Digital Commons Network^™

Digital Laws Evolve, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

The essay from Wired Magazine (UK)'s special volume, "The Wired World in 2015," argues that although digital laws have lagged behind technological advances, they are starting to catch up, and this trend will continue in 2015. When it comes to privacy and technology, the law is catching up all over the world.

Information Privacy Law Scholars' Brief In Spokeo, Inc. V. Robins, Neil M. Richards, Julie E. Cohen, Chris Jay Hoofnagle, William Mcgeveran, Paul Ohm, Joel R. Reidenberg, David Thaw, Lauren E. Willis

Scholarship@WashULaw

This brief, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States by 15 information privacy law scholars in the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (No 13-1339), argues that in enacting the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Congress crafted a bargain between aggressive, secretive data-aggregating businesses and the public: if those businesses limited disclosures and made reasonable efforts to adhere to practices ensuring “maximum possible accuracy,” they would enjoy a safe harbor from litigation under many other state and federal theories. The FCRA’s consumer transparency requirements and remedial provisions were designed to encourage steady improvement in consumer reporting practices and …

The Internet Grows Up?, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Danielle Citron’s Hate Crimes in Cyberspace is one of the most important publications to date in the emerging fields of privacy and cyberlaw. In her thoughtful and insightful book, Citron explains the uneven playing field and frequently shocking acts of abuse that women face online, and demonstrates practical steps that we can take to remedy the problem of online hate through law, education, and the development of better, more inclusive norms. Other contributors to this Symposium have examined these contributions in great detail, pointing out important nuances of Citron’s argument, urging her in at least one case to be even …

Why Data Privacy Law Is (Mostly) Constitutional, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Laws regulating the collection, use, and disclosure of personal data are (mostly) constitutional, and critics who suggest otherwise are wrong. Since the New Deal, American law has rested on the wise judgment that, by and large, commercial regulation should be made on the basis of economic and social policy rather than blunt constitutional rules. This has become one of the basic principles of American Constitutional law. Although some observers have suggested that the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Sorrell v. IMS Health (2011) changes this state of affairs, such readings are incorrect. Sorrell involved a challenge to a poorly-drafted Vermont …

The First Amendment's Public Forum, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The quintessential city park symbolizes a core feature of a democratic polity: the freedom of all citizens to express their views in public spaces free from the constraints of government imposed orthodoxy. The city park finds an unlikely cousin in the federal tax code’s recognition of deductions for contributions made to charitable, religious, and educational organizations. Together, these three categories of tax-exempt organizations encompass a vast array of groups in civil society.

The city park is a traditional public forum under First Amendment doctrine, and the charitable, educational, and religious deductions under the federal tax code function much like a …

Institutions In Context, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

This review of Paul Horwitz’s First Amendment Institutions applauds Horwitz’s call for us to take institutions and their contexts seriously. Horwitz shows why “acontextual” First Amendment thinking and doctrine lead to rigid formalism and missed opportunities. He enhances his argument with four nuanced chapters on specific institutions: universities, presses, churches, and libraries. These chapters bring to life our diverse institutions and their differences. It is less clear whether the descriptive differences that Horwitz highlights warrant the doctrinal differences that he advocates. In other words, even if Horwitz is right to call our attention to institutions, do his observations translate to …

"If You Is White, You's Alright....": Stories About Colorism In America, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines the inefficiencies of Missouri municipal courts that came into sharp focus following the killing of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Norwood details and expands on her lone dissent in the Final Report of the Municipal Division Work Group—a group created by the Missouri Supreme Court to address the alleged abuses of black and poor residents in Missouri. Norwood argues for consolidating failing municipal courts to create larger, more functional, and just courts.

Re-Assembling Labor, John D. Inazu, Marion G. Crain

Scholarship@WashULaw

Organized labor’s judicial, political, and public image is often associated with violence and anarchy. These descriptions are not spun out of whole cloth: violent uprisings that challenged the political and economic order were common in the early days of American labor unionism. But the assumptions underlying past judicial rhetoric and labor law doctrine have outlived their original context. Historical antecedents applied to modern protests like Fast Food Forward, OUR Walmart and the Occupy Movement yield troubling and inconsistent results.

Although these tensions have not gone unnoticed, scholarly commentary to date has overlooked the important connection between the collective, group-based nature …

Perceptions Of Taxing And Spending: A Survey Experiment, Conor Clarke, Edward Fox

Scholarship@WashULaw

This paper presents the results of an original survey experiment on whether the public prefers “tax expenditures” to “direct outlays” — that is, whether members of the public are more likely to support government spending that takes the form of a tax credit rather than a check or cash. Using a survey that spans a wide variety of policy areas — and with important variations in wording and information — we show that the public strongly prefers tax expenditures even when the “economic substance” of the proposed policies is identical. We also show that the public views tax expenditures as …

Measuring Clinical Legal Education's Employment Outcomes, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article examines evidence of a possible link between learning opportunities in law school and J.D. employment outcomes. It responds to a paper by Jason Yackee that finds, using 2013 data from top 100 ranked schools, “not much evidence” that law clinic opportunities are likely to improve a school’s graduates’ employment outcomes and suggesting that those opportunities may even harm employment prospects.

The Article reexamines Yackee’s methodological approach and then looks beyond both law clinics and his statistical models. The expanded empirical analysis finds it is not possible to draw any reliable conclusion from his models about the likely effects …

Ethics In Criminal Advocacy, Peter A. Joy, Ellen Yaroshefsky

Scholarship@WashULaw

Several ethics issues in criminal advocacy came to the forefront again in 2014. Although the U.S. Supreme Court did not decide important cases that cut across criminal law and the ethical obligations of defense counsel or prosecutors in 2014, there were still several other important developments and stories in the news. For example, decisions of prosecutors in Missouri and New York that they did not have a conflict of interest in considering charges against police officers in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both unarmed African America men, led to outcries of injustice and double-standards favoring police. In …

Creating The Environment For Entrepreneurship Through Economic Freedom, Joshua C. Hall, Robert A. Lawson, Saurav Roychoudhury

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

In this paper we argue that the ability of people to freely trade, enter into contracts, and start businesses in a system of private property and the rule of law is crucial for productive entrepreneurship. One measure of how freely individuals can engage in economic activity is the Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index. After examining the economic policies that harm economic freedom and possibly entrepreneurship, we highlight the correspondence between economic freedom and a number of measures of entrepreneurship. We conclude with some thoughts regarding future research involving economic freedom and entrepreneurship.

Was Adam Smith Right About Religious Competition?, Peter J. Boettke, Joshua C. Hall, Kathleen M. Sheehan

Economics Faculty Working Papers Series

Adam Smith famously argued that increased competition in religion would result in more religious tolerance and that the benefits of competition in the marketplace would also be seen in religious instruction when many religious sects are tolerated. We use a cross-section of a maximum of 167 countries to explore whether increased religious competition results in less governmental regulation of religion and less governmental favoritism of religion. Our measure of religious regulation and favoritism comes from the Association of Religion Data Archives. Our empirical analysis also explores the influence of economic and political factors, including the size of the economy, openness …

Within & Without: Singapore In The World; The World In Singapore, Eng Fong Pang, Arnoud De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Contents: We, the Citizens of Singapore by Priscilla Chia, Trenton James Riggs; Birth of a Nation: Ways of Celebrating by Celine Alexandra Fogde, Diana Khanh Nguyen, Paul Antoine Victor, Shu Chong Chen, Teo Yi Heng; Building Cross-cultural Bridges by Vani Shriya, Timoteo Marra, Svenja Nicole Schulte, Seow Guan Wen, Niklas Miro Utrobicic; Faces and Facets of Singapore by Felix Brockerhoff, Elizabeth Fong Lin, Kevin Ng Boon Kiat, Racheal Wong Shu Yi, Tam Zhi Yang; Missing the Forest for the (Super) Trees by Nick Chiam Zhi Wen, Teo Yi Heng; Singapore: The Country Where You Cannot Chew Gum? by Felix Brockerhoff; …

Establishing Hr Professionals' Influence And Credibility: Lessons From The Capital Markets And Investment Banking Sector, Paul Aldrich, Graham Dietz, Timothy Adrian Robert Clark, P.Eter Hamilton

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Through two separate studies involving 47 interviews inside 22 institutions in the capital markets and investment banking sector, we explore the levels of influence and sources of credibility for senior HR professionals, and examine the challenges they face in establishing credibility. We compare these findings against previous research, which has identified several determinants of HR's influence and credibility. Our findings confirm that HR's modest influence is contingent on the predispositions and convictions of key stakeholders, notably the CEO, but also depends on the decision being taken. We find that the basis for senior HR professionals' credibility is more individual than …

The Competency Pivot: Introducing A Revised Approach To The Business Communication Curriculum, Jacob D. Rawlins, Kristen Lucas

Faculty Publications

In this article, we outline a competency-based approach to teaching business communication. At the heart of this approach, classroom instruction, assignments, and evaluation center on a goals-oriented and receiver-centric understanding of communication in which students are taught strategies for meeting five core competencies of business communication: professional, clear, concise, evidence driven, and persuasive. This is not a reinvention of the curriculum but instead a pivot that positions existing disciplinary knowledge and best practices into a clear, memorable, and professionally oriented framework to help students build critical communication skills that can be applied strategically across a range of business situations.

Validation Of The Intermountain Patient Perception Of Quality (Ppq) Survey Among Survivors Of An Intensive Care Unit Admission: A Retrospective Validation Study, Samuel M. Brown, Glen Mcbride, Dave S. Collingridge, Jorie M. Buter, Kathryn G. Kuttler, Eliotte L. Hirshberg, Jason P. Jones, Ramona O. Hopkins, Daniel Talmor, James Orme

Faculty Publications

Background: Patients’ perceptions of the quality of their hospitalization have become important to the American healthcare system. Standard surveys of perceived quality of healthcare do not focus on the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) portion of the stay. Our objective was to evaluate the construct validity and internal consistency of the Intermountain Patient Perception of Quality (PPQ) survey among patients discharged from the ICU. Methods: We analyzed prospectively collected results from the ICU PPQ survey of all inpatients at Intermountain Medical Center whose hospitalization included an ICU stay. We employed principal components analysis to determine the constructs present in the PPQ …

"Green" Performance: The Future Of Performance-Based Executive Compensation?, Ben Schwefel

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

Although sustainability performance appears to be a logical extension of the traditional performance-based compensation model, the effect and result of such performance remains unclear and untested across the market. The adoption of broad-based sustainability performance measures may be dangerous because, often times, these measures are tailored to the corporation and may decrease total shareholder return in the short run. Regardless of whether or not the corporation decides to introduce these measures, their effect on total shareholder return and other corporate interests requires an individualized analysis.
Part II of this Comment discusses the current state of executive compensation, including the use …

Getting To Utility 2.0: Rebooting The Retail Electric Utility In The U.S., James M. Van Nostrand

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

This Article examines the drivers for this perceived need to revisit the utility business model, focusing primarily on the declining cost of DG resources and the resilience benefits of DG resources in addressing the impact of future extreme weather events. Second, this article reviews the various “Utility 2.0” proceedings underway across the United States, and the common themes emerging from those proceedings. The third section of the Article discusses the possible approaches to a utility business model, based on experience in wholesale and retail electricity markets in the United States and Europe. Fourth, this Article will examine lessons learned regarding …

Three Rules For Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers, Michael D. Cicchini

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Statistical Analysis And Modeling Of Information Diffusion Across Online Social Networks, Michael Piserchia

Open Access Master's Theses

In recent years, online social networks have become a very popular and effective forum for information exchange. These large, highly interconnected networks span the globe and have the ability to disseminate information in a fraction of the time it would take other communication networks. Given the myriad ways in which online social networks can be used, creating accurate, predictive models for the spread of information across them is very valuable. With that, modeling processes on large networks is a difficult task. It is computationally expensive, and usually prohibitive, to model a process on the entirety of a very large network. …

Epidemiology Of Puffy Snout Syndrome In Tuna, Taylor M. Voorhees

Open Access Master's Theses

The domestication of tuna species has proven to be one of the most challenging endeavours in aquaculture. Among the issues yet unresolved is the occurrence of ‘puffy snout syndrome,’ a condition in which tumor-like growths form on the head. Ultimately, vision and feeding are impaired and long-term afflictions typically result in mortality. Though few mentions of puffy snout exist in the literature, evidence suggests that it is not uncommon among facilities that hold tunas in captivity. The specific aims of this study were to: a) describe pathological features of puffy snout, and b) investigate its etiology through the evaluation of …

Pattern And Disorder: Anxiety And The Art Of Yayoi Kusama, Susanna S. Ferrell

Scripps Senior Theses

Yayoi Kusama is undoubtedly one of the most esteemed artists today, and yet she is continually written off as "crazy." Kusama's work draws not from insanity, but from her experiences with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and acts as a tool to both process and temper her obsessions and compulsions. In my own work, I reflect on the necessarily obsessive faculty of hand-drawn animation, in an effort to communicate the feeling of OCD.

Verification Of Ph Fluctuations In Narragansett Bay, Cathleen Turner

Open Access Master's Theses

In order to understand potential changes in pH driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, we first need to understand what controls pH and its variability in estuaries today. We measured total alkalinity, dissolved inorganic carbon, pH, temperature and salinity of samples taken hourly for 24 hours once a month at three sites in Narragansett Bay (2/2010 to 4/2011) to understand the controls on daily and seasonal pH variation: GSO, Greenwich Bay (GB), and Potter Cove (PC). We also measured in situ pH (pHe) and temperature every five minutes at the same sites and during the same time periods. Our calculations …

A Call For Bioregional Governance In Cascadia: Shaping An Ecological Identity In The Land Of Falling Waters, Molly D. Freed

Scripps Senior Theses

In recent years, as globalization has taken a toll on North Americans’ “sense of place,” there has been a swelling interest in the identification of bioregions: spaces delineated by their natural borders and shaped by the cultures that arise within them. Bioregionalism, the movement that arose from this scalar shift, emphasizes the “reinhabitation” of bioregions through a deep understanding and attachment between residents and their watershed and habitat. This thesis argues for a shift to bioregional-scale environmental governance in the Cascadian bioregion (the Pacific Northwest) via an interstate compact. Using the Great Lakes bioregion as a comparable case …

Adaptable Monsters: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Vampire Narrative As A Metaphor For Marginalized Groups, Alexa Wei

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis paper gives a brief history of the vampire narrative and its role in representing the collective anxieties of an age as well as serving as a metaphor for oppressed peoples. It uses Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla as historical examples of how the vampire adapts to suit issues of the day such as reverse colonization and female sexuality, respectively. The latter part of this paper speculates on the future role of the vampire in literature and proposes that the vampire could be used to discuss transgender issues as well as challenge the gender binary. …

Complementary Control Allocation For Over-Actuated Depth Control In Underwater Vehicles, William Snyder

Open Access Master's Theses

Some underwater vehicles utilize multiple types of depth actuators to achieve depth control to take advantage of desirable properties of each actuator in different situations. The Lagrangian Float developed at URI uses both a piston style variable buoyancy system (VBS) and a thruster to achieve depth control. The purpose of this work is to develop a single control system to intelligently balance actuation between the thruster and VBS that takes advantage of the properties of each actuator. A three part state feedback controller was developed. The controller calculates a control force, uses a pair of complementary filters to allocate the …

Long Live Bohatch: Why A Law Firm Partner Can Be Expelled For Following The Rules Of Professional Conduct, David A. Grenardo

MC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mentoring Case Studies In The Access And Civic Engagement Office, Technological University City, John Delap, Sinéad Mccann

Staff Articles and Research Papers

Abstract This is a collaborative paper by staff members working with Students Learning with Communities (SLWC) and the Access Service in the Access and Civic Engagement Office (ACE) at Technological University City (DIT). Through two case studies, this paper examines various types of mentoring operating within these two programmes, as well as identifying; 1) the purpose of each type of mentoring relationship, and its specific structure 2) the desired outcomes of the mentoring relationships and 3) areas in which mentoring relationships can grow. This paper aims to contribute to the development of best practice for mentoring in higher education.

Keywords: …

Introducing New Engineering Students To Mechanical Concepts Through An “Energy Cube” Project, Shannon Chance, Micheal O'Flaherty, Fionnuala Farrell, Christopher Montague

Conference papers

The objective of this paper is to describe a problem based learning module, called the “Energy Cube”, offered by Dublin Institute of Technology that is designed to teach mechanical, building services and manufacturing engineering concepts to first year engineering students.

The Energy Cube project gives students hands-on experience in areas ranging from heat transfer, lighting and energy efficiency to industrial and product design. In the Energy Cube, students design and construct (using cardboard, clear plastic, and glue) a model of a building that admits as much daylight as possible while being energy efficient and aesthetically pleasing.

The students, working in …