Digital Commons Network^™

The Public Law Paradoxes Of Climate Emergency Declarations, Jocelyn Stacey

All Faculty Publications

Climate emergency declarations occupy a legally-ambiguous space between emergency measure and political rhetoric. Their uncertain status in public law provides a unique opportunity to illuminate latent assumptions about emergencies and how they are regulated in law. This article analyzes climate emergency declarations in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. It argues that these climate emergency declarations reflect back a set of paradoxes about how emergencies are governed in law—paradoxes about defining the emergency, its relationship to time and who gets to respond to the emergency and how. These paradoxes productively complicate long-held and over-simplified assumptions about emergencies contained …

The New Norm: Do Societal Attitudes Still Play A Role In Unmarried Childbearing?, Madilynn Bulot

Honors Baccalaureate Theses

This study examines the influence of women’s economic changes in the United States on the incidence of out-of-wedlock births in the United States over time. The data were obtained from various sources including the CDC, BLS, and U.S. Census from the year 1980 to 2018. It was found that women’s education and the fertility rate had significant impacts on out-of-wedlock births. However, while these societal norms had a positive correlation in the first few decades since Roe v. Wade, the technology shock has died down while these trends have continued their path, and women are now choosing to both work …

The Collegiate Black Space: Black College Students’ Use Of New Counter-Spaces For Support, Knowledge Production, And Organizing For Activism, Heather Streets

Doctoral Dissertations

Black collegians who attend historically white institutions continue to struggle with racism, microaggressions, feelings of alienation, minimal or improper advising, and an undue pressure to prove themselves (Bonner, 2010; Feagin & Sikes, 1995; Strayhorn, 2010). These barriers to success result in part due to a lack of support from the colleges and universities that they attend (Allen, 1992; Parker, Puig, Johnson & Anthony, Jr., 2016). With institutional benefits designed to benefit white students over students of color, Black students must find their own alternatives for collaboration and to provide support for their peers.

Many Black spaces can be defined as …

Teaching Solidarity: Popular Education In Grassroots U.S. Social Movements, Tenaya Summers Lafore

Doctoral Dissertations

Fifty years after he wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s work is as relevant as ever. But while many of Freire’s ideas are well known in the United States, there is limited research on their application in social movement settings, a practice commonly known as popular education. This comparative case study draws on Freire’s theory of popular education to analyze two U.S.-based grassroots education programs, one with low-income residents in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco and one with front-line hospital and public school employees on the East Coast. Through six months of participant observation and …

Cuentos Criollos: Colombian Internally Displaced Families As Knowledge Producers, Liliana Salazar De Deck

Doctoral Dissertations

Colombia continues to report the highest number of internally displaced people (IDPs) with over eight million registered in 2021 (UNHCR, 2021). The majority of the internally displaced people are campesinos, AfroColombians, and members of Indigenous communities. Historically, people in these demographic groups have been excluded from political participation and wealth accumulation, and their identities are minoritized (Bello, 2003). Urban schools have become contact zones (Pratt, 1991) for internally displaced families and various economic, social, and political discourses attempt to explore and explain their experiences. However, the voices of the families themselves are not often found within this body of scholarship. …

An Exploration Of Learning-At-Home Experiences Among Families And Children Of Color Labeled With Disabilities During Covid-19: A Narrative Inquiry, Nam Ju Han

Doctoral Dissertations

We are living in this historical moment of a COVID-19 global crisis that is continuing to impact marginalized families in our very own communities. Students of color, especially those who are already on the margins, and experience inequities in the classroom and in the community, have been further impacted by the quarantine as the educational system had not prioritized how to support students who face certain vulnerabilities due to lack of government funding, the historical oppressive tendency for schools to function within a medical model of standardization, along with the commodification of learning. Given the novelty of COVID-19 research, the …

Feminist Catholic Organizational Identity: A Phenomenological Study Of Charism In The Lay Educator Of A Notre Dame De Namur Learning Community, Kathleen Barrera Quiazon

Doctoral Dissertations

The Catholic schools of women’s religious congregations in the United States possess a distinctive Catholic identity, owed in great part to the charism of their founders and the feminist worldview that emerged in the sisters’ mission, communal narratives, and ministries. With the decline of women religious across the country, schools and congregations ask questions for the future of that identity in the hands of lay educators. As with many religiously sponsored schools, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and their lay partners in education are engaged in these critical questions for their own learning communities across the country.

This …

Organizational Practices And Second-Generation Gender Bias: A Qualitative Inquiry Into The Career Progression Of Us State-Level Managers, Maria J. D’Agostino, Helisse Levine, Meghna Sabharwal, Ai C. Johnson-Manning

Publications and Research

Ely and Meyerson’s gendered organizations framework reconceptualizes traditional gender differences defined by biology and lack of structural opportunities, to a complex set of social relations in the workplace. We apply this framework to second-generation gender bias to further understand impediments to women’s career progression in the public sector workplace. In-depth interviews of state-level administrators in U.S. public sector agencies indicate that “narratives” perpetuate second-generation gender bias that is deeply ingrained in organizational practices and policies, especially for women and women of color. This framework can be applied to future studies examining the gendered nature of organizations in different workplace settings. …

Enhancing Police Accountability And Legitimacy, Daniel L. Stageman

Publications and Research

As the institution responsible for exercising the state monopoly on violence within U.S. borders, the legitimacy of policing depends on its accountability through the democratic process. Ideally, police in a democracy are authorized by the voting public to use force in a manner that is limited, justifiable, and clearly in service of the aims of public safety and law enforcement - in other words to prevent the social harms associated with criminal behavior. A combination of factors including structural inequality, historical associations with white supremacy, and hyperlocal oversight structures present significant challenges to police legitimacy, especially in highly policed communities …

Religion As A Micro And Macro Property: Investigating The Multilevel Relationship Between Religion And Abortion Attitudes Across The Globe, Amy Adamczyk

Publications and Research

In many countries abortion is the most contested issue being publicly discussed, in part, because it has implications for gender equality, health, family formation, and politics. Personal religious beliefs are often seen as having an important role in shaping disapproving attitudes. However, little attention has been given to the country religious context for understanding public opinion about abortion. Drawing on ideas from cultural sociology, the anti-ascetic hypothesis, and moral communities hypothesis, this study investigates the individual and country religious associations with abortion attitudes. Using hierarchical modeling techniques and survey data from over 70 nations, representing the majority of the world’s …

Using Internet-Derived Data To Measure Religion: Understanding How Google Can Provide Insight Into Cross-National Religious Differences, Amy Adamczyk, Jacqueline Scott, Steven Hitlin

Publications and Research

Internet and social media data provide new sources of information for examining social issues, but their potential for scholars interested in religion remains unclear. Focusing on cross-national religion data, we test the validity of measures drawn from Google and Twitter against well-known existing data. We find that Google Trend (GT) searches for the dominant religions’ major holidays, along with “Buddhism,” can be validated against traditional sources. We also find that GT and traditional measures account for similar amounts of variation, and the GT measures do not differ substantially from established ones for explaining several cross-national outcomes (e.g., fertility, circumcision, and …

Assessing The Benefits Of College Internships At A Hispanic Serving Institution, Amy Adamczyk, Katheryn Crawford, Yuna Kim

Publications and Research

Few studies have investigated the usefulness of internships at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI). Focusing on a 4-year public university (HSI), this study examined differences between the internship and the non-internship students, and changes across the semester for development. A structured internship appears to have some value; including increased interaction with faculty outside the classroom, confidence in verbally expressing ideas, and class presentations.

Assessing Variation And Change In Newspaper Portrayals Of Muslims: The Influence Of The Trump Election And Differences Across The United States In Local And National Papers, Amy Adamczyk, Emily Greene-Colozzi, Senahan Kiyal Keles, Aida Murati

Publications and Research

Since Donald Trump’s political campaign, Americans have appeared increasingly divided over public opinion issues and US policies with the media seemingly reflecting these divisions. One of Trump’s early initiatives was the “Muslim ban,” which restricted visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries. Focusing on the portrayal of Muslims in over 900 hand coded articles, our study uses multilevel modeling techniques to examine how newspapers changed their frames and claimsmakers in discussions about Muslims before and after Trump was elected. After the election, newspapers were more likely to include government claimsmakers and an immigration frame, and were less likely to mention a radical …

Unpacking The Influence Of Islamic Religious Culture And Individual Religious Affiliation On Testing Hiv-Positive, Brittany Hayes, Amy Adamczyk

Publications and Research

The distribution of HIV cases varies cross-nationally. We separate the influences of Islam at the macro-and micro-levels to understand the role of religion in shaping the spread of HIV. Drawing on biomarker data from the Demographic and Health Surveys, we construct a multilevel database (Individual N= 568,476; Country N= 30). We examine a series of national-and individual-level predictors that may mediate the relationship between Islam and testing HIV-positive. Individual religious affiliation and proportion Muslim retained their risk-reducing effects even when accounting for a range of mediators and suppressors. Islam has a sui generis effect on testing HIV-positive.

When And How Does Anti-Semitism Occur? The Different Trigger Mechanisms Associated With Different Types Of Criminal And Non-Criminal Hate Incidents, Matteo Vergani, Dan Goodhard, Rouven Link, Amy Adamczyk, Joshua D. Freilich, Steven Chermak

Publications and Research

We used data from an Australian community register to build a database containing 673 incidents, including both criminal and non-criminal anti-Semitic acts that occurred between October 2013 and September 2017. We conducted bivariate and multivariate analyses to explore the differences in the types of incidents associated with different trigger events. Using time series methods, we found a significant increase in criminal (but not in non-criminal) incidents during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict. During Jewish religious festivals, we found a significant decrease in criminal incidents, and a significant increase in non-criminal incidents. After the establishment of the neo-nazi group Antipodean Resistance, we …

Bullying And Truancy Amongst School-Going Adolescents In Timor-Leste: Results From The 2015 Global School-Based Health Survey, Derrick Nyantakyi Owusu, Kenneth Owusu Ansah, Nutifafa Eugene Yaw Dey, Henry Ofori Duah, Pascal Agbadi

College of Nursing Faculty Research and Publications

Introduction

Studies in Southeast Asia found that bullying commonly occurred among students, and it has a detrimental impact on their school attendance. However, there is a paucity of literature in Timor-Leste on the association between bullying and truancy. Therefore, this study examined the association between bullying and truancy among Timor-Leste school-going adolescents.

Methods

We used the 2015 Timor-Leste Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) dataset to examine our hypothesis in logistic regression models for both full adolescents (N = 3609) and gender stratified samples. The models further controlled for other sociodemographic variables. Statistical significance was pegged at p ≤ …

Responding To Mass, Computer-Generated, And Malattributed Comments, Steven J. Balla, Reeve Bull, Bridget C.E. Dooling, Emily Hammond, Michael A. Livermore, Michael Herz, Beth Simone Noveck

Articles

A number of technological and political forces have transformed the once staid and insider dominated notice-and-comment process into a forum for large scale, sometimes messy, participation in regulatory decisionmaking. It is not unheard of for agencies to receive millions of comments on rulemakings; often these comments are received as part of organized mass comment campaigns. In some rulemakings, questions have been raised about whether public comments were submitted under false names, or were automatically generated by computer “bot” programs. In this Article, we examine whether and to what extent such submissions are problematic and make recommendations for how rulemaking agencies …

Innovation In Adversity, Clark Asay, Stephanie Plamondon

Faculty Scholarship

Adverse experiences, like long-term poverty, can inhibit innovation. But as much research and many real-world examples show, adversity can also stimulate innovation. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic provides a number of recent examples where adverse conditions have led individuals, firms, and governments to innovate in the hope of benefiting society.

Despite the fact that some forms of adversity undermine innovation while others stimulate it, legal scholars have largely failed to distinguish between the two forms or even account for adversity's relationship to innovation when assessing innovation law and policy, including intellectual property (IP) laws. Yet given adversity's significant role in affecting …

Innovation's Hidden Externalities, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Faculty Scholarship

When commentators discuss innovation’s externalities, they often classify them into one of two categories. On the positive externalities, or “spillovers” side, legal and economics scholars often speak of the benefits innovation confers on other innovators. Future innovators profit from past innovation as they “stand on the shoulders of giants” to develop progressively new and better innovation. Discussion of innovation’s negative externalities, on the other hand, has mainly focused on social harms not directly related to future innovation that particular advances impose on third parties—the classic example being pollution. Thus, the common understanding is that innovation’s spillovers positively impact innovation (among …

The Sociology And Psychology Of Innovation: A Synthesis And Research Agenda For Intellectual Property Scholars, Stephanie Plamondon Bair, Laura Pedraza-Fariña

Faculty Scholarship

Intellectual Property (IP) and innovation law scholarship is generally concerned with the question of how to promote socially beneficial innovation. Until recently, the analysis brought to bear on that question in the literature has been dominated by an individual, rational-actor-centered model grounded in the neoclassical economics tradition. Under this model, individual innovators are assumed to respond to innovation incentives in rational ways, unswayed by their social environments or their own psychology.

Of course, as innovation scholars are beginning to recognize, the road to innovation is much more winding and complex than the straight path from incentive to innovation that the …

Delaware's Frontier, Matthew C. Jennejohn, D. Gordon Smith

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, prepared for a symposium honoring Chief Justice Leo Strine, explores how institutional capacity limits the Delaware courts’ role in the U.S. economy. A decision theoretic approach is employed to delineate the boundaries of that role, with particular attention paid to recent arguments that Delaware's Caremark doctrine should be extended to ESG concerns. The essay views muscular expansion of Caremark to encompass stakeholder interests as misguided without significant investments in institutional capacity.

The Transactional Dynamics Of Market Fragility, Matthew C. Jennejohn

Faculty Scholarship

This Article takes a step toward more clearly diagnosing market fragility for the purpose of developing better policy choices that anticipate and address future crises. It does so by connecting two erstwhile and distinct literatures: the legal scholarship on relational contracting and the social science on the diffusion of shocks in economic networks. This Article attempts to connect the strategies parties pursue in designing their agreements—a familiar topic to contract scholars—to the diffusion patterns observed in disrupted markets—an increasingly important area of study in macroeconomics. By investigating that intersection, this Article introduces a new potential policy domain for remediating market …

The War In Ukraine And The Legitimacy Of The International Criminal Court, Yvonne Dutton, Milena Sterio

American University Law Review

The news of the many atrocities being committed as the war in Ukraine rages on has prompted a chorus of calls seeking to hold perpetrators accountable. Heralded as a critical player is the International Criminal Court (the ICC or “Court”). Unlike in the past where states have decried requests to increase the Court’s budget or refused to cooperate with the Office of the Prosecutor’s (“OTP”) efforts to gather evidence or arrest suspects, states are generously donating funding and other resources to bolster the Court’s likelihood of bringing successful prosecutions.

This Article argues that the unique situation surrounding state support for …

First Do Not Harm: Revisiting Meriwether V. Hartop And Academic Freedom In Higher Education, Inara Scott, Elizabeth Brown, Eric Yordy

American University Law Review

repeal and amend substantive statutes unilaterally, a power that can threaten bedrock commitments to our federalism and to our constitutional rights to the jury. The decisions about how and when to displace state law in favor of federal law and about how and when to grant powers to juries over judges cannot be vested in the Judicial Branch alone without the structural restraints of an Article III “case or controversy.” The paper concludes by offering some ways to fix our evidence law and to put it on firmer footing, permitting better power-sharing and dialogue between two branches of government—Congress and …

Presumed Unfit: The Dual Bind Faced By Pregnant And Parenting Youth In Foster Care, Kara R. Finck

American University Law Review

Pregnant and parenting youth in foster care are subject to a range of laws, policies, and practices that expose the realities of a child welfare system structured to focus on surveillance instead of support and family regulation instead of family integrity. Informed by my experience representing foster youth who become parents, this Article considers how youth in care are presumed unfit to parent their children because of a history in foster care and their age. A youth’s status as pregnant or parenting is weaponized to subject them to additional scrutiny, threats, and a shifting burden to justify their fundamental right …

Judicial Review Of Emergency Administration, Desiree Leclercq

American University Law Review

This Article seeks to describe and defend the judicial review of federal agencies’ responses to national emergencies - what I refer to as “emergency administration.” That may prove difficult. Agencies are experts in their respective fields. During emergencies, scholars and policymakers assume that judges will defer to that expertise under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA ). On January 13, 2022, the Supreme Court defied that assumption when it blocked the Biden Administration s workplace vaccine and masking rules. Critics now assume that judges are reviewing emergency administration to constrain regulation. Both assumptions conclude that judicial review is neither sincere nor …

Human Trafficking Of People With A Disability: An Analysis Of State And Federal Cases, Andrea Nichols, Erin Heil

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The current academic discourse examining human trafficking is lacking in focus on survivors with a disability. The increased likelihood of abuse experienced by people with a disability is well documented in the research literature, and a small body of research indicates heightened sex trafficking victimization of minor girls with a disability. Yet, very little research specifically examines sex and/or labor trafficking of people with a disability, and no systematic research analyzes prosecuted cases of trafficking with disability as the focal point of analysis. Drawing from a content analysis of 18 federal and 17 state cases of human trafficking, the current …

Neo-Emancipatory Sex Education In Germany: Sexual Abuse And Gender Confusion, Bernd Ahrbeck, Karla Etschenberg, Marion Felder

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article focuses on two related areas of concern with regard to sex education and implications for children and youth in Germany. The first one is the history of the currently dominant neo-emancipatory sexual education and its implications for today. This direction of sex education is highly influenced by theories of Helmut Kentler who with the help of the German city of Berlin youth protection services department sent homeless and troubled boys to known pedophiles for care. This experiment went on for 30 years, ending in 2001. Only now has the extend of this horrific practice been fully discovered. The …

Sorority Women’S Perceptions Of Survivors’ Services And Justice On An Urban Campus, Andrea Giuffre, Elaine Gunnison

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

While researchers have attempted to estimate the prevalence of and identify risk factors for sexual assault, less is understood about the relationship among populations at high risk for sexual assault and their perceptions of survivors’ services organizations and justice. The purpose of this investigation is to contribute to existing research through exploratory qualitative analyses of 43 undergraduate sorority women’s perceptions of survivors’ services and justice on a large, urban campus in the Pacific Northwest in the United States. Results of these exploratory analyses revealed that the sorority women had preferences for informal confidants and services whom they could trust concerning …

Digital Transformation Of Higher Education Through Disruptive Pedagogies: Wrapping A Course Around A Course To Promote Learner Agency, Maria Elena Corbeil, Rene Corbeil

Teaching and Learning Faculty Publications

Today’s professionals are increasingly seeking learning opportunities to augment their skills and strengthen their resumes. As a result, there has been an increase in the demand for, and acceptance of, digital credentials by employers across all industries. This creates an opportunity for colleges and universities to create innovative pathways for granting academic credit to external digital credentials. In addition to embracing disruptive technologies, the digital transformation of higher education also necessitates the investigation of disruptive pedagogies–teaching methods and practices that challenge the status quo–to prepare their graduates to enter the workforce ready and equipped to hit the job running. This …