Digital Commons Network^™

Nafta Cross-Border Trucking: Mexico Retaliates After Congress Stops Mexican Trucks At The Border, Chad Macdonald

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) entitles Mexican tractor-trailers to enter the U.S. to deliver cargo from Mexico. In spite of NAFTA, the U.S. has only allowed Mexican trucks to operate in the U.S. during a controversial demonstration project that granted U.S. operating licenses to a select number of Mexican trucks during the Bush administration. The dispute over NAFTA's cross-border trucking provisions climaxed on March 16, 2009, when Mexico imposed $2.4 billion in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports in response to U.S. noncompliance.

This Note chronicles the U.S.-Mexico cross-border trucking dispute and argues that the U.S. should re-start a …

"Shelter Chic": Can The U.S. Government Make It Work?, Kristina R. Montanaro

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Note discusses government donations of seized counterfeit goods to charitable institutions and the implications of these practices. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contributions to the Red Cross for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort serve as a backdrop for important concepts. In making these contributions, the CBP relied on its emergency authority and a presidential proclamation to avoid basic statutory requirements that it (a) obtain consent from the right holders and (b) de-trademark counterfeit goods prior to donation. While the donations inarguably benefitted countless disaster victims and freed up valuable CBP warehouse space, they may have had a detrimental …

The Crisis Of International Law, Rafael Domingo

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article delves into the reasons for the current crisis in the traditional international law system, considering how the system developed through the centuries in order to respond to the needs and circumstances of past historical epochs, as well as how the system is no longer capable of meeting the unique developments and needs of life in the Third Millennium. The Article considers the fundamental problems of a state-based system of international law that--rather than focusing on the prime actor and focus of the law, the human person, and his inherent dignity--concentrates on and gives enormous power to the artificial …

Finding The ‘World’ In Biblical Studies: God-Talk, Culture, And Hermeneutics In The Study (And Teaching) Of Faith, Gerald A. Klingbeil

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Exploring Accounting Fraud In The Subsidiary Environment, Carmelita J. Troy, Madeline Ann Domino, Steven P. Landry

Faculty Publications

This research explores accounting fraud in the subsidiary environment. Utilizing institutional theory, we propose that the subsidiary environment provides an opportune setting and vehicle for individuals to commit accounting fraud. While a growing body of literature exists on accounting fraud, minimal work has focused on the role of the subsidiary in accounting fraud, as reported by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We sample companies for which the SEC has documented accounting fraud in their enforcement releases. We then analyze the related SEC documents to determine to what extent, if any, a subsidiary is involved in the accounting fraud. Our …

Eu Law, International Law And Economic Sanctions Against Terrorism: The Judiciary In Distress?, P. Takis Tridimas

Faculty Scholarship

This article seeks to examine the relationship between European Union law, international law, and the protection of fundamental rights in the light of recent case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Court of First Instance (CFI) relating to economic sanctions against individuals. On 3 September 2008, the ECJ delivered its long-awaited judgment in Kadi and Al Barakaat on appeal from the CFI. In its judgment under appeal, the CFI had held that the European Community (EC) is competent to adopt regulations imposing economic sanctions against private organizations in pursuance of UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions seeking …

Restating The U.S. Law Of International Commercial Arbitration, Catherine A. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

In December 2007, the American Law Institute ("ALI") approved the development of a new Restatement, Third, of the U.S. Law of International Commercial Arbitration (the "Restatement"). On February 23, 2009, the Restaters and authors of this Essay presented a Preliminary Draft of a chapter of the Restatement (the "Draft") at an invitational meeting in New York. The Draft addresses Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards. This brief Essay provides some reflections of the Reporters from the process of producing and presenting the Draft. Subsequent Drafts have been produced and approved by the ALI.

Courts, Clergy, And Congregations: Disputes Between Religious Institutions And Their Leaders, Ira C. Lupu, Robert W. Tuttle

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For nearly forty years, the courts have barred a variety of lawsuits by clergy against their religious entity-employers. These suits frequently involve matters of civil rights, such as sex-based discrimination in employment, but they also involve claims of defamation, violation of fair labor standards, and breach of employment contracts, among others. To justify the barriers to these suits, courts typically rely on concepts drawn from the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. In particular, courts frequently invoke theories of free exercise of religion by religious institutions, or notions of "excessive entanglement" between church and state, to justify this line of case law. …

The Dark Side Of Universal Banking: Financial Conglomerates And The Origins Of The Subprime Financial Crisis, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Since the subprime financial crisis began in mid-2007, banks and insurers around the world have reported $1.1 trillion of losses. Seventeen large universal banks account for more than half of those losses, and nine of them either failed, were nationalized, or were placed on government-funded life support. Central banks and governments in the U.S., U.K. and Europe have provided $9 trillion of support to financial institutions to prevent the collapse of global financial markets.

Given the massive losses suffered by universal banks, and the extraordinary governmental assistance they have received, they are clearly the epicenter of the global financial crisis. …

Outsourcing Immigration Compliance, Eleanor Marie Brown

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Immigration is a hot button issue about which Americans have sent a clear message. They prefer not to admit more aliens until the government is able to credibly screen for entrants who will abide by the terms of admission and sanction those who do not. While immigration debates now focus almost entirely on undocumented workers, they have overshadowed another critical, yet poorly understood challenge: designing institutions to properly screen for aliens who are visa-compliant and sanction non-compliant aliens. Because failed guest worker programs unquestionably increase the size of the undocumented population, this article addresses the difficulty of institutional design by …

The Transformation Of Originality In The Progressive-Era Debate Over Copyright In News, Robert Brauneis

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the 1991 case of Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., Inc., the Supreme Court held unanimously that only those aspects of works which exhibited a "modicum of creativity" could be protected by copyright, and hence that factual matter was not copyrightable. Feist confirmed and expanded on the Court's statements in the 1918 case of International News Service v. Associated Press that news was not copyrightable apart from its literary form. Yet for the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, the notion that copyright incorporated an originality requirement which excluded factual matter from protection was unknown to Anglo-American …

Cultural Cognition Of The Risks And Benefits Of Nanotechnology, Donald Braman, Dan M. Kahan, Paul Slovic, John Gastil, Geoffrey L. Cohen

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

We conducted an experimental public opinion study of the effect of balanced information on nanotechnology risk-benefit perceptions. The study found that subjects did not react in a uniform, much less a uniformly positive manner, but rather polarized along lines consistent with cultural predispositions toward technological risk generally.

What Do We Owe Future Generations?, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In the United States, it is common for legal scholars, economists, politicians and others to claim that we are selfishly harming "our children and grandchildren" by (among many other things) running large government budget deficits. This article first asks two broad questions: (1) Do we owe future generations anything at all as a philosophical matter? and (2) If we do owe something to future generations, how should we balance their interests against our own? The short answers are "Probably" and "We really are not sure."

Finding only general answers to these general questions, I then look specifically at U.S. fiscal …

Four Out Of Four Panelists Agree: U.S. Fiscal Policy Does Not Cheat Future Generations, Neil H. Buchanan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

As part of the George Washington Law Review's symposium "What Does Our Legal System Owe Future Generations? New Analyses of Intergenerational Justice for a New Century," participants discussed the nature of intergenerational obligations as they relate to fiscal policy. The panelists reached consensus that intergenerational justice is not an appropriate lens through which to analyze fiscal issues, because there is no obvious starting point from which to build a moral consensus about whether current generations owe anything at all to future generations, much less how to quantify any such obligation. In addition, even pessimistic forecasts indicate that future generations will …

International Human Rights In A Nutshell, Thomas Buergenthal, Dinah L. Shelton, David P. Stewart

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This book describes the development of international human rights law. The main difference today is that individuals receive protection as individuals independent from their affiliation with a nation, as compared to the traditional consideration that only states had rights under international law. The law of humanitarian intervention first suggested that states do not receive unlimited discretion in their behavior under international law. The first chapter describes the earliest treaties and agreements giving rise to the current status of international law, such as the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization.

Constitutional Patriotism And The Right To Privacy: A Comparison Of The European Court Of Justice And The European Court Of Human Rights, Francesca Bignami

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This chapter examines attitudes towards national diversity in one piece of the emerging European constitution-the right to privacy. There is a thick constitutional culture of privacy in Europe. The familiar debate of how to balance the right to privacy against freedom of expression, the market, and public security can be heard in many places: before the Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, in the European Parliament and the European Council, and before Europe's numerous data privacy ombudsmen. And in these places, the less familiar problem of tolerance of diversity within Europe, among Europe's different national communities, …

Prohibited Discrimination In International Law, Dinah L. Shelton

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay assesses how the prohibition of discrimination is understood in contemporary international human rights law. The essay aims to determine whether human rights bodies apply coherent theories when deciding which distinctions are permitted and which are invidious. The essay begins by surveying the provisions of human rights instruments such as the U.N. Charter that call for non-discrimination and equality. Next, the essay examines the jurisprudence of international tribunals and monitoring bodies, including judgments, advisory opinions, general comments, and observations on state periodic reports. The conclusion draws from this body of law a general approach to discrimination in international human …

Embryo Exchanges And Adoption Tax Credits, Naomi R. Cahn, Sarah B. Lawsky

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The “Option of Adoption Act,” a Georgia law that was introduced by a staunchly anti-abortion Georgia state representative, establishes procedures for genetic donors to relinquish their rights to embryos before birth and permits, but does not require, embryo recipients to petition a court for recognition that they are the legal parents of a child born to them as a result of an embryo transfer. This article clears up what seems to be widespread confusion about a fairly straightforward question of tax law related to such embryo “adoptions.” Notwithstanding various sources' claims to the contrary, neither a Georgia adoption tax credit …

Eight Is Enough, Naomi R. Cahn, Jennifer M. Collins

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

On January 26, 2009, the nation's second set of live-born octuplets was delivered. The public fascination with this event quickly turned ugly when the media revealed that the mother was thirty-three year-old Nadya Suleman, who is single, unemployed, and already caring for six children under the age of eight.

The cultural backlash against Suleman has focused on three separate issues. The first revolves around Suleman herself, and her ability as a single, unemployed mother to parent fourteen young children successfully. A second set of concerns revolves around the medical procedures at her fertility clinic. How could the clinic agree to …

Oxygen-Enhanced Combustion: Theory And Applications, Scott Skeen

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In the broadest sense, oxygen-enhanced combustion: OEC) refers to the use of oxygen to improve combustion and/or process characteristics. When a stream of oxygen is available, a wide range of flame configurations is possible. This work considers two specific configurations of OEC and is divided into two parts. In Part I, fundamental experimental and numerical flame studies explore the combustion of gaseous fuel/inert mixtures in oxygen-enriched air or pure oxygen under well-defined conditions. Part II targets a more practical application by considering the combustion of solid fuels in a variety of oxygen/carbon dioxide mixing scenarios. For gaseous non-premixed flames, combining …

Open Collaborative Mechanical / Product Design - User As Developer A New Design Methodology For Internet Era Business Innovations And Entrepreneurship, Jing Zheng

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In product design and development projects, the most important part is identifying user needs. Traditional methods such as surveys, focus group studies and interviews are expensive and sometime inaccurate in identifying those needs. Inspired by the open source software development, along with the research that has been done on the "lead user" method, the method of using collective customer wisdom to modify old products or even develop new products has become an emerging new design method and is starting to get popularity and success. However, the effectiveness of such method comparing to the traditional face to face "close" development method …

Antibiotic Resistance Of Helicobacter Pylori Strains In The United Arab Emirates And Its Relation To The Gene Associated To Gastric Cancer “Cag A Gene”, Wafa Ali Rashid Al-Tayyari

Theses

Helicobacter pylori is a flagellated corkscrew, slow growing neutrophilic gram negative ureolytic organism. It has an extraordinary ability to establish infection in human stomach that can last for years or decades. Its eradication remains an important public health challenge especially in light of broadening indications and increasing antimicrobial resistance.

AIM: i) Identification of H. pylori in UAE patients ii) Determination of the prevalence of antibiotic resistance genes (mutation in 23S rRNA gene in clarithromycin, and deletion in RdxA gene in metronidazole) among H. pylori strains isolated from U.A.E patients by using molecular methods, iii) Ascertain whether Cag A- positive H. …

Getting Out Of Wonderland: Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, And Anne Sexton, Jessica Mccort

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

This project examines the appropriation of children's literature, particularly Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales and Lewis Carroll's Alice books, by Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Anne Sexton. Influenced by the cultural fixation on the child and the increasing popularity of Freudian discourse in American culture, the rise of confessional poetry, and second-wave feminist interest in female socialization, Bishop, Plath, Rich, and Sexton pursued in their poetry and prose an investigation of self and social formation that was simultaneously rooted in the public exhumation of the personal past and the personalized exploration of the dominant narratives of girlhood purveyed …

Exploring The Potential Of Aging Network Services To Improve Depression Care, Leslie Hasche

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Depression is a prevalent, debilitating yet treatable psychiatric disorder affecting older adults. Older adults underutilize specialty mental health care, persistently receive poor quality care in primary care settings, and have high rates of non-adherence to pharmacotherapy. Aging network services, such as adult day services, homecare services, senior centers, and supportive housing may be able to improve the quality of depression care. However, it is unknown how current models of empirically supported depression care are used within or could be adopted by aging network services. Thus, this study described the organizational factors, staff factors, and current agency practices regarding depression among …

Who Uses Community-Based Youth Shelters? An Inter-Group And Intra-Group Analysis, Jennifer Mcclendon

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Community-based youth shelters are the primary method of intervention designed to meet the complex needs of at-risk youth who leave home before they have developed the skills to live independently. This research examines shelter users' patterns of cross-sector service use to better understand the needs and resources of shelter residents. The aims of this study are 1) to perform an inter-group analysis, comparing sheltered youth with status offense runaways and foster care runaways, and 2) to explore the population of emergency shelter residents using an intra-group analysis, determining whether distinct profiles of sheltered youth exist, based on individual characteristics and …

‘This’ Is Not ‘Love’: A Cognitive Assessment Of The Lyrics And Translations Of Jalāl Al-Din Rūmī'S Ghazal #1919 From The Divān-I Shams, Matthew Miller

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

No abstract provided.

Connections Between Floer-Type Invariants And Morse-Type Invariants Of Legendrian Knots., Michael Henry

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

We investigate existing Legendrian knot invariants and discover new connections between the theory of generating families, normal rulings and the Chekanov-Eliashberg differential graded algebra: CE-DGA). Given a Legendrian knot $\sK$ with generic front projection $\sfront$, we define a combinatorial/algebraic object on $\sfront$ called a \emph{Morse complex sequence}, abbreviated MCS. An MCS encodes a finite sequence of Morse homology complexes. Every suitably generic generating family for $\sfront$ admits an MCS and every MCS has a naturally associated graded normal ruling. In addition, every MCS has a naturally associated augmentation of the CE-DGA of the Ng resolution $\sNgres$ of the front $\sfront$. …

The Effect Of Limb Movement On The Lumbopelvic Region In People With Low Back Pain, Sara Scholtes

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Low back pain: LBP) affects up to 80% of the population at some point in their lifetime. Several models have been proposed to explain the persistent and recurrent course of LBP. In particular, the Movement System Impairment model proposes that lumbopelvic motion that begins soon after the start of an active movement is important to LBP because of its potential contribution to increased frequency of lumbopelvic motion across the day. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine aspects of this model, focusing specifically on lumbopelvic motion during limb movements. In Chapter 2, we examine whether men and women with …

Batf Regulates Previously Unknown Ap-1 Target Genes To Control Th17 Differentiation, Barbara Schraml

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

Activator protein 1: AP-1) transcription factors are dimers of Jun, Fos, musculoaponeurotic fibrosarcoma: MAF) and activating transcription factor: ATF) family proteins that are characterized by a basic region and a leucine zipper domain. While many AP-1 proteins also contain defined transcriptional activation domains: TADs), some consist only of a basic region and leucine zipper and are thought to function as inhibitors of AP-1 activity. We found that the AP-1 protein Batf, which lacks a TAD, is highly expressed in T helper cells compared to various other immune cells and tissues. IL-17-producing T helper: TH17) cells are a CD4+ T cell …

Professional Malpractice In A World Of Amateurs, Thomas D. Morgan

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

An increasing number of tasks once reserved to lawyers are now being performed by non-lawyers. That reality seems likely to continue. The question then becomes against what standard of performance such “amateur” practice should be assessed. One answer might be that a non-lawyer should be guilty of malpractice if the work is performed below the level of quality to which a lawyer would be held. This paper argues that the work should instead be judged against the standard of performance the non-lawyer purported to be able to deliver.