Digital Commons Network^™

Civil Rights In Theory, Health Disparities In Practice: Affordable Care Act Section 1557 And The Maternal Mortality Crisis, Grace Hall

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

[INTRODUCTION] On a hot Fourth of July in 2021, Harmony Ball-Stribling spent her final day laughing with her husband, hours before preeclampsia killed her. Harmony was eight months pregnant and living in Belzoni, Mississippi, where she celebrated the holiday with her church congregation. Her congregation prayed over her and her baby for a safe delivery, as she was scheduled to have a cesarean section in five days.

Later that evening, Harmony woke in agony, vomited, and complained of chest pain to her husband, Mr. Stribling. Harmony’s husband put his wifein their car and began the more than thirty-mile drive to …

The Ambiguity That Isn’T: Why Same-Sex Marriage Is Legal In American Samoa, Dante Cade Harootunian, Sammi Lawrence

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that prohibitions on same-sex marriage violate the equal protection guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, several government officials in American Samoa issued statements claiming that the decision had no effect in American Samoa, and, to date, no same-sex couples have

applied for a marriage license in the territory. This Article analyzes the Obergefell decision in light of other federal and territorial court decisions that determined the applicability of constitutional rights to U.S. territories and concludes that, despite the statements of local officials, the Obergefell decision applies in American Samoa, and the …

Framing The War On Terror: Media Narratives And U.S. Foreign Policy After 9/11, Neva Essex

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

The media plays an essential role in developing an informed public and the shaping of information. Foreign policy and the coverage of the U.S. movements abroad drastically changed with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This paper seeks to examine the ways in which media coverage of presidential rhetoric in regard to the U.S. response to terrorism changed over the course of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. With the use of qualitative narrative analysis of print news media sources and official statements made from the White House, this paper will identify the patterns and changes which occurred over the …

Mother Mary Goemaere: A California Pioneer, M. Dougherty Professer Emerita

History and Political Science| Faculty Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of California Wildfire Governance Through State Bills, Regulations, And Executive Actions, Cassandra Dawn Blevins

History and Political Science | Senior Theses

California faces an escalating wildfire crisis, driven by climate change, drought, and development in fire-prone areas. Despite decades of scientific research on wildfire behavior and risk reduction, catastrophic fires since 2017 raise a critical question: to what extent have California state laws and policies kept up with the intensifying wildfire crisis? Existing scholarship provides extensive insight into wildfire ecology, land-use planning, fuel management, and community resilience, yet it lacks a comprehensive evaluation of whether California’s legislative, regulatory, and executive actions have adapted in a coordinated and evidence-informed manner. In particular, the literature offers limited analysis of how state laws integrate …

Enforcing International Humanitarian Law Through The Business Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Tara Van Ho

Faculty Articles

Insulation produced by the Danish company Rockwool—or its Russian subsidiary—lines thirty-one Russian Navy warships. Though not a weapon, this material is essential to the vessels’ operation. Did Rockwool have a responsibility under international law to stop the transfer of the insulation to the Russian Navy before Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine? This article examines the business responsibilities under the 2011 United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”). In doing so, the article finds that the business responsibility to respect human rights in the UNGPs provides a strong mechanism for enforcing international humanitarian law (“IHL”). However, it requires …

Overcoming And Preventing The Devastation Of Burnout In The Patient Care Setting, Deepesh Patel Ds, Mdjf, Dip, Imp, Dent, Mclindent (Pros), Fpros (Rcs Ed), Mpros (Rcs Eng), Facd, Reena Pankhania Mpharm, Pgdip, Pgcertip, Mrpharms

Journal of the American College of Dentists

Healthcare professionals commonly prioritize patients’ well-being over their own. In settings where stressful situations are common, combined with the pressures of modern-day society, this can lead to chronic stress and burnout. When one experiences burnout, their ability to perform at an optimum level is impaired. This affects the team around them and the care patients receive, making mistakes more likely. It is therefore essential to recognize the early signs of burnout and address them before the situation deteriorates. Better still, preventing burnout by prioritizing oneself fosters a happier work environment, strengthens leadership, and ultimately helps patients receive better care.

There …

System Disparities: Racial Criminalization And The Risk Of Coerced And False Confessions In Youth, Cynthia J. Najdowski

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Black youth may be even more vulnerable than other youth to admitting to crimes they did not commit in the context of police interrogations. In support, analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations indicates that 65% of people who were wrongfully convicted on the basis of false confessions they gave when under 18 years old are Black, whereas only 14% of the U.S. population is Black. In this chapter, I seek to understand the overrepresentation of Black youth in samples of juvenile false confessors by examining the cultural stereotype about Black criminality in relation to both investigators and …

Ethical Considerations For Remote Accounting Teams, Ola Owokoya

Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)

Remote and hybrid employment has expanded rapidly, changing the worldwide accounting profession. Distance accountants face complex ethical issues related to confidentiality, data protection, professional accountability, and regulatory compliance. These problems are well known, but empirical research on how organizational practices affect accountants' perceptions of ethical risk is scarce. This study examines how remote work status, formal ethical oversight systems, and ethical training affect tech accounting professionals' perceptions of ethical risk. A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was adopted using non-stratified purposive sampling. Data were collected through an online questionnaire administered via the Prolific platform, yielding 256 valid responses from accounting professionals …

Southern Adventist University Graduate Catalog 2025-2026, Southern Adventist University

Catalog, Graduate

Southern Adventist University's graduate catalog for the academic year 2025-2026.

When Climate Change Forces Flight: Legal Duties In The Age Of Retreat, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

In the face of climate-driven disasters, government officials and individuals alike must decide whether to invest in climate-exposed areas or retreat. This Article analyzes emerging legal and policy issues associated with both climate retreat (when the government relocates people and infrastructure away from climate-exposed areas) and abandonment (when individuals leave climate-exposed areas, following natural disasters or otherwise). I argue that government-driven climate retreat must consider four overlapping legal duties, raising novel questions in an era of climate destabilization. First, does the government have an affirmative duty to rescue its citizens, and is this duty transformed by the government’s role in …

The Forgotten Income-Attribution Power, Alex Zhang

Faculty Articles

Economic inequality stands at record levels, and constitutional law haunts egalitarian reform. In 2024, the Supreme Court decided the latest contest. Moore v. United States rebuffed an attempt to sharply limit the federal taxing power, as a razor-thin majority upheld Congress’s attribution of foreign corporations’ income to domestic shareholders. But four Justices criticized the reasoning of the majority, faulting its use of a fabricated doctrine.

This Feature provides a systematic account of Congress’s income-attribution power. It excavates overlooked litigation materials and case law from the infancy of the current federal income tax. In the 1920s and 1930s, litigants attacked, on …

How Ip Ends, David Fagundes, Aaron Perzanowski

Faculty Articles

Real and personal property may last forever, but intellectual property (IP) ends. Despite the doctrinal complexity and practical significance of the mechanisms that terminate IP rights, scholarship has scarcely focused on them, and none has analyzed these doctrines as a unified field. As a result, the discourse about the ways IP ends remains impoverished, with courts, legislatures, and commentators offering imprecise and inconsistent formulations that obscure the rationales for these doctrines. This Article offers the first comprehensive taxonomy of IP’s terminal mechanisms, providing much-needed conceptual and definitional coherence. It then reveals the underappreciated policy leverage these mechanisms can deliver and …

Do We Really Want Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justices Practicing Law? A Public Policy Critique To U.S. Supreme Court Term Limits, Michael J. Broyde, Hayden H. Hall

Faculty Articles

In its 2021 final report, the Presidential Commission on Judicial Reform discussed the merits of implementing term limits for Supreme Court justices. The Commission began by acknowledging that eighteen-year, non-renewable terms have considerable bipartisan support, including the support of both Conservative and Progressive scholars at the National Constitution Center, whose proposals for improving the Constitution included term limits for justices. They continued by weighing the pros and cons of implementing term limits via constitutional amendment or statute, addressing, in turn, the specifics of what these limits might look like—whether a twelve or eighteen-year term is preferable, how a transition from …

Supporting Comparative Studies Of Judicial Behavior: Introducing The Australian High Court Database, Patrick Leslie, Zoë Robinson, Russell Smyth, Tonja Jacobi

Faculty Articles

Comparative research on law and legal institutions depends on high-quality data infrastructure. This article introduces the Australian High Court Database—a new resource that encodes structured information on all full judgments of the High Court of Australia between 1995 and 2020, and all leave applications (Australia’s equivalent to petitions for certiorari) from 2003 to 2018. The database is built in accordance with core principles that support comparative research: it is adaptable, and comparable. By attending to jurisdictional specificity while adhering to general standards, the database supports both within-country analysis and cross-national comparison. We illustrate how the Australian High Court Database can …

True Threats, Public Safety, And Free Speech: An Empirical Analysis Of Counterman's Consequences, Jordan Birnholtz, Matthew B. Kugler

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Many scholars expected the Supreme Court’s Counterman decision to significantly reshape true threat law, undermining public safety while expanding protections for caustic political speech. Counterman required that a speaker consciously disregard a substantial risk that their communications would be viewed as threatening violence to give rise to liability. This created a concern that it would be difficult to convict harassers and stalkers who were, or claimed to be, delusional, and thus unaware of their speech’s likely impact. Scholars also feared the invalidation of some stalking and harassment statutes and increased difficulty in obtaining protective orders, which play a major role …

An Upside Of Originalism? Jury Size, Meghan J. Ryan

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Originalists have taken over the Supreme Court, and many commentators are up in arms. This historical approach to constitutional interpretation can entrench historical biases, result in what many view as unjust decisions, and even cloak politically motivated opinions. But entirely rejecting a historical approach to constitutional interpretation overlooks what can be an upside of originalism: Because of our country’s unique history of being founded by British rebels, some practices from the time of the Founding—such as recognizing a strong jury right—advantage criminal defendants. Thus, employing a historical approach such as originalism in assessing the scope of constitutional protections can actually …

Revisiting Robinson: How Courts Can Preserve The Status Crimes Doctrine After Grants Pass, Sabina Idriz

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Prior to the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, legal advocates for the homeless used the status crimes doctrine to successfully argue in multiple cases that anti-homeless laws, which punish life-sustaining acts such as sleeping, camping, or eating in public, are unconstitutional. Under the status crimes doctrine, which comes from the Supreme Court’s 1962 interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause in Robinson v. California, it is unconstitutional to punish individuals for having a status they may have contracted innocently or involuntarily. The Robinson Court struck down a law criminalizing …

Freedom Of Speech And Criminal Solicitation, Nikola R. Hajdin

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Although criminal solicitation is recognized as one of the “historic and traditional categories” of unprotected speech, courts’ understanding of this doctrine remains limited and narrow. Nearly three years ago, the Supreme Court finally made progress in clarifying the boundaries between criminal solicitation and protected advocacy. In United States v. Hansen, the Court held that solicitation is the intentional encouragement of a specific unlawful act and, because speech of this kind “has no social value,” it is therefore unprotected. The Supreme Court, however, left a key question unanswered: Why does restricting advocacy that doesn’t meet the Brandenburg v. Ohio imminence-of-harm …

Uncharted Waters: Addressing The Shortcomings Of Criminal Liability Under The Clean Water Act By Charging Water Polluters With Assault, Abigail English

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Water pollution incidents pose both acute and long-term risks to human health, yet the Clean Water Act (CWA) ineffectively holds water polluters accountable. By defining criminal violations in terms of technical breaches of the statute, the CWA’s criminal provisions are vulnerable to narrow judicial interpretations, leaving many environmental crimes unpunished. Furthermore, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rarely pursues criminal charges under the CWA, relying instead on civil fines, which fail to impose meaningful consequences. This underinclusiveness and under-utilization allows many polluters to evade serious penalties. Even when pollution incidents are covered by the CWA and the EPA pursues prosecution, the …

Baby-Life Balance: Occupational Therapy Strategies To Support The Transition To Motherhood, Morgan Muriel Harshman

Occupational Therapy Capstones

The postpartum period is characterized by significant physical, emotional, and occupational changes that can disrupt daily functioning, routines, and role transition into motherhood (Albanese et al., 2020; Baker et al., 2024). These changes impact a mother’s ability to engage in meaningful daily activities, including self-care, infant care, and participation in family and community roles. Despite these challenges, postpartum care often emphasizes infant health, leaving gaps in support for maternal occupational performance, routine development, and environmental adaptation (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2023; World Health Organization [WHO], 2022). Occupational therapy is uniquely positioned to address these needs through its …

Foreword, Patricia B. Barnett

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Who Gets To Sue? Legal Standing After Fda V. Alliance For Hippocratic Medicine, Rachael Houston, Robert Stephen Earnest

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

This article examines how courts are invoking FDA v. Alliance to define the limits of legal standing in litigation—specifically, in a reproductive health context. Reproductive health, as used here, encompasses a broad range of medical, legal, and policy issues related to abortion access, gender-affirming care, pregnancy, and professional regulation of services connected to reproductive decision-making. It includes the provision of and restrictions on reproductive healthcare services, the regulation of speech related to those services (e.g., advertising and advocacy), and the institutional responses to contested laws and agency rules affecting bodily autonomy, medical practice, and expressive conduct. Drawing on an original …

Blue Brief 2025-2026, University Of San Diego School Of Law

Blue Brief

A USD School of Law faculty review of selected rulings from the most recent Term of the United States Supreme Court.

New Therapies, New Challenges: Cystic Lung Disease After Cancer Immunotherapy, Ananya Venkatesh, David Camacho, Ross Summer, Michael Dong

Division of Internal Medicine Faculty Papers & Presentations

Immunotherapies have reduced reliance on cytotoxic strategies with their associated high toxicity levels, revolutionizing cancer care. However, these targeted therapies have also increased prevalence of previously rare sequelae, impacting patients experiencing longer survival. We describe a case of endometrial adenocarcinoma with lung metastases, in which tumor resolution following immunotherapy created cystic airspaces, leading to a pneumothorax complication. A 49-year-old female with advanced stage endometrial adenocarcinoma and lung metastasis developed cystic lung lesions in areas of previous metastatic lesions after treatment with Pembrolizumab and Bevacizumab. She developed a pneumothorax secondary to the rupture of one of the large lung cysts, leading …

Artificial Intelligence And Consumer Well-Being: A Cross Domain Systemic Review, Setar Lytle, Mahesh Gopinath

Marketing Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in everyday consumption, yet evidence on its longer-term implications for consumer eudaimonic well-being remains dispersed across disciplines and application contexts. This review integrates that literature to clarify the domains, theoretical explanations, and conditions through which AI shapes consumer well-being. Following PRISMA and SPAR-4-SLR procedures, we reviewed research published from January 2010 to January 2026. From 6058 records, 480 studies across psychology, business, and human-technology interaction met the inclusion criteria. The evidence is organised through psychological, social, and technological perspectives and identifies six interconnected domains: mental health, cognitive development, physical health, personal growth, autonomy and …

Pillar 2 As A New International Fiscal Law, Jinyan Li

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper argues that Pillar 2 not only creates a global minimum tax on large multinational enterprises, but also manifests a new international fiscal law regime. Through the lens of a new notion of sovereignty –networked fiscal sovereignty, this paper explains Pillar 2’s raison d’être, technical components and future prospect.

Shrinking Tax Sovereignty In Canada? Evidence From The Income Tax Act, Jinyan Li, Angelo Nikolakakis

Articles & Book Chapters

This paper explores the questions of whether Canadian tax sovereignty has changed, and if so, how and why through examining the Income Tax Act in terms of the major legislative changes and their underlying influences. It finds that while maintaining formal, independent sovereignty, Canada has always borrowed foreign ideas, rules and policies when they serve Canadian interests and has recently adopted a more coordinated approach in tackling international tax challenges.

Unequal Shelter: A Constitutional Challenge To The Adams Administration’S Differential Treatment Of Migrants Under New York’S Right To Shelter Laws, Alexandra Arleo

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Federalism And Fair Housing: State Innovation Amidst Federal Retrenchment, Paula A. Franzese

Fordham Urban Law Journal

No abstract provided.