Digital Commons Network^™

Feature Comment: Institutional Amnesia And The Neglect Of The Federal Acquisition Workforce, Jessica Tillipman, Steven L. Schooner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Public procurement regimes may be constrained by rules, but people - procurement professionals - animate the process. Despite spending over $750 billion last year on federal contracts, the U.S. Government continues to deprioritize the professional capacity of its acquisition workforce. This article bemoans and critiques the persistent failure to recruit, develop, and retain procurement personnel, a failure exacerbated by politically driven downsizing, inadequate investments in workforce development, and misplaced reliance on procedural reform—most recently evidenced by the so-called “Revolutionary FAR Overhaul.” Drawing on historical data, case studies, and recent Government Accountability Office reports, the authors document how decades of underinvestment …

Police Officer Use Of Force And Officer-Created Jeopardy After Barnes V. Felix: The Supreme Court’S Important (Albeit Incomplete) Step In The Right Direction, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

On May 15, 2025, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in Barnes v. Felix, rejecting the Fifth Circuit’s “moment of threat” doctrine, which limited courts assessing the reasonableness of a law enforcement officer’s use of force to considering only those facts and circumstances known to the officer at the moment of the threat. Under the Fifth Circuit’s narrow time-framing approach, any pre-seizure conduct of the officer, i.e., acts occurring before the officer seized the individual, that may have contributed to the dangerous situation could not be considered as part of the reasonableness inquiry.

Pre-seizure officer conduct that contributes to …

Public Procurement Law Review Special Issue: Introduction And Three Articles On Public Procurement In International Trade, Robert D. Anderson, Christopher R. Yukins, Jean Heilman Grier, Derek Mckee, Daniel Schoeni

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The Public Procurement Law Review (Sweet & Maxwell / UK) has published a special issue focused on international trade and procurement. Four of the pieces from the special issue, discussed below, are available in the attached.

In their introductory editorial, “Procurement Trade Agreements and Their Discontents,” Robert Anderson (Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham School of Law, and Senior Fellow, Competition and Innovation Lab, The George Washington University, and former team lead at the WTO on the Government Procurement Agreement) and Christopher Yukins (GW Law) put the accompanying articles into context. They noted that the GPA, as the premier …

Feature Comment: Bid Protests In The U.S. Procurement System: Part Ii—Percipient.Ai, Debriefings And Agency-Level Protests, Christopher R. Yukins

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This is the second part of a two-part series. Part I, 67 GC ¶ 216, reviewed several reform proposals being considered by Congress. This Feature Comment (a) assesses the courts’ role in bid protest reform in light of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in Percipient.ai, (b) reviews the potential benefits of expanded debriefings, and (c) explains how agency-level bid protests could be reformed, using agencies’ own best practices, to make them more effective.

Policy Brief: The Federal Banking Agencies Should Withdraw Their Deeply Misguided Proposal To Weaken Leverage Capital Requirements For The Largest U.S. Banks, Arthur E. Wilmarth Jr.

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

On July 10, 2025, federal banking agencies issued a proposed regulation that would dangerously weaken capital requirements for the largest U.S. banking organizations. The proposed rule would significantly reduce the enhanced supplementary leverage ratio (eSLR) requirements for U.S. global systemically important banking organizations (G-SIBs). If adopted, the proposed rule would allow U.S. G-SIBs to become woefully undercapitalized, as their predecessors were at the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007-09. The proposed rule would make U.S. G-SIBs highly likely to fail during future systemic financial crises, with catastrophic consequences for our financial system, economy, and society.

As explained in …

The Supreme Court Should Overrule Red Lion, Richard J. Pierce Jr

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In this essay Professor Pierce uses the Jimmy Kimbell incident as the point of entry for his argument that the Supreme Court’s 1969 opinion in Red Lion v. FCC is inconsistent with today’s reality and dangerous. He urges the Court to overrule it.

The Re-Examination Clause Of The Seventh Amendment, Renée Lettow Lerner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay discusses the origins, history, and current interpretation of the Re-examination Clause of the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As Justice Joseph Story declared, the Re-examination Clause is separate from the right to civil jury trial in the Amendment’s Preservation Clause. The Re-examination Clause states that no fact tried by a jury shall be “re-examined” in federal court except by the rules of “the common law.” This provision had no counterpart in the state constitutions. The essay explains the methods of review of jury verdicts in English common-law courts in the late eighteenth century, focusing on the remedy …

Sharing The Algorithm: The Tax Solution To Generative Ai, Jeremy Bearer-Friend, Sarah Polcz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article argues that tax policy offers a core tool for mitigating the sweeping public policy challenges of generative Artificial Intelligence ("AI"). Specifically, we propose a tax that would allow the public to own a share of AI itself, not just through future income tax liabilities or new excise taxes, but a proposed ownership structure that requires a one-time tax payment by generative AI firms in the form of equity.

Fractional public ownership of AI would directly address four of the key harms of AI that have been well-documented in a deep and still expanding literature. First, many types of …

Why Canada's Terrorism Exception Does Not Violate International Law, William S. Dodge

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

On June 27, 2023, Iran sued Canada in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging that the exception for state supporters of terrorism in Canada’s State Immunity Act violates customary international law. This article argues that Canada’s terrorism exception is consistent with customary international law. Although it is commonly assumed that state-supported terrorism is a sovereign activity and that a general and consistent practice of states accompanied byopinio juris>is required to create an exception to state immunity, in fact, neither assumption is correct.

Under the restrictive theory of immunity, foreign states are generally immune from suit based on …

Erisa And The Failure Of Employers To Perform Their Fiduciary Duties: Evidence From A Survey Of Health Plan Administrators, Barak D. Richman, Amy Monahan, Sara Singer, Jeffrey Pfeffer

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Employers purchase health benefits for more than 60% of the nonelderly population, making employers both important custodians of employee well-being and important actors in the healthcare ecosystem. Because employers typically have unilateral control over health and retirement benefits, the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), enacted in 1974, imposes fiduciary obligations on employers when they manage or administer benefits. We provide evidence, from a novel survey of respondents who administer or oversee health benefits for their companies, that many employers appear to neglect even the most basic of their fiduciary obligations to their employees. This neglect may help explain …

Combating The Colorblind Courtroom: Using Race-Switching To Make Racial Bias Salient, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

In criminal courtrooms across the country, well-meaning judges insist on running colorblind courtrooms — courtrooms in which the attorneys are not allowed to call attention to race. Many judges, including many U.S. Supreme Court justices, believe it is best to ignore racial difference and that noticing race will encourage racial discrimination. The problem is that colorblind courtrooms are likely to exacerbate, not ameliorate, implicit racial bias. Decades of social science research have demonstrated that making race salient helps decision makers treat similarly situated individuals of different races the same and that not calling attention to race results in decisionmakers treating …

Prohibiting Threats Of Aggression, Edward T. Swaine

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Recent events, particularly Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have revived worries about the international regime regulating the use of force. Vastly less attention has been paid to what often precedes such attacks—threats to use force—and the prohibition on them. While the UN Charter and other legal instruments integrate the threats regime with the regime on actual uses of force, the two regimes are increasingly decoupled, in part because only one considers gradations: the use-of-force regime now identifies more serious variants like aggression and crimes of aggression; threats rules, by contrast, do not. This decoupling reflects real differences in the underlying wrongs, …

Running Government Like A Small Business: Cut Waste, Crush Fraud, Hearing Before The United States Senate Committee On Small Business And Entrepreneurship, Jessica Tillipman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This testimony analyzes the 2025 Small Business Administration "audit" of the 8(a) Program within the broader federal procurement integrity framework, emphasizing that oversight is delivered through multiple, overlapping institutions and tools rather than a single, fraud-enforcement process. It explains how independent Inspectors General, GAO, DOJ enforcement, bid protests and eligibility challenges, and disclosure and whistleblower mechanisms operate in parallel, each with distinct evidentiary thresholds, procedural protections, and remedies. It notes that oversight discourse frequently blurs critical distinctions among fraud, improper payments, ineligibility, documentation deficiencies, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Those categories are not interchangeable: “fraud” is a legal conclusion that typically …

The Survival Of The Jury, Renée Lettow Lerner

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This Foreword overviews the rich fund of ideas for reform of the jury that were discussed at The George Washington Law Review’s fall 2024 Symposium. The Symposium was inspired by my book The Jury: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2023). In many countries, rates of jury trial have been declining. The decline is steepest in the United States, which ironically has one of the most robust formal rights to jury trial in the world. This Symposium brought together distinguished judges, lawyers, and academics and exposed audience members and panelists alike to new ideas and methods of reform concerning …

The Eu Versus The Platforms And The First Amendment: Regulating Online Hate Speech, Dawn C. Nunziato

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

What speech should be allowed on social media platforms—and what speech should be prohibited—is a pressing and timely question. Given the recent changes in major social media platforms’ moderation of harmful speech—with the tacit blessing of a 2024 Supreme Court decision and the Trump Administration—and the European Union’s increased regulation of hateful speech and platform content moderation, a clash of these titans is inevitable.

This Article will examine the underlying forces that brought about these conflicts—including First Amendment, CDA Section 230, international, and EU law governing free expression, hate speech, and platforms’ rights and duties regarding content moderation. It will …

A National Zoning Atlas To Inform Housing Research, Policy, And Public Participation, Sara C. Bronin, Wenfei Xu, Scott Markley, Diana Drogaris

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Through a unique combination of data science and legal analysis techniques, the National Zoning Atlas is creating the first public, online repository of standardized data about zoning. This article first discusses the context for and methodology behind the atlas. It then establishes three possibilities for using the atlas, including facilitating research (including fair housing research), strengthening planning, and empowering the public.

Your Cursor Reveals: On Analyzing Workers’ Browsing Behavior And Annotation Quality In Crowdsourcing Tasks, Pei-Chi Lo, Ee-Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we investigate the connection between browsing behavior and task quality of crowdsourcing workers performing annotation tasks that require information judgements. Such information judgements are often required to derive ground truth answers to information retrieval queries. We explore the use of workers’ browsing behavior to directly determine their annotation result quality. We hypothesize user attention to be the main factor contributing to a worker’s annotation quality. To predict annotation quality at the task level, we model two aspects of task-specific user attention, also known as general and semantic user attentions . Both aspects of user attention can be …

Deep Reinforcement Learning With Explicit Context Representation, Francisco Munguia-Galeano, Ah-Hwee Tan, Ze Ji

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Though reinforcement learning (RL) has shown an outstanding capability for solving complex computational problems, most RL algorithms lack an explicit method that would allow learning from contextual information. On the other hand, humans often use context to identify patterns and relations among elements in the environment, along with how to avoid making wrong actions. However, what may seem like an obviously wrong decision from a human perspective could take hundreds of steps for an RL agent to learn to avoid. This article proposes a framework for discrete environments called Iota explicit context representation (IECR). The framework involves representing each state …

A Discourse Analysis Of The Development Of Institutional Compliance Mechanisms At The International Maritime Organization, Rebecca Pskowski

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) plays a pivotal and essential role in international maritime governance, providing a forum for nation states to develop and agree to international standards for maritime safety and security and the protection of the marine environment. IMO is widely perceived to be one of the most successful universal international organizations (IOS), because of the high technical quality of the conventions and other legal instruments it develops, and the near-universal acceptance of most of those instruments. IMO could be seen as an exemplar of the "technical" specialized United Nations agency, where nation-states set aside politics to agree …

Safety And Sustainability In The Domestic Ferry Sector : A Pci Framework For Esg-Aligned Maritime Governance, Mirza Zeeshan Baig

World Maritime University Ph.D. Dissertations

The domestic ferry sector is a significant component of maritime transportation. It strengthens social ties, supports economic growth and connects communities. Despites its importance, this industry faces ongoing challenges. These include fragmented governance, operational adequacies, safety risks and environmental concerns. The study deals with these issues by combining a systems-based approach with governance and change management theories. It examines the interplay between human, technical and organizational aspects. The study integrates the rule-based and rights-based maritime governance along with the Lewin’s three stage change management model (Unfreeze, Change, and Refreeze).

At the core of the study is the development of a …

Separability Doctrine: Perspectives From China, England And The Model Law, Jia Jun Benjamin Goh

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In this article, the author compares the application of the separability doctrine in the People's Republic of China, England and Wales, and select Model Law jurisdictions (including Singapore and Hong Kong). This article argues that the proper scope of the doctrine must include situations of both contractual validity and existence are in question. Additionally, the doctrine should apply in finding that the law of the arbitration agreement is different from the law of the main contract. Finally, the doctrine must also serve to protect party autonomy to shield an arbitration agreement from self defeating main agreements.

Exploring Automatic And Reflective Nudges For Smishing, Morgan E. Edwards

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Phishing has been a common problem in the world of cybersecurity for over a decade, leading to significant monetary and privacy losses. Phishing attacks commonly occur via email, but there has been a rise in a new form of phishing known as SMiShing. This attack vector occurs similarly to email phishing, except the malicious message is received via SMS text. While ways to mitigate phishing via email have been widely studied, there is a lack of research on SMiShing and ways to mitigate this problem from a human-centered approach. Interventions such as digital nudges have been successfully applied to …

Do Adhd Symptoms Enhance College Students’ Creativity And Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy?, Jorge Sebastian Montesinos

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Despite years of research focused on impairment, it is possible that attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be beneficial in some ways. Past studies have analyzed ADHD’s potential benefits to creativity and entrepreneurship, but the majority have either been underpowered or have had mixed results. In an attempt to add clarity to these potential ADHD-related strengths, the present study explored the relation between symptoms of ADHD, creative achievement, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE). The current study was a survey of emerging adult college students from multiple U.S. universities. The purpose of this study was to explore relations between symptoms of ADHD and …

Making The Jump: A Self-Study Of The Implementation Of Gamification And Student Discussion In Middle School Mathematics, John Pauly

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Middle school mathematics teaching is a complex practice that incorporates both cognitive and emotional factors (Sen, 2022). Students must have permission to get stuck and unstuck in their thinking while critically considering their approaches (Kapp, 2016), along with opportunities to engage in decision-making, deep reasoning, and discussions about mathematics (Stein et al., 1996). Gamification and game-based learning can place students in an environment where discussion, collaboration and perseverance are highly valued in overcoming challenges and achieving common goals (Kapp, 2016).

This qualitative self-study reflects on the journey of John Pauly, a middle school mathematics teacher, told through his experiences and …

Parting The Corn Rows: Nikita Khrushchev’S Visit To Iowa, 1959, Jordan Stiles

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

On September 23, 1959, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited Roswell Garst to inspect US hybrid corn and agricultural methods. Khrushchev’s initial reforms are discussed to show why Khrushchev sought agricultural knowledge abroad. The details of Khrushchev’s and Garst’s life regarding their work in agriculture are explored up to the visit. The visit would leave an indelible mark on the USSR and Iowa. Khrushchev and his successors would use Garst’s model for hybrid corn farming as the template for Soviet farming. Garst would use his limelight to catapult his corn diplomacy into action around the world. Lastly, the legacy of Khrushchev’s …

When Open-Source Information Backfires: Satellite Imagery And Privacy Breaches, Matin Pedram, Siena Chandler, Eugenia Georgiades

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Adoption, Perceptions, And Opportunities Of Artificial Intelligence Among Registered Dietitians In The United States, Hong Liu, Mariana Tadros, Edward Bitok, Liang Ji

Loma Linda University Research Reports

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping healthcare, yet its integration into nutrition and dietetics remains underexplored. This study investigates the adoption, perceptions, and opportunities related to AI technologies among Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs) in the United States. Our survey was opened in April 2025 and is still ongoing, having gathered responses from over 70 RDNs. Findings reveal that while 58% of RDNs report some familiarity with AI, only 13% consider themselves very or extremely familiar. Attitudes toward AI are generally positive, with 56% viewing AI’s impact on dietetics as positive and 70% believing it could at least moderately improve patient outcomes. …

Actinic Keratosis Treatment By Fractional Ablative Co2 Laser Medical City Teaching Hospital Baghdad, Iraq., Huda Gatea, Hayder Al-Hamamy

Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal

Background: Actinic keratoses are precancerous lesions related to excessive ultraviolet exposure, representing an emerging issue around skin diseases. They have a potential risk for developing squamous cell carcinoma and present cosmetic problems.Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness and side effects of Fractional Ablative CO2 laser in treating AKs.Patients and Methods: This interventional study was performed in Baghdad Dermatology Center from February 2022 to October 2023. Any patient with actinic keratosis lesion consulting the centre was included in the study. A thorough history was taken regarding the duration, symptoms, history of SCC, occupation (indoor or outdoor), medical illnesses and drug history. Lesions …

Late Effects Of Transsphenoidal/ Trans-Nasal Endoscopic Resection Of Pituitary Macro-Adenoma And Gamma Knife Radiosurgery On Tumour Outcome, Rasha Alshakarchy, Yasir Hamandi

Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal

AbstractObjectives: evaluate late outcomes after transsphenoidal endoscopic resection and post stereotactic gamma knife radiosurgery on pituitary macroadenomas in terms of clinical features and radiological response.Methods: This study was conducted at Ghazi Al-Hariri hospital for surgical specialties and Saad Al-Witry neuroscience teaching hospital in the period extended from January 2020 to January 2023. The study included a total number of 113 cases. Results: Total tumour volume reduction to a normal gland size was achieved in 42 cases out of the total patient number (37%) (All of which were of the transsphenoidal group), small tumour residual was found in 37 cases (33%) …

Soluble Vascular Cell Adhesion Molecule-1(Svacm-1) In Hemophilic Arthropathy, Shahad Abdulrahman, Abeer Ahmed

Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal

Background: Hemophilic arthropathy is the most common chronic complication in individuals with hemophilia, leading to significant joint damage and reduced quality of life. It shares inflammatory characteristics with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), prompting interest in biomarkers like soluble vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (sVCAM-1), which is known to be elevated in RA and other inflammatory conditions. This study aimed to explore the clinical relevance of sVCAM-1 as a potential biomarker in hemophilic arthropathy. Aims: To estimate plasma levels of sVCAM-1 in hemophilia patients compared to healthy controls. To compare sVCAM-1 levels between hemophilia patients with and without arthropathy. To correlate sVCAM-1 levels …