Law Commons^™

The Varieties Of Individual Engagement (Vie) Scales: Confirmatory Factor Analyses Across Two Samples And Contexts, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Myiah J. Hutchens, Peter Muhlberger, Shiyuan Wang, Rebecca Harris, Jayme Neiman, Alan Tomkins

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

The field of public engagement, participation and deliberation is fraught with conflicting results that are difficult to interpret due to the very different methods and measures used. Theory advancement and consistent operationalization and assessment of key public deliberation and engagement variables will benefit considerably from standardized measures of constructs and the ability to compare across studies. In this article, drawing from social and educational psychology, we describe the theoretical bases for scales assessing eight varieties of participant engagement that may be experienced during participation activities: Active learning, conscientious, uninterested, creative, open-minded, closed-minded, angry, and social engagement. We describe our development …

The Tools Of Our Trade, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library

During the past 30 years, computers and other digital tools have evolved from scientific curiosities that promised to make our lives easy and paperless and threatened to make libraries go away to ubiquitous means of communication, research, entertainment, news, and much, much more. Access to technology for librarians today is as critical as having access to leather-bound books once was for the earliest librarians. In order to communicate with peers, patrons, and colleagues and to conduct legal research and create scholarship, today we need a device that lets us “see” the communication or information. This article explores the changing role …

Copyright Small Claims, U.S. Copyright Office

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

It appears beyond dispute that under the current federal system small copyright claimants face formidable challenges in seeking to enforce the exclusive rights to which they are entitled. The Copyright Office therefore recommends that Congress consider the creation of an alternative forum that will enable copyright owners to pursue small infringement matters and related claims arising under the Copyright Act. In light of the state court tradition of referring to claims of modest economic value as “small claims,” many have adopted that term to reference the nature of the claims that are the focus of this Report, as does the …

How To Obtain Permission, United States Copyright Office

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

How to obtain permission to use or adapt a copyrighted work in the United States. One way to make sure your intended use of a copyrighted work is lawful is to obtain permission or a license from the copyright owner.

First step: Research copyright status

Next step: Contact copyright owner

The Legislative Purposes And Intent Of The Common Levy In Nebraska’S Learning Community, Matthew L. Blomstedt

Department of Educational Administration: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this historical study was to establish the purposes and intent of the common levy in Nebraska’s learning community. The development of this unique regional educational structure consisting of eleven school districts in the Omaha, Nebraska metropolitan area is central to the study. The research detailed the context of the decisions made by the Nebraska Legislature to establish and implement the learning community law from 2005 and 2012. Specifically, the study focused on the establishment of a regional tax base, the common levy, as a response to boundary and finance instability that persisted in the Omaha area. The …

Building Upon Common-Pool Resource Theory To Explore Success In Transitioning Water Management Institutions, Christina M. Hoffman

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nebraska, like many regions around the world, is faced with the challenge of adapting to a new era in water management. Increasing demands for water resources, mounting concerns over threatened and endangered species, and obligations to abide by interstate water allocation agreements have motivated Nebraska to revisit traditional water management approaches. However, although Nebraska’s water management institutions have undergone much change, little research exists on the influence these changes have had on the ability of water institutions to successfully manage water allocations. This research (1) qualitatively explores the perspectives and experiences of stakeholders in the overappropriated region of the Platte …

Fostering Climate Change Education In The Central Great Plains: A Public Engagement Approach, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Timothy Steffensmeier, Amber Campbell Hibbs, Ben Champion, Eric Hunt, John A. Harrington, Jr., Jacqueline D. Spears, Natalie Umphlett, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Roger Bruning, Daniel Kahl

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Despite its increasing importance for sustainability, building widespread competency in the basic principles of climate literacy among the United States general public is a great challenge. This article describes the methods and results of a public engagement approach to planning climate change education in the Central Great Plains of the United States. Our approach incorporated contextual and lay expertise approaches to public engagement with a focus on supporting the self-determination of the specific stakeholder groups–rural producers, educators, and community members. An integration of results from the focus groups reveal that our approach was received positively and elicited a number of …

Trust And Intention To Comply With A Water Allocation Decision: The Moderating Roles Of Knowledge And Consistency, Joseph A. Hamm, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Mitch Herian, Alan Tomkins, Hannah Dietrich, Sarah Michaels

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Regulating water resources is a critically important yet increasingly complex component of the interaction between ecology and society. Many argue that effective water regulation relies heavily upon the compliance of water users. The relevant literature suggests that, rather than relying on external motivators for individual compliance, e.g., punishments and rewards, it is preferable to focus on internal motivators, including trust in others. Although prior scholarship has resulted in contemporary institutional efforts to increase public trust, these efforts are hindered by a lack of evidence regarding the specific situations in which trust, in its various forms, most effectively increases compliance. We …

Fathers, Divorce, And Child Custody, Matthew M. Stevenson, Sanford L. Braver, Ira M. Ellman, Ashley M. Votruba

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A great many fathers will have their fathering eliminated, disrupted, or vastly changed because they become divorced from the child’s mother. In fact, between 40% and 50% of marriages end in divorce (Cherlin, 2010). Although the divorce rate (measured as divorces per 1,000 people) is high by the standards prior to the late 1960s, it has actually fallen more than 30% since its peak in 1980. The decline in divorce rates in recent years has, however, been concentrated among the college-educated portion of the population; divorce rates among the less well educated may have even increased (Cherlin, 2010). But for …

Much Ado About Authentication, Richard Leiter

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library

Much can be said about how libraries are adapting and new ways that we can continue to adapt to the rise in importance of digital resources and services. But there is a unique challenge that law libraries face that this article will attempt to address: the problem of authenticating digital legal materials. This necessity of authenticating legal materials has been articulated many times. However, there may actually be no need for authentication at all.

The question of authentication is a very important one to answer because law libraries have the responsibility of providing accurate versions of primary legal materials. It …

Cutting The Bread, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Why the draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Received Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) will not work—whereas the Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities may.

Maintaining The Master International Frequency Register, Frans G. Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

The present paper is the written elaboration of a presentation held under the same title at the workshop “International Regulations of Space Communications” held in Luxembourg on 24 and 25 May 2012. Consequently, the topic of this paper, the maintenance of the Master International Frequency Register as a key tool for allowing satellite communications to be a viable international sector of space activities, is viewed through the looking glass of the session title, “WRC-12 from the Perspective of International Telecommunications Law.”

In other words, it does not purport to deal with the actual details of maintaining the Register …

Will The Real Reasonable Person Please Stand Up? Using Psychology To Better Understand And Apply The Reasonable Person Standard, Ashley M. Votruba

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

This article will consist of four main parts. Part I will review the historical and current Reasonable Person Standard. More specifically, it will discuss a brief history of the common law negligence standard leading to the current commonly used Reasonable Person Standard, review the current American Law Institute ("ALI") language of the Reasonable Person Standard, and briefly outline the three most common legal theorist conceptualizations of the negligence standard in order to provide a review of the current understanding of the negligence standard. Part II will then examine the importance of the jury and the limited instruction they are provided …

Medical Adverse Events And Malpractice Litigation In Arizona: By-The-Numbers, Ashley M. Votruba, Michael J. Saks

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A new medical malpractice "crisis" periodically erupts across the United States, invariably producing calls for legislative solutions. Typically, the public is told that rising malpractice insurance premiums are driving doctors out of their practices or out of our state, while increasing the cost of health care, and that those rising insurance rates are the product of too many unwarranted lawsuits resulting in exorbitant damage awards. The legislative fixes typically involve restricting the ability of plaintiffs to bring claims, to prosecute their claims successfully, or to recover full damages if they happen to prevail on their claims. The U.S. Congress sometimes …

Biodiversity Heritage Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Deanna Marcum

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), created in 2006, is the result of a collaboration of ten natural history museum and botanical garden libraries seeking to digitize core taxonomic literature and to make it free and openly available throughout the world. Today, the BHL includes fifteen member institutions whose efforts have shaped a collection of over 60,000 titles. It is supported through a combination of membership dues, in-kind support from member institutions, contributions from the user community, and direct support from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, and it reaches tens of thousands of users each year. While managing the complex partnership has …