Digital Commons Network^™

The Punishment Of Gaza, Edward Sayre

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

An Ice-Core Pollen Record Showing Vegetation Response To Late-Glacial And Holocene Climate Changes At Nevado Sajama, Bolivia, C. A. Reese, K. B. Liu, L. G. Thompson

Faculty Publications

We present the results of pollen analysis performed on an ice core recovered from Nevado Sajama, Bolivia, dated to 25 ka BP. Low pollen concentrations from 25 to 15 ka BP are consistent with the scenario of an expanded ice cap surrounded by sparse vegetation and cold conditions on the Altiplano during the Last Glacial Maximum. After 15 ka BP, more pollen is present and percentages show vegetation response to climate fluctuations during the late Pleistocene. Initially, high concentrations of Poaceae pollen are replaced by Asteraceae pollen, suggesting the occurrence of dry conditions towards the end of the Bolling-Allerod/Guantiva interstadial. …

A Mixed Methods Study Of Maternal Competence And Self-Efficacy Theory In First-Time, Low-Income Mothers., Debra Copeland, Bonnie Lee Harbaugh

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Role Of Cost-Benefit Analysis In Criminal Justice Policy: A Response To The Imprisoner's Dilemma, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

With one in 100 adult Americans behind bars, and prison budgets consuming an increasing share of state budgets, few social policy issues compare in significance to the debate over which criminal offenders should be incarcerated and for how long. David Abrams' article, The Impriasoner's Dilemma: A Cost-Benefit Approach to Incarceration,' makes an important contribution to that debate, offering an economic approach to assessing the net benefits of holding or freeing prisoners on the incarceration margin. In this short Response, I first highlight several strengths of Abrams' piece and discuss the possible case that could be made for incorporating formal cost-benefit …

Transactional Drafting: Using Law Firm Marketing Materials As A Research Resource For Teaching Drafting, Edward R. Becker

Articles

Since I started teaching drafting, I would like to think that I have continued to learn some lessons about teaching both the substance and the skills of transactional drafting. One of those lessons that I am going to be talking about today is one that I stumbled across by happy accident rather than one that I consciously sought. Specifically, I want to talk about and highlight the ways that law students can use law firm marketing materials to increase their understanding of both drafting and lawyering skills in law school and, hopefully, in practice.

Did Booker Increase Sentencing Disparity? Why The Evidence Is Unpersuasive, Sonja B. Starr

Articles

The Sentencing Commission’s recent report on the effects of United States v.Booker makes a number of very worri- some claims.The most alarming is that the gap in sen- tences between otherwise similar Black and White men has nearly quadrupled: from 4.5 percent before Booker, to 15 percent after it, to 19.5 percent after United States v. Kimbrough and United States v.Gall. 1 The Commission further claims that interjudge disparity has increased in two-thirds of the federal districts, and that interdistrict variation has also increased.2 If its findings were accurate, and if these changes could be causally attributed to Booker and …

Prometheus Rebound: Diagnostics, Nature, And Mathematical Algorithms, Rebecca S. Eisenberg

Articles

The Supreme Court’s decision last Term in Mayo v. Prometheus left considerable uncertainty as to the boundaries of patentable subject matter for molecular diagnostic inventions. First, the Court took an expansive approach to what counts as an unpatentable natural law by applying that term to the relationship set forth in the challenged patent between a patient’s levels of a drug metabolite and the indication of a need to adjust the patient’s drug dosage. And second, in evaluating whether the patent claims add enough to this unpatentable natural law to be patent eligible, the Court did not consult precedents concerning the …

A Study Of Brian Bevelander's "Synthecisms No. 2" For Piano And Pre-Recorded Tape., Wei Tuck Chan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The mid-twentieth century marks an important time for electroacoustic music. The availability and commercialization of reel-to-reel magnetic tape changed the broadcast and recording landscape. Accessibility to magnetic tape gave composers easier means to edit pre-recorded sounds by employing various new compositional procedures. Interest in electroacoustic music in America grew after the introduction of works by Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto Luening in 1952. After that, electroacoustic music studios began being established throughout the country. Works for live instruments plus pre-recorded sounds began appearing in the late 1950s. Many of the works written for piano and pre-recorded sounds showcase various performance settings, …

Efficacy Of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy With Parents With Intellectual Disability., Karishma Chengappa

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Parents with intellectual disability are faced with the challenges of parenting as well as with having to deal with cognitive difficulties and limited financial and social supports. Deficits in parenting ability often are associated with poor child outcomes such as developmental delays, mental health concerns, neglect, and disruptive behavior disorders. Parents with intellectual disabilities frequently come under the scrutiny of child protective services for neglect and inadequate parenting and are often overrepresented in child maltreatment proceedings. When given systematic skills training using applied behavior analysis, these parents have been shown to improve a narrow range of basic child care skills. …

Plunging Into Endless Difficulties: Medicaid And Coercion In National Federation Of Independent Business V. Sebelius, Nicole Huberfeld, Elizabeth Weeks Leonard, Kevin Outterson

Faculty Scholarship

Of the four discrete questions before the Court in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Medicaid expansion held the greatest potential for destabilization from both a statutory and a constitutional perspective. As authors of an amicus brief supporting the Medicaid expansion, and scholars with expertise in health law who have been cited by the Court, we show in this article why NFIB is likely to fulfill that promise.

For the first time in its history, the Court held federal legislation based upon the spending power to be unconstitutionally coercive. Chief Justice Roberts’ plurality (joined for future voting purposes …

Small Business Disaster Assistance, Peggy Maisel, Natalie Roman

Faculty Scholarship

When a disaster hits, it affects the entire community. A small business is especially vulnerable because it does not necessarily have the resources to respond to a disaster or to catastrophic damage. In fact, it is reported that approximately 25 percent of small businesses that close due to a disaster never reopen, and 40 percent of small businesses hit directly by a serious natural disaster do not recover. This is true regardless of what kind of disaster is involved, from a hurricane, a tornado, an earthquake, flooding, winter storms, or even civil unrest or terrorism.
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Do Forensic Interviewing Methods Or The Presentation Of Research Findings Effect Juror's Perceptions Of Child Witnesses?, Pamela Tessier

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

It is not uncommon for children to be called to testify as eyewitnesses in court cases. In cases of child sexual abuse, children are often the only witness to the crime and are thus relied upon for truthful testimony in the case. Given a number of different forensic interviewing techniques, jurors may find themselves looking at some interview techniques as more credible and truth-inducing than others. This study aimed to find how much, if any, influence the type of interview used with the child has on the individual juror. It also aimed to assess the effect that presenting research findings …

Costume Design For Lend Me A Tenor., Alexandria Vazquez

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor, the audience is transported to the year 1934 and is given a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes antics that the employees of the Cleveland Grand Opera Company experience while preparing for a momentous performance of Otello with the famous Italian Tenor ‘Il Stupendo’, Tito Merelli. The study of this play’s historical context helped serve as the springboard for an original costume design to support the spirit of a farcical production at West Virginia University’s School of Theatre & Dance. Through an analysis of the social context, styles, and fashions of the time period and …

Chopped, Dropped & Rolled., Michael F. Loop

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis, in support of my exhibition, encompasses two of my passions; art and automobiles. In conjunction with my background in automotive restoration and backyard tinkering, I transform industrial materials, inherent to working on vehicles, (Bondo, automotive paint, hand-formed steel) into processes for art making. The pieces in this exhibition serve as an investigation into the process of making, while also paying homage to the canon of Modern and Postmodern art theories and practices, specifically Minimalism, Color Field painting, and Abstract Expressionism.

Beaumont Glass Site In Morgantown, Wv. Sustainable Urban Redevelopment Through Interpretive Design, Brownfield Reclamation And Mixed Uses., Maria Juliana Lloreda

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis project consists of a design approach to the former Beaumont Glass site and the adjacent sites, a total of 14.6 acres. The city of Morgantown and its downtown area are in need of demonstrations of sustainable development practices and mixed use design. The project design and development focus on site inventory and analysis, historic quality of the site, needs of the community, and stakeholder expectations. The applied design strategies are based on sustainable development, interpretive design, brownfield reclamation, phytoremediation technologies, and stormwater management. The vision of this project is the creation of an overall conceptual masterplan based on …

"Thir They Byen Thralls…" Chaucer's Boethian Poems And Usk's "Testament Of Love": Foundations Of English Prison Literature., Phillip Scott Dennis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Fourteenth-century English society bore witness simultaneously to a marked increase of dedicated prison spaces and a proliferation of imaginative writing in English. Volumes of study have focused on the social implications of carceral practice, and many studies have also been dedicated to the rapid development of English as a literary and philosophical vehicle in the late Middle Ages. This study seeks to bridge these areas of scholarship by focusing on the political implications of early English prison writing. Close readings of Chaucer's "Boethian texts and Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, matched for their close overlaps in subject matter, audience, dates …

Effects Of Stereotype Threat On Adolescents' Math And Visual-Spatial Performance., Lisa M. Didonato

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Recent research suggests that the gender gap in math performance is closing (Else-Quest, Hyde, & Linn, 2010; Hyde, Lindberg, Linn, Ellis, & Williams, 2008). However, negative stereotypes about girls’ math abilities are still widely held (Bhanot & Jovanovic, 2005; Bleeker & Jacobs, 2004). The gender gap in visual-spatial skills, or the ability to reason about and manipulate mental pictures, still exists in that boys outperform girls on visual-spatial tasks. The current study drew from literature on stereotype threat (i.e., the risk of confirming negative stereotypes about a specific group; Steele, 1997) to investigate the impact of negative math stereotypes on …

Mandatory Sentencing And Racial Disparity, Assessing The Role Of Prosecutors And The Effects Of Booker, Sonja B. Starr, M. Marit Rehavi

Articles

This Article presents new empirical evidence concerning the effects of United States v. Booker, which loosened the formerly mandatory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, on racial disparities in federal criminal cases. Two serious limitations pervade existing empirical literature on sentencing disparities. First, studies focus on sentencing in isolation, controlling for the “presumptive sentence” or similar measures that themselves result from discretionary charging, plea-bargaining, and fact-finding processes. Any disparities in these earlier processes are excluded from the resulting sentence-disparity estimates. Our research has shown that this exclusion matters: pre-sentencing decision-making can have substantial sentence-disparity consequences. Second, existing studies have used loose causal inference …

Development Of Hg1-Xcd Xse For 3rd Generation Focal Plane Arrays Using Molecular Beam Epitaxy., Kevin Doyle

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Hg1-xCd xSe grown on nearly lattice-matched GaSb substrates could serve as a new basis for infrared detector development. The preparation of the GaSb substrate surfaces and the growth of ZnTe1-xSex buffer layers via molecular beam epitaxy were investigated. ZnTe and ZnTe1- xSex layers were grown on GaSb substrates prepared with atomic hydrogen cleaning. The lattice constant of ZnTe1-xSex was tuned by controlling the ratio of Se/Te beam equivalent pressures, and ZnTe1- xSex was found to be lattice-matched to GaSb for x=0.01. Confocal photoluminescence measurements indicated that ZnTe0.99Se0.01 layers grown on GaSb have dislocation densities ∼7x104 cm-2, indicating that ZnTe0.99Se0.01/GaSb provides …

The Case For Online Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Frederic Stutzman

Faculty Scholarship

On the Internet, obscure information has a minimal risk of being discovered or understood by unintended recipients. Empirical research demonstrates that Internet users rely on obscurity perhaps more than anything else to protect their privacy. Yet, online obscurity has been largely ignored by courts and lawmakers. In this Article, we argue that obscurity is a critical component of online privacy, but it has not been embraced by courts and lawmakers because it has never been adequately defined or conceptualized. This lack of definition has resulted in the concept of online obscurity being too insubstantial to serve as a helpful guide …

Making Law Out Of Nothing At All: The Origins Of The Chevron Doctrine, Gary S. Lawson, Stephen Kam

Faculty Scholarship

For more than a quarter of a century, federal administrative law has been dominated by the so-called Chevron doctrine, which prescribes judicial deference to many agency interpretations of statutes. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.,2 for which the doctrine is named, has become the most cited case in federal administrative law, and indeed in any legal field, 3 and the scholarship on Chevron could fill a small library.4 Love it5 or hate it,6 Chevron virtually defines modern administrative law.

Even after almost thirty years and thousands of recitations, unanswered questions about this Chevron framework abound. Does this …

Convention Violations And Investment Claims, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

In theory, treaty commitments remain a foundation of international law, often expressed in the adage pacta sunt servanda: ‘agreements are to be kept’.1 In practice, however, some treaty violations remain without realistic sanctions. Here as elsewhere, the divergence between theory and practice remains greater in practice than in theory.

The Executive Right To Lease Mineral Real Property In Texas Before And After Lesley V. Veterans Land Board., Christopher S. Kulander

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Deceiving Law Students: Employment Statistics And Tort Liability., Angie Roberts-Huckaby

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

To A Professor: Douglas Haddock Retires., Charles Epps Ipock

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

New Oil And Old Laws: Problems In Allocation Of Production To Owners Of Non-Participating Royalty Interests In The Era Of Horizontal Drilling., Benjamin Holliday

St. Mary's Law Journal

Oil and gas exploration and production is not only a big business, it is also an expensive one. As with any business, when faced with competing alternatives, operators generally prefer to pursue exploration in areas with more stable and predictable legal environments. Efforts have previously been made to make Texas such an environment, but as technology advances, legal rules often become unclear in their application. The explosion in horizontal drilling activity is challenging the courts and the Texas Railroad Commission to apply and adapt traditional legal and regulatory concepts to horizontal wells. The growing dominance of horizontal well development is …

Plugging The School-To-Prison Pipeline By Improving Behavior And Protecting Core Judicial Functions: A Constitutional Crisis Looms., Patrick S. Metze

St. Mary's Law Journal

The consolidation of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC) into the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) in 2011, produced a unified state juvenile justice agency to promote public safety first and to produce positive outcomes for youth, families, and communities second. As Professor Metze’s second paper discussing ways to effect a change in the School-to-Prison Pipeline, he first highlights the progress of TJJD’s use of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in the Texas juvenile correctional context as continued evidence that such techniques, if effective in the correctional setting, will certainly work in the …

Texas Legislative Implications For Minors Accused Of Sexting., Mallory N. Myers

St. Mary's Law Journal

State legislation criminalizing sexting—the possession or electronic transmission of visual material capturing a minor engaged in sexual conduct—should not punish minors similarly to adults. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006 (Walsh Act) in conjunction with the Sex Offender Registration & Notification Act (SORNA), require that any individual, including a minor, convicted of child pornography register as a sex offender. As a result, states with legislation that categorize sexting as child pornography, will require a minor with a sexting conviction to register as a sex offender. This disportionate punishment on the minor will make it difficult for …

Water Can Be For Drinking Again: Economic And Collaborative Solutions To A Texas Water Fight., Aaron Culp

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract Forthcoming.

Motivation Matters: Guideline 10.13 And Other Mechanisms For Preventing Lawyers From Surrendering To Self-Interest In Responding To Allegations Of Ineffective Assistance In Death Penalty Cases, Tigran W. Eldred

Faculty Scholarship

Defense lawyers whose clients are sentenced to death are virtually guaranteed to be accused of ineffective assistance of counsel. The question is how they will respond. On one hand, lawyers alleged to be ineffective are obligated under Guideline 10.13 of the American Bar Association’s Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases to continue to safeguard the interests of their former clients, a duty that includes full cooperation in appropriate legal strategies chosen to pursue the ineffectiveness claim. On the other hand, lawyers who are accused of ineffectiveness often react defensively to the allegation, reflexively …