May Class Counsel Also Represent Lead Plaintiffs?, Bruce A. Green, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, courts and commentators have been aware that the potential for conflicting interests among the class representatives, class counsel, and absent class members is inherent in the class action device. Notwithstanding this realization and a substantial amount of scholarly and judicial commentary on class conflicts, one kind of conflict has not received due attention: the conflict that inevitably arises when class counsel also represents class members as individuals. We demonstrate that this conflict— so common to be almost invisible—arises from the very beginning of a putative class representation, and may create a fraught situation for a lawyer concurrently representing …

Afrodescendants, Law, And Race In Latin America, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

Law and Society research in and about Latin America has been particularly beneficial in elucidating the gap between the ideals of racial equality laws in the region and the actual subordinated status of its racialized subjects. Some of the recurrent themes in the race-related literature have been: the limits of the Latin American emphasis on criminal law to redress discriminatory actions; the limits of multicultural constitutional reform for full political participation; the insufficiency of land reform and recognition of ethnic communal property titles; and the challenges to implementing race conscious public policies such as affirmative action. Especially illuminating have been …

What Should Presidential Candidates Tell Us About Themselves? Proposals For Improving Transparency In Presidential Campaigns, Megha Dharia, Rikki Lavine, Ryan Partelow, James Auchincloss, Krysia Lenzo

Faculty Scholarship

Elections are at the foundation of our democracy, but voters sometimes cast their ballots without critical information about presidential candidates. This report calls for requirements that candidates release more personal financial information, including five years of tax returns, and undergo criminal and intelligence background checks. The report also advocates for a system allowing candidates to submit to voluntary medical exams with some results released to the public.

This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law School’s Democracy and the Constitution Clinic, which is focused on developing non-partisan recommendations to strengthen the nation’s …

Toward An Independent Administration Of Justice: Proposals To Insulate The Department Of Justice From Improper Political Interference, Rebecca Cho, Louis Cholden-Brown, Marcello Figueroa

Faculty Scholarship

The rule of law is undermined when political and personal interests motivate criminal prosecutions. This report advances proposals for ensuring that the federal criminal justice system is administered uniformly based on the facts and the law. It recommends a law preventing the president from interfering in specific prosecutions, another law establishing responsibilities for prosecutors who receive improper orders, and new conflict of interest regulations for Department of Justice officials.

This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law School’s Democracy and the Constitution Clinic, which is focused on developing non-partisan recommendations to strengthen …

Presidents Must Be Elected Popularly: Examining Proposals And Identifying The Natural Endpoint Of Electoral College Reform, Gianni Mascioli, Caroline Kane, Meira Nagel, Michael Mcgarry, Ezra Medina, Jenny Brejt, Siobhan D'Angelo

Faculty Scholarship

The Electoral College effectively disenfranchises voters who live outside the few states that decide presidential elections. This report endorses a change in the way electoral votes are allocated to ensure that Americans’ votes receive the same weight. States should sign on to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, an agreement among states to allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Ranked choice voting should also be employed to ensure that candidates receive majority support.

This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law School’s Democracy and the Constitution …

Enforcing The Intent Of The Constitution’S Foreign And Domestic Emoluments Clauses, James Auchincloss, Megha Dharia, Krysia Lenzo

Faculty Scholarship

The Constitution’s Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses are meant to prevent corruption and conflicts of interest. The Foreign Emoluments Clause prohibits some federal officials, including the president, from receiving payments or other benefits from foreign governments, while the Domestic Emoluments Clause bans the president from receiving payments other than the office’s salary from the federal and state governments. To enforce the clauses, this report recommends requiring the president to divest from business interests and increasing powers to investigate and punish violations of the clauses.

This report was researched and written during the 2018-2019 academic year by students in Fordham Law …

Evidentiary Irony And The Incomplete Rule Of Completeness: A Proposal To Amend Federal Rule Of Evidence 106, Daniel J. Capra, Liesa L. Richte

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Against Prosecutors, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When Prosecutors Politick: Progressive Law Enforcers Then And Now, Bruce A. Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Faculty Scholarship

A new and recognizable group of reform-minded prosecutors has assumed the mantle of progressive prosecution. The term is hard to define in part because its adherents embrace a diverse set of policies and priorities. In comparing the contemporary movement with Progressive Era prosecutors, this Article has two related goals. First, it seeks to better define progressive prosecution. Second, it uses a historical comparison to draw some lessons for the current movement. Both groups of prosecutors were elected on a wave of popular support. Unlike today’s mainstream prosecutors who tend to campaign and labor in relative obscurity, these two sets of …

The New Tax Legislative And Regulatory Process, Rebecca Kysar

Faculty Scholarship

This paper compares the enactment and implementation process for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) to prior tax reform acts, as well as situates it within other developments in the legislative process more generally. It details how the 2017 enactment process solidifies reconciliation as the primary vehicle for the enactment of major tax measures, a trend nearly two decades in the making. The ambitious scope of the TCJA, as well as the rushed and partisan reconciliation process by which it was enacted, has led to ambiguities and instability in the legislation. These features have, in turn, posed an …

The “Welfare Queen” Goes To The Polls: Race-Based Fractures In Gender Politics And Opportunities For Intersectional Coalitions, Catherine Powell, Camille Gear Rich

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Korematzu, Hirabayashi, And The Second Monster, Eric L. Muller

Faculty Publications

It is a trope at least as old as Beowulf: the unexpected second monster. Beowulf arrives in Heorot to take on Grendel, the demon who has been terrorizing the Ring-Danes’ mead-hall. He bests the monster in battle and Grendel slinks off, one-armed and bloodied, to die. The Ring-Danes honor Beowulf with a great banquet; he has slaughtered their nemesis and there is much to celebrate. Full of mead and a newfound sense of safety, the revelers drift off to sleep. That is when a terrible new monster bursts upon the scene—Grendel’s mother, the beast that brought Grendel into the …

A Poetics Of Violence: Representations Of Violence As Storytelling And World-Building Tools Of The Theater, Richard Gilbert

Dissertations

This dissertation explores how representations of violence do dramaturgical work in theatrical production. Playwrights write scenes of violence, and directors and designers stage them, with specific dramaturgical goals in mind. The project of this work is to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how productions use representations of violence. Ideally, that framework will be of use both to critics seeking to analyze productions with violence and to practitioners who want to more consciously shape their own use of violence.

Representations of violence create a sudden change in the audience's affective experience of the fictional world. I call that sudden change …

Perceived Threat And Left-Wing Authoritarianism: The Effect Of Framing On Persuasive Messages, James Donald Mcfarland

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Past research reveals a strong connection between feeling threatened and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA). This relationship is considered to be an integral part of authoritarianism and the nature of its presence in the left-leaning populace is still being fully explored. This study examined the relationship between perceived threat and Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) through the framing of persuasive messages. Participants (n = 256) were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and given a list of reward- or threat-framed statements concerning the possible ramifications of voting in future elections and then asked to rate the quality and persuasiveness of the respective statements. …

Digitizing The Corporeal: The Affect Of Mediatized Elements In Theatrical Performance, Kurtis Layne Hassinger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the affect of digital media in live performance. The research is generated from work with integrated digital media in Carol Ann Duffy's 2015 adaptation of Everyman as well as Samuel Beckett's radio play Cascando. Through experimentation and implementation of motion tracking digital elements and actor-manipulated sonic and visual digital media achieved with MIDI and OSC mapping, I explore the embodiment of performances by actors when their various characters are represented on the physical as well as the digital stage simultaneously.

The research interrogates digital media in storytelling when actors can manipulate imagery and language in real time …

A Snapshot Of Care: Creating Models Of Care For Individuals Included In The Terry Collection, Felicia Robyn Sparozic

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Utilizing the bioarchaeology of care model, this research formulates a model of care based on ethnohistorical and skeletal markers of pathologic conditions. The index of care is the method used to create models of care, and this requires social, cultural, economic, environmental, and mortuary contexts to determine the resources required to aid a person through injury or disability. This paper investigates the impact of known medical, occupational, and morgue records that accompanied each selected individual in the skeletal collection. This additional information, beyond what is gained from skeletal analysis, generates a complex model of care. A more complex model of …

Conceptions And Receptions: A Case Study Analysis Of Community Engagement At Four Local Museums, Mary L. Casey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The theme of community engagement has been a prevalent topic of debate and discussion among museum professionals across the country, and so this thesis seeks to examine how four local museums connect with their local audiences in meaningful and successful ways. I focus on local museums because they have the unique opportunity to intimately engage their immediate community’s perceptions of identity and heritage, and relate the interpreted past in innovative ways that effectively resonate with the contemporary lives of current residents.The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, Strawbery Banke Museum, The Tuck Museum of Hampton History, and the James House Museum, …

Fabrications, Molly V. Rivera

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The objects that surround us tell a story of our past, and act as physical stand ins for a person, place, or experience no longer present. My work explores the significance of objects and how we use them to preserve our memories and make them tangible. Memory is ephemeral and changes over time, simultaneously growing weaker and stronger. I use clay to accentuate this relationship, visually depicting both preservation and decay.

Inspired by my personal narrative, I recreate specific objects of significance by hand. This results in subtle variations of the original, much like the changes in our memory over …

The Treatment Female Administrators Receive From Female Followers And The Relationship And Affect It Has On Their Positions, Jennifer Rae Burnett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The barriers and support between female subordinates and female administrators are crucial elements in a successful administrative career. While much research has been conducted on men versus women in leadership positions as well as the treatment subordinates receive from their supervisors, there is little research on the subordinate’s treatment of the leader and how it affects their position.

The purpose of this non-experimental mixed methods study was to ascertain the relationship among female administrators and the support and barriers they experience from female subordinates, as well as how it affects their experience and longevity in their leadership positions. Participants included …

Handing Down The Heritage: Preserving Irish Diasporic Identities In The Festival City Of Montana, Margaret Mary Walsh

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Butte, Montana is a tough, historic industrial town in western Montana known for its mining, its Irish, and strangely, its festivals. The city boasts countless parades and community events each year for a variety of holidays as well as for showcases of traditions and ethnic pride. Three celebrations in particular, St. Patrick’s Day, Fourth of July, and An Rí Rá, attract visitors from all over the country – and world – who seek to experience the enthusiasm and splendor of these celebrations. So, what can these popular celebrations in Montana’s Festival City, Butte, reveal about the Irish community living there? …

Biotic And Abiotic Drivers Of Acyclic Snowshoe Hare Population Dynamics In A Spatiotemporally Complex System, Alexander Vishvamitra Kumar

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although periodic fluctuations in species abundance have long fascinated society (e.g. lemming mass migrations and locust plagues in Egypt), it was not until 1924 that Charles Elton brought cycles to the attention of the scientific community. Following his work, cycle dynamics have remained an enigmatic area of ecology with many cyclic species exhibiting dampened and even acyclic dynamics across space (i.e. portions of their range) or time. One such species, snowshoe hares, exhibit drastic population fluctuations in the northern boreal, but are thought to exhibit dampened cyclic or acyclic population dynamics in the southern portion of their range with quantification …

A Search For Community, Alexander Moore

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

I attempt to understand what is meant by community by grounding the analysis in Raymond Williams’ historical definition. From this, I work the criteria of community as described by Williams so to determine their precise meaning and primacy. I attempt to show why community must be small in size while arguing that humans are in a community with nonhumans. Building upon this move, I take up an argument for the role of place in community formation. This preceding inquiry is meant to prime an analysis of both virtue ethics and literature, specifically an application of Martha Nussbaum’s Central Capabilities to …

Learning From Wilderness Fire: Restoring Landscape Scale Patterns And Processes, Julia Kittleson Berkey

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Wilderness areas, because they are managed to be “untrammeled by man,” often offer the best approximation of intact, undisturbed ecological patterns and processes. In the case of wildland fire, this means that wilderness areas often provide the only landscapes where fire has been managed to play an active, ecosystem role. As a result, these wilderness areas offer unique lessons both in terms of wildland fire management as well as the ecological consequences that result from this management approach. For these reasons, an in-depth history of fire management in the wilderness areas of the Northern Rocky Mountains is provided to highlight …

Collaborative Conservation: A Philosophical Analysis Of The Efficacy And Commensurability Of Tek And Western Science, Anne M. Belldina

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis seeks to explore the similarities and differences between traditional ecological knowledge and Western science as a way to address long-held misconceptions about the efficacy of traditional ecological knowledge, or TEK. The motivation for this project arose from a deep desire to investigate the historical injustices toward Indigenous peoples in the name of conservation. The goal of this analysis is to illustrate that effective collaboration between Indigenous knowledge holders and Western scientists is not only possible, but desirable. I outline three major barriers from which I draw out three minimum criteria which much be met if collaborative conservation efforts …

The Role Of Experiential Learning In Developing Multicultural Competence, Kaoru Allison Powell

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Although much importance has been placed on training programs to develop multiculturally competent service providers, the question remains as to when and where clinicians acquire their multicultural competence (MCC). Currently, most training programs appear to focus on the development of multicultural awareness and knowledge, without adequate focus on skills. However, experientially based learning exercises are associated with skills development in many areas, including general clinical skills development. Thus, students who engage in higher levels of experiential learning in their multicultural training may rate themselves as more competent with multicultural skills than students with less frequent experiential learning. I hypothesize that …

Ethical Eating: Overcoming Alienation In The Industrial Food System By Aligning Our Practices With Our Principles, André Kushnir

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis arose out of a moment of discord, while an environmental philosopher was eating blackberries in the middle of a blizzard in Missoula, Montana. What follows is an attempt to bridge the gap between our principles and our practices, by asking the questions: What does ethical eating look like? Is it possible within our current industrial food system? and If not, what needs to change? Responding to the publication of the 2019 EAT-Lancet report, this essay moves beyond thinking of ethical eating as “healthy” and “sustainable” and challenges the networks of suffering and labour that we take for …

Creating A Conservation Corridor In Coastal Ecuador: Constraints And Opportunities For Integrative Agroforestry, Lucille M.F. Rice

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Agroforestry has the potential to address land degradation and rural livelihood concerns resulting from tropical deforestation and has therefore become a popular tool for reforestation in conservation initiatives. However, these initiatives often lack the resources to implement an integrative approach to developing site-specific agroforestry systems, leading to undesirable outcomes such as lack of community support and unmet ecological objectives. This paper presents a case study of a conservation initiative implemented by the Ceiba Foundation for Tropical Conservation (CFTC) in the Ecuadorian province of Manabí. The CFTC is working with private landowners to establish a coastal conservation corridor through reforestation and …

An Exploration Of Zero Waste Policies And Recommendations For Missoula, Sarah Blyth Lundquist

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Zero Waste” is a concept and community goal that has arisen to challenge the current consumerist economic system and offer solutions for a number of environmental issues. In adopting this goal, individuals and communities pledge to reduce and divert at least 90% of their waste in a certain number of years. These goals can be reached by employing policies, programs, and other intervention tactics which establish Zero Waste infrastructure, ensure equitable and widespread access to Zero Waste services, and provide educational outreach and resources to the community. Missoula adopted a Zero Waste goal in 2016 and created a Zero Waste …

Investigating The Coordinate Regulation Of Stem Cell Proliferation And Differentiation By Fbf Proteins, Xiaobo Wang

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Balance of stem cell proliferation and differentiation is important for maintaining tissue homeostasis, and uncovering the mechanisms regulating the balance of proliferation and differentiation of stem cells helps us understand the causative factors for ageing, cancer and various degenerative disorders. Pumilio and FBF (PUF) family RNA-binding proteins are conserved mRNA regulators controlling stem cell development in eukaryotes. FBF-1 and FBF-2, two PUF family proteins in C. elegans, are expressed in the mitotic region of the germline and are important for maintaining germline stem cells. FBF-1 and FBF-2 are very similar in primary sequence and share most of the target mRNAs, …

Improving Health Literacy As A Method Of Increasing Adherence In Institutionalized Geriatric Physical Therapy Patients, Kathryn Grace Stoehr Tiemessen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The global population of long-term care facility (LTCF) residents > 65 years of age has high rates of sedentary behavior, and is expected to increase in number in the coming years. LTCF residents benefit from physical therapy, which can increase patients’ activity levels while treating symptoms of the inevitable aging process. A novel method is needed to increase LTCF resident adherence to physical therapy programs (PTPs). Health literacy (HL), which is the ability to interpret and understand health related information, presents as one such method to increase patient adherence. The geriatric population has the lowest HL rates out of all adult …