Digital Commons Network^™

The Fallacy Of The Sovereign Prerogative To Set De Minimis Liability Rules For Sexual Slavery, Mary D. Fan

Articles

Although several treaties prohibited slavery by the early twentieth century, forced prostitution was treated as distinct from slavery and considered a domestic issue on which each sovereign state could legislate independently. The article explores the sovereign's prerogative to determine whether to set property or liability rules for sexual slavery. May bodies -- typically women's bodies -- be taken by force with compensation set ex post in liability rules by the state? Or do property rules prohibit such conscription? The article argues that while historically, it was the sovereign's prerogative to set property or liability rules, an international property rule protecting …

De-Bugging Open Source Software Licensing, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Home computer users and businesses often rely on software developed by unconventional programmers known as "hackers." Hackers claim that the code they develop is superior in quality to the code developed by commercial software firms because hackers freely share the code they develop. This code sharing enables a multitude of programmers from around the world to rapidly find and fix bugs. The legal mechanism that enables hackers to deploy this worldwide team of de-buggers is a license agreement or, to be more precise,an assortment of license agreements known as "open source" licenses.

Although open source software developers may regularly fix …

Legal Protection For Software: Still A Work In Progress, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

Software began as geekware-something written by programmers for programmers. Now, software is a business and consumer staple. Cryptic character-based user interfaces have given way to friendly graphical ones; multi-media is everywhere; people own multiple computers of varying sizes; computers are connected to one another across the globe; email and instant electronic messages have replaced letters and telephone calls for many people.

The issue of whether the law should protect software seems quaint to us now. Over the past twenty-five years, legislatures and courts have concluded that copyright, patent, trade secret, trademark, and contract law all can be used to protect …

Taxes Vs. Fees: A Curious Confusion, Hugh D. Spitzer

Articles

Provides an analytical framework for categorizing varoius types of taxes and user charges and distinguishing between them, applying both economic and legal concepts.

Probability And Statistics In The Legal Curriculum: A Case Study In Disciplinary Aspects Of Interdisciplinarity, Michael Townsend

Articles

This Article considers interdisciplinarity and the legal curriculum in the context of probability and statistics. Section D of Part II begins the discussion by sketching some multidisciplinary, pluridisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches. Part III is the workhorse of this Article. The particular example used here is the well-known jury discrimination case of Castaneda v. Partida as described in Section A. This "case study" provides the basis for a crossdisciplinary experience that offers students an opportunity to think about law as a discipline. It is difficult for students to step back and look at law as a discipline when there is …

Agency Rules With The Force Of Law: The Original Convention, Thomas W. Merrill, Kathryn Tongue Watts

Articles

The Supreme Court recently held in United States v. Mead Corp. that agency interpretations should receive Chevron deference only when Congress has delegated power to the agency to make rules with the force of law and the agency has rendered its interpretation in the exercise of that power.

The first step of this inquiry is difficult to apply to interpretations adopted through rulemaking, because often rulemaking grants authorize the agency to make "such rules and regulations as are necessary to carry out the provisions of this chapter" or words to that effect, without specifying whether "rules and regulations" encompasses …

Emerging Issues In Electronic Contracting, Technical Standards And Law Reform, Jane K. Winn

Articles

The explosive growth of electronic commerce transactions in recent years has added fuel to efforts to harmonize international commercial law. Organizations such as the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT), the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) and the Hague Conference on Private International Law are all participating in an emerging global debate concerning the changes that should be made to the form or substance of international commercial law to accommodate innovation in the technology of international trade.

Many of the important legal issues raised by cross-border electronic commerce in the 1970s and 1980s have …

Social Networks And Electronic Commerce In China, Jane K. Winn

Articles

Communication technologies that make up the emerging global information infrastructure have the power to regulate online behavior. Social networks in Chinese society have survived the growth of formal legal institutions and liberalization of China's economy, but it is not clear whether they can survive the regulatory pressures created by global information technology networks.

The spread of electronic commerce technologies in China may strengthen legal institutions and open local markets to international competition, but is likely to be resisted by all the same interests that resist those changes in other contexts. The Chinese response to the spread of electronic commerce might …

Of Punctilios And Paybacks: The Duty Of Loyalty Under The Uniform Trust Code, Karen E. Boxx

Articles

Loyalty has been cited as the most desired of traits from those who serve others. One reason that loyalty is so highly valued is that it is impossible to guarantee and impossible to buy. The trust law concept of the duty of loyalty acknowledges that human nature will cause any person to favor his or her personal interests over the interests of another, and it is this assumption of disloyalty that gives rise to the strict prohibitions of trustee conflicts of interest required under the label of "duty of loyalty."

The duty of loyalty has been called "the essence of …

Atlantic Salmon, Pacific Bound: Initiative, Defiance, Courage, And Indian Tribes In Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

I want to address my remarks to the students of the University of Maine School of Law who will face a great deal of unfinished legal business on the topics of salmon, Indian tribes, and environmental law.

Elsewhere, I have derived what I describe as the five virtues of effective action (genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, courage). People of achievement, lawyers or otherwise, are familiar with these virtues and display them in many creative forms.

Next, I will peer through this lens of effective action at some key moments in the history of Atlantic-Pacific Salmon Interactions. This coming together has been …

Growth And Form: Indian Tribes, Terrorism, And The Durability Of Environmental Law, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

My target audience is the body of extraordinary law students here at the Vermont Law School who will define the shape and direction of tomorrow's environmental law. My plan is to derive five virtues of significant achievement—genius, high-leveraging, symbolism, optimism, and courage—and to convince you that the Indian tribes of the United States are fortuitously blessed with these capacities for positive change.

I am obliged to defend my five virtues against the charge that they are "gray" virtues, mere tactics of opportunity open to use by the forces of hatred and destruction as freely as those of nurturing and protection. …

Defeating Environmental Law: The Geology Of Legal Advantage, William H. Rodgers, Jr.

Articles

My talk today will: (1) introduce the metaphor of geology, (2) suggest to you that complexity has "gainers" as well as "losers," and (3) show you how environmental laws can be defeated by these twin engines of complexity and clever human adversaries.

[Third Annual Lloyd K. Garrison Lecture on Environmental Law, Pace University School of Law.]

American-Style Justice In No Man's Land, Peter Nicolas

Articles

This Article seeks to fill the gap in the existing literature by exploring the constitutional limits on federal court subject matter jurisdiction in the context of civil disputes arising in Indian Country and civil disputes arising elsewhere involving Indian tribes, tribal entities, and tribal members.

Part II of this Article catalogues the universe of "no forum" and "biased forum" jurisdictional quagmires with respect to civil disputes arising in Indian Country or those arising elsewhere involving Indian tribes, tribal entities, and tribal members, examining the existing legal obstacles that prevent federal, state, and tribal courts from exercising jurisdiction over the "no …

Lesbigay Identity As Commodity, David M. Skover, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

This Essay explores the deep dissonance that exists today between the validation of American LesBiGays in the commercial marketplace and their devaluation in political and legal arenas, and questions the failure of legal scholars and civil rights activists to account meaningfully for this dissonance in their theories and practices. I

n America's popular culture, LesBiGay identities abound. In its political culture, however, they emerge more tentatively. The commercial and entertainment industries increasingly commodify and celebrate LesBiGay identities. The courts and legislatures generally discount and condemn them. Thus, there is a deep dissonance between the validation of LesBiGay identities in the …

Linking Progressive Corporate Law With Progressive Social Movements, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

Professor Testy critically assesses what has been termed a "new" corporate social responsibility project After noting the hegemony of shareholder primacy in corporate law, she critiques four major counter-hegemonic discourses: team production theory, corporate social accountabiity, stakeholder theory, and corporate social responsibility (or progressive corporate law). Finding the first three ineffective foils for the problems of corporate power that have spurred calls for reform, she turns to an examination of the progressive corporate law project. That project, presently poised at a defining juncture as it attempts to use the "master's tools" to "dismantle the master's house," nonetheless holds promise for …

Commentary: Convergence As Movement: Toward A Counter-Hegemonic Approach To Corporate Governance, Kellye Y. Testy

Articles

No abstract provided.

Rethinking The United States First-To-Invent Principle From A Comparative Law Perspective: A Proposal To Restructure § 102 Novelty And Priority Provisions, Toshiko Takenaka

Articles

This Article first examines the novelty and priority provisions of first-to-file countries, and then compares them with U.S. counterparts to identify major differences and determine why these differences result. The Article discusses the origins of the complex structure adopted by § 102 to define prior art and the difficult interpretation given to terms used in the novelty definition. This Article then reviews the USPTO's practice of the novelty examination and the priority determination in interference proceedings. This review confirms the first-to-file patent professional's perception that the United States, in fact, follows the first-to-file principle, although it also provides an exception …

Fretting In The Force Fields: Why The Distribution Of Social Power Has Proved So Hard To Change, Joan C. Williams

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Deforestation Rhetoric And Japan's Timber Trade., Mari Yoshimura

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Foreign Inspired Courts As Agencies Of Peace In Troubled Societies A Plea For Realism And For Creativity, Ugo Mattei

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Baboosic Lake, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Silver Lake, Madison, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Seattle By And By: The Life And Times Of Emmett Watson, Erik D. Mickelson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Upper Spokane River Model: Model Calibration, 1991 And 2000, Chris Berger, Robert Leslie Annear, Scott A. Wells

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The Washington Department of Ecology is interested in a water quality model for the Upper Spokane River system for use in developing Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs). The goals of this modeling effort are to:

• Gather data to construct a computer simulation model of the Spokane River system including Long Lake Reservoir and the pools behind Nine Mile dam, Upper Falls dam and Upriver dam. • Ensure that the model accurately represents the system hydrodynamics and water quality (flow, temperature, dissolved oxygen and nutrient dynamics)

This report evaluates the model calibration and discusses issues relative to that calibration effort. …

Are Humans Risk-Sensitive Foragers? An Experimental Model, Heide K. Deditius-Island

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

"Adopt A Pal": An Application Of The Transtheoretical Model, Chad A. Spangler

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Federating Heterogeneous Digital Libraries By Metadata Harvesting, Xiaoming Liu

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation studies the challenges and issues faced in federating heterogeneous digital libraries (DLs) by metadata harvesting. The objective of federation is to provide high-level services (e.g. transparent search across all DLs) on the collective metadata from different digital libraries. There are two main approaches to federate DLs: distributed searching approach and harvesting approach. As the distributed searching approach replies on executing queries to digital libraries in real time, it has problems with scalability. The difficulty of creating a distributed searching service for a large federation is the motivation behind Open Archives Initiatives Protocols for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAI-PMH supports …

Geometric Integrators For Hamiltonian Pdes, Dmitry Karpeev

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

We consider methods for systematic construction of algorithms for a class of time-dependent PDEs with Hamiltonian structure. These systems possess phase space geometry and constants of the motion that need to be preserved by the integration algorithm to reflect the qualitative features of the system.

We exploit the structure of Hamiltonian systems, in particular their variational formulation based on a Lagrangian, and the dual covariant formulation, to expose the geometric features of the system that have natural analogs when discretized. We emphasize the local space-time approach to the constructions, making them amenable to parallelization and preconditioning using domain decomposition methods, …

Performance Modeling And Prediction For The Scalable Solution Of Partial Differential Equations On Unstructured Grids, Dinesh Kumar Kaushik

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation studies the sources of poor performance in scientific computing codes based on partial differential equations (PDEs), which typically perform at a computational rate well below other scientific simulations (e.g., those with dense linear algebra or N-body kernels) on modern architectures with deep memory hierarchies. We identify that the primary factors responsible for this relatively poor performance are: insufficient available memory bandwidth, low ratio of work to data size (good algorithmic efficiency), and nonscaling cost of synchronization and gather/scatter operations (for a fixed problem size scaling). This dissertation also illustrates how to reuse the legacy scientific and engineering software …

Active And Adaptive Flow Control Of Twin-Tail Buffet And Applications, Zhi Yang

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Modern fighter aircraft with dual vertical tails are operated at high angles of attack. The vortex generated by leading edge extension (LEX) breaks down before reaching the two vertical tails. The wake of highly unsteady, turbulent flow causes unbalanced broadband aerodynamic loading on the tails and may produce severe buffet on the tails and lead to tail fatigue failure.

Flow suction along the vortex cores (FSVC) is investigated as an active control method for tail-buffet alleviation. Suction tubes have been tilted at different angles to study the control effectiveness of suction tubes orientation. Flow field response, aerodynamic loading and aeroelastic …