Digital Commons Network^™

Replacing Politics With Democracy: A Proposal For Community Planning In New York City And Beyond, Amy Widman

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

I Did Not Want To Kill Him But I Thought I Had To: In Light Of Penry Ii's Interpretation Of Blystone, Why The Constitution Requires Jury Instructions On How To Give Effect To Relevant Mitigating Evidence In Capital Cases, Dave Barron

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

In Re Wendland: Contradiction, Confusion And Constitutionality, Mary Ann Buckley

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Is Kendra's Law A Keeper? How Kendra's Law Erodes Fundamental Rights Of The Mentally Ill, Erin O'Connor

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Addressing Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement: Legislation Vs. Litigation, Martine J. Price

Journal of Law and Policy

No abstract provided.

Bombing Markets, Subverting The Rule Of Law: Enron, Financial Fraud, And September 11, 2001, Faith Stevelman

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

American Prophet, New England Town: The Memory Of Joseph Smith In Vermont, Keith A. Erekson

Theses and Dissertations

In December 1905, a large granite monument was erected at the birthplace of Joseph Smith on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. This thesis relates the history of the Joseph Smith Memorial Monument from its origins through its construction and dedication. It also explores its impact on the memory of Joseph Smith in the local, Vermont, and national context. I argue that the history of the Joseph Smith Memorial Monument in Vermont is the story of the formation and validation of the memory of Joseph Smith as an American Prophet.

Nineteenth century Mormons remembered a variety of individual memories …

Hardwiring Consumer Desire: Publishing And Promoting The Online Technocultural Experience : A Critical Textual Analysis Of Wired Magazine And Its Advertising, 1993-1996, Ann Willis

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This thesis examines the evolution of magazine publishing in the face of significant technological change in print-based industries. It takes as its focus the techno-lifestyle magazine Wired, and to a lesser degree its online derivative, Hot Wired because both these media magazines exemplify the changes in publishing examined. In the magazine's initial editorial statement Louis Rossetto, the publisher and editor of Wired, claimed to ''reinvent the magazine .. ,going beyond paper by making our hard copy edition a gateway to our interactive services" {Rossetto, 1993, p. 12). This claim demands an explanation as it suggests that changes in media are …

Drama Teaching: Understanding What We Do, Valerie Johnson

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Drama teaching in secondary schools in Western Australia has become an increasingly complex discipline in recent years. This study has considered the work of Drama teachers from the point of view of those practising the discipline, using a phenomenological methodology which allowed the voices of the participants to be heard directly. In the discussion, consideration is given to the way in which these teachers practice the dynamic which is drama, are influenced by the art form of theatre, and deliver the school subject, Drama.

The Role Of Buddhism In The Changing Life Of Rural Women In Sri Lanka Since Independence, Lalani Weddikkara

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

This research focuses on the role of Buddhism in the changing lives of rural women in Sri Lanka since Independence from the British in 1948 up to the present time. In this thesis I pose two questions: firstly, how important is Buddhism in the everyday lives of rural women and secondly, what impact has changes in Buddhism since Independence had upon laywomen and renunciants. I have chosen the rural village Athale, in the dry zone of southeast Sri Lanka as my area of investigation. The history of the village dates back to the times of the great hero King Dutugemunu …

Bottle-Feeding Mothers' Experiences Of Coping In A Pro-Breastfeeding Context : The Case For A Caring-Options-Responsive Model Of Midwifery Services, Elizabeth P. Duffy

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

The original contribution of this qualitative study is that it sketches the front-line of the contested domain of infant feeding choices by exploring the under-researched experiences and perceptions of mothers who actively choose to bottle-feed their babies. Twelve bottle-feeding mothers in Western Australia participated in open-ended, in-depth interviews. The interview findings were further explored using participant observations of relevant hospital practices and critical, hermeneutic re-readings of midwifery's professional and policy documents. The thesis argues that bottle-feeding is marginalised by the midwifery profession that currently defines its practices in accordance with policies such as the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. Bottle-feeding mothers …

Activist Desire, Cultural Criticism, And The Situationist International, David Banash

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the world of Anglo-American criticism, Situationism was once the province of hip theorists, progressive art historians, and a few scattered Marxists. No more, for the nineties saw Situationism come from obscure movement to the defiant avant of our cultural-critical-garde. Not only has the past decade seen the publication of a dozen books, countless articles, dissertations, and both academic and activist web-sites, the Situationists have moved right into the main line of pop-culture. Situationist graffiti turns up as the epigraph for gen-xer Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1988), and, with Rolling Stone darling Greil Marcus's …

The Observing Body: Quantum Mechanics, The Anthropic Principles, And Panopticism, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When philosopher of history and science Michel Serres wrote of that rare and narrow passage between the human sciences and the exact sciences [1], he intended to suggest not only the infrequency and difficulty of such contact, but also the unwillingness on either side to engage in what could be a dangerous, low-profit venture. It seems a long haul back to our common origins in philosophia, and typically, efforts to regain common ground between the disciplines have approached the problem as a one-sided move from the exact sciences to the study of the humanities. Notable exceptions such …

Religious Syncretism As A Factor Ensuring Economic And Social Security In The Country, Yevhen Kharkovshchenko, Vitalii S. Nitsenko, Eugene Piletsky, Mariia Nesterova

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article points out the potential of religious syncretism to ensure the political, social and economic security of Ukraine. The interpretation of religious syncretism not only as a sociocultural phenomenon, but also as a process of formation of this phenomenon is substantiated. The study singled out the stage of interfaith dialogue from the process of religious syncretism, which should form the basis for mutual understanding of faiths. This stage is considered as a multi-level communication of churches with separate structural directions, including the communicative direction of the denomination-society, in particular, the issue of economic and social security, and interfaith communication. …

The Individual And The Meeting, Martha Paxson Grundy

Quaker Religious Thought

No abstract provided.

Collective Management Of Copyright And Neighboring Rights In Canada: An International Perspective, Daniel J. Gervais

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

It is a generally held view that copyright in civil law countries is a child of the French Revolution and should be considered an inalienable right of the author, a human right in other words. In fact, it is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Granted, in several cases the economic component of the right is transferred to, e.g., a publisher or a producer, but it remains, at source, a right of the author, the creator of the protected work (or object of a related right). By contrast, one often hears that, in common law jurisdictions, …

Pick A Number, Any Number: State Representation In Congress After The 2000 Census, Paul H. Edelman, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this essay, Professors Edelman and Sherry explain the mathematics behind the allocation of congressional seats to each state, and survey the different methods of allocation that Congress has used over the years. Using 2000 census figures, they calculate each state's allocation under five different methods, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods.

On Legal Interpretations Of The Condorcet Jury Theorem, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There has been a spate of interest in the application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem to issues in the law. This theorem holds that a majority vote among a suitably large body of voters, all of whom are more likely than not to vote correctly, will almost surely result in the correct outcome. Its uses have ranged from estimating the correct size of juries to justifying the voting of creditors in Chapter 11 reorganizations. While the mathematics is unassailable, the legal interpretation of the conclusion is dependent on the model of probability one uses when invoking the assumption that the …

Attributes Of A Successful Confederacy: A Comparative Analysis Of The Political Institutions Of The Articles Of Confederation And The European Union, Kim Victor

Honors Theses

Following the devastation and instability in Europe in the aftermath of World War II, six of the continent's nations entered into the European Coal and Steel Community. The agreement to enter this organization provided the impetus for the modern day European Union (EU)I. Although its relatively short history may not be sufficient to consider the relationship perpetual, the European Union shows promise of continual integration. While these two political systems are fundamentally different in a number of respects, the basic structure of each organization be categorized as a confederacy. Using the notion of a confederacy as a point of comparison, …

Safety At Any Price, W. Kip Viscusi, Ted Gayer

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

After three decades of experience with extensive government regulation and oversight of health, safety and environmental matters, we have reason to believe that those measures have largely failed to fulfill their initial promise, but many of the initial promises were infeasible goals of a "zero-risk" society. Economic findings with respect to risk-risk tradeoffs highlight the fallacies inherent in government's zero-risk mentality. Agencies that make an unbounded financial commitment to safety frequently are sacrificing individual lives. There continues to be major opportunities to improve regulatory performance by targeting existing inefficiencies and using market mechanisms (rather than strict command-and-control mechanisms) to achieve …

Public Privacy: Camera Surveillance Of Public Places And The Right To Anonymity, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Government-sponsored camera surveillance of public streets and other public places is pervasive in the United Kingdom and is increasingly popular in American urban centers, especially in the wake of 9/11. Yet legal regulation of this surveillance is virtually non-existent, in part because the Supreme Court has signalled that we have no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places. This article, written for a symposium on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and technology, contests that stance, at the same time it questions whether the traditional, "probable-cause-forever" view of Fourth Amendment protections makes sense in this technological age. Based on an …

Haste Makes Waste: Congress And The Common Law In Cyberspace, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Every time a new technology creates legal problems, we face in a particular context the general question of relative institutional competence. Do we turn first to the judiciary, allowing time for a gradual solution derived from common law methods, or do we look instead to the federal legislature for an instant global solution? This Article endorses the judicial approach, suggesting that Congress is particularly likely to err when rapidly changing technology creates a perceived crisis, and when the strongest reasons for not legislating are abstract and inchoate. The Article examines three legal questions raised by computer technology, two the subject …

Irresponsibility Breeds Contempt, Suzanna Sherry

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Everyone is picking on the Supreme Court these days. To be sure, some of the criticism is warranted: the Court has butchered history - to say nothing of constitutional text - in its attempt to interpret the Eleventh Amendment, and betrayed its own federalism principles by second-guessing a state court's interpretation of state law (and applying a constitutional test explicitly limited to the case before it). But the current attacks on the Court go well beyond individual cases or doctrines, and are reminiscent of Jeffersonian jabs at John Marshall or the John Birch Society's "Impeach Ead Warren" campaign. Pointing to …

Pick A Number, Any Number: State Representation In Congress After The 2000 Census, Suzanna Sherry, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

In this essay, Professors Edelman and Sherry explain the mathematics behind the allocation of congressional seats to each state, and survey the different methods of allocation that Congress has used over the years. Using 2000 census figures, they calculate each state's allocation under five different methods, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various methods.

European Courts, American Rights: Extradition And Prison Conditions, Daniel J. Sharfstein

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Part I of this Article discusses the rising number of extradition requests by the United States, the common grounds for denial of extradition, and the controversies that such denials have aroused. Part II examines Soering v. United Kingdom against this background and analyzes its scholarly reception, influence on international and foreign jurisprudence, and lack of effect in the United States. Part III explores the implications of SOERING for defenses to extradition based on prison conditions: whether prison conditions in the United States could conceivably rise to the level of a human rights violation, whether the European Court of Human Rights …

Regulatory Traffic Jams, J.B. Ruhl, James Salzman, Kai-Sheng Song

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Notwithstanding the tremendous amount of attention environmental agencies, policy analysts, and scholars have paid to "regulatory reinvention," it has been pitched primarily as a refinement of the sanction and facilitation models, and thus intended to be channeled through the firm-specific behavioral responses predicted under the rational polluter and good-apple models. Little attention has been paid to the systems level question. The relevant question under the systems model is whether there is a component of noncompliance that does not respond to sanction and facilitation policies that are intended to illicit firm-specific behavioral responses. To answer this will require (1) identifying instances …

Democracy's Baby Blocks: South Africa's Electoral Commissions, Vijay Padmanabhan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Like many other transitional democracies, South Africa has chosen to run its two national postapartheid elections by an independent electoral commission, not by the existing government. Although the results were widely considered legitimate, the perception of legitimacy was due in large part to the public's low expectations. To keep the public confidence, and to avoid the sorts of large-scale breakdowns in the electoral process that might undermine it, the current Electoral Commission must embrace major reforms. One of the Electoral Commission's most pressing problems is the fact that opposition parties believe it is strongly biased in favor of the ruling …

On Apology And Consilience, Erin O'Connor

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article chimes in on the current debate about the proper relationship between apology and the law. Several states are considering legislation designed to shield apologies from the courtroom, and mediators are increasing their focus on the importance of apologies. The article develops an evolutionary economic analysis of apology that combines the tools of economics, game theory and biology to more fully understand its role in dispute resolution. When the analysis is applied to the uses of apology before and at trial, a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between apology and the law emerges.

The Law And Large Numbers, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Can mathematics be used to inform legal analysis? This is not a ridiculous question. Law has certain superficial resem­blances to mathematics. One might view the Constitution and various statutes as providing "axioms" for a deductive legal sys­tem. From these axioms judges deduce "theorems" consisting of interpretation of these axioms in certain situations. Often these theorems are built on previously "proven" theorems, i.e. earlier decisions of the court. Of course some of the axioms might change, and occasionally a theorem that was once true becomes false; the former is a common feature of mathematics, the latter, though theoretically not possible in …

Joining Forces: The Role Of Collaboration In The Development Of Legal Thought, Chris Guthrie, Tracey E. George

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

For every reason to believe that collaboration has been influential... there is a countervailing reason to believe that it has played a minor role in the evolution of legal thought. It may be easy to bring to mind a handful of prominent collaborations, but most law review articles seem to be written by one author (notwithstanding their lengthy acknowledgment footnotes, suggesting that even single-author works are shaped by the insights and input of multiple scholars). And while it is true that legal scholars often collaborate on their practically oriented works, scholarly articles might not be well suited to collaboration.