Digital Commons Network^™

Postmarital Family Law: A Legal Structure For Nonmarital Families, Clare Huntington

Faculty Scholarship

Family law is based on marriage, but family life increasingly is not. The American family is undergoing a seismic shift, with marriage rates steadily declining and more than four in ten children now born to unmarried parents. Children of unmarried parents fall far behind children of married parents on a variety of metrics, contributing to stark inequality among children. Poverty and related factors explain much of this differential, but new sociological evidence highlights family structure — particularly friction and dislocation between unmarried parents after their relationship ends — as a crucial part of the problem. As the trend toward nonmarital …

Children’S Health In A Legal Framework, Clare Huntington, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

The interdisciplinary periodical Future of Children has dedicated an issue to children’s health policy. This contribution to the issue maps the legal landscape influencing policy choices. The authors demonstrate that in the U.S. legal system, parents have robust rights, grounded in the Constitution, to make decisions concerning their children’s health and medical treatment. Following from its commitment to parental rights, the system typically assumes the interests of parents and children are aligned, even when that assumption seems questionable. Thus, for example, parents who would limit their children’s access to health care on the basis of the parents’ religious belief have …

The Rise Of The Security State, Wang Yuhua, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past two decades, the Chinese domestic security apparatus has expanded dramatically. “Stability maintenance” operations have become a priority for local Chinese authorities. We argue that the birth of these trends dates to the early 1990s, when central Party authorities adopted new governance models that differed dramatically from those that of the 1980s. They increased the bureaucratic rank of public security chiefs within the Party apparatus, expanded the reach of the Party political-legal apparatus into a broader range of governance issues, and altered cadre evaluation standards to increase the sensitivity of local authorities to social protest. We show that …

Test Unrest: New York City's Examination High Schools, Aaron J. Saiger

Faculty Scholarship

New York City bases admissions to its eight “specialized” high schools entirely upon scores on a single standardized test. This policy, hotly contested when it was codified by state law in 1971, faces renewed political and legal attacks today. Single-test admissions consistently result in alarmingly low levels of African-American and Hispanic enrollment at the most sought-after specialized schools. This brief essay compares today’s debate to that of 1971. It notes two major developments since then. The City now has eight test-only high schools, not three. Moreover, the eight schools now function in the larger context of New York’s system of …

Due Process And The Non-Citizen: A Revolution Reconsidered, Joseph Landau

Faculty Scholarship

Mathews v. Eldridge is typically understood to be a ruling limiting due process protections in benefits determinations, but this case of judicial restraint in ordinary domestic law has activist features where non-citizens are concerned. The transplantation of Mathews into the critical areas of immigration and national security has produced a body of law that is slowly ushering in rights-affirming outcomes and weakening conventional doctrines of exceptionalism in immigration and national security. There are two chief reasons for this. First, ever since Mathews required an explicit judicial determination of private interests, courts have used an increasingly particularistic, case-by-case analysis in immigration …

Disappearing Legal Black Holes And Converging Domains: Changing Individual Rights Protection In National Security And Foreign Affairs, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay attempts to describe what is distinctive about the way the protection of individual rights in the areas of national security and foreign affairs has been occurring in recent decades. Historically, the right to protection under the U.S. Constitution and courts has been sharply limited by categorical distinctions based on geography, war, and, to some extent, citizenship. These categorical rules carved out domains where the courts and Constitution provided protections and those where they did not. The institutional design and operating rules of the national security state tracked these formal, categorical rules about the boundaries of protection. There have …

The War On Drugs And Prison Growth: Limited Importance, And Limited Legislative Options, John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Reform In The Xi Jinping Era, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

In the fall of 2014, Chinese Communist Party authorities made legal reform the focus of their annual plenum for the first time. The plenum decision confirmed a shift away from some of the policies of the late Hu Jintao era, but liberal reforms still remain off the table. The top-down vision of legal reform developing under Xi Jinping’s administration may have more in common with current trends in the party disciplinary apparatus or historical ones in the imperial Chinese censorate than it does with Western rule-of-law norms. This article attempts to do three things: (1) analyze how and why China’s …

China After The Reform Era, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

China’s reform era is ending. Core factors that characterized it – political stability, ideological openness, and rapid economic growth – are unraveling. In part, this is the result of Beijing’s steadfast refusal to contemplate fundamental political reform. Since the early 1990s, this has fueled the rise of entrenched interests within the Communist Party itself. It has also contributed to the systematic underdevelopment of institutions of governance among state and society at large. Now, to address looming problems confronting the nation, Chinese leaders are progressively cannibalizing institutional norms and practices that have formed the bedrock of the regime's stability in the …

Interagency Coordination Of Security Operations In A Large U.S. Seaport, Edmund Levy

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Protecting U.S. transportation hubs against a wide variety of security threats, while avoiding undue interference with the normal operations of the hubs, is one of the greatest challenges facing security agencies. The problem addressed in this study was the limited information on the contributing factors to seaport security. The purpose of this case study was to explore issues that can inhibit efficiency of security agency operation and collaboration and to identify actions that have enhanced collaboration. Based on theories of organizational development, leadership, and security tradecraft, this study examined the activities related to maintenance of security at a large California …

Agora: Reflections On Zivotofsky V. Kerry Presidential Signing Statements And Dialogic Constitutionalism, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

When the Supreme Court held that the executive branch has exclusive authority to recognize foreign sovereigns in the Jerusalem passport case, Zivotojsky v. Kerry (Zivotojsky lI), Jack Goldsmith hailed the decision as a "vindication" of presidential signing statements and executive power. Indeed, in the context of the debate over the treatment of the terror suspects, the New York Times had called such signing statements the "constitutionally ludicrous" work of an overreaching, "imperial presidency." Others in this Symposium and elsewhere have covered what a "bonanza" Zivotojsi II is for foreign relations law, the competing visions of foreign relations at the case's …

Legislation And Regulation In The Core Curriculum: A Virtue Or A Necessity?, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

The first-year curriculum at American law schools has been remarkably stable for more than 100 years. Many would say ossified. At Harvard, the First-Year Course of Instruction in 1879-80 consisted of Real Property, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, and Civil Procedure. These five courses-focused heavily on judge-made common law-dominated Harvard's IL curriculum from the law school's founding into the 21st century. The same five subjects have long commanded the primary attention of first-year students at Fordham, founded in 1905, and at virtually every other U.S. law school throughout the 20th century. Starting in the 1990s, however, a growing …

Local Judges And Local Government, Ethan J. Leib

Faculty Scholarship

This interview-based empirical study explores how local judges view themselves and their crosscutting roles in local and state government. In particular, it considers local judges’ relationships with the public that elects them, the executive and legislative branches of their localities, and the larger statewide judicial bureaucracy of which they are a very large but somewhat disconnected part. The Article reports on the results of interviews with local judges at the county, town, and village levels — and suggests some broader lessons for scholars, officials, and policymakers interested and active in local government law and politics. Those who study local government …

Colorism And The Law In Latin America—Global Perspectives On Colorism Conference Remarks, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Today, persons of African descent make up more than forty percent of the poor in Latin America and have been consistently marginalized and denigrated as undesirable elements of the society since the abolition of slavery across the Americas. However, Latin Americans still very much adhere to the notion that, because racial mixture and the absence of Jim-Crow racial segregation are such a marked contrast to the United States’ racial history, the region is what I term “racially innocent” and thus resistant to proposals that institutions use public policies of inclusion to address the entrenched racial disparities. This resistance exists despite …

A Meta-Analysis Of Association Between One-Carbon Metabolism Gene Polymorphisms And Risk Of Prostate Cancer, Mahmood Tazari

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men. The purpose of this quantitative, meta-analysis study was to examine one-carbon metabolism gene polymorphisms in a group of genes to determine their association with prostate cancer risk. The genetic epidemiology theory provided the framework for the study. The data collected were from published articles. From over 2,800 individual studies, 20 articles were retained for results and data abstraction, following the title, abstract screen, and full text screening in the second phase. The data were analyzed by a meta-analysis statistical method, combining the results from selected studies to estimate the overall association. …

Predictors Of Physician Use Of The New Nia Alzheimer's Assessment Protocols, Richard Norman Schultz

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Consensus is lacking on early diagnostic criteria and the exact symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD). A new, in-office test may help physicians detect the early symptoms of AD, based upon new National Institute of Aging (NIA) criteria. However, a gap exists in knowledge regarding physicians' current use or intent to use the new protocols. Choreographing the descriptive AD terminology in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV-TR and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) is recommended. Thus, the purpose of this study was to understand possible contributing factors to physician's use or intent to use of the new …

The Effect Of Confirmation Bias On Criminal Investigative Decision Making, Wayne A. Wallace

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Confirmation bias occurs when a person believes in or searches for evidence to support his or her favored theory while ignoring or excusing disconfirmatory evidence and is disinclined to change his or her belief once he or she arrives at a conclusion. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine whether emotionally charged evidence and evidence presentation order could influence an investigator's belief in a suspect's guilt. The study included 166 sworn police officers (basic training recruits, patrol officers, and criminal investigators) who completed online surveys in response to criminal vignettes across different scenarios to record their measure of …

Read 180 Evaluation: Balanced Literacy In A Low-Income, Underperforming Urban High School, Daniel Lombardi

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This study investigated the effectiveness of the READ 180 balanced literacy program in addressing the problem of low reading achievement among urban minority high school students. Research has shown low reading achievement to negatively impact academic and economic success. Holdaway's theory of natural literacy, which suggests reading instruction should be purposeful and realistic, supports READ 180 as a remedial intervention. The specific purpose of the study was to evaluate READ 180 in relation to improving classroom reading achievement, standardized language arts test scores, and graduation rates among students in a low-income, high-minority urban high school. Subjects were 2 cohorts of …

A Phenomenological Study Of High School Teachers' Motivation As Related To Teacher Performance Management, Richard Hugh Wildman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Teacher motivation factors prominently in the sustainable development of educational institutions, and relate to self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and retention. Prior motivational research in education has addressed factors relating to teacher motivation, but there is a dearth of research into the impact of performance management on motivation. This phenomenological study examined the lived experiences of 5 teachers in relation to the performance management process in the selected school. The project study was guided by Bandura's social cognitive theory, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene theory. In-depth, semistructured interviews were used to extract the essence of the lived experiences as expressed …

Enhancing Workplace Productivity And Competitiveness In Trinidad And Tobago Through Ict Adoption, Kennedy Jerome Swaratsingh

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The productivity of Trinidad and Tobago's public sector workplaces is related to their absorptive capacity for technological adoption. Guided by the technology acceptance model, which suggests that individuals' and institutions' use of technology increases in relation to perceived ease of use and apparent value, this case study explored how Trinidad and Tobago used information and communications technology from 2001 - 2010 to improve public sector workplace productivity. Study data were collected from 22 individual interviews with senior executives from the government of Trinidad and Tobago, members of the e-business roundtable, and local industry experts, and from reviewing the archives of …

Gender, Instructional Method, And Graduate Social Science Students' Motivation And Learning Strategies, Mae Lynn Spahr

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The purpose of the current study was to learn how gender and learning method affect motivation and learning strategies in psychology, counseling, and social work graduate students. The variables of gender, learning method, motivation, and learning strategies are used by the self-regulation model to learning and the theory of independent learning to measure a student's academic success. Increasing the knowledge of these variables will be of interest to academic institutions and to the field of educational psychology because little is known about their interaction. The study's design was factorial quasi-experimental; it used a cross sectional survey consisting of a 2 …

Attitudes Of Returning Citizens In Government-Managed Post-Release Programming, Zachary D'Jon Weaver

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Nearly 700,000 prisoners return to communities annually, and approximately two-thirds are rearrested within 3 years of release. The cyclic pattern of recidivism presents risks to both returning offenders and the communities that accept them. Reentry research tends to include the voice and experiences of juveniles, community members, and service providers, and narrowly focuses on the socioeconomic conditions of adult ex-offender populations pre- and post-release. Few researchers have explored the attitudes of those returning citizens or the perceived impact on treatment success, as related to employment-based, post-release reintegration programs. This study investigated the attitudes of 32 participants of Project Empowerment, the …

Secondary English Teachers' Perceptions Of Differentiated Instruction For Limited English Proficient Students, M L. Langley

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In a suburban high school, an average of 50% of limited English proficient (LEP) students did not meet the required standard on the 9th grade literature and composition end of course test (EOCT), and an average of 46% of LEP students did not meet the required standard on the American literature and composition EOCT in the years 2008-2011. LEP students were expected to meet the same standards as their native-born peers in order to pass courses and ultimately graduate. Using the professional learning community (PLC) model and the concept of differentiated instruction, the purpose of this qualitative case study was …

Borrower Experiences With Subprime Mortgage Loans In Gwinnett County, Georgia, Terence Palmer

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

When purchasing a home, buyer considerations include price of the home, credit rating, mortgage type, and lending agency. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the loan options successful business leaders consider when shifting loan lending from prime mortgage loans to subprime mortgage loans. Systems theory formed the conceptual framework for the study. A purposive sample of 20 participants from Gwinnett County, Georgia completed semistructured interviews and described their personal experiences. Data analysis incorporated van Kaam's technique to code and cluster information into topics. The following themes emerged from the analysis indicating what these business leaders considered when …

A Phenomenological Study Of Female Gender Inequality In The Defense Industry, Erica Helaine Woods

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Despite advances made during the women's movement, gender inequality is a problem for women seeking leadership opportunities within the U.S. Defense Industry today. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the perceptions of civilian females who had experienced gender inequality obstacles in their professional advancement opportunities within the U.S. Defense Industry. The mommy track framework, defined as the family/work imbalance; the gatekeeper framework; and the institutional sexism framework were used to guide this study. The research questions focused on how these women perceived both internal and external barriers to their professional advancement in the U.S. Defense Industry. A …

The Passenger Cases And The Commerce Clause: Immigrants, Blacks, And States' Rights In Antebellum America, Sally Hadden

Civil War Book Review

Competing State and Federal Jurisdictions in the Antebellum South

In this study of the Passenger Cases (1848-1849), Tony Freyer has written a long-needed work of a poorly understood set of Supreme Court decisions from the antebellum period, suits that reveal much about growing sectional te....

Civil War Sesquicentennial: A Cwbr Retrospective, Zach Isenhower

Civil War Book Review

The past few years of the Civil War’s Sesquicentennial have produced a mountain of exciting works that improve our understanding of the United States’ period of deepest crisis. Civil War Book Review has done its part by keeping our readers up to date on the latest scholarship with our Sesqui....

Reconstructing Democracy: Grassroots Black Politics In The Deep South After The Civil War, Bryan M. Jack

Civil War Book Review

Black Politics and Grassroots Democracy

How did a newly emancipated people, many of them illiterate and nearly all economically marginalized, create a new, grassroots democracy in the wake of the American Civil War? How did the politics they created challenge existing racial, economic, and....

A Legal History Of The Civil War And Reconstruction: A Nation Of Rights, Lex Renda

Civil War Book Review

Bringing the Law Into Dialogue with Civil War History

A long-running debate among American historians centers on the question of whether the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction produced substantial change, or instead was but an aberration to an otherwise uninterrupted nineteenth centur....

For Slavery And Union: Benjamin Buckner And Kentucky Loyalties In The Civil War, Thomas H. Appleton Jr.

Civil War Book Review

Proslavery Kentuckians Saw in the Union the Best Protections for Their Aims

In the last half-century, military historians have often examined the course of the Civil War in border-state Kentucky. Generally left unexplored have been the social, political, and economic ramifications of the ....