No Welcome Mat, No Problem?: Federal-Question Jurisdiction after Grable

For nearly 20 years, the Supreme Court’s federal-question jurisprudence was muddied after the Court’s decision in Merrell-Dow. Last term, the Court issued a much-needed clarification in Grable. But that clarification needs clarification. In this Article, Professor Ryan endeavors to provide a candid synthesis of what the law is after Grable. While this area is rich with debate about what the law should be, a candid post-Grable synthesis is needed both to guide courts and to provide a common ground for these debates. Even such a modest task, however, is formidable. Federal-question jurisdiction is not a concept that can be viewed without its historical and theoretical underpinnings. And a bald reading of Grable does not reveal the nuances that exist, as many years of precedent have been synthesized into a new test. Professor Ryan traces the evolution of the meaning of the words “arising under” in the federal-question statute up to and through Grable and analyzes the new test in light of history, evolution, and policy

Acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge in software development teams: An empirical study

Context: Sharing expert knowledge is a key process in developing software products. Since expert knowledge is mostly tacit, the acquisition and sharing of tacit knowledge along with the development of a transactive memory system (TMS) are significant factors in effective software teams. Objective: We seek to enhance our understanding human factors in the software development process and provide support for the agile approach, particularly in its advocacy of social interaction, by answering two questions: How do software development teams acquire and share tacit knowledge? What roles do tacit knowledge and transactive memory play in successful team performance? Method: A theoretical model describing the process for acquiring and sharing tacit knowledge and development of a TMS through social interaction is presented and a second predictive model addresses the two research questions above. The elements of the predictive model and other demographic variables were incorporated into a larger online survey for software development teams, completed by 46 software SMEs, consisting of 181 individual team members. Results: Our results show that team tacit knowledge is acquired and shared directly through good quality social interactions and through the development of a TMS with quality of social interaction playing a greater role than transactive memory. Both TMS and team tacit knowledge predict effectiveness but not efficiency in software teams. Conclusion: It is concluded that TMS and team tacit knowledge can differentiate between low- and high-performing teams in terms of effectiveness, where more effective teams have a competitive advantage in developing new products and bringing them to market. As face-to-face social interaction is key, collocated, functionally rich, domain expert teams are advocated rather than distributed teams, though arguably the team manager may be in a separate geographic location provided that there is frequent communication and effective use of issue tracking tools as in agile teams

Extinction as consummation: an exposition of Virginia Woolf's mataphysic of visionary relation

What follows is an attempt to circumscribe Virginia Woolf's ideas on life and death, the relation between self and all that which is not self, and the nature of reality, in short, Woolf's vision. I hope that whatever unity and structure may exist in the vision will not be overlooked, and moreover, I intend to avoid imposing a unity where none exists, whether the absence of unity is intentional or accidenta

Consistent “Deeming”: A Cohesive Construction of 28 U.S.C. § 1332 in Cases Involving International Corporations and Permanent-Resident Aliens.

Two categories of alienage-jurisdiction cases have proven troublesome: cases involving permanent-resident aliens and cases involving international corporations. Jurisdiction in these categories depends upon the construction of 28 U.S.C. § 1332’s deeming provisions. The permanent-resident deeming provision and the corporate deeming provision operate uncontroversially to remove certain cases from federal jurisdiction, but controversy exists as to what extent they create jurisdiction that did not exist before the amendments that added the deeming provisions. The results and analytical approaches in these categories have varied, and the resulting confusion is unsatisfactory. The cases in this area are plagued by a structural flaw—while framing their analyses in terms of “clear” or “unambiguous” text, the courts have actually imposed no construction at all, instead jumping extratextually to the what-would-Congress-have-wanted question. Further, the courts faced with cases in each category have decided the cases without reference to the other category. My solution is a modest one but provides the consistency needed in a jurisdictional inquiry. I give the words “shall be deemed” a consistent construction in the two deeming provisions and resolve the missing-word problem that lurks in the background. Under my solution, the words “shall be deemed” perform a simple function in the deeming provisions—they confer State citizenship on certain litigants. But they do not strip a party of preexisting alien status. When construed this way and combined with the § 1332(a) jurisdiction-granting subcategories, the deeming provisions create no jurisdiction that did not exist before the deeming provisions. My solution provides several benefits. First, it provides the consistency and coherence needed in a jurisdictional inquiry. Second, it is textually faithful and gives effect to the similar language used in the deeming provisions and differing language used elsewhere in § 1332. And third, it avoids the constitutional problems that arise under alternative construction. To be sure, one might conjure up scenarios where, in the view of the conjurer, exercising jurisdiction would better serve the purposes of alienage jurisdiction. But those scenarios are rare, and desirability of results cannot distort the task—giving effect to the statute. Among permissible solutions, mine yields the best results. It simply is not an acceptable method of statutory interpretation to determine: when no construction yields the construer’s desired result in every case, the statute need be given no construction except what Congress should have intended in each case

Young men’s friendships: inclusive masculinities in a post-university setting

When Eric Anderson published inclusive masculinity theory (IMT), it was largely situated in relationships he observed with first-year undergraduate students. Here, he noticed a striking difference in behaviours and attitudes between the adolescent heterosexual men in the United States, compared to those in the UK. Since IMT’s inception, there has been a great deal of further enquiry into the social lives of young heterosexual men in both of these nations. What is undertheorized, however, is whether the intense emotional and physical tactility of homosocial relationships described in this literature will occur with current and future generations. Nor do we know if men described as exhibiting inclusive masculinities at university continue to do so – and to what degree – as they enter the workplace and develop family ties. This research utilizes 10 semi-structured interviews with the same participants from Anderson’s initial studies, showing that they continue to strive for the same emotional intimacy with male friends that they achieved during their time at university. Half also carried this behaviour into the friendships developed with other men since graduating from university. Thus, this research contributes to IMT as it offers preliminary analysis into the friendships of inclusive men, after their time at university