Digital Commons Network^™

The Watts Gang Treaty: Hidden History And The Power Of Social Movements, William J. Aceves

Faculty Scholarship

On the eve of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, a small group of gang leaders and community activists drafted an agreement to curtail violence in south Los Angeles. Several gangs in Watts accepted the truce and established a cease-fire agreement. By most accounts, the 1992 Watts Gang Treaty succeeded in reducing gang violence in Los Angeles. Local activists attributed the reduction in shootings to the Treaty. Even law enforcement officials grudgingly recognized the Treaty’s contribution to reducing gang violence and a corresponding decrease in homicides.

The origins of the Watts Gang Treaty can be traced to gang leaders recognizing that …

Four Privacy Stories And Two Hard Cases, A Comment On Skinner-Thompson's Privacy At The Margins, Jessica Silbey

Faculty Scholarship

Scott Skinner-Thompson's new book, Privacy at the Margins, is what I would call a "fourth-generation" study of privacy law. Privacy's contours and justifications have been debated over the course of the twentieth century, first to establish it as a matter deserving legal protection (roughly the first half of the twentieth century), ² then to iterate its various common law and constitutional variations (starting in the 1960s), ³ and since the computer and internet revolution of the 1990s, to reevaluate privacy's growing importance but waning presence in the digitally-networked age.⁴ The third-generation of privacy scholarship has been a fast-growing area …

What’S (Race In) The Law Got To Do With It: Incorporating Race In Legal Curriculum, Sonia Gipson Rankin

Faculty Scholarship

Gen Z is defined as including persons born after 1996 and, in 2018, the first Gen Z would have been twenty-two years old, the historically traditional age that many complete undergraduate studies and enter law school. With Gen Z entering law schools, the legal academy has been wholeheartedly preparing for the arrival of the first truly digital native generation in a myriad of ways. However, law training has been slow to progress in addressing the unspoken complexities of context and unconscious bias in the classroom with this population. Today’s Gen Z students were predominately raised in de facto segregated schools …

Tribal Labor And Employment Law: The Evolution Of The Navajo Preference In Employment Act, Paul Spruhan

Faculty Scholarship

For nearly 40 years, the Navajo Nation (“Nation”) has regulated labor and employment (except for occupational safety and worker’s compensation) through one statute, the Navajo Preference in Employment Act (NPEA). Despite its seemingly narrow title, the NPEA is a comprehensive law on the subject. First passed in 1985, it has gone through general and specific revisions to reflect tribal leaders’ views on the balance between the interests of employees and employers, both within and outside the tribal government. In its own right, the NPEA is an important manifestation of a Navajo-specific view of labor and employment that every attorney practicing …

Addressing Stigma And False Beliefs About Mental Health: A New Direction For Mental Health Parity Advocacy, Claire Sontheimer, Michael Ulrich

Faculty Scholarship

Despite laws designed to protect mental health and substance use parity in the United States, real parity remains an aspiration. Under the current system, insurance companies use multiple tactics to deny coverage for or delay the provision of mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) treatment. The difficulty of enforcing parity creates a barrier to achieving the goal of accessible behavioral health services. Rather than a continued effort to legislate our way out of this conundrum, it may be useful to look further upstream. Critical impediments to achieving such parity include the basic attitudes and beliefs about mental and behavioral …

The Humanities Strike Back: (E)Esg And Justice Strine Challenge Gamer Shareholder Primacy, David H. Webber

Faculty Scholarship

Leo E. Strine, Jr. is closing in on Blair and Stout for the undisputed title of all-time top-scoring stakeholderist.³ I don't intend to squander this opportunity to roast and toast him by weighing the pros and cons of basketscoring primacy. Instead, my aim is to surface an overlooked argument in the debate over shareholder primacy and stakeholderism, the case for which has been recently reinvigorated by Strine's work. My argument is this: one underappreciated aspect of shareholder primacy's appeal is that it creates a competition with a single endpoint, basically a game, and that the exhilarating tournament that results, …

The Crt Of Black Lives Matter, Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Faculty Scholarship

Critical Race Theory ("CR T"), or at least its principles, stands at the core of most prominent social movements of today-from the resurgence of the #MeToo Movement, which was founded by a Black woman, Tarana Burke, to the Black Lives Matter Movement, which was founded by three Black women: Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, and Patrisse Cullors. In fact, Critical Race Theorists have long defined CRT itself as a movement, one that has not only provided theoretical interventions regarding the relationship between race, racism, power, and the law, but that has also encouraged and, in fact, inspired and guided social movements. …

(Un)Stable Bits, Cree Jones, Weijia Rao

Faculty Scholarship

In November 2018, after more than a year of negotiations by representatives from Canada, Mexico, and the United States, the United States Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was signed by leaders from the three member states, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The Trump Administration viewed the successful renegotiation of NAFTA as one of its signature achievements and argued that the USMCA “solves the many deficiencies and mistakes in NAFTA.” One of the key revisions in the USMCA was the partial removal of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), the primary mechanism that had been used to enforce the investor protections guaranteed …

Bolstering The Asian American Law Library Collection: A Collection Development Guide, Mari Cheney, Mandy Lee, Anna Lawless-Collins

Faculty Scholarship

An increase in Asian American hate crimes has compelled law librarians to consider their collection development decisions due to a gap in Asian American law library collections. Guidance for increasing Asian American–related materials, however, is sparse. This article aims to fill this gap by discussing the importance of representation, tips on how to perform a diversity audit, and suggestions for Asian American law-related titles.

Jd-Next: A Randomized Experiment Of An Online Scalable Program To Prepare Diverse Students For Law School, Katherine Cheng, Jessica Findley, Adriana Cimetta, Heidi Burross, Matt Charles, Cayley Balser, Ran Li, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

As one of two companion papers, this article explains our efforts to create and evaluate a program called JD-Next, which exposed students to legal education, prepared them to succeed, and assessed their ability to do so. JD-Next is a fully online, noncredit, seven-and-a-half-week course to train potential JD students in case reading and analysis skills before their first year of law school. This article focuses on rigorously testing the exposure and preparation functions of this program in 2019 to determine whether participation in such a course can improve law school confidence and performance of matriculating students. In the companion article, …

Poor Writing, Not Specialized Concepts, Drives Processing Difficulty In Legal Language, Eric H. Martinez, Francis Mollica, Edward Gibson

Faculty Scholarship

Despite their ever-increasing presence in everyday life, contracts remain notoriously inaccessible to laypeople. Why? Here, a corpus analysis (n ≈10 million words) revealed that contracts contain startlingly high proportions of certain difficult-to-process features–including low-frequency jargon, center-embedded clauses (leading to long-distance syntactic dependencies), passive voice structures, and non-standard capitalization–relative to nine other baseline genres of written and spoken English. Two experiments (N=184) further revealed that excerpts containing these features were recalled and comprehended at lower rates than excerpts without these features, even for experienced readers, and that center-embedded clauses inhibited recall more-so than other features. These findings (a) undermine …

The Property Law Of Tokens, Juliet M. Moringiello, Christopher K. Odinet

Faculty Scholarship

Non-fungible tokens—or NFTs, as they are better known—have taken the world by storm. The idea behind an NFT is that by owning a certain thing (specifically, a digital token that is tracked on a blockchain), one can hold property rights in something else (either a real or intangible asset). In the early part of 2021, NFTs for items ranging from a gif of a pop-tart cat with a rainbow tail, to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet, to a New York Times column (about NFTs!) have sold for millions of dollars over the internet. Promoters assert that NFTs are the …

Ethical Quagmires For Government Lawyers: Lessons For Legal Education, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

Each presidential administration faces its own challenges related to the ethics of government officials and lawyers. What distinguished the Trump presidency was the steady stream of news reports that related to controversies involving government lawyers. In examining various controversies, this Essay argues that the ethical standards applicable to government lawyers are often thorny and debatable. Fortney discusses how controversies involving alleged misconduct by government lawyers reveal the range and complexity of ethical dilemmas that government lawyers encounter. This Essay asserts that legal educators should do more to empower government lawyers to deal with such ethics issues. To highlight key ethics …

Using Community-Based System Dynamics To Address Structural Racism In Community Health Improvement, Heidi L. Gullett, Gregory L. Brown, Robin S. Gotler, Kurt C. Stange, Peter S. Hovmand

Faculty Scholarship

Context: Structural racism is a profound determinant of health resulting in pervasive health inequities for people of color. Despite the recognition of structural racism as a complex, dynamic system, we lack a shared vision of the system that would enable identification of solutions for equitable systems transformation. Policy: Through a public health–led community health improvement planning process, a cross-sector consortium implemented community-based system dynamics to provide a systems science lens to guide efforts to eliminate structural racism. Implementation: In group model building sessions involving diverse stakeholders, community-based system dynamics was used to bring together cross-sector stakeholders to create causal loop …

Using Mhealth To Improve Adherence And Reduce Blood Pressure In Individuals With Hypertension And Bipolar Disorder (Itab-Cv): Study Protocol For A 2-Stage Randomized Clinical Trial, Jennifer B. Levin, Farren Briggs, Mahboob Rahman, Kurt Stange, Douglas Einstadter, Celeste Weise, Carla Conroy, Joy Yala, Ethan Radatz, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Cardiovascular disease in individuals with mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder is highly prevalent and often poorly managed. Individuals with bipolar disorder face significant medication adherence barriers, especially when they are prescribed multiple medications for other health conditions including hypertension. Poor adherence puts them at a disproportionate risk for poor health outcomes. As such, there is a need for effective interventions to improve hypertension medication adherence, particularly in patients that struggle with adherence due to mental health comorbidity. Methods: This 5-year project uses a 2-stage randomized controlled trial design to evaluate a brief, practical adherence intervention delivered via …

Using Mhealth To Improve Adherence And Reduce Blood Pressure In Individuals With Hypertension And Bipolar Disorder (Itab-Cv): Study Protocol For A 2-Stage Randomized Clinical Trial, Jennifer B. Levin, Farren Briggs, Mahboob Rahman, Kurt C. Stange, Douglas Einstadter, Celeste Weise, Carla Conroy, Joy Yala, Ethan Radatz, Martha Sajatovic

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Cardiovascular disease in individuals with mental health conditions such as bipolar disorder is highly prevalent and often poorly managed. Individuals with bipolar disorder face significant medication adherence barriers, especially when they are prescribed multiple medications for other health conditions including hypertension. Poor adherence puts them at a disproportionate risk for poor health outcomes. As such, there is a need for effective interventions to improve hypertension medication adherence, particularly in patients that struggle with adherence due to mental health comorbidity. Methods: This 5-year project uses a 2-stage randomized controlled trial design to evaluate a brief, practical adherence intervention delivered via …

What The Harm Principle Says About Vaccination And Healthcare Rationing, Christopher Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

Clinical ethicists hold near consensus on the view that healthcare should be provided regardless of patients’ past behaviors. In classic cases, the consensus can be explained by two key rationales—a lack of acute scarcity and the intractability of the facts around those behaviors, which make discrimination on past behavior gratuitous and infeasible to do fairly. Healthcare providers have a duty to help those who can be helped. In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic suggests the possible recurrence of a very different situation, where a foreseeable acute shortage of healthcare resources means that some cannot be helped. And that shortage is exacerbated …

Examining How Congruence In And Satisfaction With Dyadic Care Type Appraisal Contribute To Quality Of Life In Heart Failure Care Dyads, Elliane Irani, Seunghee Margevicius

Faculty Scholarship

AIMS: Given the complexity of heart failure (HF) management, persons with HF and their informal caregivers often engage in dyadic illness management. It is unknown how congruent appraisal of dyadic HF care type is associated with dyadic health. Our aim was to examine how congruence in and satisfaction with appraisal of dyadic HF care type contribute to quality of life (QOL) for dyads. METHODS AND RESULTS: This is a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data on 275 HF care dyads (patients 45.1% female, caregivers 70.5% female). Congruent appraisal and satisfaction were assessed using the Dyadic Symptom Management Type instrument. Quality of …

Respiratory Morbidity And Neurodevelopmental Outcomes In Infants Born Preterm: A Complex Web, Anna Maria Hibbs

Faculty Scholarship

This commentary is on the original article by Yu et al. on pages 1246–1253 of this issue.

Evaluation Of Periodontal Status And Cytokine Levels In Saliva And Gingival Crevicular Fluid Of Patients With Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, Andre Paes Batista Da Silva

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Periodontal diseases and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD, ulcerative colitis [UC] and Crohn disease [CD]) have been reported to present with increased salivary and gingival crevicular fluid (GCF) concentrations of cytokines. The aim of this study was to evaluate the salivary and GCF levels of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-10, and IL-17A and their associations with the periodontal statuses of UC, CD, and non-IBD patients, and to analyze the interrelationships among these cytokines, IBD conditions, and periodontal diseases. Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed with a total of 131 patients (62 women and 69 men, mean age 42.96±13.02 years). Patients were divided …

Daubert/Kumho Tire And The Legal Malpractice Expert Witness, Warren Trazenfeld, Robert M. Jarvis

Faculty Scholarship

In legal malpractice cases, parties almost always end up using expert witnesses. Whether a particular legal malpractice expert is qualified to testify often is a hotly contested issue. In this Article, the authors provide recommendations for how to qualify a legal malpractice expert and how to challenge a legal malpractice expert’s qualifications.

The Use Of The Go/No-Go Successive Matching-To-Sample Procedure With Nonverbal Auditory Stimuli To Establish Equivalence Classes And Speaker Behavior, Robbie Hanson, Jillian Sordello, Thea Skau Engell, Caio F. Miguel

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of the current study was to extend the findings on the use of the go/ no-go successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure to establish auditory equivalence classes. Eight college students learned to conditionally relate nonverbal auditory stimuli into three, 3-member classes. Following training, all participants met the emergence criterion for symmetry, and six out of eight participants met the emergence criterion for transitivity/equivalence. Furthermore, all participants responded with either an experimenter-defined or a unique tact, and five participants related these names intraverbally. Although these results replicate previous findings, albeit with stimuli that cannot be echoed, possible verbal mediation via tact …

Cop-“Like”: The First Amendment, Criminal Procedure, And The Regulation Of Police Social Media Speech, Jonathan Abel

Faculty Scholarship

What happens when a law-enforcement officer makes an offensive comment on social media? Increasingly, police departments, prosecutors, courts, and the public have been confronted with the legal and normative questions resulting from officers’ racist, sexist, and violent social media comments. On one side are calls for severe discipline and termination. On the other are demands that officers be permitted to express their views without fear of retaliation. The regulation of police social media speech has been largely conceived of in First Amendment terms. But because an officer’s comments affect her ability to testify, criminal procedure is also employed in regulating …

Periodic Functions Related To The Gompertz Difference Equation, Tom Cuchta, Nick Wintz

Faculty Scholarship

We investigate periodicity of functions related to the Gompertz difference equation. In particular, we derive difference equations that must be satisfied to guarantee periodicity of the solution.

Racial Justice And Peace, Yuvraj Joshi

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Society Of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Tactical Athlete Nutrition, Drew E. Gonzalez, Matthew J. Mcallister, Hunter S. Waldman, Arny A. Ferrando, Jill Joyce, Nicholas D. Barringer, J. Jay Dawes, Adam J. Kieffer, Travis Harvey, Chad M. Kerksick, Jeffrey R. Stout, Tim N. Ziegenfuss, Annette Zapp, Jamie L. Tartar, Jeffrey L. Heileson, Trisha A. Vandusseldorp, Douglas S. Kalman, Bill I. Campbell, Jose Antonio, Richard B. Kreider

Faculty Scholarship

This position stand aims to provide an evidence-based summary of the energy and nutritional demands of tactical athletes to promote optimal health and performance while keeping in mind the unique challenges faced due to work schedules, job demands, and austere environments. After a critical analysis of the literature, the following nutritional guidelines represent the position of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN).

Racial Trauma In Civil Rights Representation, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Anthony V. Alfieri

Faculty Scholarship

Narratives of trauma told by clients and communities of color have inspired an increasing number of civil rights and antiracist lawyers and academics to call for more trauma-informed training for law students and lawyers. These advocates have argued not only for greater trauma-sensitive practices and trauma-centered interventions on behalf of adversely impacted individuals and groups but also for greater awareness of the risks of secondary or vicarious trauma for lawyers who represent traumatized clients and communities. In this Article, we join this chorus of attorneys and academics. Harnessing the recent civil rights case of P.P. v. Compton Unified School District …

Vesting, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

"The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The Executive Vesting Clause is one of three originalist pillars for the unitary executive theory, the idea that the President possesses executive powers like removal without congressional limitations (that is, the powers are indefeasible). An underlying assumption is that "vest" connotes a formalist approach to separation of powers rather than a more functional system of Madisonian checks and balances. Assumptions about "vesting" for official powers are likely the result of semantic drift from property rights and ahistoric projections back from the later Marshall Court doctrine …

An Argument Against Unbounded Arrest Power: The Expressive Fourth Amendment And Protesting While Black, Karen Pita Loor

Faculty Scholarship

Protesting is supposed to be revered in our democracy, considered “as American as apple pie” in our nation’s mythology. But the actual experiences of the 2020 racial justice protesters showed that this supposed reverence for political dissent and protest is more akin to American folklore than reality on the streets. The images from those streets depicted police officers clad in riot gear and armed with shields, batons, and “less than” lethal weapons aggressively arresting protesters, often en masse. In the first week of the George Floyd protests, police arrested roughly 10,000 people, and approximately 78 percent of those arrests were …

Protecting The Guild Or Protecting The Public? Bar Exams And The Diploma Privilege, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The bar examination has long loomed over legal education. Although many states formerly admitted law school graduates into legal practice via the diploma privilege, Wisconsin is the only state that recognizes the privilege today. The bar examination is so central to the attorney admissions process that all but a handful of jurisdictions required it amidst a pandemic that turned bar exam administration into a life-or-death matter.

This Article analyzes the diploma privilege from a historical and empirical perspective. Whereas courts and regulators maintain that bar examinations screen out incompetent practitioners, the legal profession formerly placed little emphasis on bar examinations …