Courts Beyond Judging

Across all fifty states, a woefully understudied institution of government is responsible for a broad range of administrative, legislative, law enforcement, and judicial functions. That important institution is the state courts. While the literature has examined the federal courts and federal judges from innumerable angles, study of the state courts as institutions of state government — and not merely as sources of doctrine and resolvers of disputes — has languished. This Article remedies that oversight by drawing attention for the first time to the wide array of roles state courts serve, and by evaluating the suitability of both the allocation of these tasks and the various procedures by which they are carried out across the country. In every state, on top of the ordinary adversarial dispute resolution function that we expect judges to serve, it is state court judges who are charged with administrative functions like approving applications to change one\u27s name, to enter the legal profession, or to exercise constitutional rights like accessing abortion care without parental knowledge or consent. And it is often state court judges who are charged with or who have taken on a range of legislative and policymaking functions like redistricting and establishing specialized criminal courts for veterans, persons in need of drug treatment, and others. And in some states, it is state court judges who have the law enforcement power to decide whether a prosecutors charging choice was a wise exercise of her discretion. These are not mere odds and ends of governing either; weighty interests hang in the balance across the board. In addition to developing this more complete portrait of the state courts — and of important variation in how these roles are structured across the states — this Article examines whether the interests at stake in each context are appropriately served when state court judges handle them. In some arenas, they are, and this Article places these facets o f state court practice on firmer theoretical footing. In others, however, there is cause for concern. With respect to these tasks, this Article argues that state court judges need to be better guided by statute and subject to reason-giving and record-developing requirements that would channel their discretion, improve their decisionmaking, and enable more rigorous appellate review. But most important of all, this Article calls for states to make more conscious choices about structuring the roles they assign to state courts, and for scholars to devote more careful attention to these powerful and nuanced institutions

Taking Data

Technological development has created new forms of information, altered expectations of privacy, and given law enforcement more tools to examine that information and intrude on that privacy. One crucial facet of these changes involves internet service providers (ISPs): as people expose more of their lives to their ISPs— all the websites they visit, people they communicate with, emails they send, files they store, and more—law enforcement efforts to access that data become more and more common. But scholars and policymakers alike recognize that the existing statutory frameworks governing those efforts are based on obsolete technology and strike balances that are difficult to justify and that are both over- and underprotective of privacy. This Article proposes a new approach to regulating government investigations of data that has been shared with ISPs—one that is inspired by a legal tool designed to achieve the very balance between public benefits and private burdens that has thus far proven elusive. This tool is the Takings Clause. Under the Takings Clause, the government can acquire private property, including intangible and intellectual property, but this wide-ranging power is disciplined by the requirement that the government pursue a public purpose and pay just compensation for the property it takes. This Article argues that adapting these features of the takings framework to govern the investigation of ISP-held data would be feasible, theoretically and doctrinally sound, and normatively desirable. In making this argument, this Article addresses one of the primary problems with the various existing mechanisms by which government conducts investigations online, which is that the costs of diminished privacy fall on the civilian targets of those investigations. The result is that law enforcement does not adequately consider these costs when making investigation decisions. Acquiring information under a takings-inspired regime, by contrast, would trigger a requirement to compensate the person whose privacy has been diminished and thus impose a direct cost on the government entity conducting the investigation. This obligation to pay would force the investigating entity to be more thoughtful about which investigations are the highest priorities, most likely to yield valuable information, and most tailored to achieve their purposes

Land Use Federalism\u27s False Choice

Debates about land use federalism — like those about federalism more broadly — often focus on whether policies and priorities ought to be set at the national or local level. But such categorical judgments about national intervention are inadequate because they obscure the diversity of mechanisms by which nationalization can and does occur. This Article draws attention to the importance of this underappreciated legislative design choice and develops a framework within which to evaluate it. This Article observes that nationalization can take the form of rules that either displace local decisionmaking or channel it, and that those rules can be implemented either by fiat or by way of incentive. These are not equivalent in terms of their effects on local democracy. Quite the contrary: the threat to the values of local democracy that motivate land use federalism arises primarily from decision-displacing fiat nationalizations — a tool that is likely unnecessary for most categories of land use goals. On the other hand, national action that channels land use decisionmaking or that incentivizes outcomes can achieve its ends while avoiding pernicious effects on local democracy. In fact, these forms of national action can even enhance local democracy. By confronting the full range of nationalizing options and accounting for their varied democratic impacts, this Article offers a solution to the federalist–nationalist dilemma in land use law, and may chart a path through the same thicket in other contexts

Improvements in Space Geodesy Data Discovery at the CDDIS

The Crustal Dynamics Data Information System (CDDIS) supports data archiving and distribution activities for the space geodesy and geodynamics community. The main objectives of the system are to store space geodesy and geodynamics related data products in a central data bank. to maintain information about the archival of these data, and to disseminate these data and information in a timely manner to a global scientific research community. The archive consists of GNSS, laser ranging, VLBI, and DORIS data sets and products derived from these data. The CDDIS is one of NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) distributed data centers; EOSDIS data centers serve a diverse user community and arc tasked to provide facilities to search and access science data and products. Several activities are currently under development at the CDDIS to aid users in data discovery, both within the current community and beyond. The CDDIS is cooperating in the development of Geodetic Seamless Archive Centers (GSAC) with colleagues at UNAVCO and SIO. TIle activity will provide web services to facilitate data discovery within and across participating archives. In addition, the CDDIS is currently implementing modifications to the metadata extracted from incoming data and product files pushed to its archive. These enhancements will permit information about COOlS archive holdings to be made available through other data portals such as Earth Observing System (EOS) Clearinghouse (ECHO) and integration into the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) portal

Property Law for the Ages

Within the next forty years, the number of Americans over age sixty-five is projected to nearly double. This seismic demographic shift will necessitate a reckoning in several areas of law and policy, but property law is especially unprepared. Built primarily for young and middle-aged white men, the common law of property has been critiqued for decades for the ways in which it oppresses or simply leaves behind people based on their race, sex, Native heritage, and more. This Article contributes a new focus on property law’s treatment of people based on their advanced age. Burdened by higher relocation costs, more inelastic incomes, and shorter time horizons than those faced by younger people, elderly people encounter a doctrine that often fails to protect their interests. This Article explores five areas of property law and evaluates how each fits—or, more frequently, fails to fit—the characteristics of many older subjects. From the law of takings to the law of waste, and from tenant protections to homeowners’ associations, not only is the law a poor fit, but the consequences for the health, safety, finances, and well-being of elderly people are often dramatic. At the same time, one of the rare significant efforts made thus far to protect older people from some of these consequences—the Fair Housing Act’s protection for age-restricted communities—has generated new inequities of its own that raise important questions about competing civil rights priorities. Accordingly, mindful of the dangers of overcorrection, this Article offers institutional reforms aimed to better protect the interests of older people in each area without unduly infringing upon those of others

Antibody-Based Ticagrelor Reversal Agent in Healthy Volunteers.

BACKGROUND: Ticagrelor is an oral P2Y12 inhibitor that is used with aspirin to reduce the risk of ischemic events among patients with acute coronary syndromes or previous myocardial infarction. Spontaneous major bleeding and bleeding associated with urgent invasive procedures are concerns with ticagrelor, as with other antiplatelet drugs. The antiplatelet effects of ticagrelor cannot be reversed with platelet transfusion. A rapid-acting reversal agent would be useful. METHODS: In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 1 trial, we evaluated intravenous PB2452, a monoclonal antibody fragment that binds ticagrelor with high affinity, as a ticagrelor reversal agent. We assessed platelet function in healthy volunteers before and after 48 hours of ticagrelor pretreatment and again after the administration of PB2452 or placebo. Platelet function was assessed with the use of light transmission aggregometry, a point-of-care P2Y12 platelet-reactivity test, and a vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein assay. RESULTS: Of the 64 volunteers who underwent randomization, 48 were assigned to receive PB2452 and 16 to receive placebo. After 48 hours of ticagrelor pretreatment, platelet aggregation was suppressed by approximately 80%. PB2452 administered as an initial intravenous bolus followed by a prolonged infusion (8, 12, or 16 hours) was associated with a significantly greater increase in platelet function than placebo, as measured by multiple assays. Ticagrelor reversal occurred within 5 minutes after the initiation of PB2452 and was sustained for more than 20 hours (P\u3c0.001 after Bonferroni adjustment across all time points for all assays). There was no evidence of a rebound in platelet activity after drug cessation. Adverse events related to the trial drug were limited mainly to issues involving the infusion site. CONCLUSIONS: In healthy volunteers, the administration of PB2452, a specific reversal agent for ticagrelor, provided immediate and sustained reversal of the antiplatelet effects of ticagrelor, as measured by multiple assays. (Funded by PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03492385.)

Functionalized Carbon Nanotube Adsorption Interfaces for Electron Transfer Studies of Galactose Oxidase

Modified electrodes featuring specific adsorption platforms able to access the electrochemistry of the copper containing enzyme galactose oxidase (GaOx) were explored, including interfaces featuring nanomaterials such as nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Electrodes modified with various self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) including those with attached nanoparticles or amide-coupled functionalized CNTs were examined for their ability to effectively immobilize GaOx and study the redox activity related to its copper core. While stable GaOx electrochemistry has been notoriously difficult to achieve at modified electrodes, strategically designed functionalized CNT-based interfaces, cysteamine SAM-modified electrode subsequently amide-coupled to carboxylic acid functionalized single wall CNTs, were significantly more effective with high GaOx surface adsorption along with well-defined, more reversible, stable (≥ 8 days) voltammetry and an average ET rate constant of 0.74 s-1 in spite of increased ET distance - a result attributed to effective electronic coupling at the GaOx active site. Both amperometric and fluorescence assay results suggest embedded GaOx remains active. Fundamental ET properties of GaOx may be relevant to biosensor development targeting galactosemia while the use functionalized CNT platforms for adsorption/electrochemistry of electroactive enzymes/proteins may present an approach for fundamental protein electrochemistry and their future use in both direct and indirect biosensor schemes

MRI radiomic features are independently associated with overall survival in soft tissue sarcoma

Purpose: Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) represent a heterogeneous group of diseases, and selection of individualized treatments remains a challenge. The goal of this study was to determine whether radiomic features extracted from magnetic resonance (MR) images are independently associated with overall survival (OS) in STS. Methods and Materials: This study analyzed 2 independent cohorts of adult patients with stage II-III STS treated at center 1 (N = 165) and center 2 (N = 61). Thirty radiomic features were extracted from pretreatment T1-weighted contrast-enhanced MR images. Prognostic models for OS were derived on the center 1 cohort and validated on the center 2 cohort. Clinical-only (C), radiomics-only (R), and clinical and radiomics (C+R) penalized Cox models were constructed. Model performance was assessed using Harrell\u27s concordance index. Results: In the R model, tumor volume (hazard ratio [HR], 1.5) and 4 texture features (HR, 1.1-1.5) were selected. In the C+R model, both age (HR, 1.4) and grade (HR, 1.7) were selected along with 5 radiomic features. The adjusted c-indices of the 3 models ranged from 0.68 (C) to 0.74 (C+R) in the derivation cohort and 0.68 (R) to 0.78 (C+R) in the validation cohort. The radiomic features were independently associated with OS in the validation cohort after accounting for age and grade (HR, 2.4; Conclusions: This study found that radiomic features extracted from MR images are independently associated with OS when accounting for age and tumor grade. The overall predictive performance of 3-year OS using a model based on clinical and radiomic features was replicated in an independent cohort. Optimal models using clinical and radiomic features could improve personalized selection of therapy in patients with STS