Digital Commons Network^™

Ig–Microbiota Binding Patterns In Mothers And Infants: A Scoping Review, Alicia Tan Yi Jia, Christopher S. Peacock, Danielle E. Dye, Claus T. Christophersen

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Studies characterising the immunoglobulin (Ig)-bound microbiota apply varying methodologies, making comparisons difficult. This scoping review synthesised evidence on Ig–microbiota binding patterns in maternal and infant contexts, identified recurrent Ig-bound and -unbound bacteria across studies, and highlighted knowledge gaps for further study. Nine articles investigating Ig–microbiota binding patterns in stool or breastmilk samples in mothers or infants were included. Ig–microbiota associations were influenced by sample type, Ig-subclass, genetics, and diet. The most important antibody was IgA, with partial functional redundancy with IgM, while IgG appeared more selective for pathobionts. Ig-bound taxa in early life included important commensals and pathobionts, with high …

Faculty List

Missouri Law Review

No abstract provided.

Federalization Of Trade Secret Protection: Reflections On The 10th Anniversary Of The Defend Trade Secrets Act, Peter S. Menell

Missouri Law Review

After more than half a century of stalled proposals, Congress enacted the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) in 2016, establishing a federal civil cause of action for trade secret misappropriation. The long delay is surprising, as trade secrets are the most pervasive form of intellectual property in the United States economy. Nearly every enterprise—commercial, nonprofit, and governmental—depends upon confidential business, technical, and strategic information. Employers routinely require nondisclosure agreements, mandate return of confidential materials upon departure, and implement security measures designed to preserve secrecy. Yet, unlike patent, copyright, and trademark law, trade secret protection historically remained largely a creature of …

Pleading Secrets, J. Jonas Anderson

Missouri Law Review

Courts have traditionally not required plaintiffs to describe trade secrets in any detail in a trade secret misappropriation action. However, the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Iqbal v. Twombly, which introduced the concept of “plausibility pleading,” has begun, haltingly, to change that. Some courts, but not all, now require a plaintiff to identify the alleged misappropriated secret. This Essay argues that Iqbal did, in fact, change the law in this area and that trade secret misappropriation actions now require that the secret’s identity be included in the pleading. Some courts are starting to agree, although unevenly so. This Essay tracks …

The Vanishing Economics Of Trade Secret Value, Gregory M. Dickinson

Missouri Law Review

Trade secret law is built around a simple economic fact. Information can yield supracompetitive returns only when prospective competitors are prevented from using it, such as when it is kept secret from them. A successful trade secret plaintiff must therefore show that the alleged trade secret derives “independent economic value” from not being generally known to others. Yet modern doctrine sometimes treats this value requirement as something else—an inquiry into whether information is “valuable” in the abstract and whether it is independently useful versus dependent on some other information. Part of the reason is simply that proof of trade secret …

Trade Secret Law’S Readily-Ascertainable Bar: Then And Now, Camilla A. Hrdy

Missouri Law Review

Information that is “readily ascertainable by proper means” cannot qualify as a trade secret. This requirement—what this Article calls the “readily-ascertainable bar”—is codified in the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (“UTSA”) and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”). Yet it is poorly understood and frequently misapplied. Drawing on historical case law and archival drafting materials from the UTSA, this Article shows that this bar was adopted to overrule a line of common law cases in which the courts had protected information revealed in publicly marketed products or expired patents. The UTSA’s drafters rejected this approach, instead seeking to deny trade …

Property, Contract, Federalism: How The Dtsa Could Invigorate Reverse Engineering, Shubha Ghosh

Missouri Law Review

Does the Defend Trade Secrets Act (“DTSA”) change anything? One would hope so, but the actual answer will depend on how advocates and judges apply the 2016 Congressional legislation. This Article examines the DTSA’s application to licensing restrictions on reverse engineering, shedding some light on the question: does the DTSA change anything? This Article’s conclusion is that the answer rests on careful attention to the policies supporting reverse engineering within intellectual property and the language of the statute.

Whistleblowers And Trade Secrecy’S Long Shadow, Deepa Varadarajan

Missouri Law Review

Employee whistleblowers expose harmful and unlawful corporate practices, often at great personal cost. Recent examples—including those at Meta, Boeing, OpenAI, Twitter, and Theranos—highlight whistleblowers’ significant societal role. But these examples also showcase the myriad legal uncertainties and obstacles employees face when collecting and disclosing evidence of potentially illegal behavior by their employers.

Not So Freakish After All: Foreseeability And The Limits Of Statutory Compliance, Logan A. Blaylock

Missouri Law Review

When substitute school bus driver Tomika Richardson began her route one October afternoon, the only map she had was a scribbled list of intersections—a rough substitute for the detailed, software-generated route plan with turn-by-turn directions that First Student, Inc. (“First Student”) normally provided to its drivers. The handwritten sheet, reproduced below, was the sole document Richardson received to guide her through a complex urban bus run:

Does Horizontal Shareholding Violate The Federal Antitrust Laws? Outcomes And Considerations In Light Of Texas V. Blackrock, Inc., Thomas A. Briner

Missouri Law Review

To date, the issue of horizontal shareholding has been a purely academic topic. This is no longer the case. Horizontal shareholding—also known as “common ownership”—occurs when an investor acquires shares of two competing companies. For example, take the airline industry. In the United States, there are four main airlines, all of which are publicly traded. Suppose an investor acquires shares of both Delta Air Lines, Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. Because this investor owns shares of these two competing airlines, this investor is a horizontal shareholder. This practice is not uncommon.

The Disability Discrimination Dilemma: Resolving The Circuit Split Regarding Culpability Standards In Education, Brooklyn N. Cross

Missouri Law Review

“Our anger was a fury sparked by profound injustices. Wrongs that deserved ire. And with that rage we ripped a hole in the status quo.” In 1949, eighteen-month-old Judith Heumann contracted polio, losing her ability to walk. Heumann’s parents, German Jewish immigrants to New York, were unaware of the consequences using a wheelchair would have on their daughter’s ability to participate in certain activities. When it became time for Heumann to begin kindergarten, the principal refused to allow the family into the school, stating that Heumann was a “fire hazard.” But Heumann’s mother was tenacious, and the principal eventually admitted …

Fair Use On Trial: Reassessing Market Harm In Ai Training, Emily E. Karr

Missouri Law Review

Technological innovation has consistently reshaped society, revolutionizing how we live, work, and create. Consider the digitization of books and newspapers: it greatly increased accessibility and efficiency but also led to a decline in the printing industry.1 Similarly, VCRs allowed viewers to watch television at any time yet simultaneously threatened the market for reruns, potentially leading to lower TV ratings and revenue.2 These examples illustrate a recurring tension: new technologies bring societal benefits while potentially disrupting established industries.

Taking It Down Or Not Far Enough? Evaluating The Take It Down Act And The Future Of Online Privacy, Camryn Kesselring

Missouri Law Review

Imagine you wake up one morning to notifications from your ex-partner, threatening to post private images of you online. Panicked, you Google your name and are inundated with explicit images of yourself posted to various websites dedicated to “revenge porn.” You reach out to these websites, desperate for removal, but you are met with only automatically generated replies and no assistance from these platforms. At work, you feel the heavy weight of colleagues’ stares. Eventually, calls from clients start to come in, confirming your fears that many are sharing and viewing these images. At the click of a button, your …

Mythbusting The Moment Of Threat: Barnes V. Felix In The Context Of Unreasonable Police Seizures, Coleson Manade

Missouri Law Review

A traffic stop for unpaid toll violations should not end in death. Yet on April 28, 2016, Officer Roberto Felix shot and killed Ashtian Barnes during a routine traffic stop for a non-arrestable offense. The legal battle that followed exposed a fundamental tension in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence: how should courts balance officers’ safety concerns with citizens’ rights when analyzing excessive force claims?

Owning Geothermal Energy, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Geothermal energy holds vast potential for decarbonizing the U.S. energy system, yet the sector remains significantly underdeveloped, supplying only 0.4% of the nation's electricity. A principal barrier to growth is the fragmented and ambiguous legal landscape currently governing ownership of geothermal resources: thirty-three states lack any clear statutory or common-law framework identifying who owns subsurface thermal energy. This Article examines the physical characteristics of geothermal energy, recent developments in the U.S. geothermal sector, and the principal doctrinal approaches that might govern ownership of subsurface heat, including the ad coelum doctrine, common-pool and open-access frameworks, the rule of capture, and public …

Aggregation And The “Universal” Injunction, Portia Pedro, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we begin with a brief summary of the CASA decision’s holding regarding the availability of “universal” injunctions. Part II discusses the relationship between remedies and judicial review and the important role that such injunctions play in that regard. Part III explores how class actions could serve as an alternative path for federal courts, after engaging in judicial review, to make their decisions meaningful by requiring officials to comply with the law and to cease illegal actions or policies. We also respond to several objections to the use of class actions in this context. The final Part addresses …

The Supreme Court Under Threat: Early Lessons In Judicial Self-Protection, Curtis A. Bradley, Neil S. Siegel

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores how the U.S. Supreme Court, despite being vulnerable to defiance of its decisions and political retaliation, has developed tools of judicial self-protection to preserve its institutional authority and thus its capacity to sustain the Constitution and the rule of law. Arguing that the Court performs not only a legal role that requires interpretation of the law but also a political one that demands institutional preservation, the Essay examines how the Court has historically navigated political threats by using a range of tools—including avoidance, delay, narrow rulings, strategic dicta, and rhetorical appeals. The Essay focuses on three nineteenth-century …

Making The Party Presentation Principle Safe For Originalism, Randy E. Barnett, Lawrence B. Solum

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court sometimes adheres to what it calls the “party presentation principle”—terminology that dates back to 2008. Although judicial articulations of the principle have been inconsistent and imprecise, the gist is the familiar notion that courts should resolve cases on the basis of the issues and reasons presented by the parties to the dispute. Conversely, questions not properly raised by the parties should be avoided by the Court. Thus, the Court has on several occasions declined to address arguments outside the scope of the questions raised by the parties in their petition for certiorari.

For originalists, the importance of …

Set Lists For Conversations On Necropolitics, Antiblackness, And Colonialism, Noah Morton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In lieu of a traditional syllabus, the following setlist uses the form of an academic syllabus to unsettle ideas around knowledge production and includes six sets with multimodal resources (films, songs, articles) to engage conversations on necropolitics, antiblackness, and colonialism. The setlists come from engaging in genealogies of resistance and liberation and are attentive to recognizing (re – again | cogn – to know | ize – to make) and acknowledging various technologies of domination while witnessing anachoreographies, or spirits of refusal. Each setlist flows from a check-in song, continues to the main set of readings/videos/podcasts, and ends with an …

“Hip-Hop Permeates Everything I Do:” The Intersections Of Global Politics, Hip-Hop, And Education, Mecedes Lindsay

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This qualitative study examines how the absence of Critical Hip-Hop Pedagogy (CHHP) within academic institutions shapes students’ sense of belonging, motivation, and engagement by regulating which forms of cultural capital are deemed legitimate. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and focus groups with students, educators, scholars, and members of the hip-hop generation, this research adopts an interpretivist framework to center participants’ lived experiences within educational spaces. Informed by Freirean critical pedagogy and Yosso’s theory of community cultural wealth, the study situates schooling as a site where America’s soft power operates through curriculum design, disciplinary norms, and definitions of deviance. Findings reveal that …

Remixing The Academy Through Backyard Spaces: The Making Of Black Educology, The Mixtape, Dre Carter, Eghosa Obaizamomwan-Hamilton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

As Black academics, researchers, and educators, we navigate the twin topographies of the academy and the open territories of possibility. Connecting these realms, we construct “backyard project” spaces—semi-enclosed areas linking academic spaces and liberated spaces. We use our creation of the backyard as a locality wherein we challenge oppressive, antiquated academic systems and anti-Blackness without waiting for reform. For example, our collective project, the Black Educology Mixtape “Journal,” exemplifies this concept. This track discusses the “backyard” as an extension of both third and fugitive spaces and, through material culture and fugitivity as method, highlights the backyard as a site for …

Uplifting Black Pedagogical Rituals Of Purpose Through Portraits Of Toni Morrison’S Humanistic Education, Darion A. Wallace, Natalie Hibdon, Gabriela Lopez

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

No abstract provided.

We Buried The Curriculum And Called It Holy, Charles E. Becknell Jr., Johnna Rocker-Clinton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track develops the concept of apocalyptic pedagogy by situating it within Africana studies and classroom rituals, illustrating how curriculum itself can be examined, buried, and reimagined through practices rooted in Black educology. Drawing on ancestral knowledge and collective memory, the track envisions ritual as curriculum, where libation and remembrance become practices of mourning and reclamation. Rather than centering institutional reform, the track frames education as a ritual circle enacting pedagogy as remembrance, mourning, and rebirth, honoring Black life as sacred.

Kong Koch: An Autoethnography On Jieng Indigenous Wisdom And Ethos Of Leadership, Dau D. Jok

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In this track, I argue that Jieng (Dinka) epistemology reshapes leadership by foregrounding restraint (achin te lui ye), emotional regulation (kong koch), and social harmony (wel tuc). These Indigenous approaches challenge dominant trait-based leadership models by exposing their limits in confronting social and contextual diversity. To illustrate these ideas, I draw on personal accounts and member checks with my grandmother (Aboba) to show how Jieng wisdom reframes concepts of leadership, disposition, and practice. Building on this, the track advances Afrocentric leadership literature by defining leadership as communal accountability. Furthermore, it stresses the urgent need for scholars and practitioners to engage …

Black Boys And The New Media Mixtape: Ownership, Aspiration, And Hustle In A Digital Age, Kareem Edouard, Taquan S. Stewart

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In this track, we explore how “new media” platforms become modern “mixtape” tools for Black boys to remix identity and cultural narratives in the digital age. As Audre Lorde reminded us, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Still, we aim to interrogate whether these tools can be repurposed for empowerment. This framework unfolds in three parts: examining ownership and the gatekeeping of cultural narratives, exploring how new media platforms shape aspirations and identities for Black boys, and identifying the tools and pathways for Black boys to both see themselves as creators and access content that reflects them. …

The Cypher: Freedom Dreaming And Black Sustainability Beyond The Ruins, Tiffani Marie, Kenjus Watson, David Stovall, Dre Carter, Simple Ant, Eghosa Obaizamomwan-Hamilton

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

In confronting the structural collapse of modernity and the dehumanization inherent in public institutions, this cypher serves as a site of radical imagination and sonic medicine. By centering freedom dreaming and Black sustainability, we argue for the necessary pedagogical movements of Black Educology. Ultimately, we invite a collective reimagining of death, not as an end but as a communal transition toward life beyond the trap of modernity.

Estevanico Or The Myth Of Recognition, Said Benmbarek

SOROUD: The journal of Literacy Criticism

This article asks whether narrating the story of Estevanico of Azemmour is a way of reconnecting with a lost time in which the Moroccan explorer was buried in oblivion and ignorance. Hamza Bendriss Ottmani’s The Son of the Sun is presented as a travel narrative about a figure who marked the age of the Great Discoveries but did not receive the recognition granted to explorers such as Christopher Columbus or Marco Polo. By placing Estevanico alongside mythical heroes such as Ulysses and Hercules, the narrative transforms his unusual destiny into a shared legend, giving the story an epic dimension in …

Shrinking Sovereignty: By Land, Sea, And…Air?, Cynthia R. Harris

Pace Environmental Law Review

Atlantis was a mythical State destroyed by the gods as an object lesson to humanity. The complete destruction of a State, as a political entity, does have precedent in historical reality. The complete and permanent loss of a State’s physical territory, however, is a problem humanity has never faced—until now. Today, climate change-driven sea level rise is bringing the future sovereign status of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in question. A growing body of legal scholarship argues for maintaining these States’ maritime jurisdictions but has not yet extended the question skyward to SIDS’ jurisdiction over airspace.

This Article addresses that …

Municipality Of Bayamón V. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2025): Bringing Racketeering Charges For Climate Justice, Ilinca C. Johnson

Pace Environmental Law Review

Environmental justice communities should have their climate change damages heard in the courtroom. One means to increase environmental justice claims is through claims under the federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Using Municipality of Bayamón v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2025) as a model, this Article suggests a novel RICO case strategy to pursue climate damages for marginalized communities. Fundamentally, environmental justice RICO claims involve careful case design based on the climate-related damages a marginalized community has faced because of the long-term deception by fossil fuel actors upon those communities. Pursuing such claims forwards the intersectional issues faced by …

Non-Reformist Reforms In Environmentalism: Legal Theory And Praxis, Nicholas F. Stump

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article explores how non-reformist reforms—as opposed to traditional environmental law—are required for ecologically transformative futures. Traditional environmental law is a critically flawed regime due to its embeddedness in our current ecological political economy, which functionally requires perpetual accumulation and growth. However, this accumulation- and growth-based paradigm is incompatible with the material realities of our planetary boundaries. This paradigm has thus engendered our current era of profound ecological crisis (i.e., as associated with notions of the Anthropocene).

Non-reformist reforms are an alternative framework that can help drive transformations of our ecological political economy vis-à-vis building and operationalizing people power from …