Criminal Law Drafting Manual

This textbook was created under a Round 19 Mini-Grant. It is hosted on the Open ALG (Affordable Learning Georgia) Projects platform.https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/books/1166/thumbnail.jp

Clinical Syllabi as Demonstration of Best Practices Implementation

This Article posits that the University of Georgia School of Law for Clinical Programs course syllabi demonstrate implementation of recommendations found in leading works that advocate for change in traditional legal education. This Article reviews some high points of legal education reform with a focus on clinical legal education and then discusses the role of syllabi in the classroom and the potential within the document that many professors miss. This Article then turns to using syllabi to measure the extent that the clinics are implementing instruction that addresses all three apprenticeships as defined in the Carnegie Report.. To assess the syllabi, the authors begin with the basic model of apprenticeships in knowledge, skills, and values from the Carnegie Report and then use recommendations of best practices found in Best Practices for Legal Education to analyze whether syllabi demonstrate efforts to instruct in each of the three apprenticeships

Judicial Threats to Olmstead and the Americans With Disabilities Act

The authors examine the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Olmstead v L.C. ex rel. Zimring and related Supreme Court rulings that could raise questions about the Americans With Disabilities Act\u27s guarantee of care in integrated settings and about which governmental entity\u27s interpretation should be respected when deciding whether a state has met its integration obligation. After reviewing statutes, administrative regulations, and judicial decisions, the authors conclude that Olmstead\u27s integration mandate will likely stand, but actions should be taken to codify the rule in federal and state statutes so that governmental agencies will continue to have the authority to ensure compliance with the mandate

Good-Better-Best Practices

At our last faculty meeting, Dean Rutledge suggested developing a set of “best practices” to handle some of the challenges posed by the current public-health crisis. In discussing this idea, Jean Mangan and I felt that it might be worthwhile thinking of them as “good-better-best practices,” recognizing that varying approaches will inevitably make sense for different instructional styles and priorities. We offer the ideas in the attached document not to suggest that they’re the best practices, but rather in the hope that they’ll be useful as we all adapt to this new and challenging pedagogical environment. - Thomas Kadr

Understanding the information needs of users of public information about higher education

Report to HEFCE by Oakleigh Consulting and Staffordshire University. "This study's aims were to carry out research into understanding the needs of intended users (primarily prospective students but with some focus on their advisors and employers) of public information on higher education (HE). The work focussed on England, but also took into account Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland where relevant." - Page 1

Knowing Where to Study? Fees, Bursaries and Fair Access

This study investigates the impact of financial considerations on sixteen to twenty year-old students’ decisions about participation in higher education. It focuses on intentions to live at home whilst studying at university and the extent to which bursaries influence institutional choice. The results are based on questionnaire and interview data drawn from a large sample of school and college students from two large urban areas in the Midlands

Legal Writing Manual (2nd Edition)

This manual provides you with an overview of first-year legal writing topics and provides checkpoints during your writing process. On the other hand, this manual does not answer every question you have ever had on any legal writing concept and it is certainly not a spellbook that will make you instantly awesome at legal writing. Writing as a skill is a lifelong development process. Everyone can be an effective legal writer. Put in the time to study the concepts and then to practice using those concepts in your writing. Seek feedback on your writing and implement the feedback you receive. Writing takes practice, and this manual can help guide you through. The first edition of the Legal Writing Manual was made possible with funding from the University of Georgia’s Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost’s Affordable Materials Course Grant. The second edition of this manual was made possible with funding from an Affordable Learning Georgia Round 18 Continuous Improvement Grant.https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/books/1164/thumbnail.jp

Statute of Limitations for Child Sexual Abuse Civil Lawsuits in Georgia

Only 29% of child sexual abuse reports result in criminal charges being filed. As a result, most states have enacted civil statutes of limitations to allow survivors to file claims both against abusers and also those who owed them a duty of care and knew or should have known about the abuse. In 2015 the Georgia legislature passed the Hidden Predator Act (HPA) to amend the state’s civil statute of limitations. Under the HPA, survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred prior to July 1, 2015 were given a two-year retroactive window under which to file claims against their abusers. Notably, the open window excluded entities from liability. After the two-year window closed on June 30, 2017, survivors whose abuse occurred prior to July 1, 2015 could only sue until their twenty-third birthday. For those whose abuse occurred after July 1, 2015, the HPA created a delayed-discovery provision, allowing survivors over the age of twenty-three to file claims within two years of making the connection that the abuse caused their injuries. The Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (“CEASE”) filed six claims under the open window provision of the HPA. Four of those claims have been successfully settled, one was decided favorably for the victim at a bench trial, and one was voluntarily dismissed by the client. Through its representation of survivors, CEASE found that even in cases where the abuse occurred thirty years prior to the date of filing, claims could be successful under Georgia law and that mediation could be a powerful healing tool for survivors. However, despite the passage of the HPA, CEASE observed several barriers for survivors to the civil justice system in Georgia. While the HPA, in theory, provided civil relief for survivors, in practice, the HPA did little to extend the statute of limitations or provide retroactive access to the civil justice system. Fewer than fifteen civil claims were filed under the retroactive window, six of which were filed by CEASE. Of the nearly 1,000,000 survivors of child sexual abuse in the state of Georgia, less than 0.000015% were able to file civil claims under the open window. Furthermore, because the delayed-discovery provision only applies to acts of child sexual abuse occurring on or after July 1, 2015 and where the victim is over the age of twenty-three, no delayed-discovery cases will be seen in Georgia courts for decades

The Transcriptional Regulatory Network of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Under the perspectives of network science and systems biology, the characterization of transcriptional regulatory (TR) networks beyond the context of model organisms offers a versatile tool whose potential remains yet mainly unexplored. In this work, we present an updated version of the TR network of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M.tb), which incorporates newly characterized transcriptional regulations coming from 31 recent, different experimental works available in the literature. As a result of the incorporation of these data, the new network doubles the size of previous data collections, incorporating more than a third of the entire genome of the bacterium. We also present an exhaustive topological analysis of the new assembled network, focusing on the statistical characterization of motifs significances and the comparison with other model organisms. The expanded M.tb transcriptional regulatory network, considering its volume and completeness, constitutes an important resource for diverse tasks such as dynamic modeling of gene expression and signaling processes, computational reliability determination or protein function prediction, being the latter of particular relevance, given that the function of only a small percent of the proteins of M.tb is known

Quantitative analysis and comparison of 3D morphology between viable and apoptotic MCF-7 breast cancer cells and characterization of nuclear fragmentation

Morphological changes in apoptotic cells provide essential markers for defining and detection of apoptosis as a fundamental mechanism of cell death. Among these changes, the nuclear fragmentation and condensation have been regarded as the important markers but quantitative characterization of these changes is yet to be achieved. We have acquired confocal image stacks of 206 viable and apoptotic MCF-7 cells stained by three fluorescent dyes. Three-dimensional (3D) parameters were extracted to quantify and compare their differences in morphology. To analyze nuclear fragmentation, a new method has been developed to determine clustering of nuclear voxels in the reconstructed cells due to fluorescence intensity changes in nuclei of apoptotic cells. The results of these studies reveal that the 3D morphological changes in cytoplasm and nuclear membranes in apoptotic cells provide sensitive targets for label-free detection and staging of apoptosis. Furthermore, the clustering analysis and morphological data on nuclear fragmentation are highly useful for derivation of optical cell models and simulation of diffraction images to investigate light scattering by early apoptotic cells, which can lead to future development of label-free and rapid methods of apoptosis assay based on cell morphology.Open Access Fundin