optical flow velocimetry (wOFV) method when applied to tracer particle images is evaluated using data from a series of synthetic flows. Out-of-plane particle displacements, severe image noise, laser sheet thickness reduction, and image intensity non-uniformity are shown to decrease the accuracy of wOFV in a similar manner to correlation-based particle image velocimetry (PIV). For the error sources tested, wOFV displays a similar or slightly increased sensitivity compared to PIV, but the wOFV results are still more accurate than PIV when the magnitude of …

Trisc: Low-Cost Design Of Trigonometric Functions With Quasi Stochastic Computing, Mehran Shoushtari Moghadam, M. Hassan Najafi

Faculty Scholarship

Low-cost and hardware-efficient design of trigonometric functions is challenging. Stochastic computing (SC), an emerging computing model processing random bit-streams, offers promising solutions for this problem. The existing implementations, however, often overlook the importance of the data converters necessary to generate the needed bit-streams. While recent advancements in SC bit-stream generators focus on basic arithmetic operations such as multiplication and addition, energy-efficient SC design of non-linear functions demands attention to both the computation circuit and the bit-stream generator. This work introduces TriSC, a novel approach for SC-based design of trigonometric functions enjoying state-of-the-art (SOTA) quasi-random bit-streams. Unlike SOTA SC designs of …

Nanobubble Contrast Enhanced Ultrasound Imaging: A Review, Pinunta Nittayacharn, Felipe M. Berg, Dorian Durig, Agata A. Exner

Faculty Scholarship

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound is currently used worldwide with clinical indications in cardiology and radiology, and it continues to evolve and develop through innovative technological advancements. Clinically utilized contrast agents for ultrasound consist of hydrophobic gas microbubbles stabilized with a biocompatible shell. These agents are used commonly in echocardiography, with emerging applications in cancer diagnosis and therapy. Microbubbles are a blood pool agent with diameters between 1 and 10 μm, which precludes their use in other extravascular applications. To expand the potential use of contrast-enhanced ultrasound beyond intravascular applications, sub-micron agents, often called nanobubbles or ultra-fine bubbles, have recently emerged as a …

Bayesian Model Projecting Cardiovascular Disease Related Mortality Trends In The United States, Salil V. Deo, Sadeer Al-Kindi, Pedro R.V.O. Salerno, Antoinette Cotton, Yakov Elgudin, Sanjay Rajagopalan

Faculty Scholarship

BACKGROUND: As future cardiovascular disease mortality trends have public health implications, we aimed to project ischemic heart disease (IHD), cerebrovascular disease (CeVD), and heart failure (HF) mortality rates for adults (40–79 years). METHODS AND RESULTS: In this population-level study, we linked the yearly mortality rates (per 100 000 US residents) (2000– 2019) with IHD, CeVD, or HF as the primary cause of death from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research with the midyear US population estimates (2000–2035) for adults (40–79 years). We calculated the observed age-standardized mortality rates (2000–2019) (per 100 000 residents) …

Juror Privacy Via Anonymity, Jayne S. Ressler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.