Digital Commons Network^™

Explaining Inhumanity: The Use Of Crime-Definition Experts At International Criminal Courts, Caroline Davidson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

International criminal courts must not only decide the guilt or innocence of defendants in immensely serious cases, but also make good law in the process. To help them do so, these courts have turned to experts. This Article identifies a type of expert witness that, thus far, has escaped scholarly attention: the crime-definition expert. Crime-definition experts have provided expert reports and testimony to international criminal courts on the meaning of the very crimes with which defendants are charged, including genocide, forced marriage, and recruitment and use of child soldiers. This Article critically evaluates the risks associated with using crime-definition experts …

Functions Of Freedom: Privacy, Autonomy, Dignity, And The Transnational Legal Process, Frederic G. Sourgens

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

What is the function of freedom for the transnational legal process? This Article answers this question through the lens of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and the deeply inconsistent international legal arguments presented by each side of the conflict. These inconsistencies suggest that criticism of international law as purely political pretense has merits. The Article shows that transnational legal process theory can account for and incorporate these facial inconsistencies and thus address the criticism leveled at international law. The Article proceeds to develop a theory of freedom as a value that is internal to, and necessary for, transnational legal process. This …

Agreement In Principle: A Compromise For Activist Shareholders From The Uk Stewardship Code, David W. Roberts

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Equity ownership in the United States and Europe is now highly concentrated in the hands of institutional investors, which gives rise to new problems of agency and corporate governance. These large investment intermediaries, such as mutual funds, specialize in maximizing beneficial owner value based on short-term performance benchmarks but lack the expertise and incentive to actively engage corporate boards on business strategy and governance matters. Instead, institutional investors are "rationally reticent," meaning that they are willing to respond to governance proposals but not to propose them. Activist shareholders may offer an endogenous solution to address "latent activism" in institutional intermediaries …

Alternate Judges As Sine Qua Nons For International Criminal Trials, Megan A. Fairlie

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

When one of the three judges hearing the case against Vojislav Seselj at the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was disqualified during the deliberations phase of the prosecution, many observers assumed that the multi-year trial would have to be re-heard. Instead, the ICTY opted to begin deliberations anew once a judge--who had not spent a single day participating in the proceeding--had familiarized himself with the trial record. This Article demonstrates why the plan to proceed with a new judge in Seselj's case was both procedurally illegitimate and markedly at odds with the ICTY's statutory guarantee of a fair …

The Faults In "Fair" Trials: An Evaluation Of Regulation 55 At The International Criminal Court, Margaux Dastugue

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Despite its reputation as a "provision of an exceptional nature," Regulation 55 has become one of the most contested procedural devices employed by the judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Hailing from civil law tradition, Regulation 55 permits the ICC to modify the charges against an accused at any time--either during or after the trial--if the judiciary decides it cannot convict the accused on the original charges. This use of Regulation 55 in three of the ICC's seven trials has demonstrated that the ICC cannot effectively safeguard a defendant's fundamental trial rights: the right to be informed of charges, …

Confused, Frustrated, And Exhausted: Solving The U.S. Digital First Sale Doctrine Problem Through The International Lens, Alandis K. Brassel

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Users worldwide enjoy digital goods such as music and e-books on a daily basis. They have become a major part of people's lives, with uses ranging from lighthearted entertainment to serious educational pursuits. In many cases, convenience and affordability make digital goods more preferable than their analog counterparts. However, users often cannot use digital goods as freely as they would analog goods. Courts, legislation, and businesses prohibit those users, accustomed to reselling unwanted hard-copy books or vinyl records, from reselling digital books and music. This confuses users as to what they can actually do with their digital goods. This Note …

Judges As Guardian Angels: The German Practice Of Hints And Feedback, Robert W. Emerson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The German practice of Richterliche Hinweispflicht is a judicial duty to give hints and feedback. In a very proactive position, the German judge asks questions of the parties designed to clarify and sharpen the key facts and issues and to give the parties a chance to correct matters that may be grounds for disposition. German judges also must ensure that the parties understand all matters that could affect the outcome of the case. In effect, the German judge's roles may be viewed as civil servant, teacher, and activist, rather than as umpire and overseer, as in the United States.

American …

Nuclear Power, Risk, And Retroactivity, Emily Hammond

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster presented a familiar scenario from a risk perception standpoint. It combined a classic" dread risk" (radioactivity), a punctuating event (the disaster itself), and resultant stigmatization (involving world wide repercussions for nuclear power). Some nuclear nations curtailed nuclear power generation, and decades-old opposition to nuclear power found a renaissance. In these circumstances, risk theory predicts a regulatory knee-jerk response, potentially resulting in inefficient overregulation. But it also suggests procedural palliatives that conveniently overlap with administrative law values, making room for the engagement of the full spectrum of stakeholders. This Article sketches the U.S. regulatory response to …

Illegally Evading Attribution? Russia's Use Of Unmarked Troops In Crimea And International Humanitarian Law, Ines Gillich

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Crimean Crisis of February and March 2014 poses several questions to International Law. This Article explores one of them: Does the use of unmarked troops, soldiers in uniforms but without nationality insignia, in Crimea violate principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL)?

This Article first provides a brief summary of Crimea's history and the facts of the 2014 Crimean Crisis. It will be argued that IHL is applicable to the events in Crimea in February and March 2014 since the unmarked soldiers are attributable to Russia--either as Russian nationals or through Russia's exercise of control over them--and that there was …

Structural Tax Exceptionalism, James M. Puckett

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that it is misleading to declare the death of tax exceptionalism and that structural tax exceptionalism may have important benefits. Part II provides a brief historical overview of the rise of federal agency administration of statutes and especially tax laws. The history trends to detract from anti-tax and anti-agency rhetoric that counsel disempowering the Treasury Department and other administrative agencies from comprehensively enforcing laws and making policy in their relevant domains. Part III analyzes how the Code's structure for tax administration differs from the APA template for administrative agencies. Part IV deconstructs these differences, drawing from general …

The Price Of Paid Prioritization: The International And Domestic Consequences Of The Failure To Protect Net Neutrality In The United States, Arturo J. Carrillo, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article examines the international trade and human rights obligations of the United States as they relate to net neutrality to determine the extent to which the approach adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2015 to promote an open Internet complies with those obligations. In March of that year, the FCC adopted new rules to promote and protect an open Internet that, inter alia, reclassified broadband providers as common carriers subject to nondiscrimination obligations and codified strong net neutrality protections. The authors argue that the 2015 FCC Order, contrary to its predecessors, largely meets the requirements of the …

Faces And Figures Of Fortune: Astrological Physiognomy In Tamburlaine Part 1., Vanessa I. Corredera

Faculty Publications

When articulating the relationship between man and the world around him (or her), George Peele imagines man as a canvas, a 'picture' of the universe, a microcosm whose makeup carries the 'face' or the viewable surface of the macrocosm. Peele's statement perfectly encapsulates the early modern belief in signatures and correspondences, in which 'Individual objects on earth...contain the signature of the heavenly bodies to which they supposedly correspond'. By envisioning man as a 'picture', Peele conceives of the universe as readily legible upon the human body. In his discussion of the history of signatures and correspondences in The Order of …

Wireless Networking For Vehicle To Infrastructure Communication And Automatic Incident Detection, Sarwar Aziz Sha-Mohammad

Computer Science Theses & Dissertations

Vehicular wireless communication has recently generated wide interest in the area of wireless network research. Automatic Incident Detection (AID), which is the recent focus of research direction in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), aims to increase road safety. These advances in technology enable traffic systems to use data collected from vehicles on the road to detect incidents. We develop an automatic incident detection method that has a significant active road safety application for alerting drivers about incidents and congestion. Our method for detecting traffic incidents in a highway scenario is based on the use of distance and time for changing lanes …

The Pneumatic Common: Learning In, With And From The Air, Derek R. Ford

Education Studies Faculty publications

Air is an immersive substance that envelopes us and binds us together, yet it has dominantly been taken for granted and left out of educational and other theorizations. This article develops a conceptualization of the pneumatic common in order to address this gap. The specific intervention staged is within recent educational literature on the common by Noah De Lissovoy, Tyson E. Lewis, and Alexander Means. This literature is surveyed and analyzed in relation to educational theory, curriculum, pedagogy, and policy. Claiming that the air is a central feature of and paradigm for the common, I then concentrate on making the …

Global Analysis Of Gene Expression And Projection Target Correlations In The Mouse Brain, Ahmed Fakhry, Tao Zeng, Hanchuan Peng, Shuiwang Ji

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Recent studies have shown that projection targets in the mouse neocortex are correlated with their gene expression patterns. However, a brain-wide quantitative analysis of the relationship between voxel genetic composition and their projection targets is lacking to date. Here we extended those studies to perform a global, integrative analysis of gene expression and projection target correlations in the mouse brain. By using the Allen Brain Atlas data, we analyzed the relationship between gene expression and projection targets. We first visualized and clustered the two data sets separately and showed that they both exhibit strong spatial autocorrelation. Building upon this initial …

Applying Patent-Eligible Subject Matter Restrictions, Jonas Anderson

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The US Supreme Court’s difficulty in promulgating a standard for patent-eligibility has not gone unnoticed in the academy. Hundreds of academic conferences, including this one, have been devoted to the topic. The goal of this Article is not to solve the seemingly intractable problem of patent-eligibility doctrine. The goal of this Article is rather more modest. Instead of normatively assessing patent-eligible subject matter doctrine, this Article seeks to identify which foundational theories of patent-eligible subject matter can most readily be applied by courts and the US Patent and Trademark Office via Section 101. In doing so, this Article categorizes the …

A Description Analysis Of Disciplinary Cases Of Law Enforcement Officers In The State Of Florida Over A Ten-Year Period, Brian V. Frank

Graduate Student Dissertations, Theses, Capstones, and Portfolios

A distrust of government is as old as the country itself. Police officers hold a great deal of power, as they have the ability to take the one thing the American people hold sacred: freedom. Ethical violations by police officers enrage the public and cause great concern for law enforcement administrators. Past research has focused on the individual aspects within law enforcement along with criminological and sociological theories. The most recent research in law enforcement ethics shows fragmentation and a lack of standardization within the areas of screening, training, and managing for integrity. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, …

Application Of Damage Mechanics To Describe The Behavior Of Concrete Under Fatigue And Freeze-Thaw Processes, Ashkan Saboori

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Concrete has been used in dams, bridges, and highway pavements in which freeze-thaw process and cyclic loading are important factors affecting its mechanical behavior. Damage caused by frost expansion is a primary concern when designing concrete structures in cold regions. The onset of damage within concrete can be accelerated when a freeze-thaw cycle occurs while a structure is subjected to an external loading. Also, concrete under fatigue loading gradually loses its strength with an increase in the number of load cycles. It is widely accepted that concrete shows more flexible behavior under freeze-thaw process and fatigue loading due to wide-spread …

Damage Localization Of Slab-On-Girder Bridges Through Vibration Characteristics, Michael Andrew Telste

Civil and Environmental Engineering

An incompletely documented bridge 09-125-16 in Cass County, ND was tested by Bridge Diagnostics, Inc. (BDI). A Grillage numerical model is created with their field data to simulate the bridge responses due to traffic loads. A validated bridge model matching the field test data is developed. Based on the validated numerical model, loading of the corresponding bridge under different damage scenarios is performed to capture the change of displacement mode shapes. Using the difference of these displacement mode shape data, a modified curvature method is suggested for identifying damage in bridges, which is shown successfully through the modeling results of …

Understanding State Constitutions: Locke And Key, Gary S. Lawson

Faculty Scholarship

Steve Calabresi and Sofia Vickery have done a great service by uncovering the pre-Fourteenth Amendment case law in state courts interpreting and applying state constitutional provisions which contain "Lockean" language guaranteeing rights to life, liberty, property, safety, happiness, or some combination of those rights.' These cases are manifestly one of the keys to understanding the legal world in which the Fourteenth Amendment was crafted and ratified. It is instructive and fascinating to see the development and application of these Lockean provisions, whose influence 2 seems to have spread beyond this country. It is a pleasure and honor to be asked …

Surveillance As Loss Of Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger

Faculty Scholarship

Everyone seems concerned about government surveillance, yet we have a hard time agreeing when and why it is a problem and what we should do about it. When is surveillance in public unjustified? Does metadata raise privacy concerns? Should encrypted devices have a backdoor for law enforcement officials? Despite increased attention, surveillance jurisprudence and theory still struggle for coherence. A common thread for modern surveillance problems has been difficult to find.

In this article we argue that the concept of ‘obscurity,’ which deals with the transaction costs involved in finding or understanding information, is the key to understanding and uniting …

Medical Evidence And Expertise In Abortion Jurisprudence, Aziza Ahmed

Faculty Scholarship

Medical literature on abortion largely supports pro-choice legal claims. In turn, progressive lawyers often call for “evidence-based approaches” to lawmaking on the assumption that it will produce pro-choice legal and regulatory outcomes. This article argues that the evidence-based approach is no longer a reliable or stable strategy for pro-choice lawyering given transformations in judicial treatment of medical knowledge and a shifting evidentiary base.

Drawing on landmark cases from 1973 to 2012, this article demonstrates how the Supreme Court and lower courts selectively utilize medical expertise and evidence to liberalize or constrain abortion access. With Roe v. Wade, 4 the Supreme …

Alice Corp. V. Cls Bank Int'l, Jordana Goodman

Faculty Scholarship

Congress has the power "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."' Patent law subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. section 101 creates a balance between incentivizing inventors to publicly disclose their knowledge and protecting the public from monopolies on ideas. Allowing inventors to monopolize the basic tools of scientific and technological work might "tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote it."² "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas" constitute unpatentable subject matter under section 101.³ The section 101 inquiry serves as a threshold test to determine if the subject matter of …

Caperton's Next Generation: Beyond The Bank, Jed Handelsman Shugerman, Debra Lyn Bassett, Gregory S. Parks, Dmitry Bam, Rex R. Perschbacher

Faculty Scholarship

Part of NYU Journal of Legislation & Public Policy Fall 2014 symposium: "Courts, Campaigns, and Corruption: Judicial Recusal Five Years after Caperton". The panels can be watched here.

Factors Associated With Inconsistent Condom Use Among Men Who Have Sex With Men In Cambodia, Siyan Yi, Sovannary Tuot, Pheak Chhoun, Khuondyla Pal, Khimuy Tith, Carinne M. Brody

Background: Compared to the general population, men who have sex with men (MSM) are at greater risk for HIV and less understood due to their more hidden and stigmatized nature. Moreover, the discrepancy in findings in the literature merits further investigations in MSM populations from different cultures and settings. We therefore conducted this study to explore factors associated with inconsistent condom use among high-risk MSM in Cambodia.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2014 among 367 MSM randomly selected from Battembang and Siem Reap using a two-stage cluster sampling method. A structured questionnaire was used for face-to-face interviews to …

Factors Associated With Recent Hiv Testing Among High-Risk Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Cross-Sectional Study In Cambodia, Siyan Yi, Sovannary Tuot, Pheak Chhoun, Carinne M. Brody, Khuondyla Pal, Sopheap Oum

Background: Despite remarkable success in the fight against HIV, HIV prevalence in many countries remains high among key populations including men who have sex with men (MSM), and HIV testing rates is relatively low among this hard-to-reach population. This cross-sectional study explores factors associated with recent HIV testing among MSM in Cambodia.

Methods: This study was conducted in 2014 and included 384 MSM randomly selected from two provinces of Battembang and Siem Reap, using a two-stage cluster sampling method. A structured questionnaire was used for face-to-face interviews to collect data on socio-demographic characteristics, HIV testing history, sexual behaviors, …

Economic Self-Help Group Programs For Improving Women’S Empowerment: A Systematic Review, Carinne M. Brody, Thomas De Hoop, Martina Vojtkova, Ruby Warnock, Megan Dunbar, Padmini Murthy, Shari Dworkin

Motivation: Self-help groups (SHGs) are implemented around the world to empower women, supported by many developing country governments and agencies. A relatively large number of studies purport to demonstrate the effectiveness of SHGs. This is the first systematic review of that evidence.

Approach: We conducted a systematic review of the effectiveness of women’s economic SHG programs, incorporating evidence from quantitative and qualitative studies. We systematically searched for published and unpublished literature, and applied inclusion criteria based on the study protocol. We critically appraised all included studies and used a combination of statistical meta-analysis and meta-ethnography to synthesize the …

Research Ethics Training Of Trainers: Developing Capacity Of Bolivian Health Science And Civil Society Leaders, Annette Aalborg, Jacqueline Cortez, Sarah Sullivan, Oscar Lanza, Armando Basagoitia, Adriana Valencia, Roxane Modares

Program/Project Purpose: The University of San Andres, Faculty of Medicine in La Paz, Bolivia in collaboration with Touro University California, Public Health Program was awarded a NIH Research Ethics Planning Grant in June, 2013 to develop strategies and processes for implementation of a comprehensive national research ethics program for Bolivia. Although the importance of scientific research based on ethical principles is highlighted in the Bolivian constitution and national health legislation, few Bolivian academics, researchers and health professionals have received formal training in the principles and practices of research ethics. A principle aim of the Planning Grant is to develop …

Issues Of Online Distance Education: Learning Motivation Of Current And Prospective School Teachers, Anna Toom

Graduate School of Education Publications and Research

In this work, LM in three categories of students – motivated, unmotivated and overmotivated – was explored. Fifty graduate students, which were current and prospective school teachers and took the author’s online psychology courses in 2012-2013, participated in the study. The research methodology included developing the rules of coding students’ course work, designing the 100-scale of LM for representing their individual as well as collective data, and collecting info about students’ academic achievement in this course. According to the results, students’ LM has two co-existing components – pragmatic (grade-oriented) and cognitive (knowledge-oriented). Three mentioned categories of students differ in quantity …

A Qualitative Analysis Of Graduate Sport Administration/Management Curricula Offered At Private And Public Institutions In Comparison To Cosma Requirements, Kristin E. Brown

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The evolution of sport and the factors that are influencing it, such as industry standards and external conditions, have challenged curricula in the area of sport. The number of sport administration/management programs has increased over the years to over 500 (North American Society for Sport Management, n.d.), which, in turn, has contributed to variation among higherEducation programs (Eagleman & McNary, 2010). Sport administration/management programs vary in core content, specializations,Educational philosophies, and ideologies (Eagleman & McNary, 2010; Jones, Brooks, & Mak, 2008). Ideologies underpinning the curricular structure are uncertain among graduate programs in sport administration/management. The information in this study was …