Digital Commons Network^™

Why Law Students Should Take The Federal Courts Course, Roger L. Goldman

All Faculty Scholarship

The most unique feature of the American judiciary is its dual system of trial courts, one state and one federal. This article explores the reasons traditionally given for the need for lower federal courts and whether, in practice, the federal courts are actually serving those needs. For example, it has been assumed that state courts are less hospitable to federal civil rights and consumer claims than federal courts, yet in many jurisdictions, plaintiffs’ lawyers prefer filing claims in state courts under state anti-discrimination or consumer laws rather than federal laws to prevent removal of the case to federal court. The …

Place Mattters (Most): An Empirical Study Of Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Death-Eligible Cases, Katherine Y. Barnes, David L. Sloss, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article investigates prosecutorial discretion in death penalty prosecution in Missouri. Based upon an empirical analysis of all intentional-homicide cases from 1997-2001, this article concludes that Missouri law gives prosecutors unconstitutionally broad discretion in charging these cases. This article also finds that prosecutors exercise this broad discretion differently, leading to geographic and racial disparities in sentencing, and concludes with proposals for statutory reform.

Shareholders In The Jury Box: A Populist Check Against Corporate Mismanagement, Ann M. Scarlett

All Faculty Scholarship

The recent subprime mortgage disaster exposed corporate officers and directors who mismanaged their corporations, failed to exercise proper oversight, and acted in their self-interest. Two previous waves of corporate scandals in this decade revealed similar misconduct. After the initial scandals, Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission attempted to prevent the next crisis in corporate governance through legislative and regulatory actions such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Those attempts failed. Shareholder derivative litigation has also failed because judges accord corporate executives great deference and thus rarely impose liability for breaches of fiduciary duties.

To prevent the next crisis in …

Publicity, Pressure, And Environmental Legislation: The Untold Story Of Availability Campaigns, Molly J. Walker Wilson

All Faculty Scholarship

The availability heuristic — a cognitive rule of thumb whereby events that are easily brought to mind are judged to be more likely — is employed by decision-makers on a daily basis. Availability campaigns occur when individuals and groups strategically exploit this cognitive tendency in order to generate publicity for a particular issue, creating pressure to effect legislative change. This paper is the first to argue that environmental availability campaigns are more beneficial than they are harmful. Because they result in pressure on Congress, these campaigns serve as a catalyst for the enactment of critical new legislative initiatives. Specifically, these …

The Anti-Case Method: Herbert Wechsler And The Political History Of The Criminal Law Course, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to recover the dramatic transformation in criminal law teaching away from the case method and towards a more open-ended philosophical approach in the 1930s. It makes three contributions. One, it shows how Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler revolutionized the teaching of criminal law by de-emphasizing cases and including a variety of non-case related material in his 1940 text Criminal Law and Its Administration. Two, it reveals that at least part of Wechsler's intention behind transforming criminal law teaching was to undermine Langdell's case method, which he blamed for producing a "closed-system" view of the law …

Labor Injunctions In Bankruptcy: The Norris-Laguardia Firewall, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This article considers whether federal courts, including bankruptcy courts, are authorized to issue injunctions in connection with various kinds of labor disputes arising after the filing of a petition in bankruptcy. The question takes on renewed importance in light of the record number of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings in 2008, including filings by two of the three major American automakers, which are unionized. Given the increasing complexity of some of these notorious reorganizations, the likelihood of post-petition labor disputes appears to have correspondingly increased. In agreement with the few federal circuits that have considered the question, the article concludes that, …

Embracing Paradox: Three Problems The Nlrb Must Confront To Resist Further Erosion Of Labor Rights In The Expanding Immigrant Workplace, Michael C. Duff

All Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the Supreme Court's 2002 Hoffman Plastic Compounds opinion, normally considered in terms of its social justice ramifications, from the different perspective of NLRB attorneys tasked with pursuing enforcement of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) under the conceptually (and practically) odd rubric that some NLRA employees (unauthorized workers) have no remedy under the NLRA. The article focuses on three problems evincing paradox. First, NLRB attorneys prosecuting cases involving these workers will probably gain knowledge of unlawful background immigration conduct. To what extent must the attorneys disclose it, and to whom? Second, NLRB attorneys are extraordinarily reliant on …

Functional Interleukin-17 Receptor A Is Expressed In Central Nervous System Glia And Upregulated In Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis., Jayasri Das Sarma, Bogoljub Ciric, Ryan Marek, Sanjoy Sadhukhan, Michael L. Caruso, Jasmine Shafagh, Denise C. Fitzgerald, Kenneth S. Shindler, Am Rostami

Department of Neurology Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Interleukin-17A (IL-17A) is the founding member of a novel family of inflammatory cytokines that plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of many autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS) and its animal model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). IL-17A signals through its receptor, IL-17RA, which is expressed in many peripheral tissues; however, expression of IL-17RA in the central nervous system (CNS) and its role in CNS inflammation are not well understood.

METHODS: EAE was induced in C57Bl/6 mice by immunization with myelin oligodendroglial glycoprotein. IL-17RA expression in the CNS was compared between control and EAE mice using RT-PCR, in situ …

Quality Improvement In Small Office Settings: An Examination Of Successful Practices., Daniel Wolfson, Elizabeth Bernabeo, Brian Leas, Shoshanna Sofaer, Gregory Pawlson, Donna Pillittere

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Physicians in small to moderate primary care practices in the United States (U.S.) (<25>physicians) face unique challenges in implementing quality improvement (QI) initiatives, including limited resources, small staffs, and inadequate information technology systems 23,36. This qualitative study sought to identify and understand the characteristics and organizational cultures of physicians working in smaller practices who are actively engaged in measurement and quality improvement initiatives.

METHODS: We undertook a qualitative study, based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews conducted with practices (N = 39) that used performance data to drive quality improvement activities.

RESULTS: Physicians indicated that benefits to performing measurement and …

Quality Improvement In Small Office Settings: An Examination Of Successful Practices., Daniel Wolfson, Elizabeth Bernabeo, Brian Leas, Shoshanna Sofaer, Gregory Pawlson, Donna Pillittere

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: Physicians in small to moderate primary care practices in the United States (U.S.) (<25 >physicians) face unique challenges in implementing quality improvement (QI) initiatives, including limited resources, small staffs, and inadequate information technology systems 23,36. This qualitative study sought to identify and understand the characteristics and organizational cultures of physicians working in smaller practices who are actively engaged in measurement and quality improvement initiatives.

METHODS: We undertook a qualitative study, based on semi-structured, open-ended interviews conducted with practices (N = 39) that used performance data to drive quality improvement activities.

RESULTS: Physicians indicated that benefits to performing measurement and …

Toward A Theory Of Persuasive Authority, Chad Flanders

All Faculty Scholarship

The debate about the citation of foreign authorities has become stale. One side says that citing foreign authorities means being beholden to foreign sovereigns. The other side responds that this is nonsense, as the authorities are being used only for their "persuasive value." But do we even have a good idea of what it means to be a persuasive authority? My essay is the first to focus entirely on the notion of persuasive authority and to make the first steps towards providing a general theory of it. I make two major contributions. First, I try to show that there is …

Three Reasons To Serve, Gary L. Hopkins, Duane C. Mcbride, Stuart Tyner, Jonathan Duffy

Faculty Publications

Young people in the Seventh-day Adventist Church are in need of leadership creating effective strategies for protecting the youngsters from engaging in high risk behaviors along with finding effective methods of keeping these same youngsters churched. It is clear that God had answers to these problems long ago. A review of Matthew 25 clearly states that our purpose as Christians should be to serve individuals in need. When young people engage in service, they are more likely to be attracted to the church, get involved in the church, and stay in the church. Furthermore, service is associated with better grades …

A Role For The Ecdysone Response Gene E93 In Imaginaling Patterning During Metamorphosis, Xiaochun Mou

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Drosophila melanogaster E93 is an early ecdysone response gene that encodes a pipsqueak domain transcription factor. E93 is induced by ecdysone at the end of larval development, and directs the death and elimination of several larval tissues during metamorphosis. Although E93 has been considered a dedicated regulator of larval cell death, I have found that E93 is also widely expressed in imaginal tissues during metamorphosis, where it is required for the proper patterning of many adult structures. Our working hypothesis is that E93 functions in imaginal tissues as a metamorphosis-specific cofactor that determines the pupa-specific action of numerous other transcription …

Eighth Amendment Gaps: Can Conditions Of Confinement Litigation Benefit From Proportionality Theory, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

The article explores the potential benefits of integrating proportionality theory, traditionally used in sentencing, into litigation challenging harsh prison conditions under the Eighth Amendment. It argues that this approach could offer new avenues for addressing the limitations of current conditions of confinement jurisprudence by reimagining how courts evaluate the constitutionality of prison conditions.

Copyright And Its Rewards, Foreseen And Unforeseen, Justin Hughes

Articles

Responding to Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 1569 (2009)

Superpixel Segmentation Of Outdoor Webcams To Infer Scene Structure, Rachel Tannenbaum

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Understanding an outdoor sceneΓÇÖs 3-D structure has applications in several ∩¼üelds, including surveillance and computer graphics. Scene elementsΓÇÖ time-series brightness gives insight to their geometric orientation; and thus the 3-D structure of the overall scene. Previous works have studied the time-series brightness of individual pixels. However, there are limitations with this approach. Pixels are often quite noisy, and can require a lot of memory. This thesis explores the use of superpixels to address these issues. Superpixels, an approach to image segmentation, over-segment a scene but attempt to ensure that each segment lies on only one scene element. Applying superpixels to …

Critique Of Money Judgment (Part Two: Liens On New York Personal Property), David G. Carlson

Articles

The article critiques the New York Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR) for its outdated and overly complex framework governing money judgments, particularly in the creation, enforcement, and priority of judicial liens. It argues that the CPLR's inefficiencies and inconsistencies, exacerbated by conflicts with federal bankruptcy law and the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), lead to unjust outcomes for both debtors and creditors. The article proposes modest reforms to align the CPLR with modern legal standards, simplify procedures, and eliminate unnecessary distinctions between tangible and intangible property.

An Imperfect Vocabulary Of Religious Liberty, Marci A. Hamilton

Articles

No abstract provided.

Partial Order Reduction For Planning, You Xu

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Partial Order Reduction: POR) is a technique that reduces the search space by recognizing interchangeable orders between actions and expanding only a subset of all possible orders during the search. It has been extensively studied in model checking and has proven to be an enabling technique for reducing the search space and costs. Several POR algorithms have been proposed in planning, including the Expansion Core: EC) and Stratified Planning: SP) algorithms. Being orthogonal to the development of accurate heuristic functions, these reduction methods show great potential to improve the planning efficiency from a new perspective. However, it is unclear how …

Investigating The Potential Contributors To Non-Suicidal Self-Injury: Stress, Emotional Dysregulation, And Alexithymia, Kelly K. Espenschade

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Research has investigated perceived stress, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), emotional dysregulation, and alexithymia independently. However, there have been no studies to date that have simultaneously examined the relationship among all these variables. The purpose of this study was to examine these variables among those who had or had not engaged in NSSI. Five hundred seventy-seven college students completed self report measures of non-suicidal self-injury, perceived stress level, emotional dysregulation, and alexithymia. As hypothesized, those who had engaged in self-harm behaviors reported higher levels of perceived stress, emotional dysregulation, and alexithymia. There were no gender differences except on perceived stress levels, where …

A Motor Speech Programming Investigation Using Inhibition: Part I, Jeffrey Thomas Backlin

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The current study investigated stop/go boundaries for speech acts (i.e. saying "uh, annul, annulment") in a speech inhibition task modeled on Slater-Hammel's (1959) experiment. Specifically, the project sought to answer the following research questions: (1) Can human speakers learn to stop a sweep hand using their voice? (2) What is the absolute (100%) inhibition threshold for "uh?" (3) What is the threshold at which one half of the spoken response for "uh," can be inhibited? Two additional studies were conducted for the additional stop targets "annul" (Williams, 2009) and "annulment" (Corbett, 2009). Self-report and informal speech-language screening assessed ten adult …

Aggregation & Localization Of A Disease-Associated Prion Protein (Prp) Mutant, Andrea Rhonda Medrano

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Aggregation & Localization of a Disease-Associated Prion Protein: PrP) Mutant by Andrea Rhonda Zaragoza Medrano Doctor of Philosophy in Biology and Biomedical Sciences: Genetics) Washington University in St. Louis, 2009 Professor David A. Harris, Chairperson Prion protein: PrP) is a GPI-anchored sialoglycoprotein involved in the pathogenesis of infectious and inherited forms of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies: TSEs). A nine-octapeptide insertional mutation in the prion protein: PrP) causes a fatal neurodegenerative disorder in both humans and transgenic mice. To determine the precise cellular localization of this mutant PrP: designated PG14), we have generated transgenic mice expressing PG14-EGFP, a …

Networking Mechanisms For Delay-Sensitive Applications, Maxim Podlesny

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The diversity of applications served by the explosively growing Internet is increasing. In particular, applications that are sensitive to end-to-end packet delays become more common and include telephony, video conferencing, and networked games. While the single best-effort service of the current Internet favors throughput-greedy traffic by equipping congested links with large buffers, long queuing at the congested links hurts the delay-sensitive applications. Furthermore, while numerous alternative architectures have been proposed to offer diverse network services, the innovative alternatives failed to gain widespread end-to-end deployment. This dissertation explores different networking mechanisms for supporting low queueing delay required by delay-sensitive applications. In …

The Chapter 13 Estate And Its Discontents, David G. Carlson

Articles

Thirty years after the enactment of the Bankruptcy Code, the courts have yet to agree on a theory of the bankruptcy estate in Chapter 13 cases. This is not the fault of the courts. The Bankruptcy Code is contradictory as to the composition of the chapter 13 estate. This article selects one of four possible theories and defends it as the one that does the least violence to the plain meaning of the Bankruptcy Code.

This theory is referred to in this article as the "Divestment Theory," because it holds that, upon confirmation of a chapter 13 plan, the debtor …

Constitution On Ice: A Report On Immigration Home Raid Operations, Bess Chiu, Lynly Egyes, Peter L. Markowitz, Jaya Vasandani

Articles

No abstract provided.

Ensemble Support Vector Machine Models Of Radiation-Induced Lung Injury Risk, Todd Schiller

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Patients undergoing radiation therapy can develop a potentially fatal inflammation of the lungs known as radiation pneumonitis: RP). In practice, modeling RP factors is difficult because existing data are under-sampled and imbalanced. Support vector machines: SVMs), a class of statistical learning methods that implicitly maps data into a higher dimensional space, is one machine learning method that recently has been applied to the RP problem with encouraging results. In this thesis, we present and evaluate an ensemble SVM method of modeling radiation pneumonitis. The method internalizes kernel/model parameter selection into model building and enables feature scaling via Olivier Chapelle's method. …

A Comparison Of Iddingsite Alteration In Two Terrestrial Basalts And The Alha 77005 Martian Meteorite Using Raman Spectroscopy And Electron Microprobe Analyses., Karla Kuebler

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

The objective of this study is to document the secondary mineral assemblages in two occurrences of terrestrial iddingsite and compare these with the iddingsite in the ALHA 77005 martian meteorite: a lherzolitic shergottite). Short laser Raman spectroscopic traverses: hundreds of μm long) across olivine alteration fronts provide information about changes in the mineral assemblage with alteration. Data from the Raman traverses are combined with data from electron microprobe traverses at the same locations to provide information regarding element mobility near the zones of alteration and to confirm mineral identifications made by Raman spectroscopy. This information is used along with petrographic …

Plume Formation In Strongly Temperature-Dependent Viscosity Fluids: Application To Early Mars, Yun Ke

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

One of the most prominent features of Mars is the hemispherical dichotomy. The Martian surface consists of a heavily cratered elevated southern hemisphere and a resurfaced depressed northern hemisphere. The dichotomy seems to have formed very early in the history of the planet. Another interesting feature is a remnant magnetization of the crust, which suggests that early Mars had a magnetic field. Investigation of the origin of these features provides insights into the early history of Mars as well as other terrestrial planets including Earth. We develop a hypothesis that the dichotomy is caused by an early transient superplume produced …

Spectral And Stratigraphic Mapping Of Hydrated Sulfate And Phyllosilicate-Bearing Deposits: Implications For The Aqueous History Of Sinus Meridiani, Mars, Sandra Wiseman

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Data acquired by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: MRO) are used in conjunction with additional data sets to perform detailed stratigraphic and spectral analyses with the goal of identifying and mapping the mineralogy and stratigraphy of sedimentary deposits to infer the aqueous history of the Sinus Meridiani region on Mars. Datasets utilized include MRO Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars: CRISM), MRO Context Imager, MRO High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, Mars Express: MEX) Observatoire pour la Min├⌐ralogie, l'Eau, les Glaces et l'Activit├⌐, MEX High Resolution Stereo Camera, Mars Odyssey: ODY) Thermal Emission Imaging System, ODY Mars Orbital Camera, and ODY Mars …

Law Lags Behind: Foia And Affirmative Disclosure Of Information, Michael Herz

Articles

No abstract provided.