Digital Commons Network^™

Thrombocytopenia In Sepsis, Alireza Setarehaseman, Robert W. Maitta

Faculty Scholarship

Platelets, traditionally known for their role in hemostasis, have emerged as key players in immune response and inflammation. Sepsis, a life-threatening condition characterized by systemic inflammation, often presents with thrombocytopenia, which at times, can be significant. Platelets contribute to the inflammatory response by interacting with leukocytes, endothelial cells, and the innate immune system. However, excessive platelet activation and consumption can lead to thrombocytopenia and exacerbate the severity of sepsis. Understanding the multifaceted roles of platelets in sepsis is crucial for developing effective therapeutic strategies. Targeting platelet-mediated inflammatory responses and promoting platelet production may offer potential avenues for improving outcomes in …

Applicable And Generalizable Machine Learning For Intelligent Welding In Automotive Manufacturing, Peng Edward Wang, Xijia Zhao

Faculty Scholarship

This review paper examines the application and challenges of machine learning (ML) in intelligent welding processes within the automotive industry, focusing on resistance spot welding (RSW) and laser welding. RSW is predominant in body-in-white assembly, while laser welding is critical for electric vehicle battery packs due to its precision and compatibility with dissimilar materials. The paper categorizes ML applications into three key areas: sensing, in-process decision-making, and post-process optimization. It reviews supervised learning models for defect detection and weld quality prediction, unsupervised learning for feature extraction and data clustering, and emerging generalizable ML approaches like transfer learning and federated learning …

Can Chatgpt Implement Finite Element Models For Geotechnical Engineering Applications?, Hyoung Suk Suh

Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the capability of ChatGPT to generate finite element code for geotechnical engineering applications from a set of prompts. We tested three different initial boundary value problems using a hydro-mechanically coupled formulation for unsaturated soils, including the dissipation of excess pore water pressure through fluid mass diffusion in one-dimensional space, time-dependent differential settlement of a strip footing, and gravity-driven seepage. For each case, initial prompting involved providing ChatGPT with necessary information for finite element implementation, such as balance and constitutive equations, problem geometry, initial and boundary conditions, material properties, and spatiotemporal discretization and solution strategies. Any errors and …

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Nutrition And Weight Cut Strategies For Mixed Martial Arts And Other Combat Sports, Anthony A. Ricci, Cassandra Evans, Charles Stull, Corey A. Peacock, Duncan N. French, Jeffrey R. Stout, David H. Fukuda, Paul La Bounty, Douglas Kalman, Andrew J. Galpin, Jaime Tartar, Sarah Johnson, Richard B. Kreider, Chad Kerksick, Bill I. Campbell, Aaron Jeffery, Chris Algieri, Jose Antonio

Faculty Scholarship

Following an extensive literature review, the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN) has developed an official position on nutritional and weight cut strategies for combat sports. The type of combat sport, length of the fight camp, and time between weigh-in and competition are factors influencing nutritional and weight cut strategies. The following 16points constitute the Position Statement of the Society; the Research Committee has approved them. 1. Combat sports have differing weight categories, official weigh-in times, and competition frequencies, influencing the nutritional and weight cut strategies for training and competition. 2. As the duration of a combat match increases, >4 …

Is Cardiomyopathy Intrinsic To Marfan Syndrome?, Carolyn M. Wilhelm, James Strainic, Timothy J. Mead

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Custom’S Pervasive Role In Law And The Boundaries Of Positivism, James Paul George

Faculty Scholarship

Custom is law’s foundation, modulator, and occasional antithesis. This Article explores that relationship, starting with varying insights from some of the few legal philosophers who have examined the custom/law dynamic. The heart of this Article provides examples showing custom’s many influences on the law, set in five functional areas: origin, application, interstitial, rule-source, and oppositional. Although the custom/law interplay spans human behavior, these examples come from law practice where custom is exposed. Many are routine, some are significant, and all show our reliance on behaviors and norms that are not positive law. The conclusion addresses but does not resolve some …

We Need To Talk: Modernizing Attorney-Client Jail Communications, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

Attorney-client jail phone calls, video calls, and emails are all routinely recorded and monitored by jails, with numerous examples of jails and private telecommunications providers giving those recordings and emails to law enforcement and prosecutors. This widespread failure to protect the confidentiality of attorney-client communications prevents lawyers from being able to enjoy easy, quick, and regular communications with their clients. In practice, and despite the ever-expanding communication methods in the outside world, those held in jails in this country while their criminal cases are pending are effectively stuck in the nineteenth century when the only way to communicate was in …

Water Reallocation In The West: Government And Markets, Vanessa Casado Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

Water is multifaceted: it is a human right, a production input, a sacred element, an investment asset, public property, and a fugitive resource. Its reallocation is inherently difficult because of its natural characteristics and its hybrid nature that combines public ownership with private rights. The future of the U.S. West necessitates the reallocation of water resources, even with potential new water supplies. As climate change intensifies, reallocation will take various forms—all involving government intervention to some degree, from eminent domain to competitive markets. For water markets to function effectively, they require robust institutional infrastructure to prevent issues like imperfect information …

The Other Secret Deals: Uncovering The Power Of Non-Binding International Agreements, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Faculty Scholarship

In recent decades, the use of traditional international treaties has declined as states increasingly rely on deformalized agreements - non binding arrangements - such as interinstitutional agreements and memoranda of understanding. These agreements allow governments to bypass the complexities of formal treaty-making while addressing shared challenges. This Article, based on four years of research and previously undisclosed agreements, examines a twenty-year database of non-binding agreements between the United States and Mexico. Through this case study, the Article demonstrates how deformalized agreements drive much of the cross-border collaboration, offering a flexible mechanism for government agencies to shape state behavior, coordinate policies, …

Law For The Rich, Alex Raskolnikov

Faculty Scholarship

With top incomes and wealth reaching historic highs, scholars and politicians have proposed new taxes and novel legal rules aimed at reversing the emergence of the new Gilded Age. Yet while new taxes target the rich directly by imposing greater burdens only on those with incomes or wealth above multi-million-dollar thresholds, none of the proposed legal reforms do anything of the sort. There appears to be no interest in changing property law, corporate law, antitrust law, or labor law, among others, to have special, more burdensome rules applicable only to the rich. This Article asks: Why not? Why shy away …

The Common Law Of Constitutional Conventions, David E. Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Jill Lepore’s Jorde Symposium lecture paints a rich portrait of state constitutional conventions as engines of democratization during the 1800s and issues a dire warning about the United States’ ongoing amendment drought. Citing their unfamiliarity, however, Lepore declines to consider federal constitutional conventions as a possible corrective. In this response Essay, I argue: first, that Lepore’s marginalization of Article V’s convention mechanism is in tension with her own historical and normative account; second, that while Lepore’s wariness of conventions is entirely understandable given the state of our politics — and entirely commonplace among progressives — it carries significant risks …

Black English For Lawyers: A Primer, L. Alexander Walker Iii

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers do not know as much about Black English as they should, and people’s freedom hangs in the balance. Differences between language varieties in sounds and grammar can change and have changed the outcome of cases: “He at work” and “He be at work” mean two completely different things. To reduce misinterpretation and therefore wrongful outcomes, this Article provides a primer on the sounds, words, grammar, and social context of Black English targeted directly at legal practitioners. It begins by explaining key concepts in linguistics and making the case for why lawyers must foreground accurate description over normative prescription when …

When Anti-Fraud Laws Become A Barrier To Computer Science Research, Madelyne Xiao, Andrew Sellars, Sarah Scheffler

Faculty Scholarship

Computer science research sometimes brushes with the law, from red-team exercises that probe the boundaries of authentication mechanisms, to AI research processing copyrighted material, to platform research measuring the behavior of algorithms and users. U.S.-based computer security research is no stranger to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in a relationship that is still evolving through case law, research practices, changing policies, and legislation

Amid the landscape computer scientists, lawyers, and policymakers have learned to navigate, anti-fraud laws are a surprisingly under-examined challenge for computer science research. Fraud brings separate issues that …

Decriminalization Matters: Lgbtq Transnational Litigation Networks And Movement Lawyering In The Global South, Ayodeji Kamau Perrin

Faculty Scholarship

In the last decade, a distinct sociolegal phenomenon has been sweeping across the Global South—the judicial decriminalization of same-sex sexual conduct. On the other hand, progress on LGBTQ rights has occurred in parallel to transnational countermobilization and backlash against LGBTQ rights. Yet, neither the phenomenon of judicial decriminalization nor the countermobilization and backlash to decriminalization has attracted the attention that these phenomena deserve from doctrinal legal scholars, comparative and international law scholars, or legal mobilization scholars.

In this paper, I help to remedy this oversight by making three contributions to legal mobilization scholarship and to international law and relations scholarship. …

Community Integration Of People With Disabilities A Quarter Century After Olmstead V. L.C., Michael Ashley Stein, Benjamin Barsky, Lisa I. Iezzoni

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

To Save Democracy From Juristocracy: J.B. Thayer And Congressional Power After The Civil War, Samuel Moyn, Rephael G. Stern

Faculty Scholarship

As many Americans once again worry that their democracy is hostage to judicial power, this Article is an archival reconstruction of how famed Harvard law professor James Bradley Thayer set out on a mission to stave off the syndrome before it stuck—though he failed in the end.

The Article shows how Thayer (1831–1902) arrived at his epoch-making theory of judicial deference to safeguard Congress’s power after the democratic revolutions of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Indeed, he hoped to see America transformed in the direction of British legislative supremacy, in which Parliament—and not the courts—reigned supreme. Scandalized by growing ventures …

Interference With The Democratic Process As Public Nuisance, Richard C. Boldt, Donald G. Gifford

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the tort of public nuisance provides a vehicle for holding accountable those engaged in antidemocratic conduct. Recent history suggests that neither the criminal justice system nor Constitutional checks and balances are always up to the task. Following the 2020 election, some supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol to prevent the counting of the electoral votes, tampered with election machines, and intimidated election workers and voters. Depending on the results of the 2024 election, criminal charges against Trump and some of his followers may be dismissed. The Senate failed to convict the President on articles of …

Pushing Boundaries, Paula A. Monopoli

Faculty Scholarship

This essay was originally published in Balkinization as part of an online symposium and it is reprinted with permission. The essay engages with Julie Suk's book, After Misogyny: How the Law Fails Women and What to Do About It. It suggests that feminist legal scholars have been considering their intellectual options in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In After Misogyny, Professor Suk offers a conceptual path forward in a post-Dobbs world. Suk’s trenchant analysis of the failure of law to render substantive gender equality and her …

Guardianship And Its Alternatives: A Handbook On Maryland Law, Joan O'Sullivan, Ellen A. Callegary, Rebecca Hall, James F. Silver

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Lsat Doesn't Matter And Other Surprising Finds From A Deep Dive Into Academic Probation In Law School, Kari Milligan, Ryan Jerome Lecount

Faculty Scholarship

Numerous students nationwide are placed on academic probation and ultimately dismissed from law school each year. While students often carefully conceal their probationary status, their lack of visibility within legal communities should not be mistaken for an absence of need. These students are frequently uniquely vulnerable—facing unexpected family emergencies or entering law school unprepared. The consequences of dismissal are dire, with students experiencing adverse mental health effects and financial exigencies. During the 2023–2024 academic year alone, tuition and fees for a single year of law school ranged from $30,000 to $48,000. Yet, little research—particularly quantitative—has been conducted in service of …

Deep And Continuous Palliative Sedation Without Artificial Nutrition And Hydration: An International Review, Richard Liu, Thaddeus Pope, April Xiaoyi Xu

Faculty Scholarship

Deep and continuous palliative sedation combined with withholding or withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration (collectively termed “PSs̄ANH”) is a medical process regularly used in end-of-life care as a means of alleviating suffering. But PSs̄ANH is often not governed by a clear legal framework. To shed light on different approaches to regulating PSs̄ANH, this Article conducts a comparative analysis of the PSs̄ANH legality across twelve jurisdictions.

To facilitate understanding of this broad issue, we subdivided PSs̄ANH into three categories:

(1) PSs̄ANH will not hasten death (“Type 1 PSs̄ANH”),
(2) PSs̄ANH might, but is not certain to, hasten death (“Type 2 …

Navigating Copyright In Ai-Enhanced Game Design: Legal Challenges In Multimodal And Dynamic Content Creation, Andrew Begemann, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in video game design has transformed traditional workflows, allowing for the generation of text, images, music, videos, and code at unprecedented scales. However, this advancement presents complex challenges for copyright law, traditionally rooted in human originality and authorship. This article examines recent case law that underscores the evolving legal landscape, exploring landmark cases such as Zarya of the Dawn and Andersen v. Stability AI. These cases reveal the tensions between AI-generated outputs and copyright eligibility, especially in the dynamic, multimodal compositions inherent to video games. The review analyzes how various AI tools are employed …

The Complexities Of Consent To Personal Jurisdiction, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

Mallory v. Norfolk Southern Railway Co., decided in June 2023, held that consent remains a method of establishing personal jurisdiction independent of the “minimum contacts” test established by International Shoe Co. v. Washington. To many, the decision resolved ambiguity in personal jurisdiction doctrine and represented a straightforward way of establishing personal jurisdiction. But Mallory failed to consider the many complexities underlying consent. In this Article, I showcase those complexities and demonstrate that Mallory is just the tip of the iceberg: A host of questions, some fundamental to both consent theory and personal-jurisdiction doctrine, lurk beneath the surface. I argue that …

Overcoming Judicial Innumeracy: A Proposal To Bring The Venerable Process Of Peer Review To The Enduring Problem Of Courts’ Scientific Illiteracy, David L. Faigman

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers are not known for their proficiency in math and science. Most of us who went to law school reached a point in our math and science studies when we realized that neither medicine nor engineering were likely to be successful career paths. It is these lawyers who become judges. Yet, the United States Supreme Court has increasingly put the burden for deciding complex scientific and technical questions in the hands of judges. This Article explores this trend of putting greater responsibility for deciding scientific and technical issues on judges, particularly in the areas of evidence law, administrative law, and …

Criminal Procedure Without Consent, Kate Weisburd

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars and advocates have long argued that a person’s consent to a warrantless police search is often so inherently coerced, uninformed, and shaped by race, class, gender, citizenship status, and disability that to call it a “choice” is fiction. This critique is not limited to police searches based on consent. Waiving rights and consenting to otherwise unconstitutional state action permeates criminal procedure. The definition of a seizure, the third-party doctrine, custodial confessions, plea bargains, and agreements to alternatives to incarceration (such as GPS ankle monitoring) all hinge on the idea of voluntary choices—choices that are often just as coerced and …

Governance & Guardrails: Emerging Technologies And Low-Wage Workers, Seema N. Patel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines an important, but undertheorized phenomenon at the intersection of technology and work: the rapidly increasing presence of artificial intelligence systems into low wage workplaces—and decidedly into the lives of low-wage workers themselves—and the resulting broader implications on work law and democracy. For decades, technology has enabled employers to increasingly exert control over workers; but for all their promise, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence also extend a new and potentially harmful level of concern for low-wage workers in particular. From algorithmic software that unilaterally determines workers’ schedules “on demand” and without notice; to constant and often surreptitious surveillance …

Personal Jurisdiction And Federalism, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

Personal jurisdiction has long professed to safeguard interstate federalism through the principle that good fences make good neighbors. Although this goal sits uncomfortably with the idea of personal jurisdiction as an individual right under the Due Process Clause, recent decisions from the Supreme Court have reinvigorated the federalism aspect of personal jurisdiction, offering a new opportunity to appraise its value and efficacy. This Article does so and concludes that personal jurisdiction fails to protect interstate federalism. States and private parties, it turns out, have too much authorization to expand state-court personal jurisdiction beyond state borders using the doctrine of consent …

Personal Jurisdiction And The Fifth Amendment, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court has avoided clarifying the relationship between federal-court personal jurisdiction, congressional statutes, and the Fifth Amendment. Until June 2025, that is. In that month, the Court decided two important cases involving constraints on a federal court's exercise of personal jurisdiction outside of Rule 4(k)(1)(A), which typically ties federal-court personal jurisdiction to state-court personal jurisdiction. This brief essay explains and analyzes those cases, situating them in the Court's larger agenda for personal jurisdiction. It also discusses some open questions raised by the decisions and the role that personal jurisdiction in the United States may now play on the global …

The Supreme Court And Public Opinion, Scott Dodson

Faculty Scholarship

Alexander Hamilton famously called the Supreme Court the “least dangerous branch” because it was reliant on Congress for funding and the President for enforcement. To manage its relationship with the political branches in a way that affords the Court both independence from them and the necessary assistance from them, the Court must cultivate the affection of the electorate. Several doctrinal tools facilitate that cultivation, and, historically, the Court has used those tools effectively to maintain relatively high public-approval rates. But over the last decade, those rates have fallen significantly to historic lows. This paper interrogates why that is. Tracing the …

Trumpian Impoundments In Historical Perspective, Zachary S. Price

Faculty Scholarship

During the election campaign and the first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump and key figures in his administration took actions and made statements suggesting that they believe the President holds a constitutional power to "impound," or decline to spend, appropriated funds. They also suggested that they believe the executive branch is better suited than Congress to represent the common good in federal spending. Although both these arguments have historical antecedents, both are deeply flawed, and courts should reject them in an appropriate case. Rather than continue its trajectory toward executive governance, the United States should adhere …