Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sticky Charters? The Surprisingly Tepid Embrace Of Officer-Protecting Waivers In Delaware, Jens Frankenreiter, Eric L. Talley

Scholarship@WashULaw

This article investigates the reaction to a much-heralded 2022 legal reform in Delaware that permitted a corporation’s charter to exculpate its officers from monetary exposure for breaching their fiduciary duty of care. To isolate reactions to this statutory reform, we make extensive use of generative AI tools to identify and interpret charter amendments that introduce officer-facing waivers. We find a surprisingly tepid rate of uptake among Delaware corporations through the end of the first post-reform year, notwithstanding widespread predictions that corporate entities would quickly storm the exculpation exits once permitted to do so.

Our study makes two contributions to the …

The Debt Limit, Conor Clarke

Scholarship@WashULaw

Every couple of years, it seems, the debt limit shows up to wreak havoc in American law and public finance. By capping the face value of government securities that can be “outstanding at one time,” the statutory limit regularly threatens the Treasury’s ability to raise the revenue needed to fund required government spending. Brinksmanship over the limit has shut down the government, cost the country billions of dollars, and mired financial markets in uncertainty. And yet, despite its obvious and longstanding importance, the limit remains poorly understood. Commentators attribute its beginnings to 1917 and 1941, before which it is assumed …

Whither Coursework And Nextgen Bar Exam Success?, Robert R. Kuehn

Scholarship@WashULaw

The NextGen bar exam will focus on an expanded range of essential lawyering skills and a reduced set of legal topics. Moving toward less reliance on knowledge of the black letter law concepts of past exams, it seeks to build on the successes of clinical legal education, alternative dispute resolution, and legal writing and analysis programs. With outcomes from the first NextGen exam still two years away, this commentary examines what existing research suggests about law school coursework and likely success on NextGen that might guide students and law schools in preparing for the new exam.

Provisioning Digital Tools And Systems For Government Use, Brenda Dvoskin, Julie E. Cohen, Paul Ohm, Meg Leta Jones, Smitha Krishna Prasad, Nina-Simone Edwards

Scholarship@WashULaw

This document is part of a larger project aimed at reinventing the administrative state for effective governance of the digital, information-driven economy. It explores how the administrative state can more effectively equip itself with digital tools and systems that align with and improve government’s ability to serve public values. Established approaches to digital provisioning fail in many important respects. Among others, they introduce thorny coordination problems while doing little to ensure design for broader public values; they cause obsolete and/or poorly conceived requirements to cascade through the development process for new tools and systems; they magnify the potential for technology-driven …

Speaking Back To Sexual Privacy Invasions, Brenda Dvoskin

Scholarship@WashULaw

Many big players in the internet ecosystem do not like hosting sexual expression. They often justify these bans as a protection of sexual privacy. For example, Meta states that it removes sexual imagery to prevent the nonconsensual distribution of sexual images. In response, this Article argues that banning digital sexual expression is counterproductive if the aim is to alleviate the harms inflicted by sexual privacy losses.

Contemporary sexual privacy theory, however, lacks analytical tools to explain why nudity bans harm the interests they intend to protect. This Article aims at building those tools. The main contribution is an invitation to …

Do Patents Drive Investment In Software?, James Hicks

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the wake of a quartet of Supreme Court decisions which disrupted decades of settled law, the doctrine of patentable subject matter is in turmoil. Scholars, commentators, and jurists continue to disagree sharply over which kinds of invention should be patentable. In this debate, no technology has been more controversial than software. Advocates of software patents contend that denying protection would stymie innovation in a vital industry; skeptics argue that patents are a poor fit for software, and that the social costs of patents outweigh any plausible benefits. At the core of this disagreement is a basic problem: the debate …

Criminal Law Minimalisms, Benjamin Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

What is criminal law minimalism? At first blush, it appears to be the sober and sensible cousin of abolition. Where the language of abolition is radical and absolute, the language of minimalism speaks to moderation, pragmatism, and nuance. While I appreciate calls for nuance, I’m not sure that minimalism offers the clarity it promises or answers the hard questions about how to address the ills of the U.S. criminal system.

As a theory or label, minimalism raises two major questions: (1) a question of scope; and (2) a question of scale. On the question of scope, what exactly should be …

The Major Questions Doctrine: Unfounded, Unbounded, And Confounded, Ronald M. Levin

Scholarship@WashULaw

As explicated by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA in 2022, and reaffirmed in Biden v. Nebraska in 2023, the “major questions doctrine” provides that an administrative agency’s rule in a “major” case must rest on “clear congressional authorization.” Many commentators have deplored the major questions doctrine on the basis of its policy consequences. This Article offers a critique of the doctrine from a different angle. It primarily contends that the reasons the Court has given for enforcing the doctrine do not withstand scrutiny, even on their own terms.

In West Virginia and Nebraska, the Court relied heavily …

The Pedagogical Value Of Clinical Amicus Advocacy, Steven J. Alagna

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay makes a case for why clinical appellate amicus advocacy is particularly well suited to foster valuable experiential learning in the public interest. First, the Essay explores amicus advocacy in general, including its purposes and effectiveness. The Essay then turns to a survey of the educational benefits of amicus opportunities. Importantly, the process of identifying and pursuing amicus-eligible cases is rife with pedagogical benefits, including maximizing student engagement by broadening the kinds of cases to which students can engage (especially incorporating an element of choice that empowers students to engage with legal questions that carry a personal valence), teaching …

Subjective Costs Of Tax Compliance, Jonathan H. Choi, Ariel Jurow Kleiman

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article introduces and estimates the “subjective costs” of tax compliance, which are costs of tax compliance that people experience directly and individually. To measure these costs, we conducted a survey experiment assessing how much taxpayers would pay to reduce the unpleasantness associated with filing a tax return. The experiment revealed that taxpayers are more concerned about inadvertent mistakes in their tax filings than the time spent on compliance. Respondents also only ascribed meaningful value to eliminating all tax compliance work; they ascribed essentially no value to marginal time savings. Additionally, taxpayers were indifferent between simplification services offered by a …

Independence Through Judicialization: The Politics Surrounding Administrative Adjudicators 1929-1949, Lawrence J. Liu

Scholarship@WashULaw

One front in today’s battle to define the scope of the administrative state concerns the authority, status, and future of its 10,000-plus administrative adjudicators. Decisions by federal courts and the executive branch to increase the dependence of administrative adjudicators on the executive have sparked strong reactions from observers, with many advocating for measures to increase adjudicator “independence.” But who should administrative adjudicators be independent of, which ought to be independent, and why? Calls for administrative adjudicator independence are not new. This Article draws on primary documents produced by private actors, congressional decisionmakers, and federal executive agents to present a political …

Voting Under The Federal Constitution, Travis Crum

Scholarship@WashULaw

There is no explicit, affirmative right to vote in the federal Constitution. At the Founding, States had total discretion to choose their electorate. Although that electorate was the most democratic in history, the franchise was largely limited to property-owning White men. Over the course of two centuries, the United States democratized, albeit in fits and starts. The right to vote was often expanded in response to wartime service and mobilization.

A series of constitutional amendments prohibited discrimination in voting on account of race (Fifteenth), sex (Nineteenth), inability to pay a poll tax (Twenty-Fourth), and age (Twenty-Sixth). These amendments were worded …

Contract-Wrapped Property, Danielle D'Onfro

Scholarship@WashULaw

For nearly two centuries, the law has allowed servitudes that “run with” real property while consistently refusing to permit servitudes attached to personal property. That is, owners of land can establish new, specific requirements for the property that bind all future owners—but owners of chattels cannot. In recent decades, however, firms have increasingly begun relying on contract provisions that purport to bind future owners of chattels. These developments began in the context of software licensing, but they have started to migrate to chattels not encumbered by software. Courts encountering these provisions have mostly missed their significance, focusing instead on questions …

Measuring The Impacts Of Experiential Legal Education, Robert R. Kuehn, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Experiential legal education has become an essential component of the law school curriculum, emphasizing "learning by doing" through practical experiences in law clinics, externships, and simulation courses. This pedagogical approach offers law students the critical skills and professional values required for effective and ethical practice. Despite its recognized importance and parallels with other professional disciplines, legal education still requires minimal experiential education compared to other professions. This reluctance likely stems from lingering skepticism by some legal educators about its value, even though many stakeholders, including other educators, students, recent graduates, and other legal professionals, acknowledge its significance.

This Article is …

Key Un Committee Clears Path For Crimes Against Humanity Treaty Negotiations, Leila Nadya Sadat, Akila Radhakrishnan

Scholarship@WashULaw

On Friday, Nov. 22, 2024, the United Nations Sixth (Legal) Committee took a pivotal decision to advance toward negotiations on a global treaty regarding the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. The move is the latest in a series of discussions that has taken place over the past six years and brings States one step closer to finally closing the nearly 80-year-old gap in international law to comprehensively address these grave crimes.

We have been tracking this process together since 2021 in a Just Security series on the potential draft treaty, and in a recent article we chronicled the …

Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied: Moving Forward With A New Crimes Against Humanity Treaty, Leila Nadya Sadat, Akila Radhakrishnan

Scholarship@WashULaw

Eleven years after the International Law Commission (ILC) began considering the topic of crimes against humanity, and nearly 80 years after the London Charter was negotiated in the ashes of World War II, will States finally begin negotiating a new crimes against humanity treaty next year? The answer is not yet clear, although an overwhelming majority of the States expressing themselves last week said “yes.” This essay is a snapshot of the current state of play and is based on our firsthand observation of the plenary debate as well as discussions with State delegates and members of civil society. Negotiations …

A Draft Treaty On Crimes Against Humanity Draws More Engagement From States, Leila Nadya Sadat

Scholarship@WashULaw

The world’s first treaty on crimes against humanity inched closer to reality as the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth (Legal) Committee recently wrapped up the last of a series of “resumed sessions” before States decide this October whether to proceed to formal negotiations on the document. Significantly more States and regional groups intervened during the most recent session, held last month, than in 2023, and the number that support the draft increased. Representatives of civil society also were present in much higher numbers, issuing a “Joint Statement in Support of Progress toward a Crimes Against Humanity Treaty” from more than 400 …

A Regime Of Statutes: Building A Modern President In Gilded Age America (1873-1921), Andrea Scoseria Katz

Scholarship@WashULaw

At a time when the Supreme Court is turning its sights on the administrative state and enhancing the profile and powers of the president, it is worth recalling that behind our national complex of agencies lies a constitutional settlement that has structured government for approximately one hundred and thirty years. Its roots lie in the period from 1873-1921, and its defining values are interbranch cooperation, delegated problem-solving authority, and administrative expertise. This Article proposes to tell its story.

A century and a half ago, America was just healing from its Civil War wounds when a host of new problems descended: …

High-Dimensional Iv Cointegration Estimation And Inference, Peter C. B. Phillips, Igor L. Kheifets

Research Collection School Of Economics

A semiparametric triangular systems approach shows how multicointegrating linkages occur naturally in an I(1) cointegrated regression model when the long run error variance matrix in the system is singular. Under such singularity, cointegrated I(1) systems embody a multicointegrated structure that makes them useful in many empirical settings. Earlier work shows that such systems may be analyzed and estimated without appealing to the associated I(2) system but with suboptimal convergence rates and potential asymptotic bias. The present paper develops a robust approach to estimation and inference of such systems using high dimensional IV methods that have appealing asymptotic properties like those …

Experimental Evaluation Of Thermal Adaptation And Transient Thermal Comfort In A Tropical Mixed-Mode Ventilation Context, Yue Lei, Duygu Zeynep Tekler, Sicheng Zhan, Clayton Miller, Adrian Chong

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Mixed-mode ventilation offers a promising solution for achieving comfortable indoor environments in an energy-efficient manner. However, in the tropics, characterized by a year-round hot and humid climate, opportunities for natural ventilation (NV) are typically limited to specific hours, necessitating operational mode switches on an intraday basis. Much of the thermal comfort research on mixed-mode ventilation relies either on cross-sectional data collected from different subjects or longitudinal data spanning a few seasons. This raises an open question: Can occupants thermally adapt when switching between NV and air-conditioning (AC) modes within a single day? To address the gap, our experimental study engaged …

Singapore’S Emerging Regulatory Approach To Stablecoins, Rachel Phang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Monetary Authority of Singapore's vision to develop "an innovative and responsible digital asset ecosystem" has placed stablecoins firmly on the regulatory agenda. Stablecoins, as cryptoassets designed to maintain a stable value, are regarded as having the potential to serve as a tenable medium of exchange for the digital asset ecosystem - so long as they are well-regulated and securely backed. Both this vision of a flourishing digital asset ecosystem, as well as the specter of the instability wrought by the recent algorithmic stablecoin collapse, speak to the need for sound regulation of stablecoins. This article therefore seeks to critically …

Why Leadership Needs History, Paul W. Sanders, Martin Gutmann

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

What contribution can a leadership focus make to arbitrating the catch-22s and wicked problems of the ongoing polycrisis? Not much, if you were to turn for advice to mainstream leadership studies (LS), a field of enquiry that continues to see itself, above all, as a tool for optimizing corporate performance and effectiveness. One way in which LS can escape its current tunnel vision and lack of relevancy is to return to its own roots and rehabilitate the historical approach. Historical LS can add value in several areas: it has the ability to deliver insightful case studies that provide useful analogies, …

Bekerja Tetapi Tetap Miskin, Apakah Permasalahan Kemiskinan Multidimensi?, Abdus Salam, Endan Suwandana, Watekhi Watekhi

Jurnal Ekonomi dan Pembangunan Indonesia

Working but still in poverty, is one of the phenomena of poor workers where they continue to work but their work does not guarantee them a better life. This study uses the concept of poverty from a monetary and multidimensional perspective. This study uses data from the March 2018 National Socioeconomic Survey (Susenas) and 2018 Village Potential Survey (Podes), and uses logistic regression to analyze whether the phenomenon of the working poor is a multidimensional poverty problem. The results of the study stated that poor workers have a close relationship with low education, millennial/young workers, a single parent, employees, a …

Review Of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, Michael Kirby

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Lived Experience Of The Covid-19 Pandemic Among Mandate-Resistant Adults In Washington State, Amber N. Peterson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examined the lived experience of self-identified, mandate-resistant adults in Washington state. This study explored participants’ experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, from a retrospective framework by uncovering challenges, silver linings, decision-making, and self-reported mental health. Remote interviews were conducted with nine participants. Participants were between 23–31 years old, mostly male, and over half identified as Black. Through semi structured interviews, data was collected and analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Participants described their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted significant changes in the way they lived their lives. Most notably, participants described ways in which they defied COVID-19 …

Developing Resources To Foster Farmed Animal Agency In Sanctuary Education, Emily Tronetti

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Farmed animal sanctuaries provide lifelong care to formerly farmed animals. Many strive to educate their community about farmed animals and promote more compassionate lifestyles, such as veganism. Important to this is cultivating empathy and concern for the well-being of individual farmed animals. Essential to well-being is agency, which is the capacity of a living being to engage with their environments and to make choices for themselves. Farmed animals outside of sanctuaries have had their agency systematically suppressed and denied. Sanctuary educators can bring awareness to this and inspire alternative, agency-centered relationships with not only farmed animals but all living beings. …

Ain’T I A Survivor Too: Contextualizing Black Women’S Experience Of Sexual Trauma And Healing, Danielle Alyssa Samuel

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The double bind of Black womanhood has been long documented in Black feminist literature. This dissertation seeks to greatly contextualize how Black women experience make sense of, and heal from, sexual trauma given the nature of gendered racism in the United States (U.S). Utilizing a convergent parallel design grounded in Black Feminist Theory and hermeneutic phenomenology, the lived experiences of 98 Black women from across the U.S. were investigated. Regression analyses revealed that the frequency of gendered racial microaggressions and the associated appraisal were not significant predictors of participants’ PTSD symptoms. Additionally, PTSD symptoms were inversely predictive of current perceptions …

Ideals Of Benevolence, Acts Of Dysconsciousness: White Women's Pursuit Of Diversity In Nonprofits, Tessa A. Fulmer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Recent political movements such as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements have brought renewed attention to the social roles of White women and their unique position of intersectional privilege and oppression. White women experience the benefits of whiteness while simultaneously experiencing the gendered oppression of womanhood. However, there is a lack of research exploring how White women conceptualize and respond to their own positionality as both White individuals and as women. This study utilizes constructivist grounded theory to examine how White women navigate their social location within the context of working in the nonprofit sector, a space wherein White …

From East To West: Exploring The Mental Health Of Punjabi Immigrants Residing In British Columbia, Jasleen Kaur

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Mental health has been a topic that is slowly gaining more acknowledgement and awareness over time. However, despite the elevation in awareness, there are many cultures where mental health issues remain subject to stigma, which discourages an individual from seeking, or even acknowledging, mental health treatment and services. This study focuses upon varying perceptions of mental health by exploring in-depth the perception of mental health within the Punjabi community and how Punjabi culture affects such perceptions. Specifically, this research study examines how young adults who immigrated from Punjab, India to British Columbia (B.C.) perceive and respond to mental health concerns. …

The Development Of Internalized Sexism In Young Adult Women, Kylie Schwabe

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The present study utilized Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in order to examine the lived experiences of young adult, cisgender women and the development of internalized sexism. Eight participants completed semi–structured interviews focused on their relationships with other women and subsequent views of womanhood. Themes found were (a) womanhood is taught by women throughout the lifespan, (b) women are sexually responsible for men, (c) women are emotional caregivers, (d) there are biological bases of womanhood, (e) women are expected to “do it all,” (f) expectations of women are fueled by media portrayal, (g) traditional femininity is seen as oppositional to the feminist …