Digital Commons Network^™

Property, Sovereignty, And Customary Governance In Outer Space Resource Extraction, Monika U. Ehrman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Space technology related to extraterrestrial resource extraction has exploded. The ability to extract frozen water from asteroids or mine the lunar surface for critical minerals and water-ice is nearly viable and the potential wealth is staggering. But herein lies one of the most complicated property ownership problems—who owns these natural resources? Ownership not only includes the right to take, but also the right to exclude. As scholars have often explained, the right to exclude is the centerpiece of property rights. However, who holds these rights? And, in fact, should anyone have these rights? Space is the ultimate Ostromian commons.

This …

Harnessing The Collective Power Of Retail Investors, Sergio Alberto Gramitto Ricci, Christina M. Sautter

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This book chapter, forthcoming in A Research Agenda for Corporate Law (Christopher M. Bruner & Marc Moore, eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing), suggests a path forward to harness the collective power of new generations of retail investors. Since 2020, new retail investors have been flooding the securities markets, opening a record-breaking number of new brokerage accounts. The overwhelming majority of these new retail investors are Millennials and GenZ’ers. Due to their increasing fiscal power as well as their generational characteristics and affinities, these new generations of retail investors can shift paradigms in corporate governance and in the relation between business corporations …

The Federal Circuit And The Patent Trial And Appeal Board, David O. Taylor

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit holds a unique and powerful position in the patent system. It exercises exclusive jurisdiction over appeals in patent cases, which, short of Supreme Court intervention, empowers the court to set national patent law. But since passage of the America Invents Act, at least with respect to resolving often multimillion dollar disputes over patent validity, there is another, more powerful government institution: the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Given its significant new power over disputes regarding patent validity, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board has been the subject of numerous disputes resolved …

Sentencing In An Era Of Plea Bargains, Jeffrey Bellin, Jenia I. Turner

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The literature offers inconsistent answers to a question that is foundational to criminal law: Who imposes sentences? Traditional narratives place sentencing responsibility in the hands of the judge. Yet, in a country where 95 percent of criminal convictions come from guilty pleas (not trials), modern American scholars center prosecutors – who control plea terms – as the decider of punishment. This Article highlights and seeks to resolve the tension between these conflicting narratives by charting the pathways by which sentences are determined in a system dominated by plea bargains.

After reviewing the empirical literature on sentence variation, state and federal …

Russia, Ukraine, And The Challenge Of Wartime Accountability, Jeffrey D. Kahn

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

There has been a notable shift in the emerging Russian perspective on international law and international organizations, a trend that began nearly a decade prior to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Over this period, Russia has made substantial alterations to its laws, constitution, and international commitments, effectively withdrawing from previously accepted legal obligations. Furthermore, Russia has increasingly rejected fundamental international legal norms and principles with growing fervor.

In the keynote remarks delivered during the Texas Tech Law Review 2023 Criminal Law Symposium, the author delves into this significant shift, providing illustrative examples.

Cloud Seeding, Wildfire Smoke Emissions, And Solar Geoengineering: Why Is Climate Modification Unregulated?, Karen Bradshaw, Monika U. Ehrman

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Article is the first to identify that companies and agencies systemically modify climatic airspaces through wildfire smoke emissions, weather modification (cloud seeding to cause rain), and solar geoengineering. Climate modification is not a conspiracy theory or a hypothetical: it is happening, and it is changing weather patterns. Yet, climate modification is almost wholly unregulated. Further, it is also not recorded or tracked in systemic ways. That is to say, even government agencies do not have comprehensive records of whether; how often; or how much climate modification is occurring. The data is simply not gathered, aggregated, or stored. As a …

The Most Important Decision In Federal Securities Law - Texas Gulf Sulphur, Marc I. Steinberg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Although decided 55 years ago, the Second Circuit’s decision in Texas Gulf Sulphur may be viewed as the most important case under the U.S. securities laws. The decision addressed several landmark issues, including insider trading, company disclosure obligations, and the concept of materiality. Although a number of its rulings subsequently were rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, others remain good law today. From a comparative perspective, Texas Gulf Sulphur also is a significant decision. Many of the principles enunciated by the Second Circuit in that decision today have been adopted by developed securities markets outside of the United States.

Defamation With Bayesian Audiences, Yonathan A. Arbel, Murat C. Mungan

Articles

How strictly should the law regulate false defamatory statements? We first show that the presence of judicial errors often puts defamation law on a Laffer curve: regulation that is too lax or too strict is inferior to moderate regulation. While moderate regulation is ideal, it is not always attainable because of practical and legal constraints. With these constraints, we consider a Bayesian audience that takes the strictness of defamation law into account when evaluating statements. The optimal standard is then taxer than is prescribed by standard models with naive audiences. These findings underscore the importance of accounting for audience effects …

Front Matter

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Front Matter includes Table of Contents, Masthead, and faculty for Lewis & Clark Law Review Volume 26, Issue 4.

Assaulting The Citadel Of Section 230 Immunity: Products Liability, Social Media, And The Youth Mental Health Crisis, Matthew P. Bergman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The exponential rise in social media use among minors since 2008 is responsible for a precipitous increase in youth mental health injuries and suicides. These harms result from the design of social media platforms which elevate maximizing user engagement over providing minors with a safe online experience, yet social media companies benefit from broad construction of § 230 immunity to evade liability. Courts’ expansive interpretation of § 230 is historically analogous to the application of the privity doctrine in the 19th century to shield manufacturers from liability for designing dangerously defective products. The demise of the privity doctrine and rise …

Is Incorporation A License To Violate Human Rights With Impunity? As Of Now, Violations Are In Vogue, Sadie Wolff

Lewis & Clark Law Review

For decades, the international community has relied on corporations to take responsibility for the protection of human rights and manage accountability for violations of those rights. Yet countless human rights violations have ensued within the fashion industry as a result of multinational corporations conducting business within the current framework. This Comment looks at the human rights at stake if the international community stays its current course, offers insight into how the existing framework developed, questions the efficacy of this approach, and suggests a new framework for the international community to consider.

White Supremacy From The Bench, Vida B. Johnson

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Judges make important decisions in millions of cases a year across the country. Unlike other institutional players and unlike parties and their attorneys, judges are the only players in our adversarial legal system that are by design ostensibly neutral, impartial, and without bias.

Unfortunately, that legal fiction is not fact. Some judges do hold racial biases. A judge in Texas used racial slurs to describe Mexicans in his state in 2020. Also in 2020, a white judge in Louisiana referred to a deputy and a court clerk by the N-word, and the same year, a white Colorado judge also used …

Judicial Independence And The Rule Of Law, D. Brooks Smith

Lewis & Clark Law Review

No abstract provided.

Training A Public Accommodations Lens On Vaccine Passports, Paul Diller

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The Covid pandemic and the rise of smartphone technology enabled the use of “vaccine passports”—that is, a requirement to show proof of vaccination against Covid—on a scale unmatched before in human history. In the United States, many public accommodations such as restaurants, coffee shops, stadiums, and movie theaters required patrons to show proof of vaccination in order to enter or consume food and drink on the premises. In approximately two dozen local jurisdictions as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, government mandated that public accommodations do this, with varied carveouts for religious objections and medical or age-based …

Class Action Cy Pres: A Call For Reform Amidst Inconsistency And Criticism, Emily Potucek

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The prevalence of cy pres awards in class action settlements has increased remarkably in the last several decades. However as class action cy pres practice has become more commonplace, so have the concerns for its propriety in the class action context. Indeed because these concerns were recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court without further clarity on how, and whether, they can be alleviated, the viability of class action cy pres practice is uncertain. In response to this uncertainty, this Comment presents an exhaustive inquiry into cy pres practice in class action settlements. It demonstrates that while certain courts’ cy pres …

Making Red Lives Matter: Public Choice Theory And Indian Country Crime, Adam Crepelle

Lewis & Clark Law Review

American Indians are victims of violence at higher rates than members of any other racial group. Nevertheless, Indian victims receive little media attention. Aside from the prevalence of violence against Indians, the violence is unique because of the rules governing Indian country law enforcement. Tribes, absent compliance with federally mandated procedural safeguards, cannot prosecute non-Indian criminals. While state or federal law enforcement have jurisdiction over reservation crimes involving non-Indian perpetrators, they often fail to respond. Hence, non-Indians know they can target Indians with little fear of reprisal. This Article argues the rules governing Indian country crimes were not designed to …

Teaching The Actuality Of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, And The Sensations Of Struggle, Derek R. Ford

Education Studies Faculty publications

Exploring the nexus between aesthetics, pedagogy, and politics illustrates the central role education plays in reproducing injustice and inhibiting confidence in revolutionary struggle. Demonstrating how capitalism and its attendant forms of oppression are not merely cognitive but perceptual, Derek R. Ford proposes that revolutionary education demands the production of aesthetic experiences through which we sense the possibility and actuality of alternative worlds. To create such encounters, Ford develops a praxis of teaching and a pedagogy of unlearning that, in our current conjuncture, creates conditions for encountering what Jennifer Ponce de León calls “an other aesthetics.” Mapping contemporary capital as a …

Sentiment Strength And Topic Recognition In Sentiment Analysis, Esi A.R. Adeborna

Masters Theses

"Current sentiment analysis methods focus on determining the sentiment polarities (negative, neutral or positive) in users’ sentiments. However, in order to correctly classify users’ sentiments into their right polarities, the strengths of these sentiments must be considered. In addition to classifying users’ sentiments into their correct polarities, it is important to determine the sources and topics under which users’ sentiments fall. Sentiment strength helps as to understand the levels of customer satisfaction toward products and services. Sentiment topics on the other hand, helps to determine the specific product/service areas associated with user sentiments. This paper proposes two sentiment analysis approaches. …

Area Average Surface Transfer Coefficient In Unit Cell Geometries, Benjamin Gabriel Mackey

Masters Theses

"Honeycombs, metal foams, and lattice structures all provide a way to increase heat transfer due to better fluid mixing and larger surface area. Specifically, lattice structures can be a great way to provide heat transfer enhancement due to the ability to customize and optimize the unit cell geometry. In this research, a novel yet simple unit cell geometry is chosen for study. Four different configurations are tested in a lower Reynolds number range, 300–1800: single unit cell, two-unit cells in series, three-unit cells in series, and a 3x3 unit cell array. The Sherwood number of each configuration is found by …

#Onygo, Géraldine Blattner, Amanda Dalola, Stéphanie Roulon

PDXOpen: Open Educational Resources

#OnYGo is an innovative first-year French language e-textbook, designed as Open Educational Resource (OER), for learning beginning French (equivalent to one year at an American university). It is inspired by a remix of task-based, multiliteracies and communicative approaches, which provides students with opportunities to engage with French language and culture in a variety of contexts and situations, across a range of modalities. Through a wide range of activities, students develop and practice their language skills, and reflect on their cross-cultural knowledge and positionality in their understanding of the vast francophone landscape. #OnYGo is a first-year textbook that takes a DEI-forward …

Our Journey To “Concourse D”: A Student-Developed Space For Creating, Collaborating, And Developing Community In The Library, Katy Kelly, Adrienne Ausdenmoore

Books and Book Chapters by University of Dayton Faculty

This case study describes an academic library’s student-developed communal space for the purposes of creating, collaborating, and project development. The story begins with an exciting process and partnership developed between University of Dayton (UD) Libraries and UD’s Institute of Applied Creativity for Transformation (IACT). An IACT experiential learning program led 12 students to research and reimagine the role of the campus library, which resulted in Concourse D, “where projects take flight,” a prototyped transdisciplinary project development studio. This mutually beneficial process led the library to a user-centric mindset as they reimagined space as service; patrons as creators; and a new …

Surface Modification Of Carbon-Based Electrodes For Electrochemical Conversion Processes: Oxygen Reduction Reaction And Bicarbonate Conversion, Udari Shyamika Kodithuwakku Arachchige

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and conversion of bicarbonate into value-added chemicals are two significant electrochemical processes for energy storage and conversion. ORR is an important electrochemical reaction in fuel cells and metal-air batteries that provide power conversion and storage capacity, respectively, for portable electronics, and electric vehicles. However, the performance of catalysts (e.g., platinum-based) is critically limited by slow kinetics, inefficient four-electron pathway, and surface deactivation. This limited performance of platinum-based catalysts, the scarcity of platinum, and vulnerable supply chains for critical minerals require the development of alternative electrocatalysts now more than ever. Carbon-based materials possess several key properties that …

Investigating Ru(Ii) Anticancer Agents With Non-Canonical Mechanisms Of Action, Richard Joseph Mitchell

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Platinum(Pt)-based agents are used in approximately 50% of all cancers that are treated with chemotherapy. Unfortunately, the dose-limiting toxicity of these agents remains problematic for patients undergoing treatment. Additionally, Pt(II) therapeutics suffer from transporter-dependent uptake, limited chemical functionalization, and high susceptibility to inactivation by free thiols within the cytosol. Developing small molecules with non-canonical mechanisms of action is one strategy that can be employed to circumvent these limitations. Utilization of coordination complexes with ruthenium(Ru) metal centers is one attractive strategy. Ru(II) compounds are often octahedral, facilitating greater accessibility for chemical diversity; Ru(II) complexes use passive transport and transferrin-mediated transport for …

Investigating Determinants Of Faculty Members’ Intentions To Use Mobile Learning For Educational Purposes, Ibrahim Abdullah Albahli

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Mobile learning is a rapidly growing field in education that has gained increasing worldwide attention in recent years due to the widespread availability of mobile devices and their potential to enhance learning experiences. In Saudi Arabia, higher education institutions have explored the use of mobile learning to support teaching and learning, though limited research examines factors related to the use of mobile learning by faculty members. To ensure the success of mobile learning integration in higher education environments, it is vital to examine faculty members’ behavioral intentions to use mobile learning for educational purposes. This quantitative study investigated how the …

Nigerian Media: A Comparative Media Analysis, Temilade Inumidun Adeeko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The comparative media analysis of Nigeria using Hallin and Mancini's model provides an insightful examination of the country's media system. Hallin and Mancini's model analyzes four dimensions: the degree of state intervention, the degree of political parallelism, the level of journalistic professionalism, and the role of the state. They offer three models of media and politics: The Liberal model, the Democratic Corporatist, and the Polarized Pluralist. Nigeria’s media system is characterized by high state intervention and political parallelism, significant control over media content by the state, a close relationship between the media and political parties, and a low level of …

Herstory 101: Examining The Representation Gap Of Bipoc Women Educational Leaders, Kinasha Brown

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Background/Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine how lived experiences influenced perceptions of leadership self-efficacy amongst Black, Indigenous, or Person of Color (BIPOC) women educational leaders in order to minimize future representation gaps in educational leadership. Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with 14 BIPOC cis-gender female leaders who worked in a large school district in the southwestern region of the United States. Results: Examining the social constructs of race, gender, leadership makes clear how BIPOC women are socially constructed as inferior and how that played out in this educational leadership settings. The interconnectedness of both approaches contributes to …

Dynamic Overnight Effect On Next Day Stock Market Forecasting, Thomas J. Lee

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Using a cross section of stocks that have high frequency trading data from 2007 to 2018, we document whether various intraday momentum patterns found in the financial literature over the years continue to hold over time. The first half hour return on the market is often seen as having predictive power over the last half hour of trading, or overnight returns are thought to reverse in the next day's first half hour of trading. We find that while there is some evidence for these patterns, especially in the earlier years, these patterns tend to weaken over time as investors take …

Using Machine Learning To Predict Student Outcomes, Saba Fatima

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Predicting students’ performance to identify which students are at risk of receiving aD/Fail/Withdraw (DFW) grade and ensuring their timely graduation is not just desirable but also necessary in most educational entities. In the US, not only is the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) major becoming less popular among students, the graduation rate of STEM students is steadily declining. The lack of STEM graduates in the US is a serious problem that will place this country at a disadvantage as a competitor in international technological advancement. In order to secure its status as a technological leader internationally, the US institutions …

School Librarian Self-Efficacy Beliefs About Integrating Technology During Inquiry-Based Learning: A Mixed Methods Study, Joseph James Babb

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The purposes of this explanatory sequential mixed methods study were to examine the self-efficacy beliefs of school librarians about integrating technology during inquiry-based learning during the quantitative phase and then to explore how these practices about technology integration during inquiry-based learning were being implemented during the qualitative phase. This study was conducted to better understand the self-efficacy beliefs of school librarians and how they provided students with authentic and meaningful experiences when integrating technology during inquiry-based learning. For the quantitative strand of research, the Technology Integration Self-Efficacy Scale (Wang et al., 2004) was slightly modified to tailor it for school …

Surface Modified Titanium And Doxycycline Loaded Pcl/Plga Nanofibers For Improved Cellular Interaction And Biocompatability, Dexter D. Kling

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Biomaterials play an important role in modern medicine through their complexfunctionalities, as implants, grafts, and drug delivery systems. The addition of dopants and biomolecules in biomaterials offers unique solutions to common issues and provides new methods of improving overall health. In our work, we examined osteoblast cell interactions with titanium (Ti) after alkali treatment and deposition of magnesium (Mg) and iron (Fe). We also studied the antibacterial properties of doxycycline loaded polymeric nanofibers produced via electrospinning. To study the biological properties of surface-modified Ti, we first prepared commercially pure titanium samples by grinding and polishing, then performed alkali treatment in …