Digital Commons Network^™

The Uniform Commercial Code Survey: Introduction, Jennifer S. Martin, Colin P. Marks, Wayne Barnes

Faculty Scholarship

The survey that follows highlights the most important developments of 2021 dealing with domestic and international sales of goods, personal property leases, payments, letters of credit, documents of title, investment securities, and secured transactions.

Beyond Bristol-Myers : Personal Jurisdiction Over Class Actions, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court's 2017 decision in Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Court threatens a sea change in the relationship between personal jurisdiction and aggregate litigation. The most crucial concern has been what the decision means for class actions. Must a court subject the claims of every unnamed class member to separate jurisdictional scrutiny? If so, it could be impossible for a plaintiff who sues in her home state to represent class members outside that state; instead, the Constitution would permit multi-state or nationwide class actions only in states where the defendant is subject to general jurisdiction. For claims against a …

Comments On Preliminary Draft 8 [Black Letter And Comments], Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

PD8 represents a great deal of labor, for which the Reporters deserve recognition. As detailed below, however, PD8’s occasional departures from or omissions of statutory text may not only be misleading or confusing, but – as has been the case with prior drafts – often have the result, if not the purpose, of whittling down the scope of copyright protection. In addition to identifying those instances and explaining their consequences, the following comments will suggest clarifications to some of the Comments and Illustrations.

The Trouble With Court-Packing, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

Wide-ranging public discussion of U.S. Supreme Court reform implicates fundamental questions of constitutional policy, norms, and law. This Article focuses on the reform proposal that poses the greatest threat to judicial legitimacy and independence: Court-packing. This Article contends that there has likely been a constitutional convention against Court-packing for a long time now, although it is uncertain whether the convention continues to exist given Senate conduct since 2016. This Article also maintains that Court-packing is not as free from constitutional difficulty as the conventional wisdom holds, even if the arguments for its constitutionality are stronger on balance. Most importantly, this …

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (Spacs) And The Sec, Neal Newman, Lawrence J. Trautman

Faculty Scholarship

Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are simply enterprises that raise money from the public with the intention of purchasing an existing business and becoming publicly traded in the securities markets. If the SPAC is successful in raising money and the acquisition takes place, the target company takes the SPAC’s place on a stock exchange in a transaction that resembles a public offering. Also known as “blank-check” or “reverse merger” companies, this process avoids many of the pitfalls of a traditional initial public offering.

During late 2020 and 2021 an unprecedented surge in the popularity and issuance of Special Purpose Acquisition …

Equivocal Originalism, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

"Originalism" is a term shrouded in ambiguity and ripe for equivocation. A recent article by Stephen Sachs in the Harvard Law Review tries to clarify the discussion by distinguishing between originalism as a decision standard, or a set of criteria for ascertaining the truth conditions for propositions, and a decision procedure, or a mechanism for ascertaining whether those truth conditions are satisfied in any given context. That is a helpful distinction, but it still leaves much room for multiple and confusing uses of the term originalism. Jumping off from comments on Professor Sachs's article by Mitchell Berman and Judge Andrew …

Green, Or Greed? A Fresh Perspective On The Valuation Of Conservation Easements, Alan L. Feld, Jacob Nielson, Theodore S. Sims

Faculty Scholarship

Charitable contributions of "conservation easements" have since 1980 allowed high-income taxpayers to shelter income from taxation through overvalued deductions. Overvaluation has increased dramatically in the past 20 years: a 2016 study of all easement decisions since 1980 reported that while overvaluation had averaged by a factor of two before 1994, it averaged by a factor of ten for decisions between 1994 and 2016. SOI data disclose that aggregate easement contributions deducted on Schedule A grew from $2.26 billion in 2015 to $6.5 billion in 2018 (the most recent year available). A recent report by supporters of conservation easements acknowledges that …

January 6, Ambiguously Inciting Speech, And The Overt-Acts Rule, Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

A prosecution of Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol would have to address whether the First Amendment protects the inflammatory remarks he made at the “Stop the Steal” rally. A prosecution based solely on the content of Trump’s speech—whether for incitement, insurrection, or obstruction—would face serious constitutional difficulties under Brandenburg v. Ohio’s dual requirements of intent and likely imminence. But a prosecution need not rely solely on the content of Trump’s speech. It can also look to Trump’s actions: his order to the remove the magnetometers from the entrances to the rally and …

Colorblind Capture, Jonathan Feingold

Faculty Scholarship

We are facing two converging waves of racial retrenchment. The first, which arose following the Civil Rights Movement, is nearing a legal milestone. This term or the next, the Supreme Court will prohibit affirmative action in higher education. When it does, the Court will cement decades of conservative jurisprudence that has systematically eroded the right to remedy racial inequality.

The second wave is more recent but no less significant. Following 2020’s global uprising for racial justice, rightwing forces launched a coordinated assault on antiracism itself. The campaign has enjoyed early success. As one measure, GOP officials have passed, proposed or …

Overcoming The Peremptory's Greatest Challenge, Brian A. Wilson

Faculty Scholarship

Four decades after the Supreme Judicial Court ("SJC") first proscribed certain group-based peremptory challenges, eradicating unlawful discrimination in jury selection has gained renewed interest. Yet so long as Massachusetts retains the inherently flawed three-step "Batson-Soares" test, lawyers seeking to exclude jurors for impermissible reasons will proceed virtually undeterred.

The solution is not to abolish peremptory challenges, as Arizona did in 2022. When exercised lawfully, they enable litigants to remove jurors they legitimately perceive as biased where a challenge for cause, due to its narrow scope, legally cannot. Eliminating peremptories would provide the parties little opportunity to influence who decides the …

Legal Perspectives On The Streaming Industry: The United States, Irene Calboli

Faculty Scholarship

In the past decade, streaming has become one of the most popular formats of “consuming” entertainment and other content—from music to videos, and concerts, sports, conferences, and other events. In the United States, the majority of consumers subscribe to one or more streaming services today. Popular streaming services include famous platforms such as Spotify, Netflix, Apple Music, or Apple TV, Pandora, YouTube, and more. Beside subscription-based services, several of these platforms offer “freemium,” or ad-paid version of their services, which allow users to access content with advertisements for free. As elaborated in several industry reports and other publications, the rise …

Chronic Red Cell Exchange In Sickle Cell Patients With Iron Overload May Not Affect Mortality, Yi Yuan Zhou, Hollie M. Reeves, Robert W. Maitta

Faculty Scholarship

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an inherited blood disorder that affects ~100,000 Americans (1, 2). In SCD, red blood cells (RBC) containing aberrant sickle hemoglobin (HgbS) become sickle-shaped at low oxygen tension and stick together leading to obstructed blood flow. The resulting decrease in tissue oxygenation causes chronic complications such as vasculo-occlusive pain crises among others that require frequent hospitalizations (3). Chronic RBC transfusions play a prominent role in the treatment of this disease by improving oxygenation through addition of normal RBC and dilution of RBC containing HgbS (4, 5). However, the major disadvantage of management with simple transfusion is …

Incorporating Baryon-Driven Contraction Of Dark Matter Halos In Rotation Curve Fits, Pengfei Li, Stacy S. Mcgaugh

Faculty Scholarship

The condensation of baryons within a dark matter (DM) halo during galaxy formation should result in some contraction of the halo as the combined system settles into equilibrium. We quantify this effect on the cuspy primordial halos predicted by DM-only simulations for the baryon distributions observed in the galaxies of the SPARC database. We find that the DM halos of high surface brightness galaxies (with Σeff 3; 100L pc-2 at 3.6 μm) experience strong contraction. Halos become more cuspy as a result of compression: the inner DM density slope increases with the baryonic surface mass density. We iteratively fit rotation …

Aster La Vista: Unraveling The Biochemical Basis Of Carotenoid Homeostasis In The Human Retina, Sepalika Swarnamali Bandara Bathana Mudiyanselage, Johannes Von Lintig

Faculty Scholarship

Carotenoids play pivotal roles in vision as light filters and precursor of chromophore. Many vertebrates also display the colorful pigments as ornaments in bare skin parts and feathers. Proteins involved in the transport and metabolism of these lipids have been identified including class B scavenger receptors and carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases. Recent research implicates members of the Aster protein family, also known as GRAM domain-containing (GRAMD), in carotenoid metabolism. These multi-domain proteins facilitate the intracellular movement of carotenoids from their site of cellular uptake by scavenger receptors to the site of their metabolic processing by carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases. We provide a …

The Planetary Sublime Part Ii Of The Problem Of An Unloving World, Jeremy Bendik-Keymer

Faculty Scholarship

This essay interprets Dipesh Chakrabarty’s The Climate of History in a Planetary Age in light of the European tradition of thought about the sublime. The first half of the essay stages Chakrabarty’s historiography within that tradition focusing on a critical understanding of Kant. Then, the essay considers how the trace of the sublime in Chakrabarty’s approach to planetary history is interpretable as a form of social alienation. That argument draws on the critical theory of Steven Vogel and decolonial critique. Finally, the essay considers the moods of protest as non-alienated responses to the planetary bypassing the coloniality of the sublime.

A Blind Benchmark Of Analysis Tools To Infer Kinetic Rate Constants From Single-Molecule Fret Trajectories, Dorothy A. Erie, Lydia Kisley, Dushani Dunukara

Faculty Scholarship

Single-molecule FRET (smFRET) is a versatile technique to study the dynamics and function of biomolecules since it makes nanoscale movements detectable as fluorescence signals. The powerful ability to infer quantitative kinetic information from smFRET data is, however, complicated by experimental limitations. Diverse analysis tools have been developed to overcome these hurdles but a systematic comparison is lacking. Here, we report the results of a blind benchmark study assessing eleven analysis tools used to infer kinetic rate constants from smFRET trajectories. We test them against simulated and experimental data containing the most prominent difficulties encountered in analyzing smFRET experiments: different noise …

Pre Covid-19 Pandemic Use Of Telemedicine For Adherence Promotion In Patients With Psychotic Disorders: A Literature Review, Alyssa M. Edwards, Jordan C. Petitt, Sanjana Kumar, Jennifer B. Levin, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: Given the increasing use of telepsychiatry and to serve as a reference point informing future research, our team evaluated the literature on the use of telepsychiatry for medication adherence promotion prior to the COVID-19 pandemic among patients with psychotic disorders. Methods: A search of PubMed, Cochrane, Web of Science, CINAHL, and PsycINFO was conducted using PRISMA guidelines to identify telepsychiatry interventions to enhance medication adherence in patients with primary psychotic disorders. Both quantitative and qualitative data were extracted from the identified articles including study characteristics, interventions, and outcomes. Results: In total, 230 articles were obtained through electronic literature search, …

“Flipped” Clinical Rotations: A Novel Approach, Wei Xiong, Simran Singh, Amy Wilson-Delfosse, Robert Jones, Craig Nielsen, Carol Chalkley, Lia Logio

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, medical students were pulled out of all in-person patient care activities. This resulted in massive disruption to the required clinical rotations (clerkships), necessitating creative curricular solutions to ensure continued education for medical students. Approach: In response to the lockout, our school adopted a “flipped” clinical rotations model that assigned students to remote learning activities prior to in-person patient care activities. This approach allowed students to continue their clinical education virtually with a focus on knowledge for practice while awaiting return to the shortened in-person portions of their rotation. …

Effects Of Financial Statement And Macroeconomic Factors On Risk Measures Of Banks In India: Panel And Decision Tree Analysis Approach, Guarango Banerjee, Abhimanyu Gupta, Abhiman Das

Faculty Scholarship

This paper aims to analyze the effects of financial statement indicators and off-balance sheet items affecting risk measures among Indian banks employing both panel data regression and a non-parametric decision tree approach. We explore the effects of bank size, leverage, exposure to contingent liabilities including off-balance sheet derivatives usage and macroeconomic factors on risk measures for banks. In this paper, it is also aimed to examine the effects of the major financial liberalization policy period in the domestic market in India that started in the mid-1990s and ended around 2004 as well as impacts of the 2008 global financial crisis …

Bridge Building In Higher Education: Multi-Modal Mentoring Programs To Support Retention & Career Preparedness, James Hutson, Roger Nasser, Michael Marzano, Ryan Curtis, Elizabeth Macdonald, Sue Edele, Barbara Hosti-Marti

Faculty Scholarship

Despite the limitations on time for career preparedness and shrinking professional development budgets, mentoring remains as important as ever due to the interconnectedness in a global society and the changing demographics of postsecondary education students. The traditional-age population in college that lives on campus and does not work has been declining for over three decades. The majorities of current students that are now non-traditional, and work at least part-time are first-generation, and are pursuing degrees via distance or online learning. The importance of providing a diverse mentoring strategy for this new population is borne out in research in order to …

Screening Families In Primary Care For Social And Economic Needs: Patients’ Urgency And Activation For Social Care Navigation, Sarah D. Ronis, Marie Masotya, Kurt C. Stange

Faculty Scholarship

Introduction: Social determinants of health (SDoH) screening and intervention in primary care aim to alleviate adverse influences on health, but its efficacy may be diluted when offered supports are not well matched to families’ desire for such services. The purpose of this prospective cohort study was to provide guidance to social care navigation teams regarding which families would be most likely to make use of services. Methods: Analysis of registry data collected in April 1–September 30, 2021 from a social care navigation program embedded in a medical home was conducted. Multivariable regression models explored (1) whether family-reported urgency of needs, …

Inconceivable Families, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Basic biology tells us that each child has no more than two biological parents, one who supplies the egg and one who supplies the sperm. Adoption law in this country has generally followed biology, insisting only two parents be legally recognized for each child. Thus, every adoption begins with loss. Before a child can be adopted, that child must first be cut off from their family of birth, rendering the equation of adoption one of subtraction, not addition. This Article examines the biological model of adoption that insists on mimicking the nuclear family—erasing one set of parents and replacing them …

Optimal Standards Of Proof In Antitrust, Murat C. Mungan, Joshua Wright

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analyses of antitrust institutions have thus far focused predominantly on optimal penalties and the design of substantive legal rules, and have largely ignored the standard of proof used in trials as a policy tool in shaping behavior. This neglected tool can play a unique role in the antitrust context, where a given firm may have the choice to engage in exceptional anticompetitive or procompetitive behavior, or simply follow more conventional business practices. The standard of proof used in determining the legality of a firm’s conduct affects not only whether the firm chooses to engage in pro- versus anticompetitive behavior, …

Fashion In The Times Of War: The Recent Exodus Of Luxury Brands From Russia And What It Means For Trademark Law, Irene Calboli, Vera Sevastianova

Faculty Scholarship

In February 2022, Russia infamously invaded Ukraine, starting an unprovoked war. As a result, many foreign companies left their Russia-based operations, including most luxury fashion houses. In these remarks, we elaborate on the possible issues that these companies may face regarding the enforcement of their IP rights in Russia, particularly trademark rights, following their departure resulting from the sanctions imposed by Western countries.

At the time of writing, perhaps the most pressing issue is whether luxury fashion houses risk losing their trademark rights in Russia due to their decision to suspend their operations, even though temporarily. An additional issue facing …

Big Three Power, And Why It Matters, Lucian Bebchuk, Scott Hirst

Faculty Scholarship

This Article focuses on the power and corporate governance significance of the three largest index fund managers commonly referred to collectively as the “Big Three.” We present current evidence on the substantial voting power of the Big Three and explain why it is likely to persist and, indeed, further grow. We show that, due to their voting power, the Big Three have considerable influence on corporate outcomes through both what they do and what they fail to do. We also discuss the Big Three’s undesirable incentives both to underinvest in stewardship and to be excessively deferential to corporate managers.

In …

Occlusionchip: A Functional Microcapillary Occlusion Assay Complementary To Ektacytometry For Detection Of Small-Fraction Red Blood Cells With Abnormal Deformability, Yuncheng Man, Ran An, Karamoja Monchamp, Zoe Sekyonda, Erdem Kucukal, Chiara Federici, William J. Wulftange, Utku Goreke, Allison Bode, Umut A. Gurkan

Faculty Scholarship

Red blood cell (RBC) deformability is a valuable hemorheological biomarker that can be used to assess the clinical status and response to therapy of individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD). RBC deformability has been measured by ektacytometry for decades, which uses shear or osmolar stress. However, ektacytometry is a population based measurement that does not detect small-fractions of abnormal RBCs. A single cell-based, functional RBC deformability assay would complement ektacytometry and provide additional information. Here, we tested the relative merits of the OcclusionChip, which measures RBC deformability by microcapillary occlusion, and ektacytometry. We tested samples containing glutaraldehyde-stiffened RBCs for up …

Update On The Management Of Vitamins And Minerals In Cystic Fibrosis, Senthilkumar Sankararaman

Faculty Scholarship

Advancements in respiratory and nutrition management have significantly improved the survival of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). With the availability of several nutrition interventions such as oral/enteral nutrition supplements, enteric-coated pancreatic enzymes, and water-miscible CF-specific vitamin supplements, frank vitamin deficiencies—with the exception of vitamin D—are rarely encountered in current clinical practice. Whereas they were previously considered as micronutrients, our current understanding of fat-soluble vitamins and minerals as antioxidants, immunomodulators, and disease biomarkers has been evolving. The impact of highly effective modulators on the micronutrient status of patients with CF remains elusive. This narrative review focuses on the updates on the …

Combinations Of Chronic Conditions, Functional Limitations And Geriatric Syndromes Associated With Periodontal Disease, Hussam M. Alqahtani, Siran M. Koroukian, Kurt C. Stange, Nabil F. Bissada, Nicholas K. Schiltz

Faculty Scholarship

Objective To identify complex multimorbid conditions, including chronic conditions, functional limitations and geriatric syndromes, associated with the presence and severity of periodontal disease (PD), after accounting for a series of demographic and behavioural characteristics. Design This cross-sectional study used secondary data from a nationally representative sample, classification and regression tree analysis and random forest identified combinations of specific conditions constituting complex multimorbidity associated with the presence and severity of PD. Setting US National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey (2013-2014). Participants Individuals 60 years of age or older who completed a periodontal examination. Results Among 937 participants aged 60 and over, …

Gendering Cabinet Reshuffles In France And Spain, Karen Beckwith

Faculty Scholarship

Presidents and prime ministers who form gender-parity cabinets receive positive news coverage and public praise. Cabinet reshuffles, with less attention, may offer scope to decrease the numbers of female ministers. Although research on the gendered impact of reshuffles is sparse, some studies suggest that women’s presence declines during reshuffles. This article explores the gendered dynamics of reshuffles that follow initial gender-parity cabinets, asking whether the reshuffle context affects the proportions of men and women in reorganized cabinet teams. Employing a comparative case study approach, the article analyses initial gender-parity cabinets and subsequent reshuffled cabinets in France and Spain across three …

Accountability: Construct Definition And Measurement Of A Virtue Vital To Flourishing, Charlotte Witvliet, Sung Joon Jang, Byron R. Johnson, C. Stephen Evans, Jack W. Berry, Joseph Leman, Robert C. Roberts, John Peteet, Andrew B. Torrance, Ashley N. Hayden

Faculty Scholarship

Embracing accountability to others for one’s responsibilities within relationships is important for flourishing, yet underexamined. An interdisciplinary team defined the construct of accountability and developed an 11-item single-factor Accountability Scale. In national samples with US census demographic representation (total N = 1257), we conducted psychometric analyses using methods from classical test theory (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and item response theory. The Accountability Scale demonstrated internal consistency, construct validity, test-retest reliability, and incremental validity. Accountability correlated positively with relational variables (agreeableness, empathy) responsibility-oriented variables (conscientiousness, self-regulation), virtues (gratitude, forgiveness, limitations-owning humility), relational repair, perceived meaning presence, and flourishing, inversely with …