Digital Commons Network^™

The Ilo Convention On Freedom Of Association And Its Future In The United States, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper addresses the status of the international law convention on freedom of association in the United States. Although the United States supported the adoption of the Convention on Freedom of Association (#87) in the International Labour Organization in 1948, the U.S. government has not ratified that Convention. Instead, the Convention has sat on the shelf in the United States Senate since 1949, the longest unratified convention on the treaty calendar of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The paper analyzes the disadvantages for the United States in failing to become a party to this important treaty. The paper notes that …

Conceiving Equity: The Paradox Surrounding The Contraception Crisis In America, Meghann Diane Ainsworth

Honors Theses

Much of the controversy surrounding reproductive rights in the United States is mainly concentrated on abortion; however, an equally significant reproductive concern that sometimes goes unnoticed is the current contraception crisis in this countr>^ Pro-life and conservative right wing groups have surreptitiously launched a propaganda campaign to distort contraceptive information, leading many Americans to believe that contraception is unsafe, anti-family, and a form of abortion. These assertions are complete fabrications created to gain followers. The pro-choice side advocates the truths that contraception is safe and effective, supportive of families, and is not scientifically or medically considered a form of …

Complex Litigation Lecture: The Adversary System And Modern Class Action Practice, Roger H. Trangsrud

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In modern class action practice, the class action device can enormously expand the availability of justice but can also cause substantial injustice to defendants and absent class members when improperly used. The latter is often the case because Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has come to be interpreted by the federal courts in ways that mask the proper criteria that should be used in deciding whether to certify a class action. Thus, Rule 23 needs a complete overhaul. First, Rule 23 should be amended to allow appeals as of right, not discretion, from orders granting or …

The Case For Tolerant Constitutional Patriotism: The Right To Privacy Before The European Courts, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The theory of constitutional patriotism has been advanced as a solution to the European Union's legitimacy woes. Europeans, according to this theory, should recognize themselves as members of a single human community and thus acknowledge the legitimacy of Europe-wide governance based on their shared belief in a common set of liberal democratic values. Yet in its search for unity, constitutional patriotism, like nationalism and other founding myths, carries the potential for the exclusion of others. This article explores the illiberal tendencies of one element of the liberal canon - the right to privacy - in the case law of Europe's …

Randomized Legal Experimentation, Michael B. Abramowicz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Social scientists have performed and analyzed a number of randomized studies of policies, but the legal literature has not addressed whether and how the legal system should incorporate experimental methods. This Article identifies several benefits of randomized legal experimentation and argues that these benefits supports self-executing experiments, whose results would lead to policy changes agreed upon in advance. Randomized experiments can generate information, and self-execution can help ensure that this information affects the policy process. Such experiments may be easier to enact than other legal reforms, because each side of a policy debate may believe that an experiment is likely …

Criminal Law And The Pursuit Of Equality, Donald Braman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Article argues that, to make their vision of justice a reality, egalitarians need to change both their focus and their tactics with respect to criminal law. The tragedy of contemporary criminal justice is not that individual rights are too narrowly construed, but that those living in disadvantaged communities are injured both by crime and counter-productive law enforcement. The remedies that egalitarians have historically looked to - remedies articulated within the framework of individual rights - are poorly suited to address the systematic reproduction of inequality that results.

First, egalitarians will need to shift their focus from the racially motivated …

Cultural Cognition And Synthetic Biology Risk Perceptions: A Preliminary Analysis, Donald Braman, Gregory N. Mandel, Dan M. Kahan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We describe the results of a study to determine the synthetic-biology risk perceptions of a large and diverse sample of Americans (N = 1,500). The survey found that hierarchical, conservative, and highly religious individuals - one who normally are skeptical of claims of environmental risks (including those relating to global warming) - are the most concerned about synthetic biology risks. We offer an interpretation that identifies how selective risk-skepticism and risk-sensitivity can convey a cultural commitment to traditional forms of authority.

Why Contractor Fatalities Matter, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

At the end of July 2008, the media reported that 4,600 service members have died in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. But reporting only military fatalities understates the human cost of America's engagements in these regions by nearly a fourth. On the modern, outsourced battlefield, the U.S. government increasingly has delegated to the private sector the responsibility to stand in harm's way and, if required, die for America. As of 30 June 2008, more than 1,350 civilian contractor personnel had died in Iraq and Afghanistan, while another 29,000 contractors have been injured; more than 8,300 seriously. Nonetheless, contractor fatalities …

Federalism And International Law Through The Lens Of Legal Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Sovereignty has long been the dominant lens through which we view both federalism and international law. From the perspective of sovereignty, both federalism and international law are primarily about drawing clear boundaries and demarcations between separate, autonomous power centers. Recently, however, a group of scholars have embraced a more pluralist approach to both American federalism and international law. They have touted the important virtues of jurisdictional redundancy and inter-systemic governance models in which multiple legal and regulatory authorities weigh in regarding the same acts and actors. And they argue that such jurisdictional redundancies are not just a necessary accommodation to …

Climate Change "Crisis" - Struggling For Worldwide Collective Action, Lisa M. Schenck

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Global climate change due to increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases caused by human activity has the potential to threaten life on earth. International cooperation is required to effectively address this threat; however the climate crisis represents a classic collective action problem in response to overexploitation of a global commons. This article explains the global climate change issue, traces efforts to confront it, and argues that inherent difficulties plague collective responses to global commons problems. It pinpoints individual reasons for collective action failures, examines background economic and scientific problems, and analyzes how group factors such as strategy and coalition building …

Worker Participation And Social Dialogue At The Work Place Level In The United States, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This paper discusses the right of private sector employees to influence management decisions that may affect their working conditions. It explores the ability of workers represented by labor organizations to deal with their employers through the collective bargaining process, and through contractual grievance-arbitration procedures with respect to issues arising under current agreements. It notes the decline of unions over the past fifty years, with union membership declining from 35% in the late 1950s to under 7% today. In the absence of formal union representation, employees have no formal right to affect management decisions, even though over 85% of surveyed employees …

On The Importance To Economic Success Of Property Rights In Finance And Innovation, F. Scott Kieff

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Essay surveys recent developments across the fields of finance and innovation to highlight some common themes concerning the importance of property rights to economic success. Society regularly makes choices when shaping the precise contours of the legal institutions that govern the behavior of market actors, often in response to high profile issues like the collapse of Enron and the patenting of life-saving AIDS drugs. Recognizing that no set of legal institutions or related enforcement mechanisms will be perfect, this Essay explores some particularly helpful institutional features based on property rights that too often are overlooked by policy makers and …

Equality Opportunity: Marriage Litigation And Iowa's Equal Protection Law, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

Discrimination claims against longstanding rules invite the public and the courts to rethink the status quo and address overarching legal and social commitments to equality together with questions specific to the case at hand. Lawsuits seeking marriage rights for same-sex couples quintessentially illustrate this multilayered nature of law reform litigation, as the debates they provoke focus not only on the rights of same-sex couples but also on the meaning of marriage and the meaning of equality more generally. While few other than lawyers, judges, and perhaps some reporters actually read the equal protection and due process arguments that the presiding …

Statistics Of Local Speckle Contrast, Donald D. Duncan, Sean J. Kirkpatrick, Ruikang K. Wang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In describing the first-order properties of laser speckle under polarized illumination conditions, it is almost an article of faith that the contrast is unity. In many processing schemes, however, the contrast defined as the quotient of the standard deviation and the mean is calculated over a localized spatial region. In such cases, this local contrast displays a distribution of values that can depart substantially from unity. Properties of this distribution depend on details of the data acquisition and on the size of the local neighborhood over which the contrast is calculated. We demonstrate that this local contrast can be characterized …

Can Laser Speckle Flowmetry Be Made A Quantitative Tool?, Donald D. Duncan, Sean J. Kirkpatrick

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The ultimate objective of laser speckle flowmetry (and a host of specific implementations such as laser speckle contrast analysis, LASCA or LSCA; laser speckle spatial contrast analysis, LSSCA; laser speckle temporal contrast analysis, LSTCA; etc.) is to infer flow velocity from the observed speckle contrast. Despite numerous demonstrations over the past 25 years of such a qualitative relationship, no convincing quantitative relationship has been proven. One reason is a persistent mathematical error that has been propagated by a host of workers; another is a misconception about the proper autocorrelation function for ordered flow. Still another hindrance has been uncertainty in …

Sufficere, “It Is Enough”: Avarice Vs. Simplicity And Detachment In The Rule Of Saint Benedict, Arlen M. Hanson

School of Theology and Seminary Graduate Papers/Theses

This paper is an exegesis of selected chapters of the Rule of St. Benedict, specifically chapters thirty-three, thirty-four, fifty-four, fifty-five, and fifty-eight, to examine issues of monastic poverty, private vs. common ownership, avarice, simplicity, detachment, and related issues.

Path Of The Dragon’S Eye: Using Fantasy Elements In Realism, Winston Edward Jones Jr.

Honors Theses

WINSTON EDWARD JONES: A Collection ofInterwoven Fantasy Short Stories (Under the direction ofRonald Schroeder)

The stories presented in this thesis illustrate a common theme through the use of both fantasy and realism. Specifically, these dichotomous styles are used to comment on the nature of human desire. To represent desire, each story features an appearance and interaction with the titular item, the dragon’s eye. This item often serves as both representation and foil to the characters’ deepest desires. By interjecting this fantastic jewel into realistic situations, these stories attempt to utilize fantasy as a vehicle through which emotional tension is created …

Combination Of Natural Variability Estimation With Real Time Measurement For Mushroom Shelf Life Assessment., Leixuri Aguirre

Doctoral

The shelf life of mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) is affected by the natural variability of the produce which influences the perishable vegetable quality. One of the main causes of this variability is non-homogeneity in the product maturity at harvest, resulting in each vegetable batch being at a different stage of senescence. The present work aims to study a new approach to improve the assessment of the shelf life of mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) taking into account this variability. The study of variability involved the: i) study of the shelf life, quality parameters and variability of the mushrooms and modelling these experimental laboratory …

The Effects Of Posture On Quantitative Eeg And End Tidal Co2 Duringstandardised Optimal Hyperventiation In Healthy Adults And In Patients With Childhood Absence Epilepsy And Attack Disorders, Ann Coughlan

Doctoral

Hyperventilation is used as an activation procedure during EEG. It induces hypocapnia, which elicits changes in brain wave activity that may be diagnostically useful. The mechanism of action by which Hyperventilation (HV) produces slow theta/delta waves on EEG remains conjectural. Four criteria determine the magnitude of HV response: vigorous exchange of air, blood glucose levels, age of subject, and posture. Effects of posture are poor studied quantitatively. Objective: A Standardised Optimal Hyperventilation Protocol (SOHVP), which elicited Hyperventilation Induced High Amplitude Rhythmic Slow activity (HIHARS) during EEG controlling for posture seated (stOHV) and supine (spOHV) is presented and validated. Method: Respiratory …

Poverty, Diet And Health Behaviours: A Quantitative And Qualitative Study Among Young Urbanised Women., Daniel Mccartney

Doctoral

Demographic, socio-economic, attitudinal, dietary, health behavioural and anthropometric data were collected from 221 “disadvantaged” and 74 “advantaged” women aged 18-35 years across Dublin, according to the provisions of a novel socio-economic sampling frame. Internal and external validation techniques established the dietary assessment method of choice and identified “valid” dietary reporters (n=216, 153 disadvantaged, 63 advantaged) among this sample. Five qualitative focus groups (n=5-8 per group) were also conducted among disadvantaged women to examine their diet and health behaviour choices. Lower intakes of fruit and vegetables (172g/d vs. 405g/d, p

The Mechanism Of Silver Dissolution For Biomedical Devices And Hygienic Coating Applications., Yanmei Ma

Doctoral

This work focuses on the mechanism of silver dissolution for biomedical and hygienic coating applications. The research work began from the investigation of silver dissolution behaviour from pure silver and silver-platinum alloys in solutions with or without chloride using the technique of cyclic volammetry (CV). A zero resistance amperometry (ZRA) measurement was carried out to study the effect of platinum on the silver dissolution behaviour in 0.89%wt. NaCI solution. The mechanism of silver dissolution from pure silver and silver-platinum alloys in 0.89%wt. NaCI solution was proposed by an equivalent circuit model under the investigation of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). It …

Editorial: Nutrition Research Reviews, Katherine Younger

Articles

We are all familiar with the dietary guideline exhorting us to eat so many portions of oily fish per week in order to boost our intakes of n-3 long-chain PUFA, but it is perhaps not so widely realised that the fish must themselves be provided with dietary n-3 long-chain PUFA or, possibly, their precursors (though, as in humans, the ability of carnivorous fish to elongate and desaturate n-3 PUFA appears to be limited).

Editorial: Nutrition Research Reviews, Katherine Younger

Articles

With world attention now focusing on the Olympics, the question as to the extent to which nutrient intakes can affect athletic performance is highly topical; in this context, the article

After Ebay, Inc. V. Mercexchange: The Changing Landscape For Patent Remedies, Bernard H. Chao

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

The Costs Of Privilege: Defining Price In The Market For Educational Copyright Use, L. Ashley Aull

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Identity, Culture And Stories: Empathy And The War On Terrorism, William D. Casebeer

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Authentic Happiness, Self Knowledge & Legal Policy, Peter H. Huang

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Patents And Patients: Who Is The Tragedy Of The Anticommons Impacting And Who Is Bearing The Cost Of High-Priced Biotechnological Research?, Caroline A. Grenshaw

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Following Minnesota's Renewable Energy Example: Will Federal Legislation Fly High Or Flap In The Wind?, Susan Perera

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Jean-Paul Marat: The Politics Of Death, Joseph Paul Wallace

Honors Theses

The following thesis discusses the death and quasi-deification of Jean-Paul Marat, politician and journalist of the French Revolution. I focus on the tensions between social, artistic, and political movements that sprung up in the wake of the radical’s martyrdom. I also demonstrate the drastic change in general attitudes and policies— political, social and artistic—toward Marat between the years of the Terror and Thermidor. I hope to prove that Marat, in transcending his own policies and words after death by becoming a visual and tactile symbol representing both social justice and political terror, is a pivotal figure for the French Revolution. …