Digital Commons Network^™

Weapons Of Mass Disruption: How Small States Use Cyber To Resist Larger Powers, Russell Alexander Korb

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This paper examines the ways in which small states can engage larger actors using cyber- attacks. Since the end of both World Wars, small states have increased in both numbers and relevance, with strong international institutions and norms against military aggression allowing small states to gain legitimacy by the very act of participating in the international system. However, although small states can now do more than simply choose a larger, stronger benefactor to ward off their enemies, they still cannot defy larger powers outright due to the still- dramatic difference in capabilities between them. Those small states interested in confronting …

Leveraging Allies, Partners, And Technology: A Case Study Approach To Identifying Best Practices For Improving Us Military All-Domain Urban Training, Kevin Michael Felix

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

In this study, the researcher explored urban training gaps, opportunities, and synergies across the United States and five Allied and partner nations, and how synthetic training environments (STE) technologies should be optimized now and in the future to improve US all-domain urban training. The researcher adopted a qualitative multiple case study approach, analyzing military doctrine, urban warfare training strategies, and infrastructure in the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Israel, and Singapore to establish best practices across these countries. Urban warfare requires specialized skills to negotiate terrain, including high-rise buildings, subterranean networks, and dense civilian populations. However, the existing U.S. military …

Criminal Abortion And Citizen’S Arrest, Ira P. Robbins

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many states rushed to classify abortion as homicide. In addition to criminalizing abortion, some states have shown a willingness to place enforcement of the new laws in the hands of ordinary citizens through a variety of private enforcement mechanisms. These new abortion statutes exist in tandem with existing citizen’s arrest laws to create the possibility for women, providers, and those who assist them to be subject to this problem-ridden doctrine. This Article analyzes potential scenarios in which these areas clash and pose new risks to exercising what was not long …

The Sec, Fraud, And Cryptocurrencies, Lawrence J. Trautman, Brian Elzweig, Neal F. Newman

Missouri Law Review

The SEC’s Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022–2026 is focused on the impact of the rapidly developing rate of change in new technologies that provide for markets to be more interconnected and interdependent than ever. Because Congress has yet to give the SEC, or any other agency, express authority to regulate cryptocurrency, the SEC has taken a regulation-by-enforcement approach. The SEC’s recent enforcement efforts relating to crypto asset securities were substantial, with enforcement actions addressing a range of alleged misconduct in the crypto asset securities space, including billion-dollar crypto fraud schemes; unregistered crypto asset offerings, platforms, and intermediaries; and illegal …

The Clobes Conundrum: Why Muldrow Should Not Apply To Hostile Work Environment Claims And How The Eighth Circuit Got It Right, M. Thomas Yang

Missouri Law Review

In 2024, the Supreme Court held that an employee does not have to prove material harm to prevail on a discrimination claim under Title VII. Because hostile work environment claims also derive from Title VII, courts and litigants are currently grappling with whether this ruling upends the long-standing “severe or pervasive” doctrine. This Note argues that it does not. Passed in 1964, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act makes it illegal for “an employer . . . to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, …

The Buck Stops Here: Missouri Legislature’S Defunding Of Abortion Providers, Maizey Edgar

Missouri Law Review

On May 2, 2022, the Supreme Court’s draft opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leaked online. The era-defining opinion to overturn fifty years of Roe v. Wade and undo the constitutional right to abortion reinvigorated the discussion surrounding reproductive healthcare access among the American public, with the majority of Americans supporting legal access to abortion in all or most cases. Over the last decade, a movement to defund abortion providers has arisen, and the issue of defunding has become an even hotter point of debate after the Dobbs decision. In Missouri, elected representatives have fought to defund Planned …

Suicide’S Shadow: The Evolution Of A Ghost Crime, Scott W. Howe

Missouri Law Review

Law treats suicide as malfeasance—a display of mental illness and, worse, a ghost crime that has never left us. While states no longer criminally punish suicide, they detain and force mental-health treatment on many who attempt it, or indicate they might attempt it, and threaten criminal sanctions against those who aid or encourage it. For these and other reasons, the suicide label functions not merely as a description of an event but as a censure. A lengthy, legal history, fueled originally by religion but then tempered by pragmatism, led to these circumstances and can largely rationalize relevant legal doctrines and …

Intangible Harms, Tangible Consequences: Analyzing The Impact Of Transunion On Standing To Sue For Data Breach, Noelle Wilson, Amanda Reid

Missouri Law Review

Scholars and practitioners predicted that the 2021 Supreme Court case TransUnion v. Ramirez would essentially nullify the private right of action—a key enforcement mechanism for many consumer privacy laws. This Article analyzes federal courts (N=96) interpreting TransUnion in data breach contexts. Our contribution is twofold: (1) identifying tests courts employ to determine whether data breach plaintiffs have alleged sufficient “injury in fact” to establish Article III standing, and (2) highlighting the areas of inconsistency in how courts employ those tests. The analysis serves to ground the scholarly debate about the implications of TransUnion in holding breached entities accountable. Despite the …

Legal Market Decartelization, Milan Markovic, Nuno Garoupa

Faculty Scholarship

American lawyers’ grip on the legal market is receding. Scholars and policymakers increasingly agree that the public has little to lose and potentially much to gain from legal market decartelization - the weakening of the lawyers’ monopoly over the legal services market. Harkening to deregulatory initiatives abroad and in Arizona and Utah, reformers contend that removing restrictions on the corporate delivery of legal services and unauthorized practice of law will slash costs and expand access to justice.

Drawing on economic theory and recent market developments, this Article offers a cautionary rejoinder. Understandable concerns about cartelization and lawyer rent-seeking have led …

Who Owns The Heat? Property Rights In Geothermal Energy, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Landowners can have ownership claims to oil, gas, water, and other tangible natural resources located in their subsoil. But can they also claim rights to the thermal energy found below their land? With 50,000 times more heat energy within the top 10,000 meters (around 33,000 feet) of the Earth’s surface than contained in all of the world’s oil and natural gas resources combined, geothermal energy is a tremendously promising, clean, and renewable energy resource. Yet, ambiguities in property rights related to the development and ownership of geothermal energy resources raise questions about who is entitled to benefit from that potential. …

Tomorrow’S Climate Law, Today, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

The prospects for domestic legislation or international treaties that would require governments, businesses, and individuals to stop emitting the greenhouse gases that cause global climate change are particularly bleak these days. Even as the United States has recently passed its most ambitious climate legislation to date in the Inflation Reduction Act and related “green industrial policy” legislation, these successes were ultimately a compromise with politicians who refused to consider more direct controls on emissions. Assuming they survive the second Trump Administration, the green subsidies and nudges contained in these laws, coupled with a groundswell of private environmental governance, will do …

Property And Prejudice, Fatma E. Marouf, Vanessa Casado Pérez

Faculty Scholarship

“Alien land laws”—laws restricting noncitizens from owning real property—are back. A dozen states have enacted such laws during the past year, and over thirty states have considered such bills. These new bills are rooted in xenophobia, much like their predecessors, but they also have unique characteristics. They single out governments, citizens, and corporations of specific countries perceived to pose a threat; they impose ownership restrictions based on arbitrary distances to U.S. military bases and critical infrastructure; they inflict particularly harsh penalties; and they try to ferret out foreign control in complex corporate structures. The purported justifications are national defense, food …

Capital Formation, The Sec, And Accredited Investors, Neal F. Newman, Lawrence J. Trautman, Brian Elzweig

Faculty Scholarship

Protecting the investing public, while simultaneously facilitating the efficient flow of capital needed by all new and growing businesses continues as a primary responsibility of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Enhancing the capital formation process is a necessary step in the creation of jobs and growth of any economy. Central to the SEC’s regulatory schematic is the proposition that some particularly sophisticated and wealthy investors require less protection than those with less knowledge, experience, and resources. During December 2023, for just the third time, the SEC staff issued a report examining the status of the natural person accredited …

Micro-Costs, Kiel Brennan-Marquez, Brendan S. Maher

Faculty Scholarship

The modern world is filled with tiny attentional impositions (cognitiveasks) that inflict small mental burdens (micro-costs) on virtually everyone, everywhere, all the time. Micro-costs make life worse, and everybody knows it. They sap collective energy; they lead to worse decisions; they exacerbate inequality; and they contribute to an overall sense of "mismanagement" in the world, a sentiment that readily pairs with destructive political impulses.

Yet the law has essentially ignored micro-costs-until now. In what follows, we construct a theory of micro-costs that gives the phenomenon analytic shape and charts a path forward for reform. Drawing on the insights of philosophy, …

Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Creation, And The Future Path Of Copyright Law, Peter K. Yu

Faculty Scholarship

Most literature at the intersection of copyright and AI has focused primarily on what copyright law is or ought to be. Frequently overlooked is the question of what copyright law will be in the AI space. Understanding this question is crucial because the path of copyright law chosen by the United States will have a major impact on the country's economic and technological future.

This article begins by scrutinizing two lines of arguments that have been advanced to deny copyright protection to AI-generated works: constitutional and incentive-based. The article then discusses a third line of arguments—harmonization-based arguments—and identifies select instances …

Understanding The Strategic Value Of The Assassination Of President Juvénal Habyarimana, Jonathan R. Beloff

Journal of Strategic Security

This article examines the assassination of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana through the utilization of strategic theory. The President's assassination on the night of April 6, 1994, ignited the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, which killed up to a million Rwandan Tutsis and non-extremist Hutus within 100 days. While the assassins are still unknown, speculation exists of whether the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) or the former ruling akazu ordered the attack. It concludes that the akazu was the most likely actor behind Habyarimana's assassination, given that the structure of strategic incentives favored its position over the alternatives.

Representation Of South Asians In U.S. American Children’S Picture Books, Eman A. Chaudhry

Senior Theses

One potential cause of racism against South Asian Americans in school could be the lack of authentic representation of South Asians in the media. A method to properly depict them is via children’s picture books, which can be used to explore different cultures within the classroom. I examined the current landscape of American children’s picture books that depict South Asians and found that the most authentic portrayals included characters embracing certain holidays or traditions. Additionally, I researched issues that affect the South Asian community, one of which includes the stigmatization of mental health. Drawing on my own experiences, I wrote …

Frenemies? Fascists And Conservatives In Interwar Britain, Dylan R. Cameron

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the attitudes, beliefs, and arguments of British Conservatives (Tories) in discussions about British fascism through the lens of two mainstream Conservative newspapers, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, focused primarily on the buildup and aftermath of the infamous Olympia rally in June 1934. This thesis identifies two key factions within the conservative movement which arose in reaction to the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF): (1) the staunchly anti-fascist “mainline Tories” who detested the BUF’s “foreign” character, propensity for violence, and antithesis to traditional liberal democratic principles, and (2) the fascist-sympathizing “reactionary Tories” …

Vital Language Practices And Attitudes Among The Lumbee, Deven A. Hull

Senior Theses

The longstanding interest among linguists and linguistic anthropologists in Indigenous languages has increasingly adopted a Critical Indigenous framework, which has been promoted by Indigenous scholars and community leaders as a means of decolonizing “salvage” collection of Indigenous language materials. An important aspect of Critical Indigenous theory is the framework of vitality—that is, an emphasis in literature and community practice on the everyday living and lived elements of culture. One means of promoting Indigenous language within this Critical framework of vitality that is community-centered is centering vital language practices in community-based archives, which seek not to document the language as it …

A Theoretical Defense Of Police Recalibration In Columbia, South Carolina, Sanya Singh

Senior Theses

This paper defends police recalibrationism as the best means of reforming law enforcement. Columbia, South Carolina, will serve as a case study to demonstrate the philosophical and practical justifications of recalibrationism. Police recalibration, which aims to reconceptualize the role of police by reallocating extraneous responsibilities to other entities, offers a more comprehensive and viable solution than abolition, fiscal restraint, and managerialism. The paper further examines proposals that align with police recalibrationism through the lens of the philosophical frameworks of social contract theory and utilitarianism to demonstrate how the reform would fulfill the proposed goals of the American criminal justice system. …

Between Borders And Belief: Perspectives Of Aid Workers On Religion In A Migrant Shelter In Mexico, Kendall O. Roy

Senior Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the significance of religion in the Central American migration context through the eyes of humanitarian aid workers. It is based on interviews that I conducted in May of 2024 with staff members at a migrant shelter in Mexico, analysis of prior scholarship, and building upon an understanding of relevant religious history in Latin America. I will delve into trends that the aid workers observed in areas such as religious practices and beliefs of migrants, shelter functions that addressed and nurtured spiritual well-being, and the influence of the Church as an institution on humanitarian aid work. …

Toward Gender Parity In The South Carolina Appellate Judiciary, Anna M. Bishop

Senior Theses

In April 2023, former Chief Justice Kay Hearn retired from the Supreme Court of South Carolina, leaving the state without a woman justice on its highest court until June 2024. During this time, South Carolina was the only state in the nation to lack a female presence on its court of last resort. This lack of women was detrimental, as women judges provide crucial insight and experience to the courts on which they serve.

Through a literature review, I examine the importance of women on the bench and how different state judicial selection mechanisms affect the gendered makeup of state …

Deference Or Preference: Analyzing The Treatment Of Chevron U.S.A., Inc. V. Nrdc As A Precedent At The Supreme Court, Allison Dehart

Senior Theses

Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. is one of the most cited Supreme Court cases in history, with over 18,000 citations in federal courts alone (Merrill, 2012). It has reached doctrinal status and was widely considered a vital precedent, one that guided the fields of environmental and administrative law. However, in June of 2024, the Supreme Court released their opinion in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which overturned Chevron. With the ubiquity of Chevron in US Courts, this decision caused widespread confusion and worry over what would replace the precedent. In an era where environmental …

Reconstructing Remembrance: Race, Memory, And The Eulogies Of Charles Sumner, Emily Gray

Senior Theses

This research seeks to illuminate the unique ways in which Black and White Americans remembered Charles Sumner, exploring how these distinct perspectives reflect the social and political landscape of a post-bellum America. Rather than exploring Sumner’s legacy itself, this research will examine the broader, enduring impact of his legacy on politics and national identity by examining how Black and White speakers used Sumner’s death and legacy differently. It will highlight the active role African Americans played in shaping historical memory and advancing a vision of America grounded in justice and freedom. The significance of this work lies in its exploration …

The Stigma Surrounding Sex And Sexuality In American Culture, Sophia L. Pollock

Senior Theses

An important question to examine is the origin and implications of the taboo against sex and sexuality. The stigma against these topics encourages negative public health implications like poor sex education, high rates of sexually transmitted infections, and teen pregnancy. History of sexual stigma was examined through physical media and digital articles from the Thomas Cooper Library databases. The background and global perspective of these stigmas are covered, examining how past and distant cultures deal with sex. How sex is portrayed in the media, why a healthy sex life is important, and the subject of sex education are also addressed. …

Could It Be Cold War? How Sino-American Tensions Are Unfolding In The South Pacific., Peter R. Caldwell

Senior Theses

This thesis assesses the impacts of geopolitical competition between the United States and China, focusing on the South Pacific as a primary theatre for this great power contest, and investigating the uses of foreign aid by regional powers to effect both the geopolitical alignment and domestic policies of the developing states of the South Pacific. This paper finds that foreign aid to these South Pacific States is geopolitically motivated, and induces greater attention from competing regional powers, furthering the ongoing competition. This paper first provides an overview of the evolving political situation in Kiribati, a Pacific Island Country which has …

Guide To Sec And Business Open Source Corporate Intelligence, Lawrence J. Trautman, Brian Elzweig, Neal F. Newman

Faculty Scholarship

An agency of the U.S. intelligence community observes, "The explosion of open source intelligence (OSINT) in recent years has transformed how governments and people around the world consume and process information about society and global issues." It is likely that "We all use open-source and probably don't even realize it, but we also use it for different reasons. You might use open-source information to do a credibility check and to find out more about the person selling you something on Facebook marketplace." Others "may research someone… met on a dating app or before hiring someone for a job." Every use …

Ask An Hci Research Ethicist: A Recurring Column On Research Ethics Challenges, Casey Fiesler, Jessica Vitak, Michael Zimmer

Computer Science Faculty Research and Publications

Created in 2016, the SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee advises SIGCHI conferences and communities on ethical issues that arise in the course of conducting research. The committee also provides guidance and feedback on research ethics issues that arise during the peer review process; as a result, we have a broad sense of novel and persisting open questions within our community. Through this recurring column, we will continue this work by raising awareness and increasing discussion of ethics in the context of conducting HCI research.

The Myth Of The Best Interest Of The Child, Victoria Mikesell Mather

West Virginia Law Review

One of the basic tenets of Family Law as applied to children is consideration of “best interest of the child” in making decisions. Standards for custody, termination, adoption, and all other matters affecting children are overlaid with consideration of best interest. Unfortunately, the promise of best interest is lost in the actual mechanics of making these critical decisions involving children. This Article explores the disconnect between the ideal of using the best interest of the child as a key factor in legal decisions affecting children and the practicalities of competing interests. The Article first explores the common concern of the …

Drowning In The Patent Pool: Is Statutory Invention Registration A Lifeguard?, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

West Virginia Law Review

Patents for inventions, available since the first Congress enacted the Patent Law of 1790, have been controversial. Defenders justify patents on the grounds that they are necessary to protect inventors from free riding—copying that would deprive the inventors of an opportunity to recover the costs of development. Detractors attack patents as unnecessary monopolies, thwarting innovation. The debate continues, even as the law itself has remained remarkably constant. Technology and industry structure have not remained constant, however. Patents have proliferated, resulting in patent thickets that make it impossible to create and market any innovative product without infringing hundreds of patents. Patent …