Returning Right-To-Farm Laws to Their Roots

In 2014, some unlikely culprits—four chickens—generated negative headlines for then-Iowa Congressman Bruce Braley, who was in the midst of a close campaign for an open United States Senate seat. After neighbor Pauline Hampton’s chickens roamed onto the Braleys’ property, the Braleys filed a formal complaint with the neighborhood homeowners association and allegedly threatened to sue. If the Braleys had done so, questions of the scale of Hampton’s operation, how long she had had the chickens, and whether the Braleys or the chickens were in the neighborhood first would have been key considerations. Similar disputes between neighbors over agricultural land uses play out across America. This Note will focus on one attempt to manage these disputes: right-to-farm (RTF) laws. This Note proceeds in six parts. Part I continues to introduce the tension between urban and rural land uses, the importance of understanding it, and the mechanism of RTF laws that legislatures have adopted to mitigate it. Part I goes on to explain how different states design their RTF laws and considers previous scholarly treatment of RTF laws. This Note is indebted to the pre-existing literature on RTF laws, and recognizes and aims to contribute to some of these existing critiques and proposals: First, in Part II, this Note aims to add concreteness to the literature’s critique of RTF laws by focusing on two particular ways in which RTF laws have improperly expanded immunity from nuisance liability and by delving into illustrative case law demonstrating how these expansions operate in practice. In doing so, this Note will show how certain veins of RTF laws have become particularly unmoored from RTF laws’ origins as codifications of the coming-to-the-nuisance doctrine. In Part III, this Note then offers a concrete policy for returning RTF laws to their roots, ensuring agricultural operations are better held accountable for their effects on their communities. The Note cites a particular vein of RTF laws, namely Washington’s, focusing on desirable provisions, as an existing model for all states to consider adopting. It recommends revising RTF laws with even greater textual specificity than Washington’s so they only protect established agricultural operations facing urbanizing pressures. It also proposes revising RTF laws so that an operation that substantially changes its nature loses its immunity. In addition to legislative reform, this Note’s proposal also encourages jurists to consider the legislative intent and history behind RTF laws to better partner with legislatures in achieving their goals, echoing and defending Professor Andrew Reinert’s argument on judicial interpretation. This Note will then argue in Part IV that this model best accommodates the literature’s critique of RTF laws. While sharing some of these critiques, this Note approaches the literature with the perspective that reform of RTF laws is more likely than abolition. Therefore, it aims to answer but also temper some of the critiques by fleshing out two primary justifications supporting this reform: it restores the coming-to-the-nuisance doctrine’s importance in RTF laws—thus honoring parties’ expectations and property-for-personhood interests—and it reduces the economic inefficiency generated by RTF laws. In doing so, it draws on arguments from property theory, sociology, and economics to demonstrate why this Note’s proposal strikes a healthy balance between the competing policy concerns RTF laws involve. Part V considers public policy implications of implementing this reform

The Christian Right and Israel: A Love Story?

This thesis investigates whether or not, and how, the Christian Right in America has impacted American political discussion of and policy towards Israel. This project informs and is informed by the literature both on how interest groups affect American foreign policy and how religion affects American foreign policy. I hypothesize that the Christian Right will have successfully created a closer alliance between America and Israel, and that evangelical or Christian Right-allied decision-makers will be particularly likely to be supportive of Israel. The investigation has three sections. The first uses content analysis and examination of media coverage to examine how language regarding Israel in GOP platforms has changed. The second uses the same techniques to see how GOP presidential candidates in their primary campaigns treat Israel. The third uses probit regression models to test whether or not evangelical members of Congress are more likely than non-evangelicals to take the pro-Israel side in a congressional vote. I conclude that, through these particular avenues at least, the Christian Right, and evangelicals more generally, are not particularly likely to be supportive of Israel compared to other decision-makers

Biomass distributions in dwarf tree, krummholz, and tundra vegetation in the alpine treeline ecotone

Alpine treeline ecotones are expected to respond to climate change with shifts in biomass patterns and carbon dynamics; however, the nature of these shifts and the current structure of carbon storage at treeline remain poorly understood. Biomass at treeline sites in Glacier National Park (GNP), Montana was measured in different aboveground carbon pools. Notably large proportions of biomass were recorded in compartments of dead material (~64% in upright tree cover, ~82% in krummholz). The storage of proportionally so much carbon in dead material complicates predictions of alpine treeline response to climate change, given the expectation of increased respiration losses through decomposition in a warmer climate. Although conventional belief holds that treeline advance will result in sequestration of carbon as tundra is replaced by trees, carbon release by decomposition may deviate from this expectation. This work represents a descriptive study that highlights the importance of conducting similar work at broader spatial scales and in more varied locations to further determine the magnitude and extent of its implications

Predicting Avian Influenza Co-Infection with H5N1 and H9N2 in Northern Egypt.

Human outbreaks with avian influenza have been, so far, constrained by poor viral adaptation to non-avian hosts. This could be overcome via co-infection, whereby two strains share genetic material, allowing new hybrid strains to emerge. Identifying areas where co-infection is most likely can help target spaces for increased surveillance. Ecological niche modeling using remotely-sensed data can be used for this purpose. H5N1 and H9N2 influenza subtypes are endemic in Egyptian poultry. From 2006 to 2015, over 20,000 poultry and wild birds were tested at farms and live bird markets. Using ecological niche modeling we identified environmental, behavioral, and population characteristics of H5N1 and H9N2 niches within Egypt. Niches differed markedly by subtype. The subtype niches were combined to model co-infection potential with known occurrences used for validation. The distance to live bird markets was a strong predictor of co-infection. Using only single-subtype influenza outbreaks and publicly available ecological data, we identified areas of co-infection potential with high accuracy (area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) 0.991)

Addressing America: Washington's Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852

Thesis advisor: David QuigleyThis dissertation argues that George Washington's Farewell Address established the foundational principles of U.S. foreign policy and was the central text through which citizens of the Early Republic came to understand the connections between the nation's domestic and foreign ambitions. In the eyes of most Americans, the Declaration of Independence affirmed their ideals and the Constitution established their government, but it was Washington's principles that would ensure the nation's maturation into a world power. The Address became deeply embedded in the popular consciousness through annual readings on Washington's birthday, frequent discussion of its principles in the press, and as an integral component of the civic education of the nation's youth. Ordinary Americans far removed from the nation's capital and from complicated debates over particular foreign policies and their implications could still express an informed opinion on the wisdom of those policies based on their understanding of the Farewell. "Addressing America" goes beyond this popular story to illuminate how the Farewell shaped the fundamental disagreement over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy from 1796 to 1852. When Washington issued his valedictory he intended it as a flexible and pragmatic statement of the general principles that should guide the construction of foreign policies aimed at protecting American interests. An essential part of Washington's wisdom was the recognition that the nation's interests would change over time, and thus so too would its foreign policies. Five years later, incoming President Thomas Jefferson summarized his approach to foreign policy in his inaugural address of 1801 by promising "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." This phrase was universally seen as an allusion to the Farewell Address and it immediately entered the popular lexicon as a way of pithily describing the nation's core foreign policy principles. Over time "entangling alliances with none" became associated directly with Washington. More than just a case of misattribution, the linking of this phrase to the Farewell permanently altered the meaning of the Address for most Americans; instead of a flexible statement of general principles, it became a rigid prescription for a permanent foreign policy of virtual isolation from the rest of the world. In the fifty years after Jefferson's inaugural, the overarching narrative of American foreign policy is the conflict between these competing interpretations of the Farewell Address and how these differences in principle produced a varied understanding of both U.S. foreign policy and America's place in the world. This dissertation is the first work of historical scholarship to conduct a sustained examination of the ways that Washington's Farewell Address was understood over time by early Americans and how it fundamentally shaped their view of the United States and its place in the world.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: History

Simulated village locations in Thailand: a multi-scale model including a neural network approach

The simulation of rural land use systems, in general, and rural settlement dynamics in particular has developed with synergies of theory and methods for decades. Three current issues are: linking spatial patterns and processes, representing hierarchical relations across scales, and considering nonlinearity to address complex non-stationary settlement dynamics. We present a hierarchical simulation model to investigate complex rural settlement dynamics in Nang Rong, Thailand. This simulation uses sub-models to allocate new villages at three spatial scales. Regional and sub-regional models, which involve a nonlinear space-time autoregressive model implemented in a neural network approach, determine the number of new villages to be established. A dynamic village niche model, establishing pattern-process link, was designed to enable the allocation of villages into specific locations. Spatiotemporal variability in model performance indicates the pattern of village location changes as a settlement frontier advances from rice-growing lowlands to higher elevations. Experiments results demonstrate this simulation model can enhance our understanding of settlement development in Nang Rong and thus gain insight into complex land use systems in this area

Wood dynamics in headwater streams of the Colorado Rocky Mountains

Peer reviewedPublisher PD