Digital Commons Network^™

Jbs’S Initial Public Offering: Threats To Environmental And Human Rights, Kayla Thompson

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

This paper centers around the decision to be made regarding JBS, the world’s largest meat company, wanting to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and the environmental and social impacts that could result from the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approval. JBS has been at the center of various controversies over the last several years, including sourcing cattle from ranches acquired through illegal deforestation, engaging in greenwashing practices, incorrectly reporting greenhouse gas emissions, and engaging in human rights abuses. Many environmental groups have filed complaints with the SEC concerning JBS’s bid to list on the NYSE. The …

The Interaction Between Privacy Laws And Restrictive Licensing Agreements In Cross-Border Satellite Imagery, Ida Samardar

IP Theory

No abstract provided.

Housing As A Human Right Through Legislative Action: Comparing France And Scotland’S Enforceable Rights To Housing, Emily Peterson, Jack E. Turman Jr., Ph.D.

Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Off-Ramp From Complex Civil Litigation: Purdue Pharma, Opioids, And Unorthodox Civil Procedure In Public Harms Cases, Abbe R. Gluck

Indiana Law Journal

For civil procedure scholars, bankruptcy has become exciting. Last year, the United States Supreme Court decided for the first time a case that implicated both the core of the national opioids litigation and one of the most important developments in modern civil procedure—namely, the enormous amount of unorthodox procedural innovation that is happening in the courts as parties strive to reach global settlement.

The decision, Harrington v. Purdue L.P., took almost seven months despite the grant of expedited review—an indication that the result was likely not easily reached. In June 2024, the Court, voting five to four, reversed the Second …

Teaching Students To Be Resilient: A Campus-Wide Approach, Connie Horton, La Shonda Coleman, Brad Dudley, Stacey Lee Gobir, Sergio Gallardo Palma

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

In response to escalating mental health concerns among college students, Pepperdine University developed the Resilience- Informed Skills Education (RISE) program to equip students with resilience skills. The biblically sound and research-based curriculum focuses on six dimensions: physical, social, cognitive, spiritual, service, and life skills. All first-year students learn resilience skills through the RISE small-group program. Numerous additional opportunities are made available, including resilience coaching, a resilience interest living community, lunch and learns, a yearly summit, a podcast, a newsletter, and a variety of engaging campus programs. Student leaders have been key to the positive response to RISE, as have partnerships …

The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring Of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic Of Mental Illness, Aaron J. Howell

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

No abstract provided.

Amplifying Extremism: Small Town Politicians, Media Storms, And American Journalism, Nik Usher, Jess Hagman

Communication: Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Effects Of A Pornography Use Reduction Program, Justin Heth, John Foubert, Andrew Courtner

Growth: The Journal of the Association for Christians in Student Development

Pornography use has been shown to be highly common among young men, with numerous documented deleterious effects. Though the dangers of pornography use are well documented, few studies have attempted to determine what methods can be used to decrease use, including use among men attending Christian colleges. The present study began to address this gap by studying different groups of men who sought to decrease their use. Implications of these results are discussed.

Sermon Rhetoric And White Evangelical Support For The Republican Party, Stephan Paul Lendway

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

One of the most notable political shifts in American politics over the past fifty years has been the sorting of political and religious elites to produce the partisan “God Gap.” Among religious voters, evangelicals, especially White evangelicals, support Republican presidential candidates at higher levels than other religious voters. I argue that may partly be because of evangelical sermon content. In particular, I posit that, relative to Catholic and mainline Protestant sermons,evangelical Protestant sermons are more likely to consist of cultural and elite threats and that these threats consist of more sin, politicization on the ideological right, and mobilizing rhetoric. First, …

Customer Management In Virtual Environments, Seung Yoon Lee

Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations

The rapid expansion of digital and virtual environments has transformed customer management, providing firms with unprecedented opportunities to observe and influence consumer behavior in real-time. These self-contained worlds—ranging from gaming and education to health and the emerging metaverse—allow firms to not only track every consumer action but also dynamically modify the product and design the rules and incentives governing the very environments in which interactions take place. As a result, firms can optimize targeting strategies, personalize interventions, and design products and incentives in ways that were previously unattainable. My dissertation examines how firms can leverage these capabilities to manage customer …

Synthetic Statocracy - Pakistan’S Self-Created Inferno: Examining The Causes And Consequences Of Military Dominance In Pakistan, Umer Lakhani

CMC Senior Theses

This paper examines the history of military rule in Pakistan. Applying the framework of Johannes Gerschewski in The Three Pillars of Stability: Legitimation, Repression and Co-Optation in Autocratic Regimes, this paper looks to explain how military rulers who presided over the three periods of military rule in Pakistan consolidated and maintained their power, as well as the effects that these periods of rule had on Pakistani society. This paper will also supplement Gerschewski’s general framework by applying the findings of various established authors who have been published extensively on Pakistan’s political history, economy and relationship with the military. Such authors …

Political Cults On College Campuses: How Universities Designed To Challenge Totalitarian Thinking May Now Enable It, Ellie Lerner

CMC Senior Theses

Cults are typically associated with fringe religious or spiritual movements rather than political causes. Yet as American politics increasingly supplants religion as a central source of identity and belonging, our political culture has taken on more cult-like characteristics. This thesis develops a framework for identifying political cults by synthesizing scholarly work on ideological totalism, psychological manipulation, and group dynamics. It then applies this framework to assess the rise of anti-Israel protests on U.S. college campuses in the wake of the October 7th terrorist attack. While this thesis finds that this movement should not be classified as a political cult outright, …

Conceptualizing Caremark, Roy Shapira

Indiana Law Journal

Who is accountable for corporate compliance failures? The issue of compliance has emerged as one of the most significant developments in corporate governance over the past decades. However, until recently, corporate law has had surprisingly little to say about the question, leaving the policing of issues such as toxic pollution, product safety, or data privacy, to other regulators. This situation has changed dramatically over the past few years. Today, virtually every corporate fiasco is followed by an oversight duty lawsuit against the company’s directors and officers for not doing enough to prevent the debacle. But the rapid resurgence of oversight …

Federalism, State Action, And Workers' Medical Privacy, Ani B. Satz

Indiana Law Journal

Injured workers entering state workers’ compensation systems effectively forego their medical privacy. This is due to widespread judicial misinterpretation of the HIPAA Privacy Rule (HPR) as excluding injured workers from federal medical privacy protections. As a result, medical privacy for workers’ compensation claims is effectively governed by state law. This Article argues that states have failed to protect the medical privacy of injured workers adequately and that there is a pressing need for legislative reform. The Article presents the first comprehensive survey in the legal literature of state action protecting the medical privacy of injured workers. Part I describes the …

Medium Matters: Reading Comprehension Differences Between Print And Digital Texts In High School, Doyle Huelsman

Doctor of Education (EdD)

An increasing reliance on digital devices in public schools has raised questions about how reading medium influences student comprehension. Although digital texts offer logistical and financial advantages, prior research suggests that students may comprehend printed text more effectively. This exploratory quasi-experimental study examined whether ninth-grade students’ comprehension differed when reading a grade-level passage in print or on a digital screen in intact classroom settings. The study also investigated whether subgroup characteristics moderated any medium-related effects.

A total of 334 students enrolled in a general education English course participated. Fourteen classrooms were randomly assigned to print or digital conditions. All students …

Educators’ Perceptions Of The Components That Influence Student Behavior And The Impact Restorative Practices And Community Circles Have On Improving Overall Well-Being In Students, Catherine Dulovic

Selected Full Text Dissertations, 2011-

Restorative Practices have been utilized in many schools as an alternative to traditional disciplinary methods. Traditional methods such as Out of School Suspension (OSS) and In-School Suspension (ISS) can lead to feelings of isolation and impact students’ attitudes towards school and community. Community Circles are often used in conjunction with Restorative Practices to support the development of the whole child, build relationships, promote positive discipline, and create a trauma sensitive environment that includes mindfulness practices. The current research examined educators’ perspective of the components that influence student behavior and the impact Restorative Practices and Community Circles have on improving behavior …

Affordance-Based Information Technology Sensemaking [Abits], Arvin Mesgari, Chitu Okoli, Ana Ortiz De Guinea

Information Systems and Business Analytics Faculty Works

Information Technology (IT) use gives rise to a wide variety of outcomes. This stems in part from the divergent ways in which individuals understand technology. While the sensemaking literature unveils how meaning is attached to organizational phenomena via cognitive and social processes, it overlooks the discovery dimension of making sense, that is detecting the role of the IT artifact in bringing about outcomes. In other words, there is a need to explain how the IT artifact contributes to technology sensemaking and its outcomes. This paper presents a framework that enables scholars to analyze the IT artifact’s role in technology sensemaking …

A Preliminary Program Evaluation: Rates Of Intimate Partner Violence In An Urban Child Welfare Prevention Program, Athena Roca

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Intimate partner violence (IPV) remains a pervasive public health concern with significant consequences for families. Traditional batterer intervention programs (BIPs), which often focus solely on the person causing harm (PCH), have demonstrated limited success in reducing recidivism, particularly when grounded in punitive or authoritarian models. This study evaluated the Child-Welfare IPV Prevention Program (CWIPVPP), a family-centered, trauma-informed intervention that engages the PCH, co-parents, and children to reduce IPV-related behaviors and promote healthier family functioning.

Recidivism indicators, including domestic violence incident reports (DIRs) and arrests, were analyzed for 57 fathers referred to the program, with 53 retained for final analyses. A …

Tax Compliance, Social Norms, And Influencers, James Alm, J. A. Soled, Kathleen Delaney Thomas

Nebraska Law Review

While attaining perfect tax compliance is unachievable, more can and must be done. In the past, the country has relied primarily on a traditional system of sticks (e.g., audits and penalties) and carrots (e.g., refunds and whistleblower awards) to help narrow the “tax gap,” or the difference between what taxpayers owe in taxes and what they actually pay. Now, in the social media era, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should look beyond these traditional enforcement mechanisms. To achieve an even higher voluntary compliance rate, this Article advocates for policymakers to invest greater resources to enhance the social norm …

Who’S Afraid Of Little Old Me? The Record Industry: Protecting Creativity And Promoting Artists’ Rights Through A Narrow Scope Of 17 U.S.C. §§ 103 And 114 Rights For Derivative Works, Margaret Fouberg

Nebraska Law Review

This Comment explores the growing conversation surrounding artist rights and music ownership, catalyzed by Taylor Swift’s public dispute with Big Machine Records. Swift’s efforts to reclaim her work have spotlighted the complexities of U.S. copyright law, particularly the distinct rights afforded to sound recordings versus musical compositions under the Sound Recording Act of 1971. By examining derivative works and their required standard of originality, this Comment argues that a narrow interpretation of copyright protections for derivative works, as outlined in 17 U.S.C. §§ 103 and 114, is essential for fostering creativity and safeguarding artists’ rights. Through an analysis of legislative …

A Judiciary Without Trust?, Brandon J. Johnson

Nebraska Law Review

Public hand wringing over waning faith in the Supreme Court, this Essay contends, mistakes symptom for cause. The real crisis is not distrust but the Court’s persistent failure to earn trust in the first place. Trust is a feeling; trustworthiness is a record. This Essay adopts a common understanding of trustworthiness that evaluates the demonstrated ability of the trusted party to protect the vulnerable trusting parties, and analyzes the Court’s trustworthiness against that yardstick. From Dred Scott, Plessy, and Korematsu to modern “shadow docket” interventions and undisclosed donor funded travel, the Court has too often shown itself untrustworthy …

Not The “Mere Creature” Of Big Tech: The Constitutionality Of Parental Consent Laws For Minors’ Social Media Accounts, Kat Turco

Nebraska Law Review

A growing number of states have passed laws requiring social media platforms to obtain parental consent before granting accounts to minors to combat rising mental health issues, cyberbullying, and screen addiction. Although well intentioned, every such law has been enjoined in the lower courts, and the Supreme Court has yet to address whether laws requiring parental consent for minors’ social‑media accounts violate the First Amendment. This Comment argues that lower courts have miscast such statutes as content‑based speech restrictions requiring strict scrutiny under Brown v. Entertainment Merchants’ Association. Parental consent laws differ from the content-based statute at issue in …

A Study Of The Tap In Center Movement: How Collaboration In The Legal System Is Reducing The Negative Impact Of Bench Warrants And Restoring Justice In Communities, Patrick C. Brayer

Nebraska Law Review

While many aspects of the criminal legal system have been criticized for the harm judicial institutions inflict on communities, a unique legal initiative is garnering praise from observers across the nation. What started as a local effort to help residents withdraw bench warrants during the COVID-19 Pandemic has blossomed into four independent legal service centers in three separate Midwest metropolitan areas called Tap In Centers. The primary mission of the Centers is the recalling of bench warrants issued when criminal defendants fail to appear for court or pay a fine; however, the needs of the individual and the community guide …

Socially Responsible Ai In The Gpt Era, Yussuf A. Aleem

SMU Law Review

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) showcase its rapid evolution and promise, with the potential to profoundly transform decision-making, self-expression, and even the practice of law. However, AI also presents formidable challenges, including the further entrenchment of societal inequalities, widespread labor disruption, and existential threats to humanity. Modern AI systems show early signs of general intelligence, enabling them to perform a wide range of tasks beyond those of chatbots in both virtual and physical environments. Despite industry assurances of responsible AI development, these technologies are easily exploited and often exhibit troubling behaviors that even their creators struggle to understand.

This …

Ready Or Not: How Congressional Dysfunction And Loper Bright Enterprises V. Raimondo Will Shift U.S. Regulation Of Emerging Technologies To The Federal Bench, Michelle Benedetto Neitz

SMU Law Review

This Article is the first in legal academic literature to consider how the power shift generated by Congressional dysfunction and the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will affect emerging technology law. Power is moving toward the judicial branch of government— and away from the legislative and executive branches. As a result, federal courts will now take a leading role in the evolution of emerging technology law in the United States.

Unfortunately, the federal judiciary is not prepared for this new era. Drawing from the information processing theory, this Article explains why federal judges will be deciding …

Collegiate Athletes’ Name, Image, And Likeness As A Constitutionally Protected Interest, Josh Lens

SMU Law Review

Courts have long held that collegiate athletes’ athletics participation does not constitute a liberty or property interest afforded constitutional due process protection. Thus, universities, athletics departments, and coaches generally have not had to provide much process when suspending athletes from their teams for disciplinary reasons, for example.

Recently, however, college athletics’ primary governing entity—the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA)—altered its longstanding rules to permit athletes to accept remuneration from third parties for the use of their names, images, and likenesses. This newfound ability has significantly benefited athletes in college athletics’ transformative name, image, and likeness (NIL) era.

This Article examines …

Texas Business Court, Byron F. Egan

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Airplane!: Does The Federal Aviation Act Preempt State Law Design Defect Claims?, Max Birmingham

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Which level of government—state or federal—has jurisdiction to set safety standards for aviation defect design is a nuanced issue. Generally speaking, federal law preempts state law in this context by occupying the field through a regulatory scheme that permeates aviation safety. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 (FAAct) confers its namesake agency—the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)—the powers to prescribe the “minimum standards required in the interest of safety.” The word “minimum” has been seized upon by those on the state side of the debate to advocate that it means the floor. And they contend that those in the Union have …

Air Strikes In Myanmar - An Analysis Under International Law, Jacob Davis

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the reignited Israel-Palestine conflict in 2023, international law regulating the use of air power has been put to the test. The use of air strikes in civilian areas has put this shortcoming at the forefront of conversation about the use of force, and what constitutes a war crime in modern conflict.

This conversation has centered around the two aforementioned conflicts but has left other international disputes out of the discussion. In particular the civil war in Myanmar, a bloody conflict which follows decades of ethnic violence, political stratification, and a successful …

Let’S Jettison Some Executive Perks: Exploring The Sec And Irs Approaches To Personal Use Of Corporate Aircraft, Christine Lane

Journal of Air Law and Commerce

In 2023, 46% of the S&P 500 companies provided personal use of corporate aircraft to their chief executive officers, and 31% provided this perk to other named executive officers. This type of executive compensation has notoriously garnered much attention from the media, given the large amount of investor money spent on personal travel and the environmental impacts of flying private. In addition, the line between personal travel and business travel is often blurred, and the media has tracked flight paths of corporate aircraft to speculate that some flights may be incorrectly categorized as business trips when the jets land and …