Digital Commons Network^™

Divorcees Turn About In Their Graves As Ex-Spouses Cash In: Codified Constructive Trusts Ensure An Equitable Result Regarding Erisa-Governed Employee Benefit Plans, Sarabeth A. Rayho

Michigan Law Review

A revocation-by-divorce statute essentially nullifies a devise in a divorced decedent's will when the devise bequeaths property to the decedent's ex-spouse and the will was executed during their marriage. Until recently, state revocation-by-divorce statutes unquestionably applied not only to wills but also to will substitutes, including ERISA-governed employee benefit plans. In 2001, the Supreme Court held in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff ex rel. Breiner that ERISA preempts traditional state revocation-by-divorce statutes as applied to ERISA-governed employee benefit plans. In the wake of the Egelhoff decision, plan administrators may automatically pay proceeds to the listed beneficiary, even an ex-spouse, regardless of the …

The Enron Trial Drama: A New Case For Stakeholder Theory, Russell Powell

Faculty Articles

This article analyzes the trial of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, including an empirical analysis of jury comments made after the trial. The study indicates that the jury was influenced by the scope of the Enron collapse and its impact on employees, in particular. The article argues that if juries (or judges) are influenced by the magnitude of harm caused by fraudulent, disloyal behavior, especially when it impacts large numbers of working and middle-class employees, it is likely that the same factors will impact the outcome of derivative suits claiming breaches in fiduciary duties brought against officers and perhaps even …

Fishery Conservation And Management Act Reauthorization: “A” For Effort, “C” For Substance, Madeline Kass

Faculty Articles

In one of its last acts of 2006, the 109th Congress passed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006 (FCMRA), reauthorizing the nation's primary fishing law through the year 2013. The president signed on in early January 2007. Those involved in the reauthorization effort deserve kudos for achieving a successful bipartisan compromise, a relatively rare phenomenon in recent years. Congress also deserves praise for taking positive action towards improving existing law and for rejecting preliminary proposals designed principally to derail conservation efforts. Yet, in the face of unrelenting, catastrophic fish stock declines, it is unclear whether the …

Intellectual Property From Below: Copyright And Capability For Education, Margaret Chon

Faculty Articles

An approach to intellectual property from within a human development framework can contribute meaningfully to the WIPO Development Agenda, which was approved by the WIPO General Assembly in September 2007. Setting the proper regulatory balance between exclusive rights and access through exceptions and limitations to those rights is key to building national innovation capacity. A human development framework allows intellectual property norm-setters to prioritize the development of healthy and literate populations who are foundational to the functioning knowledge economies that intellectual property already assumes. Building upon an earlier piece in which Professor Chon posited that a substantive equality principle was …

Moiwana Village V. Suriname: A Portal Into Recent Jurisprudential Developments Of The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights, Thomas Antkowiak

Faculty Articles

On June 15, 2005, the Inter-American Court issued its judgment in Moiwana Village v. Suriname, which held Suriname responsible for numerous human rights violations and ordered several remedial measures. In a separate opinion, one of the Tribunal's veteran judges, Ant¿nio Can¿ado-Trindade, wrote that the case "raises issues of great transcendence." Certainly, the decision illustrates several of the Court's latest jurisprudential developments, and navigates a few rising socio-political tides in South and Central America. This brief essay seeks to demonstrate how the Moiwana case: a) presents factual situations that are increasingly common before the Court; b) continues to develop key legal …

Protecting The Tribal Harvest: The Right To Catch And Consume Fish, Catherine O’Neill

Faculty Articles

This article transcribes a presentation delivered by Professor O’Neill at the EPA-Tribal Leaders Summit, hosted by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, August 21-25, 2006. This article maintains that the call to protect tribal harvests—to ensure healthy and robust fisheries—is at the core of the sovereign compact between the United States and the various Native nations. The United States is, in fact, legally obligated to uphold this compact, manifested prominently in the treaties. The United States and the states are also legally bound to remedy a long history of attempts to assimilate and discriminate against Native peoples and …

Slouching Towards Development In International Intellectual Property, Margaret Chon, Denis Borges Barbosa, Andrés Moncayo Von Hase

Faculty Articles

An understanding of intellectual property's classic innovation mandate as only one of many cross-cutting development goals should be well-accepted by now within international intellectual property law and policy, given the pervasiveness of development rhetoric at the WTO, WIPO and other regional and bilateral fora. Yet development "walk" lags behind development "talk" on both international and domestic levels. This article focuses on how intellectual property can promote development, not only through innovation, but also by the promotion of broad-based human development implicitly underpinning global knowledge economies. First, we consider the rapidly evolving relationship of development and trade to intellectual property, and …

Past Reflections, Future Insights: African Asylum Law And Policy In Historical Perspective, Edwin Odhiambo Abuya

Faculty Articles

This article argues that an understanding of the evolution of asylum is an essential ingredient in the search for ideas and perspectives to the plight facing forced migrants. Using Kenya as a case study, the paper evaluates the extent to which procedures used to determine claims for asylum, protection outcomes and entitlements met international human rights and refugee law standards. It is contended that limited resources, porous boundaries and the mass movement of asylum seekers have compromised the level of protection offered to those who seek surrogate protection in African states like Kenya. In conclusion, critics in the area of …

Old Hate In New Bottles: Privatizing, Localizing, And Bundling Anti-Spanish And Anti-Immigrant Sentiment In The 21st Century, Steven W. Bender

Faculty Articles

Professor Bender’s introduction focuses on two trends that emerged or accelerated in the past few years - (1) the localization of anti-Spanish and anti-immigrant sentiment and (2) the bundling of anti-Spanish regulation with other anti-immigrant regulation. Although both of these practices have roots in the last century," no doubt of late they have become more widespread and pronounced.

The Contract Thesis Of The Federal Spending Power, David Engdahl

Faculty Articles

This article focuses on the inherent similarities between spending power and contract law, and elaborates on Congress’s ability to “contract” with the States, to have States consent to laws beyond Congress’s enumerated powers with federal funding as consideration. A majority of the federal budget is currently spent on social security, social and economic assistance, education, and other aid and development programs. This “contract” thesis permits our system to maintain the virtues of enumerated federal powers. This analogy might suggest a limited role for private parties in enforcing their terms. The article is offered as an illustration for how legal scholarship …

A Thousand Humiliations: What Brown Could Not Do, Bryan Adamson

Faculty Articles

This article takes a critical examination of the current state of race and education. Particularly, it posits segregation within education is still largely intact today, despite various legal strides and pivotal court cases. In sum, it provides insight into the race landscape, and its legal evolution over the years.

Tax And Economic Policy Responses To The Medicaid Long-Term Care Financing Crisis: A Behavioral Economics Approach, Diane Lourdes Dick

Faculty Articles

This article contributes to the prominent dialogue surrounding the healthcare financing crisis. It does so by analyzing policy solutions using consumer choice theory.

Optimization Of Porcine Buccal Mucosa For In Vitro Evaluation, Upendra D. Kulkarni

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Porcine buccal mucosa has been extensively used as in vitro model to study the permeability of drugs and assess their potential to deliver through buccal route. Porcine buccal mucosa is found to be very similar to human oral mucosa in structure and function. However, the in vitro permeation studies across porcine buccal mucosa show high variability which is mostly due to the various experimental and biological variables that are often overlooked while conducting such studies.

The precise nature of the permeability barrier offered by the various tissue layers of buccal mucosa was investigated in this study. It was observed that …

Comic : An Exploration Into Computer-Mediated Intercultural Communication, Simone Alder

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores how cultural differences manifest themselves in computermediated intercultural communication (CoMIC). This study particularly looks at the role and use of digital nonverbals (DNVs) and their regulatory functions. The data analyzed is from a global virtual team working together for a period of three months. The grounded theory method has been employed to code the electronic transcript of the team's communication. Furthermore, the participants were surveyed regarding their personal backgrounds, their work, and their perception of the communication processes that took place. The study shows that in an intercultural communication process DNVs are used to avoid intercultural misunderstandings …

Textual Strategies To Resist Disappearance And The Mothers Of Plaza De Mayo, Alicia Partnoy

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Works

In her paper "Textual Strategies to Resist Disappearance and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo" Alicia Partnoy draws attention to the ways the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo use literature as both a form of protest and as a way to build solidarity. Focusing on four texts written by the Mothers, Partnoy attempts to correct the lack of attention that this literary work has drawn. Partnoy suggests that in addition to the forms of public protest engaged by the Mothers, their literary activities also play a central role in their efforts. In fact, their use of the literary form …

Female Superintendents: Perceived Barriers And Successful Strategies Used To Attain The Superintendency In California, Denise M. Wickham

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

There exists a discrepancy with the number of females in the California superintendency being twenty-three percent, whereas seventy five percent of all educators are female. This study examined the demographics of the typical female superintendent in California as well as the perceived perceptions of these females in attaining the position. This study examined barriers to the superintendency and successful strategies utilized by females in attaining the public school superintendency. Data for this study were collected through a survey of the perception of barriers and perceptions of successful strategies. All two hundred forty nine California female superintendents were mailed surveys, one …

Distance From Family, Years Of Life On Reservation/Village, Level Of Acculturation, Gender, And Acculturation Stress Of American Indian/Alaska Native Students At The University Of Montana, Michael Brian Trahan

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Acculturation is a construct that supposes that two or more cultures interact and are in conflict with one another, and an individual can determine which qualities to adhere to from each culture. Acculturation stress is a product of the acculturation process, in which an individual experiences stress as a result of the interaction of the multiple cultures upon the individual. This study examined the effects of acculturation stress on 41 (14 male and 27 female) American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) university students in an effort to determine whether this stress is related to level of acculturation, years lived on an Indian …

The Octofoil, January/February/March 2007, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

Repression Of Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis-Inducing Ligand (Trail) But Not Its Receptors During Oral Cancer Progression, Nadarajah Vigneswaran, Darryl C. Baucum, Jean Wu, Yahuan Lou, Jerry Bouquot, Susan Muller, Wolfgang Zacharias

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: TRAIL plays an important role in host immunosurveillance against tumor progression, as it induces apoptosis of tumor cells but not normal cells, and thus has great therapeutic potential for cancer treatment. TRAIL binds to two cell-death-inducing (DR4 and DR5) and two decoy (DcR1, and DcR2) receptors. Here, we compare the expression levels of TRAIL and its receptors in normal oral mucosa (NOM), oral premalignancies (OPM), and primary and metastatic oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCC) in order to characterize the changes in their expression patterns during OSCC initiation and progression. METHODS: DNA microarray, immunoblotting and immunohistochemical analyses were used to …

Absolute Quantitative Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction For The Measurement Of Human Papillomavirus E7 Mrna In Cervical Cytobrush Specimens, Michael E. Scheurer, Laura M. Dillon, Zhuo Chen, Michele Follen, Karen Adler-Storthz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Few reports of the utilization of an accurate, cost-effective means for measuring HPV oncogene transcripts have been published. Several papers have reported the use of relative quantitation or more expensive Taqman methods. Here, we report a method of absolute quantitative real-time PCR utilizing SYBR-green fluorescence for the measurement of HPV E7 expression in cervical cytobrush specimens. RESULTS: The construction of a standard curve based on the serial dilution of an E7-containing plasmid was the key for being able to accurately compare measurements between cervical samples. The assay was highly reproducible with an overall coefficient of variation of 10.4%. CONCLUSION: …

Pro Teams Should Reward Good Off-Field Behavior, Porcher L. Taylor Iii, David R. Maraghy

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

Professional sports—particularly the NFL and NBA, whose players clearly are behavioral models for kids and even young adults—should join the cash-for-performance movement by rewarding players for their exemplary good citizenship off the field. Why not reward integrity-passionate athletes like Matt Hasselbeck of the Seattle Seahawks or Willie McGinest of the Cleveland Browns with annual bonuses of $100,000 each—or donate that amount to their favorite charities? Such a bonus program would require more than being scandal-or police-blotter-free for a year. To qualify, players would have to travel at the highest moral altitude of sports ambassadorship and citizenship. Character counts and should …

Health Care In 2020, Charlotte Weaver, Rosemary Kennedy, W. Scott Erdley, Jeongeun Kim, Polun Chang, Ulrich Schrader, Margaret M. Hansen Edd, Msn, Rn

Nursing and Health Professions Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Behavioral Management Of Command Hallucinations To Harm In Schizophrenia, Robin Buccheri, L Trygstad, G Dowling

Nursing and Health Professions Faculty Research and Publications

The study objective was to evaluate changes in prevalence of command hallucinations to harm self or others, characteristics and intensity of auditory hallucinations, and levels of anxiety and depression after attendance at a 10-session course teaching behavioral strategies for managing persistent auditory hallucinations to adult outpatients with schizophrenia. Prevalence of command hallucinations to harm self or others was measured at baseline, end of course, and 1-year post-course. Pre-course scores on the Characteristics of Auditory Hallucinations Questionnaire, Unpleasant Voices Scale, tension-anxiety subscale of Profile of Mood States, and Beck Depression Inventory-II were compared with scores immediately post-course and 1 year later. …

Healing Our Hazardous Environment, K V. Hall, B M. Afzal, Barbara Sattler

Nursing and Health Professions Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Taxing Emotional Distress Recoveries: Does Murphy Show The Way?, Kaushal P. Mahaseth

LLM Theses and Essays

The taxability of recoveries of damages on account of emotional distress remains a complicated issue under the American federal income tax law. Recent developments due to a controversial decision by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals have further added fuel to this debate. Even if one were to argue the justifications of exempting such recoveries from income taxation, courts do not appear to be the very appropriate kind of forum. Congress can, and in fact does tax such recoveries and the constitutional basis of such power can hardly be doubted. As a result, appropriate changes in the statute only can …

The Land Of The Free: Human Rights Violations At Immigration Detention Facilities In America, Caitlin J. Mitchel

LLM Theses and Essays

In America today, aliens who commit even minor visa violations can be detained in one of many immigration detention facilities throughout the U.S. These detainees may be transferred to a facility far away from their homes, families, and attorneys. While imprisoned in these detention facilities, some detainees are treated as and housed with criminals. Their substantive and procedural rights are limited and their human rights are violated. The U.S. laws that should protect them are the very laws that strip them of their rights to court proceedings, challenges of decisions regarding detention, and judicial review. By issuing substantial reservations, declarations, …

Comfort Women: Human Rights Of Women From Then To Present, Jinyang Koh

LLM Theses and Essays

This paper discusses the human rights of women through the atrocities in the Japanese comfort system during World War II. Approximately 100,000 military sexual slaves, so-called "comfort women", were recruited coercively, raped and mostly killed under the control of the Japanese government and military. The stance of Japan which has denied any legal liability in this matter affects severely the retrogression of the human rights of women. In order to ameliorate the human right at both international and domestic levels ultimately, it is significant to observe the facts of the comfort women issue, to analyze the legal liabilities of the …

The Need For A Transnational Appellate Arbitral Review Body, Priya Sampath

LLM Theses and Essays

This thesis analyzes the necessity for the establishment of a transnational body of arbitral appeal. The paper also elaborates on how the establishment such a body will serve as a suitable replacement for judicial review and be an effective source of appeal in general. Also prescribed are suggestions based on which the appellate body may be conceived.

Ethiopia's Sovereign Right Of Access To The Sea Under International Law, Abebe T. Kahsay

LLM Theses and Essays

Since Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia there has been continuous opposition by intellectuals and the opposition to the government’s policy of making Ethiopia a landlocked country. Some totally reject the secession, while others accept the independence as a "fait accompli" and voice concern over the lack of an outlet to the sea, and still others acknowledge the right of self-determination and secession of Eritrea but denounce the inconsistency of the application of the Transitional Charter regarding the Red Sea Afar and the Algiers Agreement for denying Ethiopia its legitimate right to access to the sea and allege that the government is …

International Legal Standards Governing The Use Of Child Soldiers, Dorcas B. Mulira

LLM Theses and Essays

This paper seeks to analyze the international laws governing the use of children in armedconflict. Despite the prohibition of the use of child soldiers in armed conflict in internationallaw, States and non-State actors continue to actively recruit, abduct, and directly use children,some as young as eight, in hostilities. International humanitarian law's limited scope prevents itfrom protecting the worldÕs most vulnerable children, child soldiers, while human rightsinstruments adopted to make up for these limitations lack enforcement mechanisms, thereforerendering the much-needed protection for child soldiers inadequate. As development ofinternational law concerning child soldiers progresses on paper, progress on the ground lagsbehind, thus …