Digital Commons Network^™

Civil Procedure: Pre-Trial And Trial, Donald Colleluori, Gary D. Eisenstat, Bill E. Davidoff

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Procedure: Confessions, Searches, And Seizures, April A. Strahan, Michael E. Keasler

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Employment Law, Bryan P. Neal, Stephen F. Fink, Elizabeth A. Schartz

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Family Law: Parent And Child, Linda B. Thomas, Ardita L. Vick

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Insurance Law, J. Price Collins, Ashley E. Frizzell, Omar Galicia

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Intellectual Property Law, David L. Mccombs, Phillip B. Philbin, Jacob G. Hodges

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professional Liability, Kelli M. Hinson, Jennifer Evans Morris, Elizabeth A. Snyder

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Securities Regulation, George L. Flint Jr.

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Toxic Torts And Mass Torts, Brent M. Rosenthal, Misty A. Farris, Sharon D. Bautista

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

From Reparation To Restoration: Moving Beyond Restoring Property Rights To Restoring Political And Economic Visibility, Bernadette Atuahene

SMU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Texas Annual Survey: Securities Regulation, George Lee Flint Jr

Faculty Articles

With respect to easing registration requirements, the State Securities Board (“Board”) had the opportunity to lead both state and federal securities regulatory bodies through rule changes for finders--those who assist issuers in finding purchasers. The Board also issued no-action letters for nonregistration of securities issued in connection with various reorganizations involving a Massachusetts business trust, a demutualization of an insurance company, and an exchange of private shares for public American Depository Receipts.

Other than considering the availability of the in pari delicto defense for litigation-funding agreements, the courts generally avoided the interesting issues. Such issues include whether a seller’s fraud …

Standardized Tests, Erroneous Scores, And Tort Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

Faculty Articles

Tort law offers an appropriate vehicle for handling the increased prevalence of standardized testing in the wake of the No Child Left Behind Act and the potential miss-scoring problems that arise with standardized tests. This incentivizes the use of reasonable care in scoring standardized tests and justly compensates for miss-scoring harms when doing so does not unduly burden testing agencies. Neither contract law nor the existing Truth-in-Testing law adequately affords the sort of remedies and protections the issue of standardized testing and miss-scoring pose.

The ability for tort liability to adequately hold testing agencies accountable for miss-scoring errors and afford …

Urban Law School Graduates In Large Law Firms, David Wilkins, Ronit Dinovitzer, Rishi Batra

Faculty Articles

Two major trends have dominated the American legal profession in recent years. First, "the legal profession has seen a striking growth in the largest firms during the latter part of the last century." In 1960, Shearman Sterling & Wright (now called Shearman & Sterling) was the largest firm in the country - and therefore the world. It had 125 lawyers. By the close of the century, there were more than 250 firms larger than Shearman & Sterling had been forty years before, with the largest ten topping the scales at 1000 lawyers or more. Today, in order to make the …

Comment: The Ninth Amendment: A Constitutional Challenge To Corporal Punishment In Public Schools, David R. Hague

Faculty Articles

The Supreme Court's refusal to resolve the conflict over corporal punishment in public schools perpetuates the uncertainty over children and parents' legal rights. The use of corporal punishment in public schools unconstitutionally abridges parents' right to direct the upbringing of their children because it forces parents to accept the emotional and physical marks that corporal punishment leaves on their children. In 1977, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of corporal punishment in Ingraham v. Wright. The Court held that the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment applied only to criminal punishments and thus provided no protection against …

Unlaw, Emily A. Hartigan

Faculty Articles

The United States is in a time of “unlaw” that is both a point in circular time, the time of eternal return, and a point never before reached. This “unlaw” infuses both the practical, applied, and experiential world of politics. Additionally, this era of “unlaw” also incorporates the intellectual world of philosophy and theology as well as political theory.

In this state of non-law, the United States incarcerates a higher percentage of people than any other developed nation. The United States claims to value money so much that it is speech, and thus free under the First Amendment. This results …

Categorical Exclusions From Capital Punishment: How Many Wrongs Make A Right?, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

The two categorical exclusions of age and mental capacity will impact not only those offenders who are excluded from the death penalty, but also those offenders who remain subject to this punishment. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Roper v. Simmons and Atkins v. Virginia raise the issue that a capital-punishment-limiting decision possesses wrongs of its own. Both decisions limit the death penalty—Roper excludes from this punishment offenders who committed their crimes before they were eighteen years old and Atkins excludes offenders who are mentally retarded. But in both cases, the Supreme Court overstated the uniformity and universality of traits associated …

The Court Of Appeals For The Fifth Circuit: A Legal Analysis And Statistical Review Of 2005-2006 Insurance Decisions, Willy E. Rice

Faculty Articles

he Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided and published twenty-four insurance-related appeals between June 2005 and May 2006 from cases originating in seven federal district courts. Like petitioners in prior years, the overwhelming majority of the 2005-2006 appellants petitioned the court of appeals to reverse or vacate district courts' adverse summary judgments as well as the lower courts' allegedly questionable interpretations of various insurance contracts. Most of the controversies involved familiar procedural and substantive questions of law, but the Fifth Circuit also decided many questions of fact. Furthermore, several preemption questions and disputes over subject matter jurisdiction appeared among the …

Threading The Eye Of The Erisa Needle: Erisa Preemption And Alternative Legal Schemes To Fill The Regulatory Vacuum,, Bernard D. Reams Jr., Michael P. Forrest

Faculty Articles

Popular consensus suggests that the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) is a mess, and one of historic proportions. ERISA’s comprehensive reach to protect employer-provided benefits has in practice produced unintended, if not contradictory, results.

Congress passed ERISA over thirty years ago to protect the rights of employees who benefit from employer pension and welfare benefit plans. It did so with a series of regulations that promote uniformity in litigation across the various states through “strong preemption language.” The goal of uniformity arguably benefits workers by imposing regular standards of conduct which lend predictability to the scope of litigation, or …

The Storm Between The Quiet: Tumult In The Texas Supreme Court, 1911-21, Michael S. Ariens

Faculty Articles

The Texas Supreme Court from 1911–1921 is best known not for the law it made or the opinions it wrote, but for its failure to decide cases. Although the supreme court’s difficulty in clearing its docket existed before 1911, the number of outstanding cases exploded during the second decade of the twentieth century.

Arguably, the issue of statewide prohibition and the divergent views held on that issue by members of the Texas Supreme Court was the driving force behind the disharmony and dysfunctionality of the court during this decade. Statewide prohibition explains why elections of candidates to the court were …

Cradle To Cage: Confronting The Premature Institutionalization Of The Children Of The Incarcerated, Jen Fell

Theses and Dissertations

American prisons are swollen and distended. Over 2 million Americans sit in jail or prison today. About 2/3 of the incarcerated are parents. They parent approximately 2 million children in America today who are separated from mom or dad because of incarceration. Their children suffer from poverty, inconsistency in caregivers, separation from siblings, reduced opportunity to health and education and increased risk for substance abuse, alcoholism and incarceration themselves. Children of the incarcerated are seven times more likely than their peers to become incarcerated as adults.Many of these children are unable to visit their parents. Over half the mothers in …

Development And Validation Of A Computational Musculoskeletal Model Of The Elbow Joint, Justin Paul Fisk

Theses and Dissertations

Musculoskeletal computational modeling is a versatile and effective tool which may be used to study joint mechanics, examine muscle and ligament function, and simulate surgical reconstructive procedures. While injury to the elbow joint can be significantly debilitating, questions still remain regarding its normal, pathologic, and repaired behavior. Biomechanical models of the elbow have been developed, but all have assumed fixed joint axes of rotation and ignored the effects of ligaments. Therefore, the objective of this thesis was to develop and validate a computational model of the elbow joint whereby joint kinematics are dictated by three-dimensional bony geometry contact, ligamentous constraints, …

Effects Of Cxcl8 Overexpression On Tumor Cell Proliferation And Migration In An Hnscc Cell Model, Emil Paul Christofakis

Theses and Dissertations

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is the 6th most common malignancyworldwide. Recently, a link between cancer and inflammation has been found. Mediatingthis relationship are the chemotactic cytokines known as chemokines. CXCL8 (Interleukin-8), a CXC ELR+ Chemokine mainly responsible for neutrophil chemoattraction, has beenimplicated in increased tumor proliferation, migration and angiogenesis. The current studytests the effects of CXCL8 on the tumor proliferation and metastasis. By genetically modifying cells to knockdown or overexpress the CXCL8 gene we tested its biological rolein head and neck cancer progression. Overexpression of CXCL8 in HN4 tumor cells withlow endogenous CXCL8 levels was found to increase …

Interactions Of Mtfabh With Its Substrates And Inhibitors Reveal Novel Mechanistic Insights, Sarbjot Singh Sachdeva

Theses and Dissertations

Tuberculosis emerged from its grave to be one of the deadliest diseases of the present time after recently developing a synergy with AIDS. A fatty acid condensing enzyme-mtFabH has been proposed to connect the key processes involved in biosynthesis of mycolic acids, an important component of mycobacterial cell wall. It condenses long acyl Coenzymes A (CoA; up to C20CoA) with malonyl Acyl Carrier Protein (ACP) to form the elongated β-ketoacyl-ACP which further undergoes rounds of elongation to form mero-mycolate branch of mature mycolic acids. Owing to its proposed central position in mycolic acid synthesis, mtFabH has attracted considerable attention as …

Life In An Occupied City: Women In Winchester, Virginia During The Civil War, Laura Jane Ping

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the homefront experience of middle class, white women living in Winchester, Virginia during the Civil War. The experience of women in Winchester was unique because of Winchester's proximity to both the Union and Confederate capitals. Although the majority of Winchester's women were Confederate supporters a significant minority of the population remained loyal to the Union. Winchester citizens' divided status was further complicated by numerous occupations of the town by both armies. This thesis argues that in order to cope with wartime hardships women's concepts of patriotism changed as homefront morale waned. While early in the war women's …

Professional Theatre In The Academic Theatre Setting, Hartwell Keith Hight

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to discuss the dynamic of continued employment for the theatre instructor. Surprisingly, very little is written about continued employment for the theatre instructor. In the present study, the terms instructor and teacher carry the same meaning. Because theatre builds successful human beings, a theatre program must allows students, graduates, and other interested candidates the opportunity to work closely with experienced professionals in their field.

Cannabinoid Modulation Of Chemotaxis Of Macrophages And Macrophage-Like Cells, Erinn Shenee Raborn

Theses and Dissertations

Exogenous and endogenous cannabinoids have been reported to modulate functional activities of macrophages. It is recognized that macrophages express primarily the CB2 cannabinoid receptor, but recent studies indicate that its expression is differential in relation to activation state with maximal levels occurring when cells are in "responsive" and "primed" states. The functional activities of macrophages when in these states of activation are the most susceptible to the action of cannabinoids, at least in terms of a functional linkage to the CB2. To assess the effect of cannabinoid treatment on macrophage chemotaxis and test the hypothesis that cannabinoids inhibit the chemotactic …

"Shut It Down, Open It Up": A History Of The New Left At The University Of Virginia, Charlottesville, Thomas M. Hanna

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a history of social and political activism in Charlottesville during the 1960s focusing on new left student organizing at the University of Virginia. It is a work of social history that establishes a community that has been generally ignored in traditional histories of the new left as one of the most influential centers of new left activism in the South and asserts that this prominence was due to years of activism by local liberals, civil rights advocates, and students during the city's unique experiences on the front lines of the southern desegregation, civil rights, and anti-war struggles. …

Roles And Attitudes Of Males And Females In The Anarchist Punk Community, Donna M. Manion

Theses and Dissertations

Sexism is a widespread social problem that exists throughout the world today. It persists within the dominant culture, as well as in various subcultures, including the punk subculture (Daugherty 2002; Leblanc 1999; McRobbie 1991; Rosenberg and Garofalo 1998). Nijole Benokraitis and Joe Feagin's (1995) theory of sexism posits that subtle sexism is the unequal and harmful treatment of women that is typically less visible than blatant sex discrimination. This particular type of sexism may often go unnoticed, as society has internalized subtle sexist behaviors. Empirical research on subtle sexism has been conducted in various settings, such as the employment, academic, …

On The Binding Of N1-Substituted Tryptamines At H5-Ht6 Receptors, Abner Nyamwaro Nyandege

Theses and Dissertations

Serotonin was first discovered in the late 1940s as a vasotonic factor and is now considered a principal neurotransmitter in the nervous system. 5-HT6 receptors are one of the most recently identified members of the serotonin receptor family which consists of seven classes (5-HT1-5-HT7). 5-HT6 receptors are G-protein coupled, positively coupled to an adenylate cyclase second messenger system and are primarily found in the central nervous system (CNS). The exact functional role of 5-HT6 receptors has not been determined, but is implicated to have possible involvement in certain neuropsychiatric disorders and cognition. To investigate the functional role of these receptors, …

The Art Of Collaboration In The Classroom: Team Teaching Performance, Jenna M. Neilsen

Theses and Dissertations

The Art of Collaboration in the Classroom: Team Teaching Performance is a co-written master's thesis which records our research in the field of team teaching as it relates to theatre education at the university level. It is our intent that this text be used as a tool for helping universities and teachers decide if a collaborative teaching model is right for their courses. A portion of the text is research-based, examining the scholarly writings which have preceded our work. In Chapter 1, we compiled a set of definitions, in the hopes of codifying the language used within this document as …