Digital Commons Network^™

Colorado Appeals Court Issues Second Ruling Against Masterpiece Cakeshop And Jack Phillips, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Ninth Circuit Denies En Banc Rehearing In Washington Conversion Therapy Case, Setting Up Possible Supreme Court Review, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Professional Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

International Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Legislative & Administrative Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Prisoner Litigation - Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Litigation - Notes, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Guatemalan Petitioner Wins Remand Of Asylum Claim On Several Grounds By 9th Circuit Panel, Arthur S. Leonard

Other Publications

No abstract provided.

Race-Ing Antitrust, Bennett Capers, Gregory Day

Michigan Law Review

Antitrust law has a race problem. To spot an antitrust violation, courts inquire into whether an act has degraded consumer welfare. Since anticompetitive practices are often assumed to enhance consumer welfare, antitrust offenses are rarely found. Key to this framework is that antitrust treats all consumers monolithically; that consumers are differently situated, especially along lines of race, simply is ignored.

We argue that antitrust law must disaggregate the term “consumer” to include those who disproportionately suffer from anticompetitive practices via a community welfare standard. As a starting point, we demonstrate that anticompetitive conduct has specifically been used as a tool …

Repugnant Precedents And The Court Of History, Daniel B. Rice

Michigan Law Review

Aged Supreme Court precedents continue to tolerate many practices that would shock modern sensibilities. Yet the Court lacks standard tools for phasing out decisions that offend our national character. The very cultural shifts that have reoriented our normative universe have also insulated most repugnant precedents from direct attack. And the familiar stare decisis factors cannot genuinely explain what ails societally outmoded decisions. Even for justices inclined to condemn these embarrassments in less clinical terms, it is unclear what qualifies courts to make universalist claims about contemporary American values.

The Court recently sidestepped these difficulties by insisting that one of its …

Mooting Unilateral Mootness, Scott T. Macguidwin

Michigan Law Review

Several situations cause a case to be moot. These include settlement agreements, party collusion, changes in litigant status, and extrinsic circumstances thwarting the court from granting any relief. The final reason is unilateral mootness—when a defendant ends a lawsuit against a plaintiff’s wishes by giving them everything for which they ask. In practice, this allows defendants to strategically stop lawsuits when it is clear they are not going to win. By doing so, they prevent the court from handing down adverse precedent and preserve the opportunity to engage in similar behavior with impunity. Courts have established a series of mootness …

Recognizing The Right To Family Unity In Immigration Law, Eugene Lee

Michigan Law Review

The Trump Administration’s travel ban and separation of families at the U.S.- Mexico border drew newfound attention to the constitutional due process right to family unity. But even before then, the right to family unity has had a substantial history. Rooted in the Supreme Court’s line of privacy rights cases, the right to family unity is amorphous. This ambiguity has given rise to disagreement regarding not only legal doctrine surrounding the right but also whether the right even exists. This Note clarifies this disagreement by offering a historical account of the right to family unity and an overview of three …

Insider Expungement, Brian M. Murray

Utah Law Review

Like many phases of the criminal justice system, insiders dominate the practice of expungement and there is little to no involvement of the broader community. Recently, scholars in favor of democratization in criminal justice have called for enhanced public involvement during policing, charging, bail determinations, plea-bargaining, and sentencing to improve accountability, transparency, and democratic participation. This Article is the first to extend this critique to decision-making during the expungement process. It conveys how expungement always has been the province of insiders and how recent expungement reforms, while broadening some substantive expungement remedies, double down on this paradigm. Procedures are implemented …

Rightsizing Local Legislatures, Brenner M. Fissell

Utah Law Review

Local councils, boards, and commissions have all the lawmaking powers of a legislature—including the power to criminalize conduct—but they are far too small to deserve them. With an average size of only four members, local legislatures depart from the norm observable at all other levels of government. Only in the past few years have legal scholars turned their attention to the institutional design of these bodies, but this developing literature has yet to address their most striking feature—their small size.

This Article takes up this project. It claims that local microlegislatures are comparatively unrepresentative and undemocratic, and that their size …

Adopting Social Media In Family And Adoption Law, Stacey B. Steinberg, Meredith Burgess, Karla Herrera

Utah Law Review

Social media has dramatically changed the landscape facing families brought together through adoption. Just as adoptive families thirty years ago could not have predicted the impact of DNA technology on postadoption family life, adoptive families are only now beginning to grasp the impact of social media connectivity on the lives of their growing children. This change is related both to social media’s impact on family life and to fundamental shifts in our understanding of privacy more generally. Understanding the legal rights of parents and children in these circumstances is a novel and underexplored area of family law, constitutional law, and …

Acculturation, Dietary Behaviors, And Macronutrient Intake Among Mexican Americans With Prediabetes: The Starr County Diabetes Prevention Initiative, Sharon A Brown, Heather A Becker, Alexandra A García, Mary M Velasquez, Hirofumi Tanaka, Mary A Winter, William B Perkison, Eric L Brown, David Aguilar, Craig L Hanis

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

PURPOSE: The purpose of the study was to examine the influences of sex and acculturation on dietary behaviors, macronutrient intake, and dietary quality in participants enrolled in a diabetes prevention initiative in Starr County, Texas.

METHODS: Baseline data from the Starr County diabetes prevention study (N = 300) were analyzed-acculturation (country of origin, years in Starr County, language and food preferences), depressive symptoms (Patient Health Questionnaire-9), healthy eating self-efficacy (Weight Efficacy Lifestyle Questionnaire-Short Form), diet quality (USDA Healthy Eating Index), fat avoidance (Fat Avoidance Scale, Spanish version), and macronutrients. Descriptive statistics and univariate analysis of covariance were used to examine …

Coming-Of-Age Of Teenage Female Arab Gothic Fiction: A Feminist Semiotic Study, Zoe Hurley, Zeina Hojeij

All Works

This feminist semiotic study explores the folkloric imaginary of the jinn in the context of children’s and young adults’ Arab Gothic literature. Across the Middle East, the jinn is a common trope in literature, folklore and oral storytelling who, in diegetic terms, can manifest as the Gothic figure of an aging female, deranged older woman or succubus (known as sa’lawwa in Arabic). In this study, a novel feminist semiotic framework is developed to explore the extent to which the Gothic female succubus either haunts or liberates Arab girls’ coming-of-age fictions. This issue is addressed via a feminist semiotic reading of …

Analysis Of The Inter-Annotators Agreement And Its Effect On The System Of Anti-Asian Hate Crime Detection On Twitter During Covid-19, Amir Toliyat

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, and after being utterly contagious in Asian countries, it rapidly spread to other countries. This disease caused governments worldwide to declare a public health crisis with severe measures taken to reduce the speed of the spread of the disease. This pandemic affected the lives of millions of people. Many citizens that lost their loved ones and jobs experienced a wide range of emotions, such as disbelief, shock, concerns about health, fear about food supplies, anxiety, and panic. All of the aforementioned phenomena led to the spread of racism and …

Higher Law And Lincoln's Antislavery Constitutionalism: What It Means To Say The Civil War Was Fought Over Slavery, Joel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring …

Investigating Key Risk Factors Across Violent And Non-Violent Extremists In The United States, Leevia Dillon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Problem Statement: This study investigated risk factors commonly highlighted by prior studies and risk assessment tools (e.g., Violent Extremism Risk Assessment Version 2 (VERA-2) and Extremism Risk Guidance 22+ (ERG22+)). It compared the risk factors across and within two groups – violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right extremists) and non-violent extremists (i.e., jihadists and far-right financial/material support crime extremists) in the U.S. Jihadists and far-rightists are the two greatest security threats facing the U.S., and the findings can aid counterterrorism efforts on assessment development, identifying effective risk factors across varying groups, and assessing violence risk. Research Questions/Objectives: This study aimed …

David Versus Goliath: The Power Of Weakness In Asymmetric Warfare—Lessons From History, Nicholas K. Petaludis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Under what conditions do violent nonstate actors (VNA) succeed against states? Why does David sometimes beat Goliath? Since at least the time of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars, the realist narrative in international relations measures power primarily in relative, coercive, and deterrent terms. Strong states should accordingly face fewer constraints and enjoy more options while pursuing their national interests. Unconventional warfare, and its subsets of terrorism and insurgency, should—given these circumstances, end in VNA failure. Sometimes, however, VNAs find success. By comparing the literature on historical and current case studies, I propose that a set of preconditions and two mechanisms …

Chromatic Dissensus: An Otherwise Archive Of Natural Dyes, 1700–1856, Luke Church

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Chromatic Dissensus: An Otherwise Archive of Natural Dyes, 1750-1856 works from the premise that the absences regarding subaltern life structuring the colonial archive are an epistemological problem—that is, navigating the colonial archive requires an interrogation of the parameters and practices of knowledge formation. Building from recent scholarship in early American studies which details how eighteenth-century colonial knowledge developed out of an epistemic entanglement between British colonists, diasporic Africans, and indigenous Americans, my dissertation queries the overdetermination of colonial knowledge and subsequent occlusion of alternative parameters for knowing. Enlisting aesthetics, in its broad definition as the theorization of sense making, my …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

Notes On Insurgent Universality In Ambedkar’S Social And Political Thought: A Critique Of Postcolonial Anti-Universalism, Sitharthan Sriharan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this thesis, we seek to take steps towards problematizing postcolonial theory and its frequent anti-universalism. Towards this end, my initial focus will be some of the productive and problematic aspects of what Getachew and Mantena term the “decolonization of political theory”. Here, we highlight how some comparative political theory scholars have methodologically overemphasized ‘difference’ in their studies of non-western political thought as an overcorrection to Eurocentrism. In supporting this claim, we review literature in comparative political theory, postcolonial theory, and modern South Asian history and historiography in order to demonstrate that a more philosophically robust, but still historically informed, …

The Effect Of Race On Housing Stratification Among Latinos, Julia T. Gomez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Housing discrimination has been an ethical, social, and economic blight on the American society. Among the negative outcomes of this practice are higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, and concentrated poverty. Beyond the moral injustice of this practice, housing discrimination adversely affects the socio-economic mobility of those victimized and this extends across generations. The research on the intersection of race and Latino identity demonstrates the complexity of the issue and suggests that an examination such as done in this study can add to the current knowledge. The purpose of this study was to determine what, if any, association race has …

Writing The Unwritten: Politicians, Celebrities And Activists On Lebanese Twitter, May Ahmar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the language and orthographic practices of different social groups on Lebanese Twitter. It draws on a specific event in Lebanon, namely the Lebanese presidential elections of 2016. The data, a collection of tweets from three different social groups (politicians, celebrities, and activists) during the month leading up to the announcement of the Lebanese president, delve into the choices of languages, orthographies and spelling that these groups exhibit on Twitter. My analysis shows that politicians use MSA mostly in alignment with their identity, linguistic hegemony and traditional media practices. Celebrities show more flexibility by choosing different languages and …

A Novel Measure Of Narrative Self-Functioning And Its Role In The Transformative Potential Of Psychedelic Experience Across Clinical And Non-Clinical Participants, Nicole M. Amada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The eudaimonic field of well-being is founded on the idea that self-knowledge and the realization of one’s potential is at the heart of what it means to strive for well-being. While the “self” is at the core of this perspective, theories derived from this field have yet to incorporate neurocognitive conceptualizations of the self, and account for the collection of self-referential cognitions that influence striving for well-being. Such a theory and measure could fill this theoretical gap and be applied in person centered interventions to capture change in these processes over time. One such intervention utilizes psychedelic experience as a …

On Viscoelastic Fiber Jet Formation By Forcespinning At High Rotation Rate, Daniel N. Riahi, Saulo Orizaga

School of Mathematical & Statistical Sciences Faculty Publications

We consider a nonlinear three-dimensional viscoelastic fiber jet that is generated during a forcespinning process. We provide a particular case for such a rotating jet at a high rotation rate. We use a viscoelastic constitutive model for the jet equations and then applying a new slender body approach, we continue with proper scaling and perturbation technique to develop a new model for such a jet system. We find that the profiles for jet quantities versus arc length are notably different from all those in related studies reported before for either high or low rotation rates. In particular, jet radius first …

Incarceration-Related Stigma And Caring Self-Efficacy Among Long-Term Care Nurses, Sandra D. Langston

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: A silver tsunami is occurring in U.S. prisons because of an unprecedented increase in the older population. Prisons are structurally ill-suited to care for this population and financially burdened with providing the necessary medical and nursing care. States have enacted legislation to afford justice-involved persons parole to manage chronic conditions in community-based long-term care (LTC) facilities. Changes in Medicaid regulations provide a seamless transition from prison to community long-term care for this population. However, it is not known if the stigma of justice involvement impacts the perception of long-term nurses concerning this population.

Aims/Purpose: This study examined the effects …

Three Essays On Substructural Approaches To Semantic Paradoxes, Brian C. Porter

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis consists of three papers on substructural approaches to semantic paradoxes. The first paper introduces a formal system, based on a nontransitive substructural logic, which has exactly the valid and antivalid inferences of classical logic at every level of (meta)inference, but which I argue is still not classical logic. In the second essay, I introduce infinite-premise versions of several semantic paradoxes, and show that noncontractive substructural approaches do not solve these paradoxes. In the third essay, I introduce an infinite metainferential hierarchy of validity curry paradoxes, and argue that providing a uniform solution to the paradoxes in this hierarchy …