Digital Commons Network^™

A Public Concern: Protecting Whistleblowers Under The First Amendment, Steven Still

Fordham Law Review

The United States has just witnessed an impeachment debate which may have far-reaching ramifications for our democratic institutions. These hostilities began with an anonymous whistleblower complaint from a government employee, disclosing what he or she believed were illegal activities directed by President Donald J. Trump. Ever since, discussion of whistleblowers has taken on greater salience in the news cycle. Today, there are a number of whistleblower statutes that protect employees who disclose knowledge of their employer’s illicit activities from workplace retaliation. Although whistleblowing is not unique to government workers, these individuals have an added layer of protection afforded to them …

2020-March-01-Announcement, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

East Tennessee State University has learned that someone has created a fraudulent account on Upwork and Skype using the name and likeness of “Brian Noland” and is attempting to use that identity to obtain personal information, such as home address and phone number, from persons seeking freelance work.  President Noland is not using these platforms for this purpose, nor does the university conduct interviews in this way.   ETSU has notified Public Safety about this matter and an investigation is taking place.

Anyone who has more information about this is encouraged to contact ETSU Public Safety at 423-439-4480.

Understanding Challenges In Modern Police Leadership: A Multi-Case Study Of Procedural Justice Reform Leadership, Kelliann Klindtworth

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

This multi-case study examined the experiences of leadership in police departments currently focused on implementation of reform through the lens of procedural justice. The study collected the experiences of six leaders in a single department who have leadership responsibilities over other officers. The study sought to understand the common challenges, barriers and elements that contributed to the success of shifting paradigms and behaviors in a department focused on building trust and legitimacy with the community they serve. Based on interview data, the participants in this study identified key areas of consideration for the implementation of procedurally just reform. The four …

Restoring American Statesmanship: A Citizen's Guide, John Shaw

Institute Publications

Restoring American Statesmanship: A Citizen's Guide offers a working definition of statesmanship, identifies its essential qualities, provides more than a dozen examples from American history, acknowledges current barriers to statesmanship, and suggests ways to re-establish statesmanship as an aspiration and goal in American political life.

"We endeavor to resurrect this critical concept from the dusty pages of history books and use it to illuminate and inspire public affairs in the United States," the guide says. "Our goal is to stimulate a vigorous discussion about statesmanship and reintroduce this concept into the political discourse."

The Dynamism Of Health Law: Expanded Insurance Coverage As The Engine Of Regulatory Reform, Gabriel Scheffler

Articles

Can law improve the delivery of health care? The predominant view is that law serves as a barrier to reforming the health care delivery system. Health law scholars of all stripes blame regulations for impeding innovation, limiting competition, and exacerbating fragmentation in health care.

I argue that this view neglects an important-but overlooked-feature of health law: the dynamic relationship between laws that expand health insurance coverage and laws that regulate the delivery of health care. By expanding health insurance coverage and increasing the demand for health care, laws such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act catalyze policymakers to …

Privacy As Safety, A. Michael Froomkin, Zak Colangelo

Washington Law Review

The idea that privacy makes you safer is unjustly neglected: public officials emphasize the dangers of privacy while contemporary privacy theorists acknowledge that privacy may have safety implications but hardly dwell on the point. We argue that this lack of emphasis is a substantive and strategic error and seek to rectify it. This refocusing is particularly timely given the proliferation of new and invasive technologies for the home and for consumer use more generally, not to mention surveillance technologies such as so-called smart cities.

Indeed, we argue—perhaps for the first time in modern conversations about privacy—that in many cases privacy …

Labor Antitrust’S Paradox, Hiba Hafiz

University of Chicago Law Review

Growing inequality, the decline in labor’s share of national income, and increasing evidence of labor-market concentration and employer buyer power are all subjects of national attention, eliciting wide-ranging proposals for legal reform. Many proposals hinge on labor-market fixes and empowering workers within and beyond existing work law or through tax-and-transfer schemes. But a recent surge of interest focuses on applying antitrust law in labor markets, or “labor antitrust.” These proposals call for more aggressive enforcement by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) as well as stronger legal remedies for employer collusion and unlawful monopsony that suppresses …

Have Problem-Solving Courts Changed The Practice Of Law?, Cynthia Alkon

Faculty Scholarship

Thirty years after the start of the first drug court, it is a good time to examine what the problem-solving court movement has contributed to our criminal legal system overall. It is also a good time to ask what it would look like if these courts had made "monumental change" in our criminal legal system. This article will start with a discussion of mass incarceration and offer some reasons why problem-solving courts did not prevent, or lessen, mass incarceration. Next this article will discuss how problem-solving courts work, including by looking at the roles of the professionals, the judges and …

Extraterritorial Rights In Border Enforcement, Fatma Marouf

Faculty Scholarship

Recent shifts in border enforcement policies raise pressing new questions about the extraterritorial reach of constitutional rights. Policies that keep asylum seekers in Mexico, expand the use of expedited removal, and encourage the cross-border use of force require courts to determine whether noncitizens who are physically outside the United States, or who are treated for legal purposes as being outside even if they have entered the country, can claim constitutional protections. This Article examines a small but growing body of cases addressing these extraterritoriality issues in the border enforcement context, focusing on disparities in judicial analyses that have resulted in …

Vocational And Life Skills Monthly Data Update: March 2020, Uno Nebraska Center For Justice Research, Katelynn Towne

Reports

Grantees use an online data management system to submit data on participants served under their Vocational and Life Skills programming. This data is due monthly and reflects all services provided during the previous month to participants. Evaluators at the Nebraska Center for Justice Research work with grantees directly to manage data entry errors on an ongoing basis during update calls and site visits.

The current data derives from an active database, from which data is being entered and updated daily. Data values, including previously submitted information, may fluctuate depending on the duration of lag between service delivery and data entry. …

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Human Rights, Those Who Are Governed And The Legitimacy Of Law Enforcement, Lynn Rhodes

Comparative Civilizations Review

Most everyone, if not all of us, wants to be happy. Peace is a common denominator frequently sought. It is human nature to seek security, another word for happiness. Human Rights, as we know, are basic rights and freedoms that inherently belong to every person.

Trade Secrets And The Right To Information: A Comparative Analysis Of E.U. And U.S. Approaches To Freedom Of Expression And Whistleblowing, Sharon K. Sandeen, Ulla-Maija Mylly

North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology

In this so-called “information age,” when numerous companies are collecting and creating more and more data and information, it is important to consider how the interests of these companies can (and should) be reconciled with the public’s interests in information, or what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights labels the “right to information.” Having expended money to create their stores of information, these companies often claim the need to protect it from all “unauthorized” uses, but our laws have never gone so far. To the contrary, information is not protected unless the law says it is, and when it is …

An Empirical Study Of Political Control Over Immigration Adjudication, Catherine Y. Kim, Amy Semet

Journal Articles

Immigration plays a central role in the Trump Administration’s political agenda. This Article presents the first comprehensive empirical assessment of the extent to which immigration judges (IJs), the administrative officials charged with adjudicating whether a given noncitizen will be deported from the United States, may be influenced by the presidential administration’s political preferences.

We constructed an original dataset of over 830,000 removal proceedings decided between January 2001 and June 2019 after individual merits hearings. First, we found that every presidential administration—not just the current one—disproportionately appointed IJs with backgrounds in the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of Homeland …

What Makes You So Good? Highly Effective General Education Teachers Serving Students With Special Education Needs, Paige Gill

Student Work

Teachers are the single most important factor in student learning, including the learning of students who receive special education services. Most students with disabilities are included in the general education classroom but general education teachers often express feeling underprepared to meet their diverse needs. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the experiences of general education teachers in a traditional high school environment who are highly effective in serving students with special education needs in hopes of finding commonalities that could be replicated for other teachers. In this study, six positive deviant general education teachers participated in …

Law And Development In The United States: A Nexus With Civil Rights, Yong-Shik Lee

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

Several decades have passed since the civil rights movement began. The movement achieved historic success owing to the efforts of so many who dedicated their lives to the call of justice and equality. This remarkable success has led to an improved society that accords the legal protection of equal rights among different races, genders, and ethnic groups. Despite this important achievement, we still have a long way to fulfilling the full promise of the civil rights movement, which at its core lies the protection and promotion of equity and dignity of all people.

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., in …

An Invasion Of Privacy: Genetic Testing In An Age Of Unlimited Access, Najla Hasic

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

This Note discusses how privacy rights are implicated when direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies disclose an individual’s genetic information to law enforcement officers—often without any warrant or legal procedures required—who then use that data to implicate an individual’s family members in crimes.

After a brief introduction, Part II of this Note discusses DNA, what it is, and how it is used and tested by both state and private actors. It also provides a brief history of the Fourth Amendment with a specific focus on its application in jurisprudence as technology advances and privacy rights diminish. Finally, an overview of current …

Recreational Breeders And The Companion Animal Overpopulation Crisis, Nicole Engelhardt

Southern Illinois University Law Journal

This note proposes an amendment to Illinois law which aims to discourage recreational breeding by imposing standards and requirements on people who choose to breed their pet. Part II of this note discusses the evolution of animal law in the United States.

Following national law, there is an examination of the difference in animal law between Kentucky, Nebraska, and the country’s top state for animal law: Illinois. Part III analyzes how law in Illinois fails to provide standards regarding recreational breeding and why this is a problem. Lastly, Part IV proposes a change to Sections 2 and 2.3 of the …

Early Christian Responses To Persecution And Their Implications For Christians In Northern Nigeria, Yakubu Tanko Jakada

ATS Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Analysis Of Crashes Involving First Responder Vehicles, Josie Gray

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

First responders face many hazards that put their lives at risk while on duty. A review of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund statistics shows that 553 police officers died in the line-of-duty between 2008 and 2017 as a direct result of a traffic related incidents. Sadly, the nation’s first responders are exposed to factors which make them uniquely vulnerable to traffic related injuries and deaths. The goal of this research is to investigate and analyze crashes involving first responder vehicles and struck-by crashes. This project concludes that approximately 1.2% of the crashes in the state of Florida involve …

Tinker-Ing With Machine Learning: The Legality And Consequences Of Online Surveillance Of Students, Amy B. Cyphert

Nevada Law Journal

All across the nation, high schools and middle schools are quietly entering into contracts with software companies to monitor the online activity of their students, attempting to predict the next school shooter or to intervene with a student who might be contemplating suicide. Systems using algorithms powered by machine learning trawl the Facebook posts of fifteen–year–olds and weed through the Twitter feeds of seventeen–year–olds. When certain keywords or features are flagged, the posts are forwarded to school administrators, who can decide whether the post requires an intervention and whether the student requires discipline. Who (or what) decides what these keywords …

"Paradise...They Make You Feel At Home": A Case Study On Understanding The Role Of An Undocumented Student Resource Center And Its Influence On The College Journey Of Undocumented Students, Rosa Olivia Rosas

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Access to U.S. higher education for undocumented students has been challenging over the years despite recent legislative and organizational changes that have afforded some the opportunity to enroll in post-secondary institutions (Conger & Chellman, 2013; Juárez, 2017; Pérez, 2010). Of the approximately 65,000 undocumented students who graduate from high schools across the country every year, only 7,000-13,000 enroll in post-secondary institutions annually (Gildersleeve & Hernandez, 2012; Muñoz, 2013). However, most recent data reveal that an estimated 98,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools across the country every year (Zong & Batalova, 2019). Despite these challenges, undocumented students are resilient and …

Identifying Markers Of Transit States Embedded In International Drug Trafficking Networks, Citlalik Ibarra Figueroa

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Illicit drugs can travel across multiple borders before reaching their intended retail market. International drug trafficking is important because it introduces a large quantity of foreign sourced illicit drugs into domestic drug markets. Of utmost importance are countries that lie along the transshipment paths used by international drug trafficking operations that facilitate the movement of illicit drugs. Understanding the characteristics of countries operating as transit states is necessary to combat transshipment operations. The study investigates social, economic, geographic, and political factors that have the potential to account for nations being positioned as transit states in illicit drug transshipment networks generated …

Analysis Of Us Accidents And Solutions, Swapnil Kisan Nikam

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Reducing traffic accidents is an essential public safety challenge all over the world; therefore, accident analysis has been a subject of much research in recent decades.

The objective of the project is to analyze the US accident data from 50 states to inform the US government agencies and the general public on trends and possible causes of traffic accidents and what could be done to reduce them. The analysis include number of accidents by year, number of accidents by state, best time to travel by month, day and hour, accident-prone area in each state, factors responsible of the accidents like …

A Bridge-Rehabilitation Strategy Based On The Analysis Of A Bridge-Inspection Data Set, Liam Dromey, Kieran Ruane, John J. Murphy, Brian O'Rourke, Seán Lacey

Publications

Bridge-management systems (BMSs) allow bridge owners to assess the condition of their bridge stock. However, not all BMS packages have the capability to formulate network-level bridge-rehabilitation investment strategies. This research has developed a decision-support system for bridge owners in the selection of the best strategy for bridge rehabilitation at the network level. The basis of the research is an available data set of 1367 bridge-inspection records for County Cork, Ireland, that has been prepared to the Eirspan BMS inspection standard. The developed system consists of a project-prioritisation procedure that builds on previous research, a methodology for the calculation of a …

S2n2: An Interpretive Semantic Structure Attention Neural Network For Trajectory Classification, Canghong Jin, Ting Tao, Xianzhe Luo, Zemin Liu, Minghui Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We have witnessed a rapid growth over past decades in sensor data mining (SDM), which aims at extracting valuable information automatically from large repositories of moving activity data. One of the significant SDM tasks is identifying humans through their transit modes using a variety of user-tracking systems. However, to the best of our knowledge, distinguishing traces of users and understanding their behaviors are difficult tasks in most real-life cases for the following reasons: 1) activity data containing both temporal and spatial contexts are of high order and sparse; 2) living patterns are not as regular as expected, and the route …

Is There A Right To Tweet At Your President?, Nick Reade

Fordham Law Review

The U.S. Supreme Court has developed the public forum doctrine to protect the First Amendment rights of speakers in places of assembly and expression. The doctrine facilitates free expression by restricting the government’s ability to discriminate against or regulate speech in state- controlled public forums. In 2019, two federal courts of appeals extended the doctrine to protect speakers who express themselves in the interactive spaces that elected politicians control on their personal social media accounts. In Davison v. Randall, the Fourth Circuit held that a local official’s Facebook page was a public forum and, therefore, the official could neither …

State Department Of Transportation Suas Program Development And Operational Deployment, Dennis Bausman, Joseph Burgett, Ajay Jadhav, Scott Shaffer, Eric Stuckey

The Professional Constructor

Over the past several years small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) have gained popularity in the private sector. Recent studies have shown an increasing interest from state DOTs in the U.S. for the use of drone technology. However, most of the studies did not fully investigate the depth of program integration or application. This study combines the findings of recent studies to identify state DOTs with the most extensive sUAS operational experience. The drone champions for the six states identified, were interviewed to gain substantive insight regarding program initiation and organization, the spectrum of agency use, perceived benefits, and the DOT’s …

Constructing A Legal Framework For The Expansion Proposals Of Collection Museums, Colleen O’Leary

Duke Law Journal

In 2018, The Frick Collection, a museum featuring the private art collection of Henry Clay Frick and housed in the Frick family’s private residence, finally received approval from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to expand its physical footprint to accommodate its growing number of visitors. Official sanctioning of the plan came after years of consternation, however, demonstrating the competing legal principles and conflicting interests that emerge when collection museums seek to expand their physical structures.

Collection museums, like the Frick, are institutions created from individuals’ private art collections that were themselves amassed to found and open the museum. …

Tennessee Farm Bureau News - March 2020, Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation

Tennessee Farm Bureau News

No abstract provided.