Digital Commons Network^™

Balancing As Well As Separating Power: Congress's Authority To Recognize New Legal Rights, Heather Elliott

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

Spokeo, Where Shalt Thou Stand, Joan Steinman

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fletcherian Standing, Merits, And Spokeo, Inc. V. Robins, Howard M. Wasserman

Vanderbilt Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judges As Framers Of Plea Bargaining, Daniel S. Mcconkie Jr.

Faculty Articles, Papers, and Other Scholarship

The vast majority of federal criminal defendants resolve their cases by plea bargaining, with minimal judicial input or oversight. This presents significant issues concerning transparency, fairness, and effective sentencing. Federal prosecutors strongly influence sentences by the charges they select. The parties bargain informally outside of court and strike a deal. But defendants often plead guilty without a realistic understanding of their likely sentencing exposure. Instead, they plead guilty based on their best guess as to how judges will resolve certain issues and their own fear that they could get an unspecified but severe post-trial sentence. The judge is often reluctant …

Aqueous Atmospheric Species, A Dual Study: 1. Comparison Of The Effects Of Temperature, Oxygen Level, Ionic Strength, And Ph On The Reaction Of Benzene With Hydroxyl Radicals At The Air-Water Interface To The Bulk Aqueous Phase. 2. Determination Of Carbonyl Compounds In Fog Water Samples Via Online Concentration And Hplc, Aubrey Anne Heath

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The air-water interface is the largest interface in the environment. Atmospheric droplets, such as fog, which can have an exceptionally high surface area-to-volume ratio, also have a large range of physical and chemical properties (e.g. temperature, pH, ionic strength, and chemical composition) based on location, time of day, and emission source. Unlike larger atmospheric droplets, which are predominately characterized by bulk aqueous phase conditions, reactions that take place in fog droplets are determined by both the bulk-aqueous phase and the air-water interface due to a high surface area-to-volume ratio. In order to have a greater understanding of atmospheric processes and …

A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers And The Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910, Helana E. Brigman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Until recently, critics have devalued the Victorian cookbook as an object of literary inquiry, regularly dismissing it as “Victoriana”—cultural, anthropological histories detailing bland culinary traditions. A Domesticated Idea: British Women Writers and the Victorian Recipe, 1845-1910 seeks to provide a framework by which we can explore the Victorian cookbook as a literary text appropriated by writers responding to and advocating for cultural, educational, and artistic reform during the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Looking specifically at how women used recipes to discuss food preparation, dining, and household management, I argue that British women writers participated in a collaborative tradition, borrowing and sharing …

Risk-Based Wind Loss And Mitigation For Residential Wood Framed Construction, Fatemeh Orooji

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As a result of increasing windstorm losses in the United States over the past 50 years, a variety of residential wind hazard mitigation methods have been suggested. Mitigation undoubtedly reduces windstorm losses; however, the expected economic risk reduction of mitigation practices over the life of the building depends on the building characteristics (i.e., capacity) and the intensity and occurrence of wind speeds (i.e., demand). Effective decision making requires estimation of potential future losses based on many variables. Many models, primarily mechanics-based simulation models, have been developed to predict building damage from wind events; however; fewer models of economic loss have …

Framing Theory And Its Application To The Fracking Controversy In St. Tammany Parish, Lindsay Colleen Rabalais

LSU Master's Theses

When Helis Oil & Gas Company announced it was interested in drilling for oil in Louisiana’s St. Tammany Parish, it ignited a firestorm. The proposed drilling project would use hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking” – causing some residents to voice their concerns for the parish’s wellbeing. My thesis looks to framing theory to analyze how local media covered the issue, as well as the effects those frames might have on public policy and the lawsuits that arose out of the proposed drilling operation. I performed quantitative and qualitative content analyses of local media coverage of this issue from April 2014 …

Dosimetric Advantages Of Personalized Phantoms For Quality Assurance And Research In Radiation Dose Measurements, Andrew Michael Halloran

LSU Master's Theses

Background: Phantoms have been in use in medical and health physics for decades, serving as a surrogate for human tissue in several different applications. In radiation dose measurements, anthropomorphic phantoms are designed with tissue substitute materials to mimic both the elemental compositions and anatomical structures of the human body. In some cases the performance of anthropomorphic phantoms for personalized measurements is severely limited by the use of reference anatomy in the geometric design. 3D printing could potentially be used to overcome some of these shortcomings by enabling rapid fabrication of personalized phantoms for individual patients based on radiographic imaging data. …

Sustainable Materials For Pavement Infrastructure: Design And Performance Of Asphalt Mixtures Containing Recycled Asphalt Shingles, Samuel B. Cooper, Jr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As the price of liquid asphalt continuously climb, methods are being sought to decrease material costs which will have less impact on ecological systems without compromising material or pavement performance. The use of recycled materials is one method that can replace a percentage of their virgin counterparts, thus reducing the negative impacts on the environment. Asphalt mixture performance is affected by the level of blending that occurs between aged and virgin asphalt binders. The interaction and compatibility of recycling agents (RAs) with recycled asphalt shingles (RAS) and reclaimed asphalt pavements (RAP) have not been thoroughly evaluated since the 1970s. To …

Speaker Discrimination: The Next Frontier Of Free Speech, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Citizens United v. FEC articulated a new pillar of free speech doctrine that is independent from the well-known controversies about corporate personhood and the role of money in elections. For the first time, the Supreme Court clearly said that discrimination on the basis of the identity of the speaker offends the First Amendment. Previously, the focus of free speech doctrine had been on the content and forum of speech, not on the identity of the speaker. This new doctrine has the potential to reshape free speech law far beyond the corporate speech and campaign finance contexts. This article explores the …

Agnes In Agony: Damasus, Ambrose, Prudentius, And The Construction Of The Female Martyr Narrative, Eric James Poche'

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the earliest surviving sources on the virgin martyr Agnes. Agnes is significant due to the popularity of her cult and the large number of early sources recounting her martyrdom. This dissertation argues that the fourth-century bishops Damasus and Ambrose, along with the Christian poet Prudentius, helped construct the narrative of Agnes’ passion in order to help popularize her cult throughout western Christendom. In an effort to promote virgin asceticism to their communities, they endorsed Agnes as the dominant exemplum for female piety in the west. By doing so, they associated themselves with the influential martyr. Since Agnes …

Believable Victims: Asylum Credibility And The Struggle For Objectivity, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Asylum adjudication is often the invisible frontline in the struggle by oppressed groups to gain recognition for their plights. Through this process, individual people must tell their stories and try to show that they are genuine victims of persecution rather than simply illegal immigrants attempting to slip through the system. In 2002, because the world had not yet acknowledged the nature of the calamity from which they were escaping, many Darfurian asylum cases would have relied on the ability of each individual to convince government offices to believe their stories. They would have had to be deemed “credible,” or they …

Immigrant Victims, Immigrant Accusers, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The U Visa program provides an immigration status to noncitizen victims of crime, which is essential to prevent unauthorized immigrants from being afraid to seek help from the police, and thus becoming easy prey for criminals. This visa falls into a category of immigration programs that grant benefits on the basis of victim status, rather than on family or employment connections to the United States. But the federal government structured the U Visa program so that in order to be protected as a victim, a person must also become an accuser. The U Visa thus implicates the rights of third …

A Taxonomy Of Discretion: Refining The Legality Debate About Obama’S Executive Actions On Immigration, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Broad executive action has been the Obama Administration’s signature contribution to American immigration policy, setting off a furious debate about whether the President has acted outside his constitutional powers. But the legal debate about the scope of the President’s authority to change immigration policy has not fully recognized what is actually innovative about the Obama policies, and thus has not focused on those areas where he has taken executive discretion into uncharted territory. This essay aims to add new focus to the debate about Pres. Obama’s executive actions by defining five different types of presidential discretion: Congressionally-authorized discretion, non-enforcement discretion, …

Homenaje A García Lorca, A Conductor’S Approach, Alejandro Artemio Larumbe Martínez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide a conductor’s analysis of the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas’s Homenaje a García Lorca from research of his work and life. Revueltas wrote Homenaje a García Lorca, a chamber orchestral piece, in response to the murder of the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. Homenaje is orchestrated for twelve instruments in three contrasting movements: Baile (dance), Duelo (mourning), and Son (son is the name of a genre of traditional Mexican music). Homenaje is widely regarded as one of Revueltas’s most compelling works. It combines a highly personal …

On The Development Of Analytical Methodologies To Interrogate The Lipid Dynamics And Phase Transition Resulting From The Reduction Of Stimuli-Responsive Vesicles, James Edward Winter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The potential is great for liposome drug delivery systems that provide specific contents release at diseased tissue sites upon activation by upregulated enzymes; however, this potential will only come to fruition with mechanistic knowledge of the contents release process. NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase type 1 (NQO1) is a target for reductively-responsive liposomes, as it is an enzyme upregulated in numerous cancer tissues and is capable of reducing quinone propionic acid (QPA) trigger groups to hydroquinones that self-cleave from dioleolylphosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) liposome surfaces, thereby initiating contents release. This research targets the development of analytical methodologies to observe and characterize the dynamics and resulting …

The Multiplicity Of Copyright Laws On The Internet, Marketa Trimble

Scholarly Works

From the early days of the Internet, commentators have warned that it would be impossible for those who act on the Internet (“Internet actors”) to comply with the copyright laws of all Internet-connected countries if the national copyright laws of all those countries were to apply simultaneously to Internet activity. A multiplicity of applicable copyright laws seems plausible at least when the Internet activity is ubiquitous — i.e., unrestricted by geoblocking or by other means — given the territoriality principle that governs international copyright law and the choice-of-law rules that countries typically use for copyright infringements.

This Article posits that …

Nature's Geometry, Lin Feng

LSU Master's Theses

The beauty of the natural world, from the literal to the abstract: color, texture, shape, sounds, plant structure and anatomy, has continuously been the source of inspiration for artists and graphic designers. Our natural environment provides a readily available resource as a basis of visual study and exploration to develop a unique visual language and construct compelling work. Therefore, the aim of my thesis investigation is to create a new visual language and communication based on the inherent beauty within nature and geometric forms found in nature. I began my investigation by developing a family of symbols based on natural …

Synthetic Methods Development Towards The Total Synthesis Of Chlorosulfolipids, Andres Villalpando

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The focus of this dissertation is the development of a novel chlorination reaction utilizing a triphosgene-amine based mixture towards the total synthesis of chlorosulfolipids, a subclass of naturally occurring organohalogen natural products. This novel, mild chlorination reaction will be utilized under a global chlorination strategy to chlorinate multiple alcohol substituents in one synthetic operation. Chapter one details the history of chlorosulfolipids from the early stages of their isolation, relevant structural elucidation techniques, appropriate biosynthetic discoveries, and their biological relevance to a thorough investigation of the total syntheses completed to date. These compounds demonstrate a range of biological activities and have …

Advancing A Framework For Regulating Cryptocurrency Payments Intermediaries, Sarah Jane Hughes, Stephen T. Middlebrook

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article looks at competing models for regulating providers of services to individuals and businesses that take cryptocurrencies in payment for goods and services, including operators of online wallets and exchanges, and other cryptocurrency market intermediaries whose functions resemble "money service businesses" or "money transmission." We conclude that, in addition to whatever "money services" or "money transmission "prudential regulation the States or federal government may adopt, the operation of wallets and exchanges requires a new commercial law that lays out rights and liabilities of cryptocurrency users in a robust and transparent fashion. We use Article 4A of the Uniform Commercial …

A Rhetorician’S Practical Wisdom, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

For three years, I had the great good fortune to work in the office next to Jack Sammons. My good fortune extended to a coincidence of timing that allowed me to work with Jack on a co-authored article, The Law's Mystery. During the time I worked next door, I felt cursed by an inability to grasp concepts that to Jack appeared inevitable and essential, whether those inevitabilities and essences were to be found within the law, good lawyering, or good legal education. The curse persisted throughout the writing of The Law's Mystery.

For Jack, the essence of a …

Do Immigrants Have Freedom Of Speech?, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

The Department of Justice recently argued that immigrants who have not been legally admitted to the United States have no right to claim protections under the First Amendment. If the DOJ argument is right, then most of the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. could be censored or punished for speaking their minds – as many of them have in support of comprehensive immigration reform and the Dream Act. This Essay explores the complicated and conflicted case law governing immigrants’ free speech rights, and argues that, contrary to the DOJ position, all people in the United States are protected …

A Performer's Guide To Sergei Lyapunov's Concerto For Piano And Orchestra No.1, Op.4, Irina Cunev

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This document is intended to contribute to the ongoing study of Sergei Lyapunov’s work by focusing on his First Piano Concerto, a brilliant work that was once highly esteemed, but which has been unjustly neglected over the years. The main purposes of this study and the accompanying public lecture-recital are threefold: 1) to provide a historical background and to discuss major music trends that shaped Lyapunov’s style, along with biographical information about the composer’s life, 2) to provide a specific descriptive analysis of key stylistic elements utilized in the concerto and 3) to provide a detailed discussion of pianistic techniques …

The Unconstitutional Use Of Restraints In Removal Proceedings, Fatma Marouf

Scholarly Works

This Article challenges the constitutionality of indiscriminately restraining civil immigration detainees during removal proceedings. Not only are immigration detainees routinely placed in handcuffs, leg irons, and belly chains without any individualized determination of the need for restraints, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the prosecuting party, makes the decisions about the use of restraints, rather than the judge. After examining the rationale for the well-established prohibition against the indiscriminate use of restraints during criminal and civil jury trials, and discussing how some courts have extended this rationale to bench trials, this Article contends that ICE’s practice violates substantive and procedural …

Nevada Youth Learn About Voting Rights, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

Prof. Rachel Anderson describes the second Youth Voting Rights Project, an event created by Prof. Anderson in collaboration with Dr. Zachary Robbins, Clark County School District principal, to help educate Nevadan high school and middle school students on the topic of election law.

Prof. Anderson also comments on the controversy surrounding Voter ID laws and the question of whether and to what degree the United States has made progress in fulfilling the promise of the Voting Rights Act.

Non-State Armed Groups And The Role Of Transnational Criminal Law During Armed Conflict, Christopher L. Blakesley, Dan E. Stigall

Scholarly Works

With the ascendance of the terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the international community has struggled to adapt to the new international security context. Among the challenges that are currently being confronted are questions relating to how states may effectively facilitate international cooperation to counter ISIS (especially among countries in the Middle East and North Africa). Within this context, guidance from the United Nations on international cooperation posits that “[t]he universal counter-terrorism conventions and protocols do not apply in situations of armed conflict” – a legal position that would serve to stymie important cooperative …

Joan: A Play With Broken Songs, Colton James Neidhardt

LSU Master's Theses

ABSTRACT This thesis details the writing process, rehearsals and performance of the author‘s devised play, Joan: A Play With Broken Songs. The play aims to reimagine events occurring the evening before the death of French folk hero and Catholic Saint, Joan of Arc. The play exists in the moments between sleep and waking, in which Joan is visited by her own patron Saints (Margaret and Catherine,) as well as the Archangel Michael. The Saints then guide Joan through the dreamscape revealing to her images of the past, present, and future that allow her to come to peace with the sacrifice …

Fairly Pricing Guilty Pleas, Anne R. Traum

Scholarly Works

Building on Professor Andrew Taslitz’s work, this article explores how Fair Price Theory can help us analyze the fairness of guilty pleas. In Judging Jena’s D.A., Professor Taslitz used Fair Price Theory to explore how prosecutors could strive to achieve fairness and reduce the perception of racial stigma. He used Fair Price Theory to propose a system of prosecutorial ethics that takes into account racial stigma. This article considers how Fair Price Theory challenges courts to analyze guilty pleas differently, by focusing on price without relying on the agency of prosecutors. Under current doctrine, a court examines whether the …

A Multi-Theoretical Analysis Of Motivation In College Activity Courses, Louis Hines

LSU Master's Theses

College activity courses present an opportunity for physical educators to increase physical activity among young adults. Facilitating motivation in activity courses may lead to increased engagement and future participation in physical activities. The purpose of this study was to examine motivation in college activity courses utilizing a multi-theoretical approach in order to assess changes in physical self-concept and intention for participation in physical activities. It was hypothesized that a task-involved motivational climate would predict need satisfaction, which would in turn predict self-determined motivation. It was further hypothesized that this motivational sequence would predict changes in physical self-concept and intention to …