Digital Commons Network^™

What Did They Do And What Does It Mean? The Three-Judge Court's Decision In Mcconnell V. Fec And The Implications For The Supreme Court, Richard Briffault

Faculty Scholarship

My role at this symposium is to provide a brief overview of the three-judge court's decision in McConnell v. FEC, review the opinions, piece together what the court actually decided, and see how the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("BCRA") now stands. I will try to do that briefly, while giving a few general comments about what the court's opinions tell us about the state of campaign finance law today. As a preliminary matter, the three-judge court's opinions provide us with two radically different world views – almost two different intellectual universes – for thinking about campaign finance …

Where Will Women Lawyers Be In 25 Years?, Frances E. Bivens, Joan Guggenheimer, Nancy Northrup, Susan Sturm, Judith Reinhardt Thoyer

Faculty Scholarship

Barbara Black said in her unbelievably moving remarks that Columbia has opened up its institutional heart to women. I thought that was a wonderful expression and, as a relative newcomer to Columbia, I have to agree. What does this mean? It means that women have become part of the cultural fabric of the Columbia Law School. We are not an accent. We are not an accessory. We are woven into the day-to-day fabric of the school. And this means being able both to participate in the old traditions and to reshape them to make some new traditions and then have …

Thinking About Feminism, Social Justice, And The Place Of Feminist Law Journals: A Letter To The Editor, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Dear Editors:

You, like the editors who came before you, have staked a place in an invigorating and challenging conversation about the transformative potential of feminist approaches to social justice.1 As you envision and edit your journal, fundamental questions about the purpose of feminist scholarship and the value of retaining an autonomous space for feminist jurisprudence loom large.

Not surprisingly, The Bluebook will provide little guidance on these topics. Instead, consistent with the feminist enterprise,2 you will need to search out sources, both within and outside of the law school library, to spark your critical thinking. Ideally these will ensure …

Incomplete Law, Katharina Pistor, Chenggang Xu

Faculty Scholarship

This Article develops a framework for analyzing the relation between basic features of statutory and case law and the design and functioning of institutions that enforce this law. The basic premise is that law is inherently incomplete and that this has important implications for law enforcement. In particular, when law is incomplete, special emphasis needs to be placed on the allocation of lawmaking and law enforcement powers (LMLEP) to different institutions such as legislatures, courts, or regulators, in order to attain optimal levels of law enforcement. Using the development of the legal framework governing financial markets as an example to …

About Morality And The Nature Of Law, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

In support of my longstanding claim that the traditional divide between natural law and legal positivist theories of law, the present paper explores a variety of necessary connections between law and morality which are consistent with theories of law traditionally identified as positivist.

Biology Goes Digital: An Array Of 5,700 Spartan Fpgas Brings The Biowall To "Life", Christof Teuscher, Gianluca Tempesti

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A unique, scientific research instrument and art piece, the BioWall models bio-inspired electronic tissues capable of evolution, selfrepair, self-replication – and learning. Much pure and applied scientific research has focused on replicating biological functions in digital hardware. Here, at the Logic Systems Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), we have utilized 5,700 Xilinx Spartan™ FPGAs, in multiple configurations, to build bio-inspired computing machines that exploit three essential biological models: • Phylogenesis – the history of the evolution of the species • Ontogenesis – the development of an individual as directed by his genetic code • …

Managing A Correctional Marketplace: Prison Privatization In The United States And The United Kingdom, David Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

This article traces the recent history and development of privately operated prisons in the United States and the United Kingdom, and it compares their current role in the countries' correctional systems. The privatization movements of the U.S. and the U.K. were driven by similar factors, but the relative weight of these factors varied between the two. In the U.S., legal pressures to alleviate prison overcrowding and fiscal incentives to contract out prison construction were stronger, while in the U.K. the ideological and political aims of the governing party exerted more influence in stimulating privatization. America's experience with private prisons in …

Privatize Or Self-Operate: Decision-Making In Campus Services Management, Jeffrey Shelton Pittman

Theses and Dissertations in Urban Services - Urban Education

In the past colleges operated as communities in which teaching and almost every other aspect of campus life were managed by a campus entity. This is particularly true in the area of campus support services. In recent years, there has been a significant shift in the way campus services are provided. Increasingly, college and university administrators evaluate the benefits and potential problems of privatizing or outsourcing various service units. Currently, such services as bookstores, food preparation/service operations, and physical plant departments have been the primary services chosen for privatization.

This study examines the decision-making process governing the choice between privatization …

Optimal Feedback Control For Ship Roll Motion Under Sea States, Anusit Anmanatarkul

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The primary influences of ship motion are roll motion. The purpose of this dissertation is to discuss a means to reduce the roll amplitude of ship motion in the case of zero forward speed using the roll mitigation device known as the flume tank, or U-tube, tank. Passive control and active control are studied. Optimal feedback control is the designated algorithm for activated roll mitigation device. The assumed model in this study is a submarine chaser. The linear coupled equation of swaying, rolling, and yawing motion of this assumed model is studied. The roll motion of this vessel is investigated …

Life-Extending Control For A Highly Maneuverable Flight Vehicle, Si-Bok Yu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the feasibility and potential of life extension control logic for reducing fatigue within aerospace vehicle structural components. A key underpinning of this control logic is to exploit nonintuitive, optimal loading conditions which minimize nonlinear crack growth behavior, as predicted by analytical fatigue models with experimentally validated behavior. A major simplification in the development of life extension control logic is the observation and justification that optimal stress loading conditions, as described by overload magnitude ratio and application interval, are primarily independent of crack length and therefore, component age. This weak relationship between optimal stress loading and structural age …

Boussinesq Model And The Relative Trough Froude Number (Rtfn) For Wave Breaking, Takashi Okamoto

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The relative trough Froude number (RTFN) theory is a new phase-resolving type, wave breaking trigger model introduced by Utku (1999) and Utku and Basco (2002). Based on the moving hydraulic jump concept, this model provides a better implementation of wave breaking in terms of hydrodynamics. Development of computer resources permits the use of the phase-resolving type, Boussinesq wave models in nearshore areas. The Boussinesq equation, however, does not include the physics of wave breaking, so that an additional mechanism is required to initiate wave breaking in the model. The main objective of this study is to develop a new wave …

Developing A Methodology To Detect Partial Failures For Dynamic Systems, Anwar A. Al-Jowder

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to develop a decision support system that can assist in detecting partial failures in dynamic systems such as Fire Control System Tracking Radar (TR) onboard Naval Ships. Partial failures do not necessarily shut down the system immediately but cause degradation of operational performance. Previous work has shown that experts in the field of failure detection, test point insertion and Built-In-Test Equipment (BITE) can provide useful input in detecting partial failures. Partial failures affect operational system performance and support costs, which can be significant. Often, however, partial failure detection consists of the estimations and opinions …

Development Of An Aggregation Methodology For Risk Analysis In Aerospace Conceptual Vehicle Design, Trina Marsh Chytka

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The growing complexity of technical systems has emphasized a need to gather as much information as possible regarding specific systems of interest in order to make robust, sound decisions about their design and deployment. Acquiring as much data as possible requires the use of empirical statistics, historical information and expert opinion. In much of the aerospace conceptual design environment, the lack of historical information and infeasibility of gathering empirical data relegates the data collection to expert opinion.

The conceptual design of a space vehicle requires input from several disciplines (weights and sizing, operations, trajectory, etc.). In this multidisciplinary environment, the …

An Examination Of Personality As A Predictor Of Guard Behavior In A Virtual Environment, Jean M. Catanzaro

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Military personnel need access to realistic training tools that can provide a safe environment in which to acquire skills that will generalize to real world tasks. A virtual environment (VE) is one such tool. The focus of the present study was to evaluate a VE as a training tool for military guards. The first goal was to examine the potential of VE technology to provide effective training for standing watch at a military checkpoint. The second goal was to study a set of personality traits that might predict performance. Participants completed the NEO Personality Inventory and were trained to perform …

Examining The Equivalence Of Rater Groups In 360-Degree Feedback For Use In Leadership Development, Amy Fitzgibbons

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

This study assessed the seldom-considered aspect of measurement equivalence across the three most common rater groups in 360-degree feedback systems. The graded response model for polytomous items was used to assess differential functioning of items and tests and applied to an archival data set of 664 ratees to determine the equivalence of peer, subordinate, and supervisor ratings of four leadership competencies. The results indicate that the leadership competencies were invariant across the three rater groups. The results and conclusions produced are discussed with practical implications in mind.

Shock Wave Dispersion In Weakly Ionized Gas, Prasong Kessaratikoon

Physics Theses & Dissertations

Electrodeless microwave (MW) discharge in two straight, circular cylindrical resonant cavities in TE_1,1,1 and TM_0,1,2 modes were introduced to perform additional experimental studies on shock wave modification in non-equilibrium weakly ionized gases and to clarify the physical mechanisms of the shock wave modification process. The discharge was generated in 99.99% Ar at a gas pressure between 20 and 100 Torr and at a discharge power density less than 10.0 Watts/cm³. Power density used for operating the discharge was rather low in the present work, which was determined by evaluating the power loss inside the resonant cavity. …

Racial And Ethnic Profiling: Statutory Discretion, Constitutional Remedies, And Democratic Accountability, Sujit Choudhry, Kent Roach

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Given the prominence of the issue of racial, ethnic, and religious profiling in the public debate about terrorism, it is significant that Canada's two legislative responses to September 11 - the Anti-terrorism Act and the proposed Public Safety Act - are silent on the issue, neither explicitly authorizing profiling nor expressly banning it. In this article, we focus on the constitutional remedies available for profiling in the face of these statutory silences, and the implication that the choice of remedies holds for both remedial efficacy and democratic accountability. Contrary to the position held by the majority of the Supreme Court …

Anger And Intent For Murder: The Supreme Court Decisions In R. V. Parent, Joanne Klineberg

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

In R v. Parent, the Supreme Court of Canada recently held that intense anger alone is not, of itself, a defence to murder, although anger does play a role in reducing murder to manslaughter in connection with the defence of provocation. The Court's brief decision ignores twenty years of contrary jurisprudence and fails to provide detailed reasons for its conclusion, resulting in uncertainty about the scope and application of the decision. In this article, the author explores the relationship between anger and intent for murder, and outlines some possible arguments the Court could have relied on that would have provided …

Financial Collapse And Class Status: Who Goes Bankrupt?, Elizabeth Warren

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Every policy prescription, economic analysis, or news report about consumer bankruptcy rests on one or another unspoken image of the estimated 1.5 million families that will file in a single year. Data from the 2001 Consumer Bankruptcy Project permit a systematic analysis of the composition of those who file for personal bankruptcy, focusing on their education, occupation, and home ownership status. These attributes serve as a proxy for class identification. Based on these indicia, more than 90 per cent of the families in bankruptcy qualify as middle class. These data are a powerful reminder that whatever else might be said …

Book Review: Torture As Tort: Comparative Perspectives On The Development Of Transnational Human Rights Litigation, By Craig Scott (Ed), François Larocque, Mark C. Power

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Policing And Punishment In London, 1660-1750: Urban Crime And The Limits Of Terror, By John M. Beattie, Jim Phillips

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Policy Recommendations For Dispute Prevention And Dispute Settlement In Transatlantic Relations: Legal Perspectives, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

The concrete case studies and general policy analyses that were the subject of inquiry in the conferences culminating in the present volume have predictably generated a series of distinctly legal – as well as political – reflections on dispute prevention and dispute settlement in the transatlantic arena. One of the merits of the dual (concrete and abstract) approach that has been adopted for these conferences is its capacity to provide a check against the risks that would result either from divorcing this study from the realities of disputes or from relying exclusively on potentially idiosyncratic dispute scenarios. The recommendations to …

The Interface Of National Constitutional Systems With International Law And Institutions On Using Military Force: Changing Trends In Executive And Legislative Powers, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The perplexities of the twenty-first century over national decision-making in support of international security are an outgrowth of centuries-long trends concerning subordination of military power to constitutional control. Civilian control over the military has been inextricably connected with the strengthening of domestic constitutionalism and safeguards for citizens' liberties in many different democracies.

Along with the establishment of constitutional structures for regulating national military power, national constitutions have contributed to the evolution of contemporary international law prohibiting the use or threat of force in international relations. Milestones along this path begin with the French Constitution of 1791 – the first national …

Federalism And The Future Of Health Care Reform, Richard Briffault, Sherry Glied

Faculty Scholarship

An important theme in the ongoing health care reform debate is federalism. During the battle over the Clinton Health Plan in 1993–94, the question of which level of government — federal or state — should take the leading role in health policy was almost as contentious as the particular proposals for extending access to quality health care and controlling health care costs. With the failure in 1994 to achieve comprehensive legislation at the national level, many policymakers and commentators gave fresh attention to the states as potential agents for health care reform.

Of Legal Transplants, Legal Irritants, And Economic Development, Katharina Pistor, Daniel Berkowitz

Faculty Scholarship

The collapse of the socialist system has given way to unprecedented economic and legal reforms in the former socialist countries. Over the past decade they have enacted new legislation in all areas of the law, drawing heavily on legal models from developed market economies, including common law and civil law countries. While the transplanted laws now on the books is largely consistent with Western practice, the enforcement of these new laws is often ineffective (Berkowitz, Pistor, and Richard, 2003).

Consensual Sex And The Limits Of Harassment Law, Carol Sanger

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter discusses an enormous achievement of the campaign against the harassment of working women, which is the establishment of a set of facts about sex at work that had previously been denied, mocked, and misunderstood. It is now understood that sex can be unwelcome, that unwelcome overtures are neither harmless nor fun, and that consent to sex demanded on the job does not shift the behavior from the category of unwanted sex to the category of the welcome. On the other hand, one of the most ferocious complaints against the establishment of sexual harassment as a legal wrong is …

Remarks From The 75th Anniversary Luncheon, Barbara Aronstein Black

Faculty Scholarship

I will try to make this reasonably brief, though not as brief as a commencement address I was once asked to give. The invitation stated that I was to speak on any topic of my choice. Anything at all. For five minutes. Reporting this to one of my sons – I can't remember which one – I said, "They say it has to be no longer than five minutes. What can I possibly say in five minutes that's worth saying?" To which my son replied, "Did they say it has to be worth saying?"

Well, I'd like to say something …

Victim Impact Evidence: Hard To Find The Real Rules, Robert P. Mosteller

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Federal Judicial Selection As War: Part Iii --The Role Of Ideology, Michael J. Gerhardt

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Illusion And Reality In The Compensation Of Victims Of International Terrorism, W. Michael Reisman, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

One of the many curious revelations in the increasingly bizarre saga of the presidential pardon of Marc Rich in the twilight hours of the Clinton administration is especially fascinating to the student of international human rights law. Former President Clinton, in justifying the pardon, explained that Mr. Rich was an unheralded human rights activist. Among his apparently numerous, but unacknowledged, good deeds, one stands out for its carefully crafted hypocrisy. Mossad, the Israeli covert action agency, arranged for Mr. Rich secretly to transfer $400,000 to the Egyptian government, which then established a fund to compensate the families of Israeli victims …