Digital Commons Network^™

Foreword: The Constitution And Public Finance—Why Now And Why Ever?, Conor Clarke, Eric Kubo

Scholarship@WashULaw

This paper introduces the Washington University Law Review’s 2026 symposium issue on “Taxing, Spending, and the Constitution.” We situate the symposium’s ten papers within three interconnected developments in public finance law: the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the Sixteenth Amendment in Moore v. United States; the Trump Administration’s assertions of executive control over appropriated funds; and the use of emergency and trade statutes to justify sweeping tariff authority.

We also step back to ask why constitutional issues in public finance—long treated as a technical backwater—have become such a central site of doctrinal and political conflict. We offer several explanations beyond …

Tax Exceptionalism After Loper Bright, Conor Clarke, Noah Hertz Marks

Scholarship@WashULaw

We consider how tax regulations should be reviewed in a post-Chevron world. In 2011, the Supreme Court’s Mayo Foundation decision subjected Treasury regulations to ordinary Chevron deference, rejecting National Muffler’s tax-specific standard of review and declaring that the Court was “not inclined to carve out an approach to administrative review good for tax law only.” In 2024, Loper Bright overruled Chevron. This Article asks what Loper Bright means for Mayo—and, in turn, for National Muffler.

We reject the simple inference that Loper Bright automatically revives National Muffler. But we argue that National Muffler nonetheless …

Does It Matter What People Lie About?, Stefanie Jung, Peter Krebs, Monika Leszczynska

Faculty Scholarship

We investigate whether people’s moral judgments of lies in pre-contractual negotiations differ from their views on whether such lies should give the deceived party a legal right to rescind the contract, and whether these judgments depend on the content of the lie. In a vignette study with 832 German students and 885 participants from Germany, Italy, and the United States, respondents evaluated a range of common negotiation lies. Across samples, participants were generally more likely to deem a lie immoral than to believe it should justify rescission, but the size of this gap varied depending on the lie’s subject. Lies …

Private Money, Public Risk: Why Florida’S Sb 178 Undermines Equity, Ethics, And Accountability In K–12 Athletics, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper critically evaluates Florida Senate Bill 178, which would require the Florida High School Athletic Association to adopt bylaws allowing coaches to use personal funds to support student athletes, once reported and presumed not to be an impermissible benefit. While the bill is framed to help students who lack essential items, it introduces serious structural risks that outweigh its intended benefits. By relying on private contributions within a public educational system, SB 178 threatens equity, transparency, and ethical governance.

The bill encourages uneven financial assistance that varies based on a coach’s personal means and the socioeconomic conditions of individual …

C.A.S. Full Assessment Report: State Of Florida Government Portal, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the cognitive overhead, transparency, and attentional integrity of

official State of Florida digital interfaces using the Cognitive Attentional Standards (C.A.S.) platform.

While the Florida Digital Bill of Rights (FDBR) establishes strict regulatory guardrails for consumer data

transparency, tracking opt-outs, and attentional safeguards, the State of Florida explicitly exempts its own

government agencies, public universities, and non-profit entities from complying with these rules.

This assessment serves to investigate the tension between legislative intent and government execution. By

analyzing public sector websites through the C.A.S. platform, this project will establish a “state-enforced vs.

state-executed” …

The Attention Safeguard Models: Governing Digital Harm Without Restricting Lawful Speech, Delante Clark

Graduate Scholarship and Creative Works

Digital platforms increasingly govern contemporary social, civic, and psychological life through systems optimized for attention capture, amplification, and monetization. While lawful expression remains protected under the First Amendment, the infrastructural mechanisms that determine how speech circulates have produced a range of attention‑based harms, including cyberbullying, engagement farming, compulsive doom scrolling, emotional dysregulation, and civic polarization. This research paper introduces the Attentional Safeguards Model (ASM), coined and formalized by Delante Clark, as a novel governance framework that mitigates such harms by regulating systems of amplification rather than restricting expression itself. Building on attention economy theory, technological mediation, constitutional free‑speech doctrine, …

Decoding A Decade: Evolution In Distal Radius Fracture Techniques From Past To Present, Embracing The Efcr Method, Natasha G. Dark, Ahmed S. Raihane, Laurie G. Wells, Deana Mercer

Western Journal of Orthopaedics

No abstract provided.

Activity-Dependent Remodeling Of Muscle Architecture During Distinct Locomotor Behaviors In Caenorhabditis Elegans, Adina Fazyl, Akash Anbu, Sabrina Kollbaum, Andres G. Vidal-Gadea

Faculty Publications – Biological Sciences

Muscle structure is dynamically shaped by mechanical use, yet how distinct locomotor behaviors influence sarcomere organization remains poorly understood. In Caenorhabditis elegans, crawling and swimming constitute discrete gaits that differ in curvature, frequency, and mechanical load, providing a tractable model for studying activity-dependent remodeling. Using confocal imaging of phalloidin-stained body-wall myocytes, we quantified myocyte geometry, sarcomere length, and sarcomere number across anterior, mid-body, and posterior regions in animals reared exclusively under crawling or swimming conditions. Quantification and hypothesis testing used linear mixed models that accounted for repeated myocyte measurements within animals, with interaction terms testing region-specific effects of locomotor …

To Flea Or Not To Flea: Abiotic And Biotic Factors Driving Flea Parasitism On Wild Deer Mice, Parker Todd, Angela Luis, Mike Kinsella

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) are an abundant North American rodent and the primary reservoir for Sin Nombre virus (SNV), a hantavirus with a 30-40% case fatality rate in humans. While ectoparasites, such as fleas, are not considered vectors of SNV, their bites may indirectly affect the transmission of SNV by impacting host condition or immune function. These impacts could potentially lead to an increase in host susceptibility and/or an increase in viral shedding, yet there is still little knowledge on what influences flea parasitism on deer mice in western Montana. This study looks to examine how mouse sex, …

Perceptions And Metaperceptions Of Bison In The West, Riley Rush Comstock

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Effective coexistence between wildlife populations and the people that live with them requires an understanding of how people feel toward the species and their management. Bison occupy a unique place in conservation history and management. Once extirpated across nearly all of their range and only recently introduced to areas outside of large tracts of federal land, they are now a jurisdictionally challenged species, with varying management paradigms across a patchwork of landowners and managers. Recent research has shown how activating different social identities can distort people’s attitudes toward species. Here, I explore whether activating urban and rural identities distorts people’s …

Consumer Digital Financial Literacy And Purposive Credit Card Behavior, Guohai Jiang, Fuzhong Chen, Jing Jian Xiao

Human Development and Family Science Faculty Publications

Purpose: Purposive credit card behavior refers to using credit cards to purchase different types of goods, as measured by a discrete variable. This study explores the relationship between digital financial literacy and purposive credit card behavior in the context of digitization and diversified consumer demands.

Design/methodology/approach: Employing data from the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this study uses a multinomial probit model to examine the above relationship. It measures digital financial literacy using the coupling coordination degree model. The Karlson-Holm-Breen (KHB) method serves to verify mediating effects.

Findings: Consumers with high levels of digital financial literacy are …

Evaluation And Advancement Of The Students’ Artificial Intelligence Literacy Through Toolkit-Based Teaching Instruction In Fashion Merchandising Education, Xun (Catherine) Sun, Jia Wu, Li Zhao

Faculty Publications - Family and Consumer Sciences

With the rapid adoption of AI in fashion merchandising, there is an increasing need for students to develop AI literacy to meet evolving industry demands. However, higher education faces challenges due to limited discipline-specific pedagogical practices, insufficient student training, and a lack of AI-integrated curricula. Grounded in Bloom's Taxonomy Revisited and IDEO's 3I design thinking framework, this study introduces the #AIforfashionedu toolkit–a how-to-guide toolkit comprising AI-integrated learning activities. These activities were qualitatively implemented in three fashion merchandising-related courses at U.S. institutions. A total of 195 student reflection papers were collected, analysed, and evaluated using a thematic analysis approach. The findings …

Imaging-Based Colorimetric Gas Sensing For Wearable Applications, Syed Saad Ahmed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Continuous monitoring of gases is a critical challenge for wearable health monitoring systems and portable environmental gas detection. The technology used for gas detection, including electrochemical sensors, metal oxide semiconductors, and non-dispersive infrared systems, is based on bulky optical components, which limit their practicality as an ideal tool for wearable and field-deployable stages. This thesis investigates if the passive colorimetric chemistry read-out provided by a low-power CMOS imager-based architecture can provide a non-invasive alternative across two different application domains: medical transcutaneous CO₂ monitoring systems and toxic gas detection from environmental. Two sensing platforms were developed and evaluated. In the first …

Towards Optimal And Resilient Ac/Dc Microgrids: Control Design, Analysis, And Implementation, Jun Zhang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Microgrids serve as a small-scale power grid for utilizing renewable energy to enhance energy reliability, sustainability, and resilience. As an autonomous system, an islanded microgrid can disconnect from the utility grid and operate independently by maintaining system voltage and frequency. However, this new feature introduces coordination problems among distributed generators (DGs), such as 1) how to make sure the voltage profile and current sharing in DC microgrid with different types of converters; 2) how to reduce the impact of cyberattack when the system coordination is performed based on communication, and 3) how to calculate the steady state under a droop …

Godsightings: In The Wake Of A Man Saved By God Who Then Became His Photographer, Floyd Daniel

Daniel Collection

Autobiography of Floyd Daniel, photographer. The Daniel Photography collection, part of the Whitworth Special Collections, contains 1500 publications on the history of photography.  Books either focus on photography as an art form and communication medium, or that exemplify photographic excellence. Historically significant applications of photography are also included in  this collection. Originally the private collection of Floyd Daniel, it was gifted to Whitworth in 1995. The collection was expanded by subsequent additional gifts by Floyd and Shirley Daniel of Seattle.

Personhood Amidst Process, Bennett B. Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Both process philosophy and key forms of philosophical personalism aim to harmonize the flux of reality, especially of organisms, with cosmic values and human meaningfulness. This is because both must face our mortality. This paper makes four suggestions for considering further the connection between these two approaches. First, that process philosophy can supply for personalism a thoroughly reasoned ground for nonreducible complexity. Second, that process thought borrows from personhood its model for cosmic creativity. Third, that both approaches share strong notions of the interdependence of all parts of a relational universe. And fourth, that they differ in respect of moral …

Darrell Grayson Undated Poetry, Darrell Grayson

Darrell Grayson Creative Writings

Selected poems from Darrell Grayson.

03 Electrostatics Iii, Gerhard Müller

Electromagnetism (2026)

Part 3 of course materials for Electromagnetism taught by Gerhard Müller at the University of Rhode Island.

Introduction To Christian Ethics, Michael Knight, Lizette Knight

Academic Books

No abstract provided.

The Sub-Lethal Effects Of Trematode Parasites On The Migratory Behavior Of Lesser Scaup (Aythya Affinis), Scott Alan Herman

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The introduction of the invasive freshwater faucet snail (Bithynia tentaculata) and its associated parasites in the Upper Mississippi River and Great Lakes Region provides the opportunity to investigate how anthropogenic stressors impact the life history of lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) using the Mississippi Flyway. To understand the life histories and interactions between lesser scaup and faucet snails we examined historical records, research, and ecology textbooks. Our literature review identified critical knowledge gaps in lesser scaup literature surrounding population dynamics, reproduction, and migration. Specifically, the sub-lethal effects of invasive trematodes on the migratory behavior of lesser scaup in the Upper Mississippi …

Security Threats To General Dynamics And Sensitive Defense Programs, Robert J. Hehl, Shane Williams, Henna Darji, Delia Tarasco

CJC 450 - Criminal Justice and Criminology Capstone

This Capstone Research Assessment focuses on the identification and analysis of foreign state actors, insider threats, and personnel negligence to United States defense contractors within the private sector, specifically General Dynamics. This assessment examines how The Big Four --- China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea --- continue to pose the most significant threats to U.S. sensitive defense programs.

What To Do With An Improper Woman: Gender Roles And Their Repercussions In Great Expectations, Abby Shaver

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Embarrassment As A Signal: Feminist Affects And The Commodification Of Love, Bianca L. Schmitt

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Engaging The Audience Through Gps: Using Ai To Design Experiential Learning Activities In The Social Sciences, Zaki Eusufzai

Economics Faculty Works

Shows how instructors can use AI tools to design experiential learning activities that promote deeper engagement and critical thinking. Introduces the GPS framework— Games, Puzzles, and Storytelling—as an alternative to traditional assessments. A game on social mobility shows how AI-assisted design can produce meaningful classroom simulations that reveal structural inequality and foster reflection. Rather than being a threat, AI can be re-purposed as a creative partner in re-imagining pedagogy.

A Transnational Feast Of Our Lady Of Guadalupe: Globalization, Identity, And Collective Memory In Dodge City, Kansas, David A. Solis-Enriquez

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This work examines the transnational connections of Dodge City’s Mexican immigrants and their celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe and how their cross-border activity were parts of larger systems like globalization, identity, and collective memory. With migration into Southwestern Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle increasing intensely in the 1980s, because of the economic opportunities that the livestock and meat manufacturing industries offered, Dodge City’s Mexican population reached unprecedented heights. These migration waves mark the starting point of this thesis.

The incoming Mexican population flooded the city’s Catholic facilities, which prompted the community and the local diocese …

Beyond Judicial Intent: The Agency Of The Defense Counsel In Ozawa’S And Thind’S Supreme Court Cases, Bret K. Luchs

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis seeks to examine how specific legal strategies by the defense counsel in Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), compelled the Supreme Court of the United States into a reactive and contradictory position. A re-examination of Ozawa and Thind delves deeper into the legal briefs and arguments made by Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, alongside their legal teams. These briefs, opinions of the court, past lower court cases, and personal statements by Ozawa and Thind demonstrate how they did not surrender to the confines of …

Vessel Of Survival, Jonah W. Simmons

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

Survival is not innate or effortless, but learned, regulated, and sustained through continuous labor, both visible and unseen. Vessel of Survival is an exploration of the human body as a site of containment, adaptation, and endurance shaped by trauma, systemic pressure, and the conditions of contemporary life. Through ceramic form, ruptured surfaces, photographic imagery and narrative intervention, this work explores how trauma, chronic illness, and socioeconomic systems inscribe themselves onto the body. Within this framework, the body becomes a vessel that continually negotiates fragility and resilience.

This investigation is informed by my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes, a condition that …

Secure Peer-To-Peer Messaging Using Distributed Servers, Jack Stoller

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Traditional messaging systems that rely on centralized infrastructure often introduce three security vulnerabilities: single points of failure susceptible to availability attacks, metadata leakage, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

This project designs, implements, and validates a distributed peer-to-peer messaging system that addresses each of these concerns through architectural design. A consistent hash ring is used with virtual nodes to distribute user data across a mesh of connected nodes, eliminating centralized dependency on any single server. Message contents travel directly between browser clients over a WebRTC data channel secured with end-to-end DTLS encryption, bypassing the server infrastructure. Inter-node communication is protected by mutual TLS …

Brrbox, Shawn J. Myers, Lane Cline, Michael Davis, Christian Secrest

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This report details the project known as “The BRRBOX”, a reusable, insulated thermoelectric cooler developed to keep internal temperatures at refrigeration levels or cooler for at least 48 hours. The cooler will track its internal temperature during this period and be able to give the data at the end of its delivery cycle to keep up with food and pharmaceutical standards during delivery. The BRRBOX uses Peltier-based cooling alongside vacuum insulation panels and fans to achieve efficient thermal control. An onboard microcontroller will monitor temperature, record the data, and adjust the cooling output to minimize power consumption. The box will …

Automated Pill Dispenser, Ryan Oderkirk, Connor Beaven, Rachelle Labrie, Josue Panchana

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The project we propose is an automated system for dispensing dosages of medication throughout the day. It will be able to alert a user when their pills need to be taken and give them the correct dosages of up to four different medications. These dosages are configurable as well as the scheduled time they are to be taken. In addition, the pill dispenser will alert users when they are low on medications and need to refill the machine.