Digital Commons Network^™

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Shareholder Profit Maximization, Claire A. Hill

Articles

There is presently a heated debate as to what a corporation’s purpose should be. The debate is between proponents of shareholder profit maximization (SPM), the idea that companies should be run exclusively in the financial interests of their shareholders, and proponents of stakeholderism, the idea that in addition to shareholder financial interests, companies should be run to further interests of other stakeholders. At least some of these other stakeholders are quite sympathetic and their interests, or more precisely, the respects in which their interests are purportedly being harmed (or at least insufficiently attended to), are quite salient. While SPM and …

Anticipating A New Modern Skidmore Standard, Kristin E. Hickman

Articles

In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court overruled Chevron deference but blessed giving agency interpretations of statutes “respect” or “weight” under the Skidmore standard during judicial review. Yet, the Court in Loper Bright offered only a few limited references regarding Skidmore as a doctrine, with little guidance regarding what judicial review under Skidmore ought to look like. The Court might not have felt the need to elaborate, as courts have been applying Skidmore for eighty years. As applied, however, Skidmore is a more complicated doctrine than many people realize. An extensive Skidmore jurisprudence exists, with nuances that at …

Legal Scholarship Through The Lens Of Generative Ai, Darkly, Andrew Martineau, Loren Turner

Articles

Unlike traditional search engines limited to connecting users to original source content, generative AI systems produce new, ad-hoc sources of information derived primarily from patterns in their training data and information fed into the system as context. As such, generative AI systems can play a mediating role between users and information sources, especially when these systems are integrated into databases and web search engines. This article examines how GPT-4 (ChatGPT) interacts with law review articles, revealing its unreliability in summarizing them independently but notable accuracy when provided with full-text input. Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) offers a potential solution for improving …

Scientific And Technical Expertise After Loper Bright, Sapna Kumar

Articles

Courts once trusted federal agencies for their expertise in administering complex statutory schemes, particularly regarding science and technology. Unlike judges, agency officials can narrowly focus on a specific area of law and have access to experts to inform their decision making. In Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the Supreme Court created a presumption that, absent language to the contrary, Congress intends for agencies to interpret statutory ambiguities. Chevron allowed agencies to utilize their varied forms of expertise while ensuring oversight from generalist judges. This court–agency partnership abruptly ended, however, in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. The Court …

Hiding In Plain Sight: Erisa’S Cure For The $1.4 Trillion Health Benefits Market, Amy B. Monahan, Barak D. Richman

Articles

Since 1974, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) has imposed fiduciary duties on those who manage and administer employee benefit plans. But for the largest employee benefits—retirement benefits and health plans, which together constitute 13% of total national compensation—ERISA’s fiduciary duties have played very different roles. For retirement benefits, ERISA scrutinizes plan managers and requires employers to select plan investments with care. For health plans, there is a regulatory vacuum, as ERISA imposes few federal requirements yet preempts state efforts to ensure quality plan offerings. In short, ERISA has advanced protections for retirement plans but mostly curtailed protections for …

Phyllis Schlafly And How Forgetting Women's Struggles For Equality Perpetuates Inequality, Jill Elaine Hasday

Articles

In a nation whose Constitution purports to speak for “We the People,” too many of the stories that powerful Americans tell about law and society include only We the Men. A long line of judges, politicians, and other influential voices have ignored women’s struggles for equality or distorted them beyond recognition by wildly exaggerating American progress. Even as sexism continues to warp constitutional law, political decisionmaking, and everyday life, prominent Americans have spent more than a century proclaiming that the United States has already left sex discrimination behind.

This symposium essay draws on my book, We the Men, to …

Narrowing The Frame: Consumer Insurance Policies And The Limits Of The Restatement Of Consumer Contracts, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Avoision: When Government Lawyers Turn The Sovereign Against Itself, Richard Painter

Articles

Lawyers sometimes use legally permissible but ethically dubious strategies to avoid the law and at other times they cross the line into illegal law evasion. Between the two is a gray area of conduct highly likely, but not certain, to be illegal known as law “avoision.” Lawyering at the outer limits of the law is controversial in the private sector when lawyers represent clients against the government or against other private parties. The better interpretation of the law may stand on the other side, and the lawyer must decide how far to go in an arguably illegal direction on behalf …

Obamacare For Homeowners Insurance: Fixing America's Broken Insurance Markets In A Time Of Climate Change, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Articles

Over the last decade, homeowners insurance markets nationwide have experienced unprecedented instability due to climate change. These disruptions, which are likely to accelerate in the coming years, risk destabilizing real estate markets, triggering financial instability, and undermining the nation’s resilience to climate change. Despite these massive stakes, federal and state reforms to date have largely failed to result in more accessible and affordable homeowners insurance coverage that promotes climate change resilience. This Article offers a new way forward, arguing that today’s troubled homeowners insurance markets resemble the broken, state health insurance markets that pre-dated the 2010 passage of the Affordable …

Estimating Per-Infection Cost And Burden For Dengue And Zika As A Function Of Antibody-Dependent Enhancement, Christopher M. Kribs

Mathematics Faculty Publications - Archive

The complex immune interactions produced by the tetravalent dengue vaccine Dengvaxia have foregrounded the important role of antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) in dengue infection. Some evidence exists that ADE may extend beyond the four dengue serotypes to Zika, a closely related flavivirus transmitted by the same mosquito species as dengue, and may also account for the increased severity of some cases. Estimates of the public health impact of dengue vaccination may then need to include its effects on the transmission of Zika in addition to dengue. This study gathers primary references to build estimates of per-case economic cost and disease burden …

Applying The Regulatory Report Card To Tax Regulations, Kristin E. Hickman, Bridget C.E. Dooling

Articles

An invited contribution to an issue of the Journal of Benefit–Cost Analysis honoring the work of the late Dr. Jerry Ellig, this essay recognizes and draws upon the Regulatory Report Card methodology developed by Ellig and Dr. Patrick McLaughlin to evaluate the quality of regulatory impact analysis published by federal government agencies in conjunction with notice-and-comment rulemaking. The essay anticipates a forthcoming study of changes to tax regulatory practices as a result of a 2018 Memorandum of Agreement between the Treasury Department and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs – a study the authors discussed and hoped to conduct …

Ai Assistance In Legal Analysis: An Empirical Study, Jonathan H. Choi, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Liability, Property, And Inalienability Rules In Employee Data Regulation, Matthew T. Bodie

Articles

Legal protections for workers’ data have usually taken the form of privacy protections designed to deter data processing that is excessive or invasive. Such protections generally fall into the category of liability rules, under which rights can be infringed as long as compensation is provided for the violation. As Guido Calabresi and A. Douglas Melamed have described in “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral,” liability rules are contrasted with either property rules that prevent the involuntary transfer of rights or inalienability rules that prohibit rights transfers altogether. This article explores how property rules and inalienability …

Free Speech And Incorporation: A Reassessment, Ilan Wurman

Articles

Many of the Supreme Court’s most controversial free speech decisions involve state laws. In Gitlow v. New York, the Court assumed that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech applied directly against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, a doctrine today referred to as incorporation. Yet there is reason to doubt incorporation is correct as a matter of the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Indeed, much of the historical evidence involves debates over the freedom of speech, but none of the historical actors seemed to think the First Amendment applied against the states. This short essay evaluates the …

The Effects Of Social Media Usage On Mental Health In Adolescents And Young Adults, Hannah Small, Eddie Bacon, Melanie Aguilar

IdeaFest 2025

This research explores the effects of social media and smartphone usage on the mental health of adolescents and young adults. It examines how factors such as screen time, social comparison, cyberbullying, and digital connectivity influence psychological well-being, including anxiety, depression, self-esteem, and sleep quality. This study aims to provide insights into both the risks and potential benefits of digital engagement among youth, contributing to strategies for healthier technology use.

Preventing Falls In Hospitalized Elderly Patients, Rory Boeck

IdeaFest 2025

Falls among hospitalized elderly patients is a significant safety issue, with up to one million falls occurring annually in U.S. hospitals. With about 30% of the falls resulting in injury leading to increased hospital stays and increased healthcare costs. This project aimed to reduce fall rates on a medical-surgical unit by 25% over six months using individual interventions based on the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) framework.

Resistance Training On Self-Concept To Improve Gender Affirmation And Community Belonging Lgbtq+ Individuals, Lauren Bankerd

IdeaFest 2025

Determining the effects of resistance training tailored to LGBTQ+ individuals with the purpose of increasing gender congruence, self-concept, and community belonging.

The Cycle Of Giving:, Sarai Brown

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

On one hot summer day in the middle of a 3-month stint studying Mandarin Chinese at National Chung Hsing University (NCHU) in Taichung, Taiwan, my friends and I were desperate to sate our appetites after class, even in the atrociously hot and humid conditions. Most of our little group was drawn to a 牛肉麵 niúròu miàn (beef noodle) shop, but the thought of hot soup on a day like this drove me and a couple of others to continue our search. We stumbled upon another outdoor restaurant—though “restaurant” is perhaps a loose term for the holey-tent-covered food stand with mismatched …

Contributors, Eliana Elkhoury, Jako Olivier, Travis N. Thurston, Morgan Barker, Steven Clontz, Will Cross, Michael Tadeusz Dabrowski, Teresa Focarile, Hillary Fox, Angela George, Sharona Krinsky, Drew Lewis, Erin Mckenney, Lauren Mcmillan, Nalanda Roy, Zoë Soon, James Thibeault, David Tully, Lydia Watson, Sam Winemiller

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

No abstract provided.

1. Placing Students At The Heart Centre: Using A Compassionate Lens In The Selection And Use Of Open Assessment, Lydia Watson

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

This chapter will discuss the topic of compassion and its role in the selection and application of open educational assessment practices. Drawing on research and practice that centers compassion within assessment activities and everyday life, it will focus on four emerging themes, namely: understanding compassionate assessment, self-compassion and assessment, compassion for students in assessment, and compassion for faculty in assessment practices. It will propose that embracing and integrating open assessment practices offers a meaningful path forward.

3. Checkit Oer Assessment Generator, Steven Clontz, Sharona Krinsky, Drew Lewis

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

The CheckIt framework is an open educational technology for authoring randomized exercises, banks, and assessments for mathematics. Technological means facilitate the easy sharing and modification of open-source templates and generators authored in the framework to be used both in classrooms as well as to support educational research; case studies in this paper illustrate its use in both contexts, and describe its use in both small and large classrooms.

Bibliography, Mary P. Bennett

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Mary Bennett.

5. Student As Creator + Curator: Transformative Oer Pedagogy Through Student Research In Excel, Morgan Barker

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

This chapter considers ways that basic student research can act as a transformative OER pedagogy. The author examines student co-created lessons and assesses an open pedagogy design model utilized in California Community College Excel courses over the last 10 years. While Excel is a valued academic and job-oriented skill, many students find that spreadsheets are not engaging nor the primary focus in most courses. It is through this design model that students are encouraged to curate “micro” lessons for fellow students, acting as active curators rather than passive learners. The concepts thoughtfully encourage students to have agency/ hope, develop advocacy …

5. Teaching Excellence Fostered Through Institutional Collaboration: A Case For An Effective Assessment Rubric, Amanda Morris, Anna Kuthy

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Teaching excellence is a defining characteristic and ongoing challenge at small liberal arts institutions, where instructor independence and mission-driven education converge. Defining and measuring it in such contexts involves navigating instructor autonomy, institutional mission, administrative oversight, and accreditation requirements. This chapter presents a case-based approach to addressing these challenges at Brescia University, a small liberal arts school in Owensboro, KY. We offer an example of an implementable solution that fosters and documents teaching excellence while aligning with both generally accepted standards and the university’s mission. Additionally, we model a collaborative development process between the offices of the Academic Dean and …

6. The Creation Of A Teaching Excellence Framework: Defining, Measuring, And Facilitating Teaching Excellence, James Agutter, T. Adam Halstrom, Anne Cook

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Defining what constitutes teaching excellence is a crucial focus for faculty development to create deep learning opportunities in our classrooms and ensure our students’ success. However, establishing a single definition is challenging to standardize and quantify. We recognize outstanding teaching when we see and experience it — we all know the faculty members who spark curiosity, foster deep learning, and create memorable experiences for our students. Yet, how do we assess something so complex, nuanced, and profoundly influential? Excellent teaching varies based on the institution, the field, the context, the content, and the demographics of the students in a course. …

Introduction, Eliana Elkhoury, Jako Olivier, Travis N. Thurston

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

The need to rethink assessment in higher education has become increasingly urgent due to the shift to remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent introduction of various generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. Globally, instructors are called to redesign their assessment practices to make them more innovative, authentic, and empowering.

10. The Language Of Teaching Excellence: Describing Pedagogical Expertise Through A Framework Of Care, Beth Buyserie

Documenting Teaching Excellence

During my 20 years of college-level teaching, I have engaged in countless conversations where instructors communicate their passion for teaching, their commitment to student learning, the depth of their disciplinary expertise, their continued pedagogical innovations, and their thoughtful reflective practices. Yet often these same teachers confide that they find it quite challenging (sometimes nearly impossible) to write about their teaching for promotion—not because they are not strong teachers, but because the language expectations for documenting teaching accomplishments can be formidable. For example, at my particular institution, teaching-centered instructors are specifically directed in our role statements to “demonstrate excellence” in our …

Harvesting Connections Farmers Markets Cultivate Communities, Azariah Mohr, Olivia Aldinger, Robyn Stallman

IdeaFest 2025

No abstract provided.

Bridging Gaps In Rural Diabetes Care, Ashley Sciple Cron

IdeaFest 2025

This quality improvement project aims to reduce disparities in diabetes care by improving access to Tirzepatide through individual, community, and policy-level interventions. Set in a rural clinic, the project focuses on providing culturally tailored telehealth education, peer mentorship, and advocacy for expanded medication coverage. The goal is to improve patient outcomes by increasing diabetes knowledge, medication adherence, and access to evidence-based treatment. Guided by the Iowa Model of Evidence-Based Practice, this approach supports safe, equitable care and long-term sustainability through data-driven evaluation and community engagement.

The Importance Of Community Service, Luis Reyes

IdeaFest 2025

No abstract provided.