Digital Commons Network^™

Intelligent Design And Judicial Minimalism: Further Thoughts On The 'Is It Science?' Question, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

A few years ago, at a conference on religion in the public schools sponsored by the First Amendment Law Review at the University of North Carolina, I argued that although I thought Judge Jones' opinion in Kitzmiller' was mostly correct, the judge erred by deciding that Intelligent Design (ID) is not science. Although I continue to believe that teaching ID in public schools is unconstitutional-I have argued this point for a dozen years and will not reiterate my reasoning here -I also continue to agree with my original assessment of the judge's treatment of the so-called "is it science?" question. …

Pharmaceutical Innovation: Law & The Public's Health, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

At last count, global pharmaceutical spending exceeded $750 billion. Unlike most medical products and services, many pharmaceuticals are sold at a price that greatly exceeds marginal cost. AIDS medicines that retail for over $10,000 per person per year in the United States can be produced generically at a marginal cost of less than $150. Patents and other related IP rights create these significant gaps between marginal cost and retail price, generating many billions of dollars in profits (patent rents) for companies.

Defining Health Law Or The Edgewood Syndrome, Paula Lobato De Faria, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

The authors' main purpose is to present ideas on defining Health Law by highlighting the particularities of the field of Health Law as well as of the teaching of this legal branch, hoping to contribute to the maturity and academic recognition of Health Law, not only as a very rich legal field but also as a powerful social instrument in the fulfillment of fundamental human rights. The authors defend that Health Law has several characteristics that distinguish it from traditional branches of law such as its complexity and multidisciplinary nature. The study of Health Law normally covers issues such as …

A Framework For Data Decay In Client-Server Model, Matthew Taber

Theses

Data breach incidents are a growing concern in both the private and public sector. As an increasing amount of sensitive information is made available through information systems, the number of occurrences and the potential damage as a result of these breaches will continue to expand. There is a clear need for a framework to mitigate the dangers of leaking data while simultaneously allowing authorized individuals to gain access to necessary information. This thesis presents the concept of data decay, applied to a client-server model for retrieval of sensitive data. In this framework, files tagged by the framework and stored on …

The Impact Of Sovereign Wealth Funds On The Regulation Of Foreign Direct Investment In Strategic Industries: A Comparative View, Maya Steinitz, Michael Ingrassia

Faculty Scholarship

Investments by sovereign wealth funds ('SWFs') - pools of capital accumulated by and under the control of sovereign states, mostly from the Persian Gulf and East Asia - in European and North American companies have changed dramatically both in scope and in nature in the last few years. In terms of scope, SWFs are estimated to currently control USD$2-3 trillion in assets - more than all hedge funds and private equity funds combined - and within the next five years, they are expected to direct USD$6-10 trillion in assets.' In terms of the nature of the investments made, these funds …

Islam’S Fourth Amendment: Search And Seizure In Islamic Doctrine And Muslim Practice, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

Modern scholars regularly assert that Islamic law contains privacy protections similar to those of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Two Quranic verses in particular - one that commands Muslims not to enter homes without permission, and one that commands them not to 'spy' - are held up, along with reports from the Traditions (Sunna) that repeat and embellish on these commands, as establishing rules that forbid warrantless searches and seizures by state actors and require the exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of these rules. This Article tests these assertions by: (1) presenting rules and doctrines Muslim jurists …

Shelter From The Storm: An Analysis Of U.S. Refugee Law As Applied To Tibetans Formerly Residing In India, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Supporting Attorney’S Personal Skills, Marjorie A. Silver

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Sprawl In Europe And America, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

Defenders of suburban sprawl assert that sprawl is inevitable in affluent societies, based on trends in Western Europe. According to supporters of this Inevitability Theory, European cities have decentralized and become more car-dependent, thus proving that even where governments are more aggressively anti-sprawl than American government, anti-sprawl policies will be futile.

This Article compares Western Europe to the United States, and criticizes the Inevitabilty Theory on the grounds that:

(1) Europe is in fact far less automobile-dependent than the United States;
(2) Europe has not, contrary to the Inevitability Theory's claims, become more car-dependent and suburbanized in recent years; and …

Community Benefits Agreements And Comprehensive Planning: Balancing Community Empowerment And The Police Power, Patricia E. Salkin, Amy Lavine

Scholarly Works

Traditionally, the states have empowered local governments to develop plans and implement regulations for neighborhood and community development. When accomplished at the local or regional level, the interests and benefits of the community as a whole are to be weighed against the detriments to individuals. Much has been studied and written about the lack of meaningful public participation in the planning and land use regulatory process, suggesting that often low-income and minority communities are not fully engaged in the process, even when it may result in decisions negatively impacting their neighborhoods. Case studies have also shown that governments are sometimes …

New York Climate Change Report Card: Improvement Needed For More Effective Leadership And Overall Coordination With Local Government, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

New York ranks eight out of the 50 states in terms of carbon emissions. While the State government is just beginning to enact meaningful programs and incentives to encourage municipal policies and actions that will reduce the impact of local decisions on our carbon footprint, a number of local governments across the State have already been at work developing and adopting "greening" strategies, policies and regulations. While the New York State Bar Association has released for comment a report of its Task Force on Global Warming which documents an impressive two-dozen current state-level laws and programs on climate change, the …

Linking Land Use With Climate Change And Sustainability Topped State Legislative Land Use Reform Agenda In 2008, Patricia E. Salkin

Scholarly Works

Linking land use with climate change and sustainability topped state legislative land use reform agenda in 2008. The only discernible state land use reform trends in 2008 have focused primarily on themes surrounding sustainability. Many states pursued statutory reforms to address the strong linkages between land use and climate change, green development and affordable housing. Only one state, Michigan, focused on recodification of its planning and zoning enabling acts.

Mobile Web Resource Tracking During A Disaster Or Crisis Situation, Phavanhna Douangboupha

Theses

This paper proposes a prototype solution for a mobile web resource tracking system using mobile devices during an emergency situation. The system provides real time data to a decision maker so that he/she can effectively and efficiently monitor resources and assess the situation accordingly. Mobile devices (i.e., smart phones) support the ease of use for any location and at anytime. The Internet technology is selected to enable multiple or cross platform technology solutions for different mobile devices. Resources in the scope of this project are human resources (e.g., a doctor, a police officer) and a chemical list in a room. …

Scientific Visualizations, Nick Kochakian

Theses

Visualizations for three different categories of problems are presented: measurements of object parameters as they vary over time, constructing surfaces from unorganized sets of points, and representing the internal structure of volumes using isosurfaces. Problem backgrounds are discussed as well as the operational details of each visualization. Visualizations were written with ease of use in mind for Spiegel, a programmable visualization environment.

Towards Virtual Machine Integrity Using Introspection, Sammy Lin

Theses

The Integrity Measurements Architecture (IMA) provides attestation and integrity for Linux hosts. But what if an administrator wants to provide IMA functionality to an older (non-IMA capable) or a non Linux-based OS? If the system is deployed on top of a hypervisor, IMA functionality can be provided at the hypervisor level. This paper applies Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) to provide IMA functionality to virtualized guest OSes. We implement a proof of concept library (using a shallow shadow filesystem) and integrate it with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. The modifications provide the Linux host OS the ability to see when …

Data Center Design & Enterprise Networking, Christian Mahood

Theses

Today’s enterprise networks and data centers have become very complex and have completely integrated themselves into every facet of their represented organization. Organizations require Internet facing services and applications to be available at any part of the day or night. These organizations have realized that with centralized computing and highly available components, their technological presence with customers can be greatly enhanced. The creation of an infrastructure supporting such high availability takes numerous components and resources to function optimally. When an organization makes the decision to design a data center, they utilize resources to provide insight into what components to deploy. …

Assessing Instructional Strategies At Barbados Community College Hospitality Institute In A Dynamic Global Environment, Juiann Young-Lovell

Theses

Today, there are educational institutions whose offerings highlight the value of a blended learning experience. Such organizations design their curricula to enhance students' knowledge, skills and attitudes. These institutions integrate several elements into the learning experience. The subject mater is taught, provision is made for students to practice and this all takes place in the traditional or virtual classroom or in a real world setting. Instructional practice is the bridge between the student and the teacher. At the Barbados Community College Hospitality Institute (BCCHI), there is no evidence that the faculty has conducted formal assessment of the organisation's instructional practices …

Analytical Jurisprudence And The Concept Of Commercial Law, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Commercial lawyers working across borders know that globalization has changed commercial law. To think of commercial law as only the law of states is to have an inadequate understanding of the norms governing commercial transactions. Some have argued for a transnational conception of commercial law, but their grounds of justification have been unpersuasive, often grounded on claims about the common content among national legal systems. Legal positivism is a rich literature on the concept of a legal system and the validity conditions for rules in legal systems, but it has not been used to understand legal order outside or beyond …

When Does Might Make Right? Using Force For Regime Change, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Should states use force to bring about regime change? International law recognizes no such grounds. This paper seeks to provide guidance from moral theory. The aim of this paper is to identify the moral grounds for the use of armed force by one state or a group of states, against another state, when the intention of the intervening states is to achieve a fundamental change in the character of the political and legal institutions of the other state. Lawyers tend to place the argument for regime change intervention within putative humanitarian intervention doctrines. The moral justification for humanitarian intervention is …

Exploring The Impact Of The Marriage Amendments: Can Public Employers Offer Domestic Partner Benefits To Their Gay And Lesbian Employees?, Tiffany C. Graham

Scholarly Works

Over the course of the past decade, the question of same-sex marriage has been one of the most contentious issues affecting this country. Starting in 1998, forty-five states prohibited the creation or recognition of same-sex marriage, and thirty states solidified their positions through the passage of state constitutional amendments. Eighteen of these amendments extended their prohibitions even farther by refusing to create or recognize civil unions, domestic partnerships, or any other alternative to traditional marriage that was patterned after marriage. It is this last group of amendments that poses a potentially intractable problem: Is the language employed by these amendments …

Torture, Necessity, And Supreme Emergency: Law And Morality At The End Of Law, Zachary R. Calo

Scholarly Works

This paper employs Michael Walzer's concept of "Supreme Emergency" to address the permissibility of torture under conditions of necessity. It proposes moving beyond both utilitarian and deontological approaches to legal authority in order to understood necessity as a moral category. A full account of right action under conditions of necessity therefore demands taking account of the distinct yet cooperative function provided by legal and moral norms. A political official might therefore possess moral but not legal warrant to act in contravention of binding legal norms. Preserving the validity of law is essential to the economy of social reconstitution in the …

Designing Foreign Tax Credit Rules In China: The Case Of Foreign Loss Limitations, Wei Cui

All Faculty Publications

Over the last few years, China’s large trade surplus against other countries, as well as its high domestic savings rate even relative to its high investment rate, have resulted in a very substantial foreign currency reserve that puts the country in the position of a significant capital exporter. The huge amount of foreign currency assets held by the Chinese government— near $1.9 trillion at the end of 2008 — and a breathtaking series of acquisitions made by Chinese firms overseas are now salient items in international business reporting and public discussion. China’s new posture as an exporter of capital has …

Implementing Qr Code Technology In Medical Device Pacakage, Manu Chakravarthy Kittanakere Naagaraj

Theses

The medical device industry strives to improve the delivery of key device information

through the package to patients, doctors and end users. To achieve this goal Indications For Use (IFU) and user manuals have been major tools and are necessary components required in Medical Device Package according to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards.

Historically there have been challenges caused by packaging information materials aspects

such as manufacturing, transportation and translation. The need for extensive packaging and labelling has ultimately contributed to increased cost of manufacturing for devices. It is also important to know what information a customer needs and …

Shear Stress Distribution And Hemolysis Measurements In A Centrifugal Blood Pump, Matthew Nicholson Giarra

Theses

The use of computational fluid dynamics (CFO) to predict red blood cell trauma (hemolysis) in blood pumps based on their exposure to turbulent stresses has increased in recent years. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has initiated a project to determine the fidelity with which modern CFO can accurately predict hemolysis in such devices. The project involves the collection of experimental data against which externally-conducted CFO simulations may be compared. Because the data will be used to judge the ability of CFO to predict hemolysis, the pump was designed to cause more turbulence and blood damage than would be …

Pragmatic Selective Waiver: Re-Aligning Corporate Executives' Personal Interests With Those Of The Corporation Amidst Government Investigations, Erin M. Carter

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the corporate setting, government investigators increasingly ask corporations to waive the attorney-client privilege as part of the "cooperation" necessary to receive incentives. In practice, however, these cooperation incentives have led to what has become known as a "culture of waiver," where waiver of the privilege in the face of investigation has become virtually essential. One way courts have sought to diminish the negative externalities of waiver is through the doctrine of selective waiver. Selective waiver allows the corporation to waive the attorney-client privilege, but only to the government agency during the course of the investigation, while still retaining the …

Attorneys, Accountants, And Bankers, Oh My! Primary Liability For Secondary Actors In The Wake Of "Stoneridge", Robert J. Grubb

Vanderbilt Law Review

Mervin "Buddy" Schwartz, Jr., embodied the American Dream. A Pennsylvania resident, Schwartz began working for Hershey Foods in 1961 as a maintenance mechanic.' He eventually became a member of the local union's executive board. A hard worker providing for his family, Schwartz had a thirteen-year perfect attendance record and often worked overtime. He even managed to attend night classes and obtained an associate's degree in Bible studies.

Lacking any financial training, Buddy Schwartz relied on the retirement plan and 401k5 Hershey provided for his retirement. Because he contributed the maximum allowable amount out of each paycheck to his 401k, he …

Effects Of Telepresence Light Height And Ambient Light On Glare And Appearance, James P. Beno

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Sheaf Catalogs Of George John Spencer, Larissa C. Brookes

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Stigmatization Of Iraq Veterans With Ptsd, Depression, Or Chronic Back Pain, Melissa Daoud

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Dietrich And Sternberg : From Cabaret Performance To Feminist Empowerment, Elizabeth Anne Taylor

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.