Digital Commons Network^™

A History Of Preferential Share In Ontario: Intestacy Legislation And Conceptions Of The Deserving Or Undeserving Widow, Louise M. Mimnagh

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Ontario’s current method for trying to ensure the fair distribution of an intestate’s estate, or the estate of an individual without a valid Last Will and Testament, is outlined in the Succession Law Reform Act. Specifically, section 45(1) outlines the foundational concept of a “preferential share,” which entitles the surviving spouse to a prescribed financial interest in the estate which is prioritized above all other heirs. The concept of a preferential share stands in sharp contrast with historical English common law methods of devolving intestate estates in which legal entitlements were heavily influenced by an individual’s gender and marital status. …

All Convictions Are Not The Same: Rethinking Cupe's Abuse Of Process Doctrine In Cases Involving Plea Bargains, Lara Kinkartz

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Historically, when a criminal conviction was introduced as evidence of guilt in a subsequent civil action, the convicted party was permitted to introduce rebuttal evidence to negate or mitigate the effect of the prior conviction. However, the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2003 decision in Toronto (City) v Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 79 has resulted in an unprecedented restriction on the ability to rebut a prior conviction. As a result of the CUPE decision, the doctrine of abuse of process now precludes rebuttal evidence in most cases. CUPE’s expanded abuse of process doctrine is troubling because, to date, …

Autonomous Weapons Systems: Taking The Human Out Of International Humanitarian Law, James Foy

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Once confined to science fiction, killer robots will soon be a reality. Both the USA and the UK are currently developing weapons systems that may be capable of autonomously targeting and killing enemy combatants within the next 25 years. According to Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention and customary international law, weapons systems must be capable of operating within the principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). This paper will demonstrate that without significant restrictions on the use of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) or the creation of a new legal framework, the use of AWS is problematic. First, there are …

A Case Study On The Legal Impacts Of Corporate Sustainability Pledges In The Alberta Oil Sands, Jeffrey Bone

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Suncor Energy Inc. is Canada’s largest oil and gas producer with significant operations in the Alberta oil sands. In its 2010 Sustainability Report, the corporation made several long-term environmental pledges. This paper confronts a hypothetical situation involving these environmental pledges. What if Suncor’s commitments prove to be effective from an environmental standpoint, but they become more costly from a financial perspective than Suncor anticipates? In accordance with their statutory fiduciary duties, Suncor directors have a choice to make between two options. First, the company could increase or maintain expenditures in order to meet these commitments. Second, the company could limit …

Grassroots Capitalism Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying About Financial Risk In The Exempt Market And Love Equity Crowdfunding, Marco Figliomeni

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Crowdfunding represents a successful grassroots response to the funding gap present in many independent creative projects. While it traditionally operates on the basis of donations and rewards, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) has proposed implementing equity crowdfunding, which would permit the online sale of corporate securities to retail investors. This paper posits that equity crowdfunding should be adopted in Ontario. The ensuing growth in capital markets will ultimately benefit the Canadian economy and, in particular, the entertainment sector. The OSC’s proposed regulatory framework for a crowdfunding prospectus exemption is a step in the right direction. The streamlined process makes it …

Reciprocity: Fair Trade Of Free Trade? Challenging American Electricity Regulation Under Nafta, Hugh Goodday

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Restructuring in the American electricity market by the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has had a pervasive effect on Canadian utilities and their provincial regulators. This article argues that FERC’s application of Order No. 888 and its market-based rate authorization to Canadian utilities violates the doctrine of national treatment, a core tenet of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and supplants the principle of free trade with the principle of fair trade. Order No. 888 effectively requires Canadian utilities that export electricity across American transmission systems to provide their American trading partners with reciprocal access on comparable …

Stories Of 0s: Transgender Women, Monstrous Bodies, And The Canadian Prison System, Allison Smith

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Prisons regulate identities and what rights get recognized and protected in a prison setting. Gender is a core element of identity that is policed by the prison system and by the law that governs prisons. Focusing on developments within Canadian transgender jurisprudence, this paper explores how prisoners’ bodies that do not conform to a strict gender binary are defined as inhuman. By critically assessing the prison system and prison policy, this essay demonstrates how Canadian law has often failed to address the needs and lived experiences of transgender women in their interactions with the penal system. As case law demonstrates, …

Complicating The Simple Probability Principle: Developing A New Approach To Probabilistic Reasoning In Personal Injury Litigation, Nayha Acharya

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Canadian courts use simple probability reasoning inconsistently in personal injury litigation, subjecting litigants to irregular legal principles and potentially improper compensation. Turning to foundational principles of tort litigation, I suggest a new framework for the availability of simple probability that would promote greater coherence. Simple probability reasoning is understood as an alternative standard of proof that enables compensation for a loss proportional to the likelihood that the loss will occur. Accordingly, the availability of simple probability is thought to depend on which types of facts (past vs. future vs. hypothetical facts) are amenable to balance of probabilities proof versus simple …

Administrative Employees Returning To An Academic Appointment As A Faculty Member Policy

Academic Affairs Policies

Addresses the issue of salary of administrative employee returning to an academic appointment as a faculty member.

Membership On Committees, Task Forces, And Councils

Academic Affairs Policies

The policy was implemented regarding the appointment of committees, task forces, and councils to promote effective communication within the University and to ensure proper assignments for personnel.

A Tale Of Two Rights, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In part I of this article the author identifies and criticizes a cluster of constitutional rights, which she argues does tremendous and generally unreckoned harm to civil society, and does so for reasons poorly articulated in earlier critiques. At the heart of the new paradigm of constitutional rights that the author believes these rights exemplify is a “right to exit.” On this conception of individual rights, a constitutional right is a right to “opt out” of some central public or civic project. This understanding of what it means to have a constitutional right hit the scene a good two decades …

Sacred Trust Or Sacred Right?, Jeffrey Shulman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This is the first chapter from The Constitutional Parent: Rights, Responsibilities, and the Enfranchisement of the Child (Yale University Press, 2014.)

It is commonly assumed that parents have long enjoyed a fundamental legal right to control the upbringing of their children, but this reading of the law is sorely incomplete. What is deeply rooted in our legal traditions is the idea that the state entrusts parents with custody of the child, and the concomitant rule that the state does so only as long as parents meet their legal duty to take proper care of the child. This book looks at …

Bond V. United States: Concurring In The Judgment, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Bond v. United States presented the deep constitutional question of whether a treaty can increase the legislative power of Congress. Unfortunately, a majority of the Court managed to sidestep the constitutional issue by dodgy statutory interpretation. But the other three Justices—Scalia, Thomas, and Alito—all wrote important concurrences in the judgment, grappling with the constitutional issues presented. In particular, Justice Scalia’s opinion (joined by Justice Thomas), is a masterpiece, eloquently demonstrating that Missouri v. Holland is wrong and should be overruled: a treaty cannot increase the legislative power of Congress.

Advocates, Federal Agencies, And The Education Of Children With Disabilities, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The aim of this essay, prepared for a symposium on dispute resolution in special education held at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in February 2014, is to highlight ways that advocates for children with disabilities can use federal agencies to improve the implementation and enforcement of federal laws protecting children with disabilities in schools—that is, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act as it relates to schools.

One can spend a lot of time engaging with the contemporary public conversation about the law surrounding …

Agency Enforcement Of Spending Clause Statutes: A Defense Of The Funding Cut-Off, Eloise Pasachoff

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article contends that federal agencies ought more frequently to use the threat of cutting off funds to state and local grantees that are not adequately complying with the terms of a grant statute. Scholars tend to offer four arguments to explain—and often to justify—agencies’ longstanding reluctance to engage in funding cut-offs: first, that funding cut-offs will hurt the grant program’s beneficiaries and so will undermine the agency’s ultimate goals; second, that federalism concerns counsel against federal agencies’ taking funds away from state and local grantees; third, that agencies are neither designed nor motivated to pursue funding cut-offs; and fourth, …

Public Health Emergencies: What Counts?, Lawrence O. Gostin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Vaccines and drugs to prevent and treat Ebola Virus Disease that have never been tested in humans, and in scarce supply raise profound ethical challenges. What if good evidence emerged demonstrating safety and efficacy of drugs? What would be an ethical method of allocating scarce beneficial resources? The apparent preference given to foreign aid workers over West Africans provoked a firestorm. In addition to discussing the ethical allocation of scarce drugs, this article also asks a more fundamental question: Why did it take nearly 40 years after the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 to launch clinical trials?

Future Of Undergraduate Geoscience Education: Summary Report For Summit On Future Of Undergraduate Geoscience Education, Sharon Mosher, Tim Bralower, Jacqueline Huntoon, Peter Lea, David Mcconnell, Kate Miller, Jeffrey G. Ryan, Lori Summa, Joshua Villalobos, Lisa White

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

A Method For Estimating Ice Mass Loss From Relative Insar Observations: Application To The Vatnajökull Ice Cap, Iceland, Wenliang Zhao, Falk Amelung, Timothy H. Dixon, Shimon Wdowinski, Rocco Malservisi

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

We present a new method for estimating ice mass loss from glaciers and ice sheets using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) time‐series data. We use a linear inversion method based on observations of nearby bedrock uplift and a solution for surface loading of an elastic half‐space. The method assumes that mass loss is focused on lower elevation terminal regions of the glacier or ice sheet, and that there is an exponential decrease in thinning rate toward the higher elevation interior. We apply the method to uplift rates between 1995 and 2009 near Vatnajökull, Iceland. The data reveal up to 13 …

Volatility Of The Utilities Industry: Its Causal Relationship To Other Nine Industries, Kuo-Hao Lee, Ahmed Y. Elkassabgi, Wei-Jen Hseih

Faculty Publications - The LeMoyne Smith School of Business

The goal of this study is to investigate the causality relationship between the Utilities industry and the nine other industries. Previous literatures show that volatility of stock prices is informative; Granger causality is applied in this research by using of a leveraged bootstrap test developed by Hacker and Hatemi-J (2006) to examine the behavior of the volatility. The results indicate that causality of the volatility of the Utilities industry on the volatility of seven other industries, except the Information Technology and Telecommunication Services industries. The data also suggest that Financials industry has impact on the Utilities industry.

The Influence Of Cognitive Trust And Familiarity On Adoption And Continued Use Of Smartphones: An Empirical Analysis, Efosa C. Idemudia, Mahesh S. Raisinghani

Faculty Publications - The LeMoyne Smith School of Business

In the information-driven and application rich environment of smartphones, power is closer to the user than ever before and it has the potential of helping them become more effective and efficient. Smartphones have become increasingly important for companies to create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for its stakeholders and improving efficiency. Technological advances in smartphones have led to increased mobile applications and implications for theory and practice since they create strategic opportunities and competitive advantage by adding value for customers and improving efficiency through the use of mobile technologies. Understanding the factors that influence the continuance in …

Uncovering The Reformation Roots Of American Marriage And Divorce Law, Judith C. Areen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In 1639, Massachusetts Bay colonists pressed Governor John Winthrop to adopt a “body of laws” that would restrict the considerable power that “rested in the discretion of magistrates.” Having survived both the transatlantic voyage and the rigors of the new world in their quest to establish a religious utopia away from the demands of church and state in England, the colonists were understandably loath to give their local officials unchecked power. Winthrop offered several reasons why the leaders of the colony opposed the request: the colonists did not yet have enough experience to develop laws appropriate for their new circumstances, …

What Would Zero Look Like? A Treaty For The Abolition Of Nuclear Weapons, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Nuclear disarmament-the comprehensive, universal, and permanent abolition of all nuclear weapons, pursuant to a verifiable, legally binding international agreement-has long been one of the most ambitious, controversial, and urgent items on the agenda for arms control. To date, however, most of the discussion of "getting to zero" has highlighted the political, military, technical and diplomatic dimensions of this complex problem, and there has been relatively little attention to the legal requirements for drafting such a novel treaty.

This Article fills that gap by offering two proposed agreements. The first, a non-legally-bindingfr amework accord, would be designedf or signature relatively soon …

An Inference About Interference: A Surprising Application Of Existing International Law To Inhibit Anti-Satellite Weapons, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article presents a thesis that most readers will find surprising, in an effort to develop a novel, simultaneous solution to three urgent, complex problems related to outer space. The three problems are: a) the technical fact that debris in outer space (the accumulated orbital junk produced by decades of space activities) has grown to present a serious hazard to safe and effective exploration and exploitation of space; b) the strategic fact that many countries (notably the United States, China and Russia, but others, too) continue to demonstrate a misguided interest in pursuing anti-satellite weapons, which can jeopardize the security …

Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact: Proposing A Treaty For The Renunciation Of Nuclear Wars As An Instrument Of National Policy, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article performs three functions. First, it offers a revisionist interpretation of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the much-maligned treaty through which the key powers of the era, led by the United States, undertook to “outlaw” war, renouncing it as a tool of national policy and committing themselves to resort exclusively to pacific means for the resolution of their international disputes. Because of Kellogg-Briand’s inability to prevent the outbreak of World War II, the treaty has been derided for decades as a futile, utopian illusion, but this article argues that it was, in fact, a tremendous success in altering states’ attitudes …

The Effects Of Offshoring On Judgment Quality In A Management Accounting Task, Daniel D. Selby

Accounting Faculty Publications

This study investigates the effects of offshoring on judgment quality in a management accounting context (i.e., capital budgeting). The effects of offshoring on judgment quality are understudied and might explain the ineffective and inefficient use of information in offshoring arrangements (Srikanth and Puranam, 2011). A 3x2 between-subject experiment was conducted where participants were assigned to one of three experimental conditions: onshore team, offshore team, or no team. Two dependent variables were measured for judgment quality: effectiveness and efficiency. My results suggest that offshoring may have detrimental effects on efficiency. However, I also find that offshoring does not affect effectiveness.

Releasing Information In Xbrl: Does It Improve Information Asymmetry For Early U.S. Adopters?, Marshall A. Geiger, David S. North, Daniel D. Selby

Accounting Faculty Publications

Information released in XBRL is intended to improve the quality and accessibility of SEC filings, leading to less information asymmetry in the equity market. Research findings on the effects of XBRL on information asymmetry in the US., however, are mixed. Kim et al. (2012) reports that XBRL reduces information asymmetry while Blankespoor et al. (2012) reports that XBRL increases information asymmetry. In contrast to these prior studies, we report that the answer as to whether XBRL affects information asymmetry is matter of firm size. In this study we examine shifts in two measures of information asymmetry for early adopters of …

A Comparative Analysis Of The National Cyber Security Strategies Of Leading Nations, Bilge Karabacak, Unal Tatar, Orhan Calik, Minhac Celik

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The rapid pace of technological developments in the area of information and communications technologies caused nations and peoples to be more reliant on cyber infrastructure to survive. Besides opportunities, the widespread use of information technology introduces new threats as well. Risks related to cyber security have started to threaten critical infrastructures, which are defined as assets that are essential for the functioning of a society and its economy. Cyber security has become one of the most serious national security concerns. In 2003 the United States was the first nation to prepare and publish a national cyber security strategy In the …

Mirabile Dictu: The Bryn Mawr College Library Newsletter 17 (2014), Bryn Mawr College Library

Mirabile Dictu: Newsletter of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries

No abstract provided.

Measuring Circuit Splits: A Cautionary Note, Aaron-Andrew P. Bruhl

Faculty Publications

A number of researchers have recently published new measures of the Supreme Court’s behavior in resolving conflicts in the lower courts. These new measures represent an improvement over prior, cruder approaches, but it turns out that measuring the Court’s resolutions of conflicts is surprisingly difficult. The aim of this methodological comment is to describe those difficulties and to establish several conclusions that follow from them. First, the new measures of the Court’s behavior are certainly imprecise and may reflect biased samples. Second, using the Supreme Court Database, which some studies rely on to assemble a dataset of cases resolving conflicts, …

Ison V. Google, California Court Of Appeals

Historical and Topical Legal Documents

No abstract provided.