Celebrating Trickett Hall at 100 Years

Visual material documenting and celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Trickett Hall dedication

1918-1919 Law School Catalog

A copy of the 1918-1919 catalog of the Dickinson School of Law containing historical information about the law school, a schedule of courses, a description of the method of instruction, general information about law school and being admitted to the bar, and a list of recent graduates and enrolled students

An empirical study on applying community detection methods in defining spatial housing submarkets in London

Housing submarkets can be defined as a set of dwellings that are reasonably close substitutes with one another, but poor substitutes between other submarkets. This research argues similarities within submarkets are not only captured by its building and location characteristics but also in how each dwelling is inter-connected within its local area and embedded to the rest of the system. This research conjectures that spatial network local-areas as defined by community detection methods can be used to identify spatial housing submarkets. In order to test this conjecture, the hedonic approach will be used as an empirical strategy on the case study of London. The study found spatial network local areas correspond with planned known local area boundaries and that greater house price similarity is found within spatial network local-areas than between. The study also found that spatial network local area as defined by community detection technique can be used to identify spatial housing submarkets to explain house price. The contribution of this research is it represents a proof of concept in the use of community detection techniques in the definition of spatial housing submarket. Importantly it illustrates the significance in how spatial configuration influences housing market not just in terms of accessibility (Law et al. 2013) but also in terms of housing submarket. Further research will be carried out to study the spatial configuration of the spatial network local areas in understanding severances and connectivity between them. By understanding cities through multiple spatial representations will allow more informed policies at the local-area level

To File or Not to File a Notice to Appear: Improving the Government\u27s Use of Prosecutorial Discretion

A report by the Penn State Law Immigrants\u27 Rights Clinic that highlights the rate and circumstances surrounding Notice to Appear (NTA) filings at the immigration court.https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/irc_pubs/1002/thumbnail.jp

The 9/11 Effect and its Legacy on U.S. Immigration Laws: Essays, Remarks, and Photographs

An anthology of 9/11 reflections released today by the Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights and the Penn State School of International Affairs concentrates on the impact of the attacks on the lives of immigrants and immigration policy, providing both a report card and ideas for the future.https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/irc_pubs/1007/thumbnail.jp

The 9/11 Effect and its Legacy on U.S. Immigration Laws: Essays, Remarks, and Photographs

An anthology of 9/11 reflections released today by the Penn State Law Center for Immigrants’ Rights and the Penn State School of International Affairs concentrates on the impact of the attacks on the lives of immigrants and immigration policy, providing both a report card and ideas for the future.https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/irc_pubs/1007/thumbnail.jp

The economic value of spatial network accessibility for UK cities: A comparative analysis using the hedonic price approach

Spatial network accessibility was found to be significant when associating with house prices using the hedonic price approach. These results suggest some individuals are willing to pay more for spatial isolation while some individuals will pay more for spatial co-presence. An obvious limitation of earlier research is a lack of comparative analysis between cities. Focusing on a single case study reduces the generalisability of the results and the extent to which different spatial contexts might value accessibility differently. The aim of this research was therefore to study the extent to which spatial network accessibility effects differ across cities in the UK. A hedonic price approach was used to explore the extent to which these differences are related to social-economic-mobility factors. Results show, both visually and quantitatively, the economic value of accessibility, measured using space syntax analysis, differs across geographical regions. The accessibility effect on house price ranges from strongly significant in London to insignificant in Birmingham. In general, the economic effect is weaker in smaller, more car dependent cities, with a greater proportion of the population employed in the manufacturing sector, and is stronger in cities that are denser, more walkable with greater productivity and a greater proportion of residents in the education sector. This exploration therefore suggests that the economic value placed upon urban accessibility may be related to a combination of mobility factors, its urban form and its economic profile. Finally, it appears that city productivity as measured by GVA is correlated with increased value placed upon accessibility

Estimating house price with spatial and land use accessibility components using a data science approach at the national scale

Extensive research had been conducted studying the spatial configuration effects on house price using the hedonic price approach. Previous research has mostly focused on using econometric approaches in estimating house price. With the growing popularity of machine learning methods, there is an opportunity to study this problem from a data science perspective. Following Law et al (2017) which studied how economic value of closeness centrality (integration) differed across cities in England, we conduct here a similar experiment examining these differences using a data science approach. We leveraged on an integrated urban model, a large-scale geographic database to compute a series of land use accessibility and space syntax accessibility measures at the country scale (~120 measures). We then use a compressed set of spatial and land use accessibility components to estimate a set of hedonic price models in England; i. first for the entire country, then ii. for all 22 cities and then iii. for 22 cities individually. We found that spatial and land use accessibility features improve house price prediction accuracy jointly and the improvements are greater when using nonlinear methods. This research serves as a basis on the application of data science approaches in space syntax research for predicting real estate outcomes at the National-Scale

Behind Closed Doors: An Overview of DHS Restrictions on Access to Counsel

The Center collaborated with LAC to produce a white paper addressing the law, policy and practice surrounding right to counsel in non-removal contexts before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). To reach this end, students at the Center reviewed an internal legal memorandum prepared by the American Immigration Lawyers Association and LAC; a detailed memo prepared by the Center analyzing individual attorney experiences with restrictions on access before DHS; and conduct additional research pertaining to access to counsel. The white paper articulates the legal and policy standards governing an individual’s right to counsel in various non-removal settings in order to provide a framework for understanding the rights of represented individuals as well as the agency culture that continues to limit and deny representation in encounters before DHS. The white paper illustrates how current DHS practices 1) do not comply with existing law and/or 2) are restrictive interpretations of the law that are not good policy. The paper includes recommendations to DHS and possibly other federal agencies for improving access to counsel through administrative fixes that may or may not include regulatory fixes and changes to current agency guidance.https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/irc_pubs/1006/thumbnail.jp

Local Modularity, a measure that characterises street neighbourhood connectivity

Recent research in space syntax has shown the use of community detection methods on the street network dual graph can identify isolated local areas. Leveraging on this characteristic, we propose a new measure called local modularity that tries to capture street neighbourhood connectedness. We examine the measure visually for a number of cities where we found the measure can identify more neighbourhood connectivity. We also then validated the measure by running a network stability experiment where we simulate a network under different forms of attacks; a random attack scenario versus a targeted attack scenario. We found more stable behaviour when removing streets that have higher neighbourhood connectivity than attacking the same network randomly. These results have implications on the spatial design and planning of neighbourhoods and in measuring community severances