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The Wild Dark Or, La Oscuridad Salvaje: Illuminating Identity Through Failure, Worley B. Gierhart

Undergraduate Theses

This thesis, "The Wild Dark or, La oscuridad salvaje: Illuminating Identity Through Failure," explores how the narrative power of darkness can serve as a catalyst for profound self-discovery, particularly in the aftermath of significant failure. Drawing upon literary analysis and the author's personal experience of shifting academic paths, the study examines how confronting metaphorical darkness allows for a critical rebuilding of identity and self-concept. The play referenced in the title, "The Wild Dark or, La oscuridad salvaje," serves as a central point of analysis, investigating the interplay of theme, setting, and scenario in depicting this transformative process. By engaging with …

Upper And Lower Body Volume-Equated Resistance Exercise Increases Post-Exercise Lipid Oxidation In Trained Eumenorrheic Females., Alyssa L. Parten, Abbie E. Smith-Ryan, Eric K. O'Neal, T Scott Lyons, Hunter S. Waldman

Theses

Exercise strategies targeted to increase lipid oxidation (LOx) in the resting state present an opportunity to optimize long-term metabolic health. However, research examining the effects of resistance training (RT) on LOx in females remains scarce, particularly with no studies yet examining whether differences exist in LOx between upper and lower body RT. This study examined LOx changes following volume-load equated upper and lower body RT in well-trained, eumenorrheic females. Twenty-two (age: 25.4 ± 5.6 years, BMI: 24.6 ± 2.7) females completed a 3-repetition-maximum (RM) and 1RM test for the barbell back squat (BS) and bench press (BP), respectively. From these …

Restoring Rattlesnake Creek: Using Citizen Science To Assess The Ecological And Morphological Impacts Of Dam Removal In Western Montana, Bethany Blakey

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

As dam removals increase in frequency across the U.S., most research has focused on the impact of larger dam removals, despite the removal of small dams being much more common. Given the hundreds of small dams in Montana, this research uses citizen science data collected over eight years spanning before and after a 2020 small dam removal in Rattlesnake Creek, Montana, to investigate impact on stream ecology and morphology. We analyzed pebble count grain size distributions and aquatic macroinvertebrate biotic indices from 2017 to 2024 to assess changes in sediment transport and macroinvertebrate population as well as evaluate the efficacy …

Ending The Presumption Of Reasonableness And Using Data To Reduce Sentencing Disparities, Brandon Mordue

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The idea that one’s punishment should depend on the crime committed rather than which judge happens to do the sentencing strikes most as uncontroversial, if not a requirement for a fair sentencing regime. Forty years ago, the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act promised just that result. Increased data availability allows us to evaluate the project’s success. The results are not encouraging.

Federal defendants are sentenced using guidelines issued by the United States Sentencing Commission that sometimes bear little relation to the underlying wrongdoing. This has created a split among judges, with some following the guidelines and others rejecting them. …

Police Misconduct: Combatting The Complicity Crisis, Eric Arnold

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

This Comment explores the current state of police reform in the city of Chicago, with a special focus on the various oversight agencies currently in force. Chicago has a long history of police misconduct, and the city has tried to make changes over the years to restore the community’s trust in policing. The police reform movement became especially prevalent in recent years following the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago Police Officer in 2014. This Comment will show why the current mechanisms in place are insufficient to bring the needed change to the Chicago Police Department, and that …

Yet Another Elected Power: A Case For Randomly Selected Forepersons, Cj Miller

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Most United States courts require the jury to elect their own foreperson, a role that has amplified influence on the jury’s verdict. In practice, the election process is done quickly and without discussion. As a result, the foreperson is demographically biased toward older men of high socioeconomic status. This paper uses psychological literature to argue that the current selection system produces suboptimal forepersons. Instead, it proposes a system of random selection, including an opt-out procedure for those who do not feel capable of holding the position.

Minimal Rationality And The Law Of Evidence, Ronald J. Allen, Michael S. Pardo, William J. Lawrence, Christopher K. Smiciklas

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

For more than a century, one of the pillars upon which the law of evidence was thought to rest is that the primary (although by no means exclusive) objective of the law of evidence is to further accurate fact-finding by maximizing the rationality of the evidentiary process. The crux of this pillar is that the law of evidence increases rationality (and thereby increases accuracy) through admissibility rules that (1) require reliable evidence, and (2) behave paternalistically toward jurors and their cognitive abilities. This Article aims to supplant this pillar by showing that the law of evidence pursues minimal, not maximal, …

Justice Ginsburg's Criminal Justice Legacy: Fair Tribunals, Fair Punishment, Sandra Guerra Thompson, Samantha Medlin

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Scholars have written much about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy in many areas of law, but her criminal justice legacy has yet to be fully articulated, likely because she penned few important opinions in this field. This article argues that Justice Ginsburg had an enormous impact across a large area of criminal justice cases decided by the slimmest majority. We explore these close cases and, in so doing, we show her to have played a crucial role in a remarkable number of landmark cases that extended important constitutional protections to criminal defendants. Specifically, she joined the majorities in …

Crimes Without Law: Administrative Crimes And The Nondelegation Doctrine, Nicolas Elliott-Smith

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The future of the nondelegation doctrine is clouded with uncertainty. Despite the Supreme Court’s insistence that the nondelegation doctrine is an axiom of constitutional law, the doctrine remains an illusory constraint on Congress. Indeed, almost a century has passed since the Court invalidated a congressional delegation under the nondelegation doctrine. But several Justices appear eager—or at least willing—to revive the nondelegation doctrine.

This Comment charts an originalist path forward. It primarily argues that the original meaning of legislative power restrains Congress from delegating legislative authority to write criminal law. The constitutional enactors believed that core private rights—to life, liberty, and …

Sentencing Insurrection, Kevin Lapp

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

On January 6, 2021, an estimated two thousand people broke police lines and breached the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. Over one thousand people have been charged with various crimes for their actions that day, from misdemeanor trespassing charges to felony assault with a weapon and seditious conspiracy. Relying on publicly available sources, this Article presents results from an analysis of the first 514 people to have been sentenced in federal court for crimes committed on January 6. The result is a snapshot of the insurrectionists, the charges they …

The Unknowns Of The Knowledge Requirement: Revisiting The Deliberate Indifference Standard In Prisoner Healthcare, Malina J. Simard-Halm

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

In the 1976 decision Estelle v. Gamble, the Supreme Court held that “deliberate indifference” to significant health needs of prisoners violated the Eighth Amendment. The standard’s knowledge requirement, however, ensured that prisoners were not guaranteed healthcare under the constitutional standard; rather, the constitutionality of healthcare in prisons would be tethered to the mental state of prison officials. This Article seeks to demonstrate that correctional standards of healthcare occupy an incoherent space in constitutional law. By analyzing the legal standard and the application of the knowledge requirement, this Article exposes the theoretical inconsistency and inadequacy of the deliberate indifference standard—and …

Proof Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Doesn't Exist: Except As An Emergent Property Of A Complex Adaptive System, Ronald J. Allen, Nicolas Elliott-Smith

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The pursuit of knowledge is undergoing a transformation. Scientists and scholars are rejecting standard reductionist efforts, popularly captured by “the scientific method” and embracing the framework of complexity theory and complex adaptive systems. That framework is invaluable to understand both the law of evidence and the nature of Anglo-American legal systems. It also has significant implications for the ongoing debate over the concept of law. This Article demonstrates how “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” (BARD) does not exist in any knowable form, except as an emergent property of a complex adaptive system—the criminal process. First, what constitutes BARD will vary …

Institutional Structures Of Penal Inequality, Alexandra Natapoff

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

The U.S. penal apparatus is a bundle of wildly divergent practices. Police in some cities use more force than others. Prosecutors in some jurisdictions file charges automatically while others screen carefully. Public defenders in some counties lack zeal while others provide high quality representation. Offices that share the same name and perform the same basic legal functions—“police,” “prosecutor,” “public defender,” “criminal court”—actually operate according to highly disparate legal, professional, and normative standards. These differences give rise to a stratified criminal process in which a minority of defendants and cases are handled lawfully with attention and care, while a much larger …

A Commitment To Health For All: Reimagining Representation And Participation In The Who Beyond State-Centrism, Yen-Wen Liao

Public Health Theses

Despite its stated commitment to “health for all,” the World Health Organization (WHO) has long been subject to the influence of Member State politics. Specifically, the Organization’s state-based membership model and governance structure have continuously enabled powerful Member States to advance their political interests, leading to the exclusion and marginalization of populations based on the recognition or political status of their representatives. One such example is Taiwan, which has been repeatedly denied membership in the Organization despite the functional independence of its public health authority, leaving over 23 million people neglected amid two major health crises. These forms of exclusion …

Defining The Genetic Basis Of Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Liver Disease With Whole Exome Sequencing, Xinmiao Meng

Public Health Theses

Polycystic liver and kidney diseases are inherited disorders marked by progressive cyst formation in hepatic and renal tissues, leading to significant morbidity through organ enlargement, impaired function, and eventual kidney failure or painful hepatic enlargement. While several genes—including PKD1, PKD2, GANAB, and PRKCSH—are implicated, a substantial proportion of cases remain genetically unexplained, limiting diagnostic precision and therapeutic development. This thesis aims to refine the genetic understanding of polycystic liver diseases through whole exome sequencing of 292 individuals with liver and/or kidney cysts. We first identify pathogenic variants in known disease genes in 133 individuals (46%), confirming the recurrent involvement of …

Colorado, Caroline Day, Nathaniel Behl

Water Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ai Act Manipulation Gap, Claire Boine

Emory International Law Review

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) represents a significant step in regulating AI technologies, but this paper argues that its provisions on manipulation are critically under-inclusive. Through a comprehensive analysis of AI-enabled manipulation and the current EU legal framework, this paper offers an account of how the AI Act’s narrow focus on subliminal techniques and purposeful manipulation fails to address the full spectrum of AI-driven manipulative practices.

The paper develops its argument in four parts. First, it provides an overview of AI-enabled manipulation, highlighting its unique characteristics and the structural changes it introduces to democratic processes. Second, it …

Islamic Finance, Commercial Law, And Economic Justice: Apocalyptic Challenges To The Global Order, Ali Rod Khadem

Emory International Law Review

This Article engages with the heated debates about the Islamic finance industry, which range from praise as an ethical model of ESG principles to sharp criticism as a vehicle for financing terrorism. Offering a novel lens, this Article examines several case studies of Islamic thinkers and movements that have disrupted global politics, exploring how they deploy apocalyptic ideology to promote vastly different visions of future economic orders. Some of these case studies reinterpret key concepts from Islamic commercial law—like unjust enrichment, limited liability partnerships, insurance, almsgiving, and inheritance—while others call for a return to abandoned practices, such as slavery, discriminatory …

Determining The Content And Meaning Of Foreign Law: The Approach Of The New Third Restatement Of Conflict Of Laws, Christopher A. Whytock

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Public Policy Exception In Choice Of Law, Symeon C. Symeonides

Emory International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Oil Prices, Monetary Policy And Income Inequality: The Role Of Education, Edmond Berisha, Orkideh Gharehgozli, Ram Sewak Dubey, Farahmand Rezvani

Department of Economics Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Purpose – This paper examines how oil supply shocks and monetary policy actions jointly affect wage inequality in the US, with a particular focus on the role of education. The study addresses three key questions: (1) how exogenous oil supply shocks influence wage inequality, (2) how exogenous monetary policy shocks shape income distribution, and (3) whether these effects differ within and between education groups, revealing the role of human capital in amplifying or mitigating inequality. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis uses quarterly US data from 2000 to 2021. Wage inequality is measured using the Theil index constructed from CPS/BLS weekly earnings …

Jamaica: The Stories We Never Told, Vinnette Gibson

Theses

Jamaica: The Stories We Never Told is a memoir project that describes the realities of Jamaican life through personal narratives that detail the cultural and social nuances of Jamaican experiences. Its purpose is to broaden the global perception of Jamaican culture beyond tourism, beaches, music, and sports by representing everyday realities of Jamaican life, often overlooked by the global community. It details multifaceted experiences, including challenges and positive encounters, the transition from youth to adulthood, and complex emotions throughout. This project documents the author’s lived experiences and reveals cultural nuances, including friendships, family dynamics, and the use of Patois to …

Digital Threads: Fashion Design With Clo3d, Maya Herring

Theses

CLO3D (CLO) has emerged as a prominent software service within the fashion industry, molding the conceptualization and development of 3D fashion designs. By eliminating the constraints of customary manufacturing processes and real-life production costs, CLO equips designers with tools to bring their fashion garments and designs to life. This study aims to explore the capabilities of CLO software by developing five digital bridal dresses while also examining the learning curve, challenges, and benefits associated with its usage. The objective is to identify how CLO can provide aspiring fashion designers with the tools to produce high-quality designs without traditional training.

By …

Nine Lives Of A Hero: Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki And The Idolization Of Minamoto No Tametomo, Roger Thomas

Faculty Publications – Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

This study examines Takizawa Bakin's (1767-1848) novel Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki in terms of its importance, both among his prodigious works and among Japanese early modern historical romances. It analyzes his use of sources and discusses the role this novel played in popular perceptions of Ryukyu among Edo-period Japanese, as well as in the persistent belief in the historicity of legends that Minamoto no Tametomo (1139-1170) actually visited that southern island kingdom.

Material, Health, And Social Vulnerability And Loneliness Among Older Adults: From The Welfare Regime Perspective, Ji Young Kang, Oejin Shin, Sojung Park, Jihye Baek, Minyoung Kwak

Faculty Publications - Social Work

Loneliness in later life is a significant global public health issue that negatively impacts well-being, life satisfaction, and mental health. This study investigates how material, health, and social vulnerabilities contribute to loneliness among older adults using a welfare regime framework. It examines the link between vulnerability and loneliness in the United States, Korea, Sweden, Spain, and Germany using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) alongside its international sister studies, encompassing both Western and East Asian welfare states. Findings indicate that older adults in less generous welfare regimes experience higher levels of loneliness and material vulnerability. A multidimensional approach reveals that …

Let This Sleeping Dog Lie: The Dormant Commerce Clause Has No Business Limiting Registration-Based Jurisdiction, Samuel Brownsword

Student Works

No abstract provided.

From Conflict Prevention To Contract Intervention: Revisiting The Founding Purpose Of The Pca In An Evolving World Of International Arbitration, Kevin Mckenzie

Student Works

No abstract provided.

2025 Faculty Summer Seminar - The Living Word Of God: Still Alive Today?, Center For Catholic Studies, Seton Hall University

Center for Catholic Studies Faculty Seminars and Core Curriculum Seminars

About the 2025 Faculty Seminar - p.6

Josephine De Vito - p.10 Understanding the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Holy Scriptures

Elizabeth Brewer Redwine - p.13 Reading and Listening in Difficult Times: Classroom Strategies

Judith Stark - p.18 Beyond Genesis 1-3: The Many Ways to Conceptualize Nature

Gloria Thurmond - p.25 Study to Show Thyself Approved

John P. Wargacki - p.29 Jacob Marley as 'Intercessor" in Ebenezer Scrooge's Journey of Transformation in Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol

Seton Hall University Statement: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition – p.32

About the Authors -p.35

Promoting Student Retention Through Mandatory Remediation, Randi Mccoy

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

This DNP Project seeks to identify and evaluate among associate degree nursing (ADN) faculty, will implementing a pilot remediation policy, compared to the current remediation policy, impact faculty perception regarding exam remediation? Exam remediation is important as it helps students understand why they missed questions, how to improve on their next exam, provides guidance and confidence. It is also essential to determine whether required remediation for students after failing an exam promotes student retention, growth, and expansion at a local university in Oklahoma in the setting of an unprecedented program. Does adding required remediation after a failed exam offer students …

Quality Improvement Project: Reducing Ventilator Days: Evaluating The Effectiveness Of A Nurse-Led Mechanical Ventilation Liberation Protocol In Critical Care Units, Joseph Duncan

Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects

The present study investigated the effect of intensive care unit (ICU) nurses’ knowledge and confidence in managing mechanically ventilated patients’ weaning trials, and whether innovative education can improve these clinical interventions. Current practice relies on an antiquated provider-led protocol that does not account for the nurses’ skill level or practice autonomy. This oversight consistently leads to ventilator associated complications including prolonged ventilation time, increase sedation infusion use and increase ICU length of stay. This study’s aim was to determine if innovative education could improve nursing knowledge and confidence related to ventilated patient care. Nurse participants (N=100) were randomly selected to …