Digital Commons Network^™

Alternative Facts: The Strategy Of Judicial Rhetoric, Tonja Jacobi, Eryn Mascia

Emory Law Journal

Studies have established the influence of ideology on the answers justices give to legal questions; this study shows that the questions themselves are often selected, framed, and phrased in a way that promotes ideologically-driven answers. By examining a variety of linguistic techniques used to describe just the facts of constitutional criminal procedure cases—separate from the legal analysis—we show the justices are engaging in highly strategic behavior. The facts included, omitted, or emphasized vary with the ideology of the justices and are predictable not just based on voting behavior in other criminal procedure cases but in all Supreme Court cases. We …

The Los Angeles Police Department After The End Of The Consent Decree, Daniela Corona

CMC Senior Theses

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) entered into a consent decree with the Department of Justice in 2001. The LAPD was tasked with reforming a range of behaviors and practices including racial profiling, excessive use of force and corruption. Previous studies suggest that after the implementation of the consent decree the LAPD was able to reduce their uses of force and improve public perception of their department while still maintaining an effective level of policing activity and preventing increases in the crime rate. This paper seeks to revisit the LAPD after the end of the consent decree and assess if …

Estimating Bedrock Shear Wave Velocity At Vsap, Paducah, Kentucky, Using Ambient Noise, Russel Rogers

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Due to the nature of the Mississippi Embayment region and its vicinity to the New Madrid Seismic Zone, earthquake ground-motion site effects are potential hazards and quantifying the associated hazard is a necessary step for public safety. Measuring the V_s contrast between bedrock and overlying soil layers is necessary for site effect evaluation. Various methodologies for investigating shear wave velocity (V_s) profiles have been implemented in the Mississippi Embayment. However, these previous studies provided a wide range of bedrock Vs. In this study, microtremor array measurements, utilizing ambient background noise, were used to provide an additional estimate …

Tragedy Of The Digital Commons, Chinmayi Sharma

Faculty Scholarship

Google, iPhones, the national power grid, surgical operating rooms, baby monitors, surveillance technology, and wastewater management systems all run on open-source software. Open-source software, or software that is free and publicly available, powers our day-to-day lives. As a resource, it defies economic logic; it is built by developers, many of whom are volunteers, who build projects with the altruistic intention of donating them to the digital commons. Developers use it because it saves time and money and promotes innovation. Its benefits have led to its ubiquity and indispensability. Today, over ninety-seven percent of all software uses open source. Without it, …

Trust The Police? The Myth Of Protect And Serve, Harvey Gilmore

Western New England Law Review

On May 25, 2020, a shocked, appalled, and outraged. global audience witnessed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd repeatedly told the officer he couldn’t breathe while Chauvin had his knee pressed against his neck, literally choking the life out of Floyd. The resulting outrage and protests have thrust the issue of police brutality, particularly against people of color, into the national spotlight. This piece looks at the long history of egregious police conduct against people of color without suffering any legal recrimination. This has led to a longstanding distrust of law enforcement by many …

Contributions To Professional School Counselors Entering And Remaining In The Profession: A Grounded Theory, Kathryn Babb

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

As the mental health needs of children and adolescents have reached a crisis level, the need for trained mental health professionals in the field is as important as ever. However, many states are currently experiencing a shortage of educators, including school counselors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand the factors that contribute to school counselors selecting their career, as well as understanding what elements lead to the retention of professional school counselors. As there are no existing theories related to understanding the career choice of professional school counselors, nor pertaining to the supports leading to the retention …

Tennessee Forestry Commission 2022 Annual Report, Tennessee. Department Of Agriculture.

Forestry Commission Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Tennessee Forestry Commission 2023 Annual Report, Tennessee. Department Of Agriculture.

Forestry Commission Annual Report

No abstract provided.

Labor Mobility And The Problems Of Modern Policing, Jonathan S. Masur, Aurélie Ouss, John Rappaport

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

We document and discuss the implications of a striking feature of modern American policing: the stasis of police labor forces. Using an original employment dataset assembled through public records requests, we show that, after the first few years on a job, officers rarely change employers, and intermediate officer ranks are filled almost exclusively through promotion rather than lateral hiring. Policing is like a sports league, if you removed trades and free agency and left only the draft in place.

We identify both nonlegal and legal causes of this phenomenon—ranging from geographic monopolies to statutory and collectively bargained rules about pensions, …

Twilight-Zone Originalism: The Peculiar Reasoning And Unfortunate Consequences Of New York State Pistol & Rifle Association V. Bruen, Albert W. Alschuler

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a New York Statute that, as construed by the state courts, allowed an individual to carry a firearm outside her home or business for purposes of self-defense only if she could show licensing authorities "a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community." By a vote of six-to-three, the Court concluded that this statute violated the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment and applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Court announced a general standard …

Grid Reliability In The Electric Era, Joshua Macey, Shelley Welton, Hannah Wiseman

Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The United States has delegated the weighty responsibility of keeping the lights on to a self-regulatory organization called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). Despite the fact that NERC is one of the largest and most important examples of industry-led governance—and regulates in an area that is central to our economy and basic human survival— this unusual institution has received scant attention from policymakers and scholars. Such attention is overdue. To achieve deep decarbonization, the United States must enter a new “electric era,” transitioning many sectors to run on electricity while also transforming the electricity system itself to run …

Grand Jury Information And Government Contractors: Reconciliation Through Privacy Law, Andrew Holzmann

Marquette Intellectual Property & Innovation Law Review

None

Alone In The Lone Star State: How A Lack Of Centralized Public Defender Offices Fails Rural Indigent Defendants, Aiden Park

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The criminal justice system is stacked against indigent defendants. The disadvantages indigent defendants face are exacerbated when mixed with the unique qualities of rural America.

For instance, rural court-assigned attorneys are often picked through ad hoc systems by the very judges these attorneys must appear in front of, creating a judicial conflict of interest. The financial realities of rural public defense work often force counsel to manage a private practice while also balancing court-appointed cases. To the extent integral resources like investigators or experts are present in rural spaces, they are seldom used. This Note highlights the way Texas organizes …

Annual Report 2023, Tennessee. Department Of Correction.

Annual Report

No abstract provided.

From The Legal Literature: Judicial Resistance To New York’S 2020 Criminal Legal Reforms, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

From The Legal Literature: Private Prosecutions, Francesca Laguardia

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Nysrpa V. Bruen And New York: A Lost Opportunity For Racial Equity In The Polarizing Gun Conversation, Zamir Ben-Dan

City University of New York Law Review

On June 23, 2022, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen,1 which invalidated the “proper cause” requirement of New York’s “Sullivan Law,” its gun licensing statute. Reactions to this deci-sion were predictably mixed, largely drawn along the regular partisan lines.2 For those concerned about racial justice, this decision created an opportunity for honest dialogue about how to enhance public safety in a nondiscriminatory way while being consistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. Unfortunately, this was bound to be a lost opportunity in New …

Reducing Multigenerational Poverty In New York Through Sentencing Reform, Jared Trujillo

City University of New York Law Review

The relationship between incarceration and poverty is circular, cyclical, and symbiotic – poverty is a cause of incarceration, and incarceration causes poverty. In the 1970’s and 1990’s, New York led the country in enacting draconian sentencing laws that required judges to sentence children and adults to longer periods of incarceration, while also reducing the ability of incarcerated people to earn time off of their sentences for participation in rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programming. For the past half century, these harsh sentencing laws have been the primary driver of mass incarceration in New York. As a result, generations of families with …

Implementation Of A Staff Education Project On Human Trafficking For Emergency Department Staff, Monica Rena Hunt

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Evidence demonstrates that people who are being trafficked will seek medical attention, especially in emergency departments, which presents a rare opportunity to identify and support them. This Doctor of Nursing Project (DNP) was designed to evaluate if educating emergency department nurses on using an adult screening tool for human trafficking improves knowledge in a local emergency department in Texas. The participants were 11 registered nurses. The Maslow hierarchy of needs theory and the adult learning theory were used as a framework, and the models used to construct the educational project were Gagne’s nine levels of learning and the use of …

Perceptions Of Law Enforcement Officers Regarding Their Interactions With Persons In Mental Health Crises., Monica Roundtree

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Law enforcement officers are guided by principles to protect and serve the community in general; this includes persons with mental health illnesses. These officers are often the sole community resource responding to calls involving persons in mental health crises. However, many officers lack the knowledge and skills to effectively interact with this group. This quantitative study addressed how law enforcement officers perceive that a selected policy, procedure, or strategy is effective for interacting with a person experiencing a mental health crisis. The theoretical framework for this study is the procedural justice theory. A convenience sample of 100 sworn law enforcement …

Search And Seizure Budgets, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Stephen E. Henderson

Faculty Articles

This article proposes a new means of restraining police power: quantitative limits on the number of law enforcement intrusions—searches and seizures—that may occur over a given period of time. Like monetary constraints, search and seizure budgets would aim to curb abusive policing and improve democratic oversight. But unlike their monetary counterparts, budgets would be indexed directly to the specific police activities that most enable escalation and abuse. What is more, budgets are a tool that finds support, conceptually, in the American framing experience. The Fourth Amendment has long been understood to require procedural limits, such as probable cause, on specific …

Synthesis Study On Employing Snowplow Driving Simulators In Training, Luciana Debs, Yanchao Zheng, Jesutoba Ademiloye, Yunfeng Chen, Jiansong Zhang

JTRP Technical Reports

Departments of Transportation (DOTs) need to mobilize workers under harsh weather conditions for winter operations. Traditional snowplow driver training at INDOT is usually conducted annually before the snow season; therefore, it does not replicate the conditions which drivers will be exposed to during winter operations. To this point, some state DOTs have incorporated simulators in their snowplow driver training. Despite this raised interest, few studies have (1) surveyed other state DOTs about the use of this equipment in winter operations driver training, or (2) provided a systematic consideration of all factors involved in the decision to use driving simulators in …

Speed Enforcement In Work Zones And Synthesis On Cost-Benefit Assessment Of Installing Speed Enforcement Cameras On Indot Road Network, Jijo K. Mathew, Jairaj C. Desai, Howell Li, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Technical Reports

Work zone safety is a high priority for transportation agencies across the United States. High speeds in construction zones are a well-documented risk factor that increases the frequency and severity of crashes. It is therefore important to understand the extent and severity of high-speed vehicles in and around construction work zones. This study uses CV trajectory data to evaluate the impact of several work zone speed compliance measures, such as posted speed limit signs, radar-based speed feedback displays, and automated speed enforcement on controlling speeds inside the work zone. This study also presents several methodologies to characterize both the spatial …

Implementation Of Enhanced Probe Data (Canbus) For Tactical Workzone And Winter Operations Management, Jairaj Desai, Rahul Suryakant Sakhare, Justin Mahlberg, Jijo K. Mathew, Howell Li, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Technical Reports

For over a decade, segment-based probe data has been extensively used by transportation stakeholders for monitoring mobility on Indiana roadways. However, enhanced probe data from connected vehicles includes a richer dataset that can provide more detailed real-time and after-action reviews. This enhanced data includes detailed vehicle trajectories, at 3s resolution, and “event data.” This event data is near real-time and includes hard-braking events, hard-acceleration events, weather-related data, including wiper activations and some seat belt usage data. This project developed a set of methodologies and resulting visualizations that enables the use of emerging connected vehicle data in operational decision-making on work …

Crowdsourcing/Winter Operations Dashboard Upgrade, Justin A. Mahlberg, Jairaj Desai, Haydn Malackowski, Howell Li, Jijo K. Mathew, Rahul Suryakant Sakhare, Timothy Wells, Darcy M. Bullock

JTRP Technical Reports

INDOT has recently completed the deployment of Parsons telematics-based dash-cameras, automatic vehicle locator (AVL) positions, and spreader rate monitoring across their winter operations fleet. The motivation of this study was to develop dashboards that integrate connected vehicle data into the real-time monitoring and after-action review of winter storms. Each month approximately 13 billion connected vehicle records are ingested for the state of Indiana and almost 99 billion weather data records are ingested nationwide in 15-minute intervals. This study developed techniques to utilize this connected vehicle data and weather data to monitor real-time mobility of interstates and post storm after-action assessments …

Predictors Of Psychoactive Substance Abuse Among Eastern Nigeran Youth, Kingsley Chidiebere Izuka

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractPsychoactive substance (PAS) abuse is a major public health problem leading to increased morbidity and mortality. In Nigeria, the incidence rate of PAS abuse has remained high, particularly in the youth population. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social factors and school enrollment status on PAS abuse in youth in Southeast Nigeria. The social ecological model and the theory of reasoned action were the theoretical frameworks used for this study; they were selected due to their focus on multiple levels of factors that influence behavior. A quantitative cross-sectional study design approach was used to determine …

Emotional Intelligence And Toxic Leadership In Police Departments, Lisa Sorensen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Effective leadership in law enforcement is critical for the overall success andeffectiveness of law enforcement personnel. Police leaders need to effectively guide officers through unparalleled social, technological, and life and death challenges. Although scholarly research indicates a positive connection between leadership effectiveness and emotional intelligence, understanding the specifics of this relationship has not been clearly identified. This research was an attempt to better understand how emotional intelligence impacts the perception of leaders demonstrating toxic behaviors and the relationship quality between police leaders and their direct reports. Data was collected from 63 law enforcement leaders and 162 direct reports in small …

The Geography Of Unfreedom, Ann M. Eisenberg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia. By Judah Schept.

Public Duties For The New City, Sarah L. Swan

Michigan Law Review

The first job of a government is to protect its people, and, in the United States, the government ostensibly performs this job through the police. But policing in America is deeply dysfunctional, as the police not only provide inadequate protection from violent crime, but simultaneously engage in outright acts of brutality against the citizenry. As awareness of these practices has swept across the nation, legal scholars and policymakers have offered numerous reforms and remedies to help solve policing’s problems. The responses have tended to focus on the top of the legal pyramid, using the big hammers of the federal government, …

The Great Effacement: New Zealand's Silencing On The 2019 Mosque Shooter, J.C. Oleson

University of San Francisco Law Review

No abstract provided.