Digital Commons Network^™

Useful Noise: Understanding Dicta And Knowing What To Do With It, Len Niehoff, Tucker Gribble

Articles

Sometimes we approach the idea of obiter dictum as if it were Latin for “Here the court says something I wish it didn’t.” When a judicial opinion includes a statement that hurts our case, we labor to cast it as dicta and we give it the first name “mere.” If the opposing party quotes the statement, we huff about its irrelevance and dismissively proclaim that it can, indeed must, be ignored. We treat dicta as background noise, and we encourage the court to plug its ears and hum.

Gamification: The Viability Of Using Genai To Create Games To Teach Legal Concepts, Nicole Belbin

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines whether generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can lower the technical, time, and cost barriers that have limited the use of game-based learning (GBL) in legal education. It first considers the science of learning, focusing on spaced practice, retrieval practice, and concrete examples, and explains how GBL can incorporate these strategies. It then evaluates four general-purpose GenAI tools—Perplexity, Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude—by testing their ability to state legal rules accurately and create games that teach personal jurisdiction.

The results demonstrate both GenAI’s promise and its limitations. Although all four tools incorporated core concepts of general jurisdiction, each omitted at …

Cold Comfort: Japan’S “Comfort Women” Litigation Under Transnational Law, Timothy Webster

Faculty Scholarship

Transnational human rights litigation has emerged as a powerful tool to remediate state and corporate abuses. Courts, however, rarely evince the same enthusiasm for these lawsuits as practitioners, scholars, and activists. For the past thirty-five years, “comfort women,” or survivors of wartime sexual exploitation, have used transnational litigation to seek redress from the Japanese government. Yet they have lost nearly all their cases. This Article uses ten “comfort women” lawsuits from Japan to test the limits of transnational human rights litigation. While judges rarely found for the comfort women, their verdicts nonetheless advanced the redress issue by showing the illegality …

Peeking Inside The Black Box: Discovery In Fair Housing Act Cases Arising From Ai Decision Making, Jessica Mahon Scoles

Faculty Scholarship

In today’s real estate market, more housing decisions are being automated. If artificial intelligence renders a biased decision, will the person impacted have any legal recourse? Commentators have expressed concern that the proprietary nature of AI will allow defendants in discrimination lawsuits to avoid discovery, effectively shielding their decision making from judicial scrutiny. This article examines whether AI and algorithm-related information is the discovery black box that some fear it to be.

Addressing the issue in the context of Fair Housing Act (FHA) litigation, the article argues that concerns about access to AI and algorithm-related discovery are overstated. In real …

Perioperative Predictors Of Hemodynamic Instability After Carotid Revascularization, Lutfi Barghuthi, Rebekah Bjorklund, Mya Phelps, Shrina Patel, Lakecia Beasley, Bayli Zink, Alyssa Bedell, Gaurav Singh, Sarah Stokke, Jacob Dunn, Lily Sadri, Carly Wadle, Alisha Thedford, Rebecca Swindall, Alan Cook, Hishaam Ismael, Mark Robbins

School of Medicine Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective

Postoperative hemodynamic instability after carotid revascularization can lead to adverse outcomes such as intensive care unit admission and prolonged hospitalization, leading to an increase in resource utilization. This study aimed to compare hemodynamic instability between transcarotid artery revascularization (TCAR) and carotid endarterectomy (CEA).

Methods

A retrospective cohort study was conducted at a single institution on treatment for carotid artery stenosis between 2021 and 2024. Clinical outcomes after TCAR and CEA were compared. The primary outcome was hemodynamic instability; secondary outcomes of interest included any >30-day complication or death.

Results

In total, 566 patients were included, 71.2% undergoing TCAR (n …

More Than A Man: An Ethnomusicological Survey Of The Folklore Of John Henry And Resource Guide For “More Than A Man” By Shanyse Strickland, Clayton R. Heath

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

“John Henry” exists as an enduring folk legend in the United States of America, representing the confluence of the Reconstruction Era, the economic utility of Appalachia and the Westward expansion of industry which left it behind. Though based on historical events, Henry’s fictional representation has diverted and evolved in music and other media from its inception in the oral tradition to the modern age. Through this progression, shared symbols have circulated, gathering embedded meanings and associating the folklore with specific communities. Henry’s representational identity has been signaled with the creation and distribution of each version of his story, both complicating …

Process Modeling, Operability Analysis, And Techno-Economic Optimization Of Soecs For Sustainable H2 Production, Krishna Murthy Busam

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The global imperative to decarbonize energy systems has intensified research into sustainable hydrogen production pathways, as hydrogen emerges as a critical energy carrier for sectors difficult to electrify directly. Among water electrolysis technologies, solid oxide electrolyzer cells operating at elevated temperatures offer the highest theoretical efficiency by utilizing thermal energy to reduce electrical energy requirements, yet comprehensive frameworks integrating electrochemical modeling with process operability analysis and techno-economic optimization remain scarce in the literature. This dissertation develops a process systems framework for proton-conducting solid oxide electrolyzer cells that bridges the gap between fundamental electrochemical phenomena and industrial-scale process economics. At the …

Student And Teacher Perceptions Of Confirming Behaviors Across Instructional Modalities, April Nicole Wright

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation examined how undergraduate students and instructors evaluate lowinference teacher confirmation behaviors across instructional modalities and identified additional behaviors perceived as confirming in contemporary instructional contexts. Participants included 274 undergraduate students and 104 higher-education instructors who completed a survey measuring four clusters of confirming behaviors (willingness to engage, recognition, acknowledgment, and endorsement) using a 7-point Likert-type scale. Open-ended questions invited participants to describe confirming behaviors not represented in existing measures. Results indicated that both students and instructors rated most behaviors above the midpoint of the scale, with instructional responsiveness and course organization receiving the highest ratings. Instructors rated all …

Sidelining The Public, Anya Bernstein, Glen Staszewski, Wendy E. Wagner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article challenges the widely held view that Congress is the American government’s institution closest to the people, while administrative agencies are unaccountable and unresponsive. Providing a systematic, side-by-side institutional analysis, we compare the actual practices and capacities of these two institutions to engage affected publics in policymaking. We find that despite the democratic bona fides of an elected legislature, agencies possess superior capacities, more evolved practices, stricter rules, and stronger incentives for meaningful public engagement. Yet these capacities have been eroded—particularly over the last 50 years—by intensifying legal, political, and managerial obstacles. The Supreme Court and political actors have …

Hydrodynamic Tipping Points In The Mississippi Sound In Response To Bonnet Carré Spillway Openings, Mustafa Kemal Cambazoglu, Brandy N. Armstrong, Mohsena Lopa, Marc Diard, Jerry D. Wiggert

Faculty Publications

This project examines the current operational strategy of the Bonnet Carré Spillway (BCS), a Mississippi River flood-control structure located about 21 miles northwest of New Orleans, Louisiana, and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The BCS is part of the larger Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, a network of levees and control structures designed to minimize flooding from the American plains to southern Louisiana. The spillway is opened when river discharge at New Orleans is forecasted to exceed 1,250,000 cubic feet per second, diverting significant volumes of Mississippi River water into Lake Pontchartrain which subsequently flows into Mississippi …

Maesa Ramentacea Leaf Extract Protects Against Gentamicin-Induced Nephrotoxicity In Wistar Rats By Modulating Renal Oxidative Stress, Inflammation And Apoptosis, Fahmida Akter, Md Shafiqul Islam Sovon, Baizid Hossain, Md Ariful Islam, Subrato Das, Anik Biswas, Md Sohorab Uddin, Md Mahmudul Hasan

Faculty Publications

Background: Gentamicin-induced nephrotoxicity continues to be a significant clinical concern, while effective and safe protective options remain limited. The nephroprotective potential of Maesa ramentacea has not yet been explored. To address this gap, the present study investigated the ethanolic leaf extract of M. ramentacea (MR-LEE) for its effects on gentamicin-induced kidney injury in Wistar rats. Methods: GC-MS profiling was employed to identify bioactive metabolites. Rats were categorised into five groups: control, gentamicin (100 mg/kg), gentamicin combined with silymarin (100 mg/kg), gentamicin combined with MR-LEE (200 mg/kg) and gentamicin combined with MR-LEE (400 mg/kg). Renal biomarkers, oxidative stress indicators, inflammatory and …

Building Capacity, Driving Impact: A Landscape Analysis Of Community Engagement And Outreach Cores' Activities, Emily Frankel, Stephanie Broyles, Stephenie Kennedy-Rea, Casey Solsrud, Elizabeth K. Woods, Deborah Goebert, Zsolt Nagykaldi, Holly Huye, Lee M. Pachter

Faculty Publications

Community Engagement and Outreach (CEO) Cores are a key component of the IDeA Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) Program, serving to develop and implement capacity-building initiatives that empower communities to engage and collaborate with investigators in community-engaged research. To strengthen collaboration and shared learning across sites, a CEO Special Interest Group was established. In 2022, the group conducted a landscape analysis to systematically characterize and categorize CEO Core activities across the IDeA-CTR network, with a focus on capacity-building efforts related to knowledge transfer, co-learning, and infrastructure development. The analysis revealed several common approaches to community engagement and capacity building across …

Wellness Policies In Action: A Wscc-Based Comparative Analysis Of District-Level Policy And School-Level Practices, Leanne Denise Watson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

ABSTRACT

Wellness Policies in Action: A WSCC-Based Comparative Analysis of District-Level Policy and School-Level Practices

Leanne D. Watson, M.S.

The United States Department of Agriculture utilized the policy platform to implement and reinforce federal mandates aimed to improve health outcomes for student-aged youth, requiring all schools participating in the National School Lunch and/or Breakfast Program to develop a written wellness policy beginning with the 2016-2017 school year. However, the resulting impacts on school environments are unclear. The Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model is a recommended framework to influence wellness policies and school practices and support the holistic …

Three Essays In Health Economics, Caroline Andressa Welter

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Health outcomes and access to care are shaped by the interaction between public institutions, administrative rules, and responses to health risk. This dissertation investigates how barriers to access, changes in perceived risk, and policy design influence participation in public programs, preventive health behavior, and  treatment continuation. Across three essays in health economics, I examine how individuals respond to disruptions in service delivery, epidemic exposure, and administrative burden, with a focus on vulnerable populations that depend on public systems of care.
The first essay analyzes the impact of Social Security Administration field office closures on participation in federal disability programs during …

Three Essays On Urban Transportation, Daniel Amorim Souza Centuriao

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Urban environments are shaped by dynamic interactions between infrastructure development, policy interventions, and episodic demand shocks, all of which can generate unintended externalities in the form of motor vehicle collisions, injuries, and fatalities. This dissertation investigates the determinants of traffic safety in dense urban settings, with a particular focus on how different sources of urban activity affect collision risk and severity. Using New York City as a case study and leveraging high-resolution spatial and temporal data, I examine three distinct but interconnected mechanisms: construction activity, traffic safety policies, and large-scale events.

The first chapter analyzes the impact of urban development, …

Ai In The Workplace: Understanding The Path Between Ai Adoption Intensity And Ai-Induced Job Insecurity, Joanna J. Frieske

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more embedded in organizational workflows and is reshaping work environments, changing how we work, make decisions, stay engaged, perform, and learn. While AI adoption is associated with a wide range of benefits, it also presents negative aspects that may affect employee experiences and influence the future of work. Drawing on extant literature and on the Job Demands–Resources (JD-R) model, Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, and the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework, this research proposes a model in which psychological safety mediates the relationship between AI adoption intensity and job insecurity, while procedural justice and AI self-efficacy act …

Success Coaching And Conditional Admit Student Success, Zachery Oliver Thayer

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Student success is a matter of critical importance to institutions of higher education, and to students. Colleges and universities exist in a current context of decreasing supply of potential students as a result of an impending demographic cliff and, therefore, increased competition for those remaining students, all while many institutions have become more tuition-dependent. This creates an incentive to decrease selectivity in order to meet enrollment goals as well as to focus university resources on student success measures that impact retention.  Some institutions have decreased selectivity to the point of admitting students conditionally or provisionally, even if those students do …

Evaluation Of Brook Trout (Salvelinus Fontinalis) Thermal Tolerance And Projected Climate Change Effects On Headwater Brook Trout Population Persistence, Cory Bauerlien

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Climate change has been identified as one of the greatest threats to global biota in recorded human history. Consequences are expected to be more pronounced in ectotherms because most of their physiology is controlled by external temperature conditions. Predicting how ectotherms may respond to increasing global temperatures necessitates information about thermal limits of thermal sensitive species and how increasing temperatures may affect individual and population-level fitness. Therefore, the objectives of this research were aimed at gaining a better understanding of the mechanisms that underpin thermal tolerance limits of fish and how those mechanisms may affect fitness and population persistence under …

Foreword: Turning Points And Paradigm Shifts In International Law, Michael P. Scharf, Lucas R. Van Dyke

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Sharenting And Child Rights In The Age Of Platform Capitalism, Christiana Essie Sagay, Unyime Abasi Odong

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The boundaries between private life, work, and visibility have become increasingly blurred in the digital age. Nowhere is this more evident than in the phenomenon of sharenting, a portmanteau of “sharing” and “parenting,” where parents routinely post images, videos, and personal narratives of their children on social media platforms. While often framed as acts of familial affection or digital memory-keeping, sharenting implicates commercial content creation and positions children as de facto participants in global digital labor markets. In this context, childhood increasingly unfolds within algorithmic and economic contexts that transcend domestic boundaries and challenge conventional legal norms, protections, and understandings …

Governing Economic Statecraft: Procedural Guardrails From State Practice, Wto Rules, Multilateral Trade, Dah-Wei Yih

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

National security exceptions have long been part of international trade law, but their use has expanded alongside the rise of economic statecraft. States now increasingly rely on geoeconomic tools such as sanctions, subsidies, tariffs, and investment and export controls to pursue geopolitical goals. This phenomenon, described by political scientists as “weaponized interdependence,” has blurred the boundary between economic policy and national security, thereby straining the integrity of WTO rules and the multilateral trading system.

Against this backdrop, how can states promote rule-of-law values such as transparency and predictability on the international plane as they implement geoeconomic policies?

This Article makes …

Ecocide And The International Criminal Court: Reassessing The African Union-Icc Impasse, Ikechukwu Ugwu

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The refusal of the African Union (AU) and its leaders to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) led to the negotiation of the Protocol on Amendments to the Protocol on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights 2014 (the Malabo Protocol). The Protocol incorporates the core crimes of the Rome Statute and, in addition, expands on the meaning of international crime by defining crimes related to the environment, among others. Although the Malabo Protocol is innovative in its provisions, it lacks the potential to prevent ecocide in Africa or to serve as a model for …

Institutional Authority Without Ratification: Rethinking International Organizations’ Governance In The Post-Treaty Era, Izadora Coutinho

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

This Article examines the growing normative authority exercised by international organizations through informal governance mechanisms that operate without treaty ratification or formal consent. It argues that international law is undergoing structural transformation: global standards increasingly emerge from flexible, network-based arrangements rather than negotiated treaties. Using the OECD/G20 Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) Rules as a case study, this Article illustrates how nonbinding instruments can generate de facto binding effects. Their adoption by numerous jurisdictions reflects systemic incentives, reputational pressures, and tax base erosion threats. While such mechanisms enhance flexibility and responsiveness, they also raise significant concerns about legitimacy, sovereignty, and accountability. …

State Complicity And The Threshold Of Knowledge: From Fragmentary Evidence To Evidentiary Saturation, Christina Bradic

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2007 judgment in Bosnia v. Serbia turned on evidentiary gaps. Although the ICJ recognized that genocide had been committed at Srebrenica, it declined to hold Serbia complicit, reasoning that the record did not prove awareness of genocidal purpose. Intelligence was piecemeal, contemporaneous witnesses were scarce, and the ICJ refused to infer knowledge absent direct proof.

Two decades later, the evidentiary environment looks radically different. In October 2024, ninety-nine American healthcare professionals who had volunteered in Gaza sent an open letter to the White House reporting that children with gunshot wounds to the head or …

Keynote Speech For The American Society Of International Law 2025 Midyear Meeting, Dr. Mark Ellis

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Talking Foreign Policy: "Turning Points And Paradigm Shifts In U.S. Foreign Policy" June 23, 2025 Broadcast, Talking Foreign Policy

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Equal-Access Extraction: Necessary Revisions To The Extent Of The 1920 Svalbard Treaty Due To Norway's Deep-Sea Mining Decision, Louden J. Keihl

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

Svalbard’s 100-year-old governing treaty, the Svalbard Treaty, has been the cause of several disputes regarding its applicability to maritime zones not developed at the time of its negotiation. This Note argues that, considering Svalbard’s importance, the different treaty parties should renegotiate and revise the Svalbard Treaty to clarify ambiguities regarding its geographic scope. The reasons why the dispute has not been solved to date and the differing views on the Treaty’s geographic scope are also discussed. Potential clarifying language is proposed and analyzed. (from the author)

The Doctor Won't See You Now: Legal Proscriptions For Medical Tourism Control And Regulation, Shenley W. Wish

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

The Medical Tourism industry has experienced remarkable growth in the past decade and is tracking to exceed that growth dramatically in the coming decade. With this rapid expansion, however, comes growing pains—predominantly lackluster patient safety. This Note examines the opportunities and challenges that would arise from regulating Medical Tourism through an international treaty, recognizing that an international treaty approach provides the most comprehensive and practically feasible solution for addressing complex cross-border constraints to create a safer global medical industry. (from the author)

Prescribed Fire Liability And Administration In Western States: An Empiricalanalysis And Call For Reform, Stephen R. Miller, Anastasia Telesetsky

Utah Law Review

Wildfires have grown exponentially over the last few years due to fuel loads, range- and timber-management policies, and climate change. The cost of fire suppression is also growing in both rural and urban areas. For instance, the 2016 Pioneer Fire in rural Idaho cost around $100 million to fight, while the 2025 urban conflagrations in Los Angeles, California destroyed over 16,000 structures despite an astonishing array of suppression resources deployed. Something new, and something big, in terms of law and policy interventions, is needed to stem the intensity of wildfires. Increasingly, governments, private citizens, and even corporate interests like insurance …

The Idea Of Air, Jonathan Skinner-Thompson

Utah Law Review

How we view air, especially clean air, has meaningful normative and practical implications. Today, it is commonly recognized as an exhaustible natural resource. But air was not always thought of as something to be conserved, developed, and used. This Article is the first to explore and interrogate that view. The shift to seeing air as a resource started in the first part of the twentieth century. Previously, air was characterized by its limitless supply of oxygen: a pure public good. Over time, the quality of that good changed, and a precious resource emerged. That resource—especially its chemical and physical characteristics—inspired …