Digital Commons Network^™

A Broken System, Part Ii: Why There Is So Much Error In Capital Cases And What Can Be Done About It, James S. Liebman, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Andrew Gelman, Valerie West, Garth Davies, Alexander Kiss

Faculty Scholarship

There is growing awareness that serious, reversible error permeates America’s death penalty system, putting innocent lives at risk, heightening the suffering of victims, leaving killers at large, wasting tax dollars, and failing citizens, the courts and the justice system.

Our June 2000 Report shows how often mistakes occur and how serious it is: 68% of all death verdicts imposed and fully reviewed during the 1973-1995 study period were reversed by courts due to serious errors.

Analyses presented for the first time here reveal that 76% of the reversals at the two appeal stages where data are available for study were …

Measured Interpretation: Introducing The Method Of Correspondence Analysis To Legal Studies, Bernard E. Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Harcourt develops and advocates a method to more rigorously measure and evaluate how qualitative “social meaning” variables relate to legal practices and public policies. The method integrates in-depth qualitative interviews with an experimental free associational component, map analysis of the interviews, and a methodology, correspondence analysis, that remains little known in the United States despite its acceptance in other parts of the world. Correspondence analysis, according to Professor Harcourt, is a tool that allows researchers to visually represent the relationship between structures of social meaning and the contexts and practices within which they are embedded. This method opens up …

Public Funds And The Regulation Of Judicial Campaigns, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

Recent discussions of judicial election campaigns have been marked by two themes: (i) the growing costs of such campaigns, with concerns over the roles of large contributions and independent spending, the burden of fundraising for candidates, and the implications of campaign finance practices for judicial decision-making; and (ii) the changing nature of campaigning, as elections that were once “low-key affairs, conducted with civility and dignity,” have become increasingly politicized, marked by heated charges and sharp criticisms of the records and decisions of sitting judges. The two developments are surely intertwined, with the more bitter and hard-fought campaigns funded by rapidly …

Parallel Lives: Women's Rights And Lesbian Rights Litigation, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

I love the title of this panel because it gave me a chance to think about the historical themes and emerging issues in law related to women's rights, which of course is a mere endless set of possibilities.

I spent much of the last decade doing lesbian and gay civil rights litigation, and the question that I will focus on today grows out of that work and is a comparative one or at least a relational one. The question is this: What is the relationship between women's rights litigation as it has evolved in the last thirty years and lesbian …

Unifying Commercial Law In The New Century, Lance Liebman

Faculty Scholarship

I join enthusiastically in the applause for Fred Miller's service as Executive Director of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL). Without question, Fred is the outstanding contemporary embodiment of the passion that led fifty years ago to the achievement of a uniform commercial law among the American states. His work serves a worthy cause, and the American Law Institute (ALI) is proud to have been a partner in the venture and to have played its appropriate instruments in the orchestra that Fred has been conducting.

That said, and Fred's integrity, intelligence, and steadfastness appropriately noted, it …

Patent Signals, Clarisa Long

Faculty Scholarship

Courts and commentators often treat intellectual property as if the private value of the rights stemmed entirely from the control legal rules conferred over the protected subject matter. While the literature has devoted an enormous amount of time, paper, and ink to the discussion of whether legal rules grant the optimal amount of exclusivity, it has not considered whether it has been examining all the functions of patents This Article provides a new general framework for analyzing the function and effect of intellectual property rules. Rather than focusing on patents as a mechanism for privatizing information, this Article instead frames …

Trade And Poverty In The Poor Countries, Jagdish N. Bhagwati, T.N. Srinivasan

Faculty Scholarship

While freer trade, or “openness” in trade, is now widely regarded as economically benign, in the sense that it increases the size of the pie, the recent anti-globalization critics have suggested that it is socially malign on several dimensions, among them the question of poverty.

Their contention is that trade accentuates, not ameliorates, and that it deepens, not diminishes, poverty in both the rich and the poor countries. The theoretical and empirical analysis of the impact of freer trade on poverty in the rich and in the poor countries is not symmetric, of course. We focus here only on the …

The Future Of Reform: Campaign Finance After The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Of 2002, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

On March 27, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA" or "the Act") into law. The culmination of a protracted six-year legislative and political struggle, BCRA is the most significant change in federal campaign finance law since the early 1970s, when the Federal Election Campaign Act ("FECA") of 1971 and FECA Amendments of 1974 were adopted. The Act addresses a broad range of campaign finance issues, including fundraising on federal property, contributions by foreign nationals, donations to the presidential inauguration committee, electronic filing and Internet access to campaign disclosure reports, and penalties for …

Challenging A Tradition Of Exclusion: The History Of An Unheard Story At Harvard Law School, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

In a series of lectures at Harvard University, Professors Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres posited that people of color are the "miner's canary" in American society. Guinier and Torres argue that pursuing color blindness policies is dangerous because it ignores racial differences that affect every aspect of our society. According to Guinier and Torres, like the miner's canary that uses a call of distress to warn the miner of the hazardous atmosphere in the mine, the critiques people of color offer our institutions are warning signals to alert us to the presence of more systemic problems. Instead of relegating the …

Disputants' Decision Control In Court-Connected Mediation: A Hollow Promise Without Procedural Justice, Nancy A. Welsh

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Deborah Hensler suggests in the lead article of this Symposium issue that the courts' embrace of facilitative, interest-based mediation may have been ill-conceived. She argues that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that litigants are more satisfied with mediation than with adjudicative alternatives such as arbitration and trial. She also urges that there is sufficient evidence to show that litigants prefer processes that vest decision control in third parties. Both of these assertions are subject to challenge,' but this Comment will focus upon the significance of giving decision control to the disputants in consensual processes.

Using available research, this …

Iowa Journal Of Communication, Volume 34, Number 2, Fall 2002 [Download Entire Issue]

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Function Of The Heterocercal Tail In Sharks: Quantitative Wake Dynamics During Steady Horizontal Swimming And Vertical Maneuvering, C. D. Wilga, G. V. Lauder

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The function of the heterocercal tail in sharks has long been debated in the literature. Previous kinematic data have supported the classical theory which proposes that the beating of the heterocercal caudal fin during steady horizontal locomotion pushes posteroventrally on the water, generating a reactive force directed anterodorsally and causing rotation around the center of mass. An alternative model suggests that the heterocercal shark tail functions to direct reaction forces through the center of mass. In this paper, we quantify the function of the tail in two species of shark and compare shark tail function with previous hydrodynamic data on …

Silkworm Genomics - Progress And Prospects, J. Nagaraju, Marian R. Goldsmith

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

The biology and genetics of silkworm, Bombyx mori, is the most advanced of any lepidopteran species. Its rich repertoire of genetic resources and potential applications in sericulture and as a model for other Lepidoptera led to the initiation of genomics research. During the past decade much effort has been made in the areas of marker development, and molecular maps have been constructed in standard strains with the use of RFLPs, RAPDs, ISSRs, STSs, and microsatellites. The potential applications of molecular markers and linkage maps include stock identification, Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), identification of Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL), and, ultimately, …

Graduate Recital In Piano: April 22, 2002, Allison Rae Dencklau

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Allison Rae Dencklau, pianist, presented her graduate piano recital on Monday, April 22, 2002, at 6:00 in the evening in Davis Hall of the Gallagher-Bluedorn Performing Arts Center at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa This piano recital was given in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music degree with an emphasis in Piano Performance and Pedagogy. Ms. Dencklau's program included works by Haydn, Brahms, Liszt, and Ginastera. This abstract includes a brief discussion of the lives of the composers as well as backgrounds and musical highlights of the recital pieces.

Migration And Cultural Identity: Performing The Afro-Caribbean Woman's Struggle, Elvinet Samantha Wilson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Current research suggests a relationship between cultural identity negotiation and the phenomenon of border crossing. While a wealth of literature exists on the topic of migration, few studies reflect a scope that includes in-depth analysis of the experiences of Afro-Caribbean women in the United States.Through ethnographic and autoethnographic methodologies, and using a feminist theoretical lens, this study explores issues relating to cultural identity negotiation in the lives of 10 Black women from Jamaica, The Bahamas, and Trinidad, who now reside in the Midwest region of the United States. Analysis based on a grounded theory approach, allowed themes to emerge from …

Classroom Analysis Of Ross Perot And Diversity Using C-Span As A Data Base, Jim Schnell

Iowa Journal of Communication

Goal: To enhance student understanding of variables that comprise and impact the process of defining what connotes sensitivity and insensitivity with diversity issues and how journalistic interpretation can affect our perception via mass media.

This article presents a unique means for classroom analysis of the blend of politics and diversity issues. A primary objective in the development of my classroom assignments is to construct activities that convey theoretical understanding and illustrate correlation between theory and real world application. Theory and the application of theory should be woven into the fabric of knowledge. The use of C-SPAN videotapes, available from the …

A Small Group Service Learning Project, Alan Lerstrom

Iowa Journal of Communication

Goal: Students will develop a greater understanding of the relational and task aspects of group development and interaction processes as they teach communication skills to children in the primary grades.

In a seminar on service learning, Communication Education Outreach/ Service Learning, at the 1999 NCA Institute for Faculty Development at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, I developed an assignment in which students in a small group communication class would teach communication skills to elementary school children. Facilitator Ann Q. Staton of the University of Washington distinguished between "volunteerism," as a means of contributing to a community's welfare, and "service learning," …

Back Cover

Iowa Journal of Communication

No abstract provided.

Using Role-Playing To Demonstrate Processes Of Group Problem-Solving, Paul J. Siddens Iii

Iowa Journal of Communication

Goal: To demonstrate the many theoretical and practical dynamics that exist within group decision making and problem solving processes.

One of the most difficult parts of teaching group process to communication students, particularly in the basic communication course, is finding classroom activities and assignments that realistically, and clearly, demonstrate to our students the many theoretic and practical dynamics that exist within group decision making and problem solving processes. Student group presentations are often composed of a set of preprepared informative and/or persuasive speeches that each student delivers, then a decision is reached by taking a vote. In such presentations students …

Secondary Student Perceptions Of Vocational Education, Randall Mcgarey Haney

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The central focus of the present study was to examine the relationship between student personal factors (i.e., gender, race, academic performance, career awareness, and socio-economic factors) and the perceptions of secondary school students regarding vocational education. In recent years, traditional vocational programs have not done well throughout the nation. Enrollment within vocational education has dropped to approximately 10%, while enrollment in college preparation courses has increased to over 50%.

The subjects of this study were secondary school students enrolled in the Duval County Public School system. The research was conducted using a two-part survey instrument containing 24 demographic questions and …

Transformational Leadership And Moral Discourse In The Workplace And Civil Society, John W. Frank

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study was grounded in the theory and practice of transformational leadership, where leaders function as moral agents of change as they facilitate values talk (moral discourse) among their constituents. The study took its cue from Rost's call for a new paradigm for leadership ethics that calls for methods of group moral decision making to assess organizational and social ends. The inquiry sought to better understand how leaders engage others in moral conversation and how such processes influence organizational culture and democratic civil society.

The methodology was qualitative and phenomenological as it was centered on leaders' perceptions of their experiences …

Anticipatory Mourning In Caregivers With Children Who Die In The Hospital, Annie Rini

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The death of a child has tremendous impact on a caregiver. Even when prognosis is poor and death appears imminent, care of the dying child typically focuses on achieving cure. Consequently, caregivers are often ill prepared to cope with the grief they experience as their child is dying. Anticipatory mourning allows caregivers time to begin grief work prior to the death of a loved one. Literature suggests that those who experience anticipatory mourning have a less complicated bereavement period. The purpose of this qualitative study is to (a) describe the presence (or absence) and role of anticipatory mourning in caregivers …

Causes Of Student Underachievement In Northside New Era Secondary School In Ghana, Edward Larbi

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focused on the causes of student underachievement in a selected high school in Ghana. The anonymous name chosen for the school was Northside New Era Secondary School. The participants in the study were administrators, teachers, and students. They were selected from the same school where the researcher conducted the study. The school was located in the Northern Region of Ghana. It had proven records of underachievement compared to other schools in the country according to the Ministry of Education's recent statistical report on education. The criterion for measurement was based on the results of the final examination conducted …

Decision Makers' Thinking During The Design And Implementation Of A K-5 High-Computer-Access (Hca) Program, Constance Dianne Gutknecht

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As present trends in education indicate, learning with technology is increasingly being considered as a means of instructional delivery for K-1 2 learners. Educational leaders must be informed of how to provide the experiences, skills, and knowledge required of the learners for whom they are responsible.

This qualitative study examined the conceptualization of a school district's attempt to design and implement a high-computer-access (HCA) program. Research methodologies included interview, observation, and analysis of related documents. The results comprised the thinking of the HCA program designers and how they viewed learning theory and effective instruction principles in relationship to the HCA …

Urban Traffic Externalities And Housing Value, Michael Owen Carpenter

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This study explores the relationship between high-capacity urban roadways and housing value. The traffic on high-capacity urban roadways is expected to generate negative externalities, depressing the value of nearby housing. These same roads also provide accessibility, which is expected to capitalize into housing value as a bonus. The hypothesis underlying this research is that houses near high-traffic, high-speed roads suffer a penalty to their value as the negative externalities generated by the road are capitalized. However, as distance from these roads increases and the presence of negative externalities decreases, houses will capitalize a net benefit due to the accessibility gained …

Feminist Issues And Concerns In The Fictions Of Two Egyptian Women Writers: Alifa Rifaat And Nawal El-Saadawi, Shafiqa Anwar Fakir

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This thesis involves an examination of feminist issues and concerns in the fictions of two contemporary Egyptian women writers: Alifa Rifaat and Nawal el-Saadawi. The main focus will be on illuminating the social, sexual, economical problems that the literary female characters encounter and how they deal with these various forms of oppressions. Examination of these author's lives and works illustrates the complexity of women within the boundaries of the same nation in matters of gender justice and equality. This further, implicitly, illustrates the complexity of Arab women who tend to be viewed as a cohesive whole.

Effect Of Tio₂-Mediated Photocatalytic Degradation On The Toxicity Of Orange Ii, Arnaud Eric Nicolas Goutard

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

C.I. Acid Orange 7 (15510) is the sodium salt of p-[(2-hydroxy-1-naphtalenyl)azo] benzenesulfonic acid. This azo dye is commonly known as Orange II and has been used to dye soaps, shoes, wood and paper (Ramchandani et al., 1994). In the United States and Europe, this dye is not allowed in foodstuffs. The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficiency of a TiO2-mediated photocatalytic oxidation process to degrade Orange II and to determine if Orange II is cytotoxic to certain types of cells. The role of UV radiation and TiO2 particles were examined, as well as the importance of oxygen …

Intergroup Rivalry, Anti-Competitive Conduct And Affirmative Action, Michelle Adams

Articles

Significant research in social science describes racial inequality as grounded in notions of group identity and group conflict. Sociologists and social psychologists who study discrimination and prejudice have moved away from theories that explain prejudice solely as a problem of individual perception, and toward theories that view individual cognitive processes as related to group membership. While present social science yields no consensus view, there is a striking emphasis in the current literature on group identity theories as "powerful determinants of behavior." These theories, which stress the importance of prejudice as a group-based phenomenon and focus on "social-structural theories of group …

Dimensions Of Servant-Leadership In American Not-For-Profit Hospitals, William C. Mason

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The leadership of American not-for-profit hospitals is one context in which servant-leadership finds appropriate expression. However, little research exists that explores the sources of servant-leadership within the leader, what processes leaders use to engage in servantleadership, or what impact servant-leadership has on organizations and communities. This research presents a new perspective offering insight into those questions.

The Dimensions of Servant-Leadership in American Not-for-Profit Hospitals is a qualitative study of the lives and works of four chief executive officers of successful not-for-profit health systems identified as exemplars of servant-leadership. The researcher further examined perceptions of servant-leadership among colleagues of each of …

Incorporating Aspects Into The Software Development Process In Context Of Aspect-Oriented Programming, Mark Alan Basch

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Aspect-oriented programming is a relatively new approach to programming that is design to resolve issues of separation of concerns. Rather than focusing on commonality of objects, as in object-oriented programming, aspect –oriented programming focuses on commonality of concerns, or more precisely as described by experts in the field, of "cross-cutting concerns." These are aspects that cut across different modules of a program, such as security and authentication issues.

While much research in the area has focused on developing programming languages, little attention has been given to dealing with aspects in the software development process and the Unified Modeling Language. This …