Digital Commons Network^™

Signature Identification In The Light Of Science And Experience, Roger C. Park

UC Law Journal

The Daubert case encourages judges to ask whether forensic identification expertise is valid, not merely whether it is accepted among practitioners. The example of DNA has shown what real science can do, and has highlighted the shortcomings of other forms of forensic science. The combined effect of Daubert and DNA has contributed to skepticism about forensic identification techniques. This skepticism may lead to exclusion of evidence or to procedural limits aimed at making the expertise more trustworthy or preventing it from having undue weight. I will discuss these two alternatives in the context of the specific forensic problem of signature …

Communicating Opinion Evidence In The Forensic Identification Sciences: Accuracy And Impact, Dawn Mcquiston-Surrett, Michael J. Saks

UC Law Journal

How forensic identification experts describe their observations and express their opinions in court can be expected to have important effects on what jurors and judges conclude from this evidence. But the communication of findings from forensic identification analyses can be challenging as experts try to express their results accurately: without error, exaggeration or intentionally or unintentionally misleading fact finders. In this Article, we discuss how fact finders interpret and respond to the expert testimony of forensic science examiners, and how expert testimony can be made most informative. We first describe the results of several empirical studies we have done which …

Conceptual Hurdles To The Application Of Atkins V. Virgina, Lois A. Weithorn

UC Law Journal

In its 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, the United States Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment precludes the execution of "mentally retarded offender[s]." Despite the apparent "brightline" clarity of an absolute ban on the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the determination of which offenders fall within the protected group is deceivingly complex. The meanings of the concepts of "mental retardation," "intelligence," and "adaptive behavior" are-like the standards of decency guiding the Court-continually evolving, and are subjects of ongoing reevaluation and debate. Given what is at stake in Atkins assessments, lawmakers, jurists, practitioners, …

The Myth Of "Lucky" Patent Verdicts: Improving The Quality Of Appellate Review By Incorporating Fuzzy Logic In Jury Verdicts, Michael T. Nguyen

UC Law Journal

Fuzzy logic, a relatively new mathematical concept, has emerged over the past few decades as an effective tool to model complexity and uncertainty. In a nutshell, fuzzy logic recognizes that truth is not always black or white, but rather, truth can be measured in shades of gray. Patents, because they rely on language to claim inventions, are fuzzy legal concepts. Fuzzy logic may help to simplify the jurors' comprehension of complex real-world problems in patent law.

In this Note, I propose a "fuzzy" special verdict form and procedure for "defuzzifying" the verdict that would allow the jury the freedom to …

Ten Lessons For Practitioners About Family Responsibilities Discrimination And Stereotyping Evidence, Catherine Albiston, Kathryn Burkett Dickson, Charlotte Fishman, Leslie F. Levy

UC Law Journal

This Article highlights ten key lessons that employment law practitioners can take away from the scholarship collected in this symposium Issue. The legal field of Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) has developed rapidly in the past two decades, with FRD litigation only likely to increase. Social science research on the maternal wall continues to develop, increasing our understanding of what discrimination looks like in the workplace today. The FRD case law and social science research highlighted in this Issue provide essential information that employment law attorneys can put into practice when faced with addressing FRD in the workplace.

Cognitive Bias And The Motherhood Penalty, Stephen Benard, In Paik, Shelley J. Correll

UC Law Journal

Women experience significant penalties in wages and other labor market outcomes when they have children. In this Article, we review and evaluate theory and research on cognitive bias and the motherhood penalty. Several theories predict that discrimination in the form of cognitive bias accounts for at least a part of the penalty that mothers experience. These theories include status characteristics theory, the stereotype content model, the shifting standards model, and the lack of fit model. Empirical evidence from controlled laboratory experiments and field studies strongly supports the general hypothesis that women experience labor market discrimination when they have children. There …

The Matter Of Fit: The Law Of Discrimination And The Science Of Implicit Bias, David L. Faigman, Nilanjana Dasgupta, Cecilia L. Ridgeway

UC Law Journal

This Article examines the "fit" between the law of discrimination and the science of implicit bias, including consideration of the legal standards that apply and a broad overview of the sociological and psychological literatures that are relevant to those standards. The Authors first set forth the legal framework within which the psychological and sociological research literatures must be considered. Although the legal standard is not entirely unambiguous, scientific research on implicit bias appears relevant to the basic empirical issues put in issue by the law. The Authors then review the general research literature on the phenomenon of "implicit biases" in …

Discrimination-Reducing Measures At The Relational Level, Tristin K. Green, Alexandra Kalev

UC Law Journal

Social scientists have shown that bias and stereotypes are executed and reinforced not only in moments of decision making, like hiring or promotion, but also in day-to-day interactions and social relations (or lack thereof) at work. The Authors discuss existing measures for reducing employment discrimination as focusing too narrowly at the individual level of discrimination. They argue that discrimination-reducing measures taken by employers should be expanded to address the relational sources of discrimination. The Authors review research showing that employers can reduce relational sources of discrimination and workplace inequality by changing the context of workplace relations and interactions from stereotype …

Old Problem, New Tactic: Making The Case For Legislation To Combat Employment Discrimination Based On Family Caregiver Status, Noreen Farrell, Genevieve Guertin

UC Law Journal

Employment discrimination against employees based on their status as parents or family caregivers occurs at an alarming rate in this country, and is hardly a new phenomenon. Family Responsibilities Discrimination (FRD) disproportionately impacts working mothers, but advocates have begun to look beyond traditional gender discrimination and family leave theories of liability to strategies based on legislation expressly prohibiting discrimination based on parental or family caregiver status. This Article examines FRD legislation passed or proposed in recent years in the context of criticisms of this strategy by Professor Peggie Smith, who addressed the issue in her article Parental Status Employment Discrimination: …

Armed Standoffs And The Warrant Requirement, Edward H. Arens

UC Law Journal

The Fourth Amendment, as decided by the Supreme Court in Payton v. New York, forbids police from arresting suspects in their homes without a warrant or a compelling excuse. Applying this principle to standoffs between police and suspects who have barricaded themselves inside their homes, however, presents significant interpretive problems. The foremost difficulty is that it is not clear when the Fourth Amendment even applies to police standoffs. Courts disagree on whether police seize barricaded suspects simply by surrounding a house, or whether the suspect remains free until he or she surrenders or is physically subdued. Second, Payton excuses a …

Creating Children With Disabilities: Parental Tort Liability For Preimplantation Genetic Interventions, Kirsten Rabe Smolensky

UC Law Journal

Using preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), parents can now screen embryos for genetic traits such as deafness and achondroplasia (dwarfism). Studies show that some parents intentionally choose embryos with disabilities because that genetic trait runs in the family. This recent trend raises the important legal question of whether a child can sue his parents in tort for selecting or engineering disabling genetic traits.

This Article suggests that children both can and should be able to successfully sue parents who engage in certain direct genetic interventions. First, tort law should protect a child's moral right to an open future where parents' preimplantation …

Intentional Diminishment, The Non-Identity Problem, And Legal Liability, I. Glenn Cohen

UC Law Journal

This Article, lying at the intersection of law and bioethics, examines whether it is wrongful to use assisted reproductive technology to intentionally create disabled children, and whether legal liability should attach to such acts. In particular, this Article considers the way these issues are intertwined with what philosophers have called the "Non-Identity Problem," the idea that so long as a resulting child will have a life worth living the child cannot be harmed by being brought into existence, because even an impoverished life is better than not existing at all.

In her article in this Issue, Kirsten Smolensky suggests that …

Duty To The Unborn: A Response To The Smolensky, Jaime King

UC Law Journal

Advances in assisted reproductive technology and genetic testing continue to offer parents a plethora of new reproductive choices. As a result, we now face significant moral and legal challenges regarding how to balance the interests of parents, children born through the procedure, and society as a whole. This Essay analyzes Professor Kirsten Smolensky's argument in favor of permitting children the right to sue their parents in tort law for manipulating their DNA prior to implantation to produce a disabling trait. While Smolensky's basic argument is sound, a more encompassing standard would create a duty to potential offspring to act as …

Parental Tort Liability For Preimplantation Genetic Interventions: Technological Harms, The Social Model Of Disability, And Questions Of Identity, Kirsten Rabe Smolensky

UC Law Journal

Professors Glenn Cohen, Jaime King, and Alicia Ouellette each wrote a thoughtful commentary in response to the article, Creating Children with Disabilities: Parental Tort Liability for Preimplantation Genetic Interventions. This short Essay is a reply to several broad themes that appear in these commentaries. It both clarifies several points made in the original article and makes a few additional arguments in favor of parental tort liability. In particular, this Essay addresses calls for regulation and provider liability, assesses additional costs and benefits associated with preimplantation genetic interventions, reevaluates the original proposal in a way more sensitive to persons with disabilities, …

The Forgotten Frontier - Healthcare For Transgender Detainees In Immigration And Customs Enforcement Detention, Dana O'Day-Senior

UC Law Journal

a challenge for anyone, but for transgender individuals, the lack of healthcare policy specifically addressing the healthcare needs of transgender individuals can mean that ICE detention is hazardous to one's health. Many researchers have studied the challenges faced by transgender individuals in the prison setting, and many researchers have examined the problems with healthcare access and delivery in ICE detention facilities. However, so far no one has bridged the gap between the two areas of research and looked at the specific challenges ICE detention poses for healthcare for transgender individuals.

This Note attempts to bridge that gap by focusing into …

Trademarks, Consumer Psychology, And The Sophisticated Consumer, Glenn L. Christensen, Eric D. Derosia, Thomas R. Lee

Faculty Publications

Trademark law rests on an amorphous foundation. The scope of protection afforded to the trademark holder turns on the psychology and behavior of the "ordinary" consumer "under the normally prevalent conditions of the market and giving the attention such purchasers usually give in buying that class of goods." In trademark law, "everything hinges upon whether there is a likelihood of confusion in the mind of an appreciable number of 'reasonably prudent' buyers." Where the ordinary consumer is deemed sufficiently "sophisticated" to discern differences between two competing marks, the law forecloses protection for the senior trademark.

New Legal Rights In The Legal System Of The United States Of America, Roberto Rosas, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

Currently, there exist an extensive variety of individual rights recognized both nationally and internationally. With the course of time, however, they change; therefore, governments occasionally consider it necessary to create additional protections for their citizens. Generally, these propositions are made possible through the creation and approval of new rights. Even though these new rights are based on other previously established rights, they do offer society the opportunity to protect and defend itself as well as allowing it to continue making progress.

Only a few of the new legal rights that have been recognized within the last few years will be …

Libqual 2008 Survey, Robert R. Muntz Library

Reports and Assessments

No abstract provided.

The Bulletin, Undergraduate Catalog 2008-2009 (2008), Minnesota State University Moorhead

Undergraduate Bulletins (Catalogs)

No abstract provided.

Critical Acts Of Recognition: Reading Law Rhetorically, Sarah Burgess

Studio for Law and Culture

On July 11, 2002, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) set the scene for a significant shift in the way the United Kingdom legally defines sex and the status of transsexual and transgender people (trans people) within British society. The ECHR, in Christine Goodwin v. The United Kingdom, found that British laws defining sex according to a set of biological criteria applied at birth prevented trans people from enjoying the full spectrum of rights guaranteed by the European Convention of Human Rights. Barring individuals from changing their sex for legal purposes on official documents, such as birth certificates …

Social Life And Civic Education In The Rio De Janeiro City Jail, Amy Chazkel

Studio for Law and Culture

In the six weeks from mid-July to early September 1912, about a third of the 389 men whom guards escorted through the front doors of the Rio de Janeiro city jail had been arrested for vagrancy, or in Portuguese vadiagem, an infraction whose etymological connection to the word “vague” is not a coincidence. These men remained in detention for between five days and over a year, accused by arresting police officers of having committed the crime of doing nothing. As they awaited trial or, for the least fortunate, transportation to an offshore penal colony, they shared the crowded space …

The Sit-Ins And The Failed State Action Revolution, Christopher W. Schmidt

Studio for Law and Culture

This article revises the traditional account of why the Supreme Court, when faced in the early 1960s with a series of cases arising out of the lunch counter sit-in movement, refused to hold racial discrimination in public accommodations unconstitutional. These cases are the great aberration of the Warren Court. At a time when the justices confidently reworked one constitutional doctrine after another, often in response to the moral challenges of the civil rights movement and often in the face of considerable public resistance, they broke pattern in the sit-in cases. And they did so despite a transformation in popular opinion …

Divorcing Family Law From The Nation, Philomila Tsoukala

Studio for Law and Culture

This paper examines the contribution of law and legal narrative in the generation of national identities, using modern Greece as a case study. It explores how claims of family law continuity and unity in nineteenth century Greece became the main mode of arguing for the existence of a Greek people, culturally distinct from their Ottoman oppressors. I argue that far from embodying any truth about Greek family law, these legal historical narratives constituted a reconceptualization of social relations on the national basis giving content to the relatively new concept of the “Greek people”. These narratives also made possible and reflected …

Multicultural Education: Raj’S Story Using A Curricular Conceptual Lens Of The Particular, Vicki Ross, Elaine Chan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

In this study, we employ a curricular conceptual lens of the particular to explore the experience of multicultural education from the perspective of an immigrant student, Raj. Using a school-based narrative inquiry approach, we learn about Raj’s experiences at the intersections of immigration and settlement, adaptation and assimilation, English-language acquisition, unemployment, poverty, family violence, and family relocation. We employ Dewey’s [(1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster] theory of experience, Connelly and Clandinin’s [(1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia] understanding of curriculum as experience, and Schwab’s [(1969). The …

From Nuevo León To The Usa And Back Again: Transnational Students In Mexico, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor A. Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez Garcia

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

The movement of Mexicans to the United States is both longstanding and long studied and from that study we know that for many newcomers the attachment to the receiving community is fraught and tentative. The experience of immigrant children in U.S. schools is also relatively well studied and reveals challenges of intercultural communication as well as concurrent and contradictory features of welcome and unwelcome. What is less well known, in the study of migration generally and of transnational students in particular, is how students moving in a less common direction — from the U.S. to Mexico — experience that movement. …

Content Is Not Enough: A History Of Secondary Earth Science Teacher Preparation With Recommendations For Today, Elizabeth B. Lewis

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Secondary geoscience education has its roots in geography and physiographic education from the turn of the 20th century. High school Earth science reached a peak during the late 1960s and 1970s, after plate tectonic theory revolutionized geology. The production of Earth science teachers, unlike biology teachers, has never reached full capacity, which has likely contributed to the lesser presence and status of Earth and space science in U.S. high schools today. Historically, the geoscience community has focused on enriching teachers' geoscience content knowledge, but modern Earth and space science teachers need more than just content knowledge.

Based on current science …

The Limits Of Health Care Reform, Ani B. Satz

Faculty Articles

Part I of this Article provides a context for understanding health law in 2008. It discusses the complex relationships between the various actors, at both the federal and state levels, which affect the distribution, provision, and regulation of health care, as well as the role of technological devel­opments in these relationships. Individuals familiar with health law may choose to skip this Part.

Parts II and III address the theoretical underpinnings of basic mini­mum and rationing approaches, respectively. Part II discusses the contractarian foundations of basic minimum schemes. It focuses on the distribu­tion of health care goods as primary goods (goods …

Acknowledging Guilt: Forcing Self-Identification In Post-Conviction Dna Testing, Tonja Jacobi, Gwendolyn Carroll

Faculty Articles

This Essay formally illustrates how it is possible to force prisoners to self-identify as innocent or guilty by deciding whether to seek post­conviction DNA testing. Additionally, it shows why other systems that aim to reduce the number of guilty petitioners seeking post-conviction DNA testing create perverse incentives, and why only additional incarceration can effectively encourage innocent and guilty prisoners alike to self-identify. This will reduce costs on the judicial system by discouraging guilty prison­ers from seeking post-conviction DNA tests. It will also make it faster and easier for actually innocent prisoners to seek the tests they need for timely exoneration. …

Book Review: Teaching As Community Property By Lee Shulman (Jossey-Bass, 2004), Lynne Mcvey

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

Excerpt: Teaching as Community Property is a collection of Lee Shulman’s speeches, papers and presentations from 1987-2004. It is an inspiring and practical volume of Shulman’s profound and influential contributions to the field of teaching and learning in higher education. For readers’ individual interests, it is conveniently divided into three sections; Learning, The Profession of Teaching, and Practices and Policies. In his introduction, Russell Edgerton suggests that readers view this collection from three perspectives: pedagogy, prescription and philosophy. A useful aspect of this book is that each chapter can be read individually for the purpose of finding a solution …

The Rollamo 2008, Missouri University Of Science And Technology

Yearbooks

No abstract provided.