College of Law

One summer evening in 1992, two women went to some nightclubs in Minneapolis to have fun. 1 The women drank that evening, one testifying "she had four vodka mixed drinks" and the other testifying "she had four beers." 2 The women were separated in the club and when everything closed at 1:00 a.m. the next logical step was to meet back at the car. One woman arrived at the vehicle first and was approached by a man who asked her "to come home with him and drink beer, and [she] repeatedly asked him to leave her alone." 3 Once her friend arrived the woman wanted to leave as quickly as possible. As the first woman tried to enter the vehicle, the man grabbed her. At this point the man sexually assaulted both women. The second woman hit the man and he left saying "he would never be caught and nothing would happen to him." 4 These two women, the victims of the assault, were the only eyewitnesses to this criminal act.

The Voting Rights Act was passed to prevent racial discrimination in all voting booths. Does the existence of a racial digital divide make Internet elections for public office merely a computer geek's pipe dream? Or can ivoting withstand scrutiny under the current state of the law? This i-Brief will consider the current state of the law, and whether disproportionate benefits will be enough to stop this extension of technology dead in its tracks.

In response to gang violence at local "cyber cafés," the City Council of Garden Grove, California, passed an ordinance requiring cyber cafés to install video surveillance systems. The constitutionality of the provision was subsequently challenged, and a California Court of Appeal determined that the video surveillance requirement did not violate free speech or privacy protections under either the federal or California Constitutions. This decision was immediately challenged, by commentators and a dissenting judge, as opening the door to Orwellian-type, government intrusions into individuals' personal lives. This iBrief analyzes the appellate court's decision and concludes that not only did the majority reach the correct conclusion, but that there is no merit to the dissent's Orwellian fears.

Client assignments chart a course for a student’s learning experience in a live-client transactional law clinic. Assignment decisions are multifaceted, requiring careful consideration to balance educational objectives for law students with professional obligations to clinic clients. Mind mapping can be employed by clinical law faculty to organize, synthesize, and creatively evaluate information to make client assignments that effectively balance pedagogical objectives with client needs. Mind mapping is a visual tool that has inspired thinkers from da Vinci to Picasso to understand and analyze information in innovative ways. New electronic mind mapping applications make this tool easily accessible to clinical faculty, providing functionalities that expand its creative potential. Grounded in transactional clinic design principles and the author’s experiences with mind mapping at the University of Nebraska College of Law, this article provides readers with a detailed road map for utilization of electronic mind mapping in a live-client transactional law clinic.

The authors report the results of an ongoing study that investigates the effects of crew size, composition, mission duration, and mission interval on behavior and performance among polar and space expeditions. The standardized rates for a behavior/performance indicator constructed during the pilot study displayed distinctive patterns across different crew profiles and settings. Then, a further analysis over the missions in the pilot sample found compelling information suggesting that several factors created specific differentials between outside (baseline) groups (e.g., mission controllers, "folks back home") and groups in extreme environments. These differentials reflected how the passage of time was subjectivized by crews and how the expeditionary situation was otherwise defined differently from baseline. These analyses suggest that the definition of the long-duration mission, such as a mission to Mars, likely involves more than the issue of real-time duration. Also, crew size and composition of such ventures need to be examined in light of social and behavioral

Abstract: The author developed the MarsSat concept during the 1990s. For this task, he designed a class of orbits to solve the problem of communicating with crews on Mars when the planet is in solar conjunction as seen from Earth, a planetary configuration that occurs near the midpoint of a conjunction class mission to Mars. This type of orbit minimizes the distance between Mars and the communications satellite; thus, minimizing the size, weight, and power requirements, while providing a simultaneous line-of-sight to both Earth and Mars. The MarsSat orbits are solar orbits that have the same period as Mars, but are inclined a few degrees out of the plane of the Mars orbit and also differ in eccentricity from the orbit of Mars. These differences cause a spacecraft in this orbit to rise North of Mars, then fall behind Mars, then drop South of Mars, and then pull ahead of Mars, by some desired distance in each case—typically about 20 million kilometers—in order to maintain an angular separation of a couple of degrees as seen from a point in the orbit of Earth on the opposite side of the Sun. A satellite in this type of orbit would relay communications between Earth and Mars during the period of up to several weeks, when direct communication is blocked by the Sun. These orbits are far superior for this purpose when compared to stationing a satellite at one of the Sun-Mars equilateral Lagrangian points, L4 or L5, for two reasons. First, L4 and L5 are 228 million kilometers from Mars, about 10 times the distance of a spacecraft in one of the MarsSat orbits, and by virtue of the inverse-square law, all other things being equal, the signal strength received at L4 or L5 would be one percent of the signal strength received by a spacecraft in one of the MarsSat orbits. Thus, a relay satellite stationed at L4 or L5 would have to be that much more powerful to receive data at the same rate, with concomitant increases in spacecraft size and weight. Second, a number of Martian Trojan asteroids have been discovered at the Sun-Mars L4 and L5 points, and there are probably countless smaller objects that have collected in these regions that pose a significant threat to any spacecraft located there.

From the time human beings could adequately comprehend their view of the stars in the heavens, they sought to understand what existed beyond the Earth and their own place in the universe. Early in the history of humankind, the longing for traveling to distant worlds accompanied our determination to understand the universe, perhaps starting with a visit to the Moon. As our comprehension of space phenomena became more sophisticated, so too did our realization that space travel and settlement could occur only after solving numerous difficulties. This sophistication followed applications of rocketry in World War II and the following Cold War. Men and women who as children dreamed of traveling to other planets were put to work building the machines of war and participating in a Space Race. This outer space production has motivated weapons systems and reconnaissance systems used for defense and for making war. However, that production has also sent humans to the Moon and generated much scientific knowledge for the benefit of humanity, to include the reconnaissance about weather and the environmental condition of our planet and a level of technology that allows for cellular phone communication and rapid financial transactions. In these ways, humans have been explorers of the Cosmos. There is a cultural imperative to colonize environments beyond the Earth because that is a logical extension of these historical elements. Yet, this cultural imperative to colonize space has slowed in current times. When the Cold War wound down, the years following the United States' Apollo program seemed like a rejection of human space travel to extraterrestrial destinations. However weakly, though, our society still clings to the dream to colonize the Moon and then Mars to learn the lessons necessary to move far beyond both in terms of distance and development. Essential is the vigorous stimulation of this cultural imperative, because outer space production is key to the survival of the human species.

Astrosociology is a newly-identified subfield that has historical roots going back half a century. The new tag also encompasses a variety of phenomena, ranging from the micro to the macro, from the social interactions of small human groups operating in the extreme environment of space, to the operations and activities of mission control/mission support teams on Earth, to the organizational challenges of multinational and transnational space projects, to the political-economic issues of multiyear funding continuity, and strategic partnerships between government agencies and private enterprises, to the relationship of the space community to the larger society of which it is a subset.

In the past 125 years, more than 70 authors have published ideas for keeping time on Mars, describing how to divide the Martian day and Martian year into smaller units. The Martian prime meridian was established in the mid-19th century, and the design of the Martian clock has been standardised at least since the Viking missions of the 1970s. Scientists can tell time on Mars; however, despite the constant stream of data that is downlinked from Mars these days, there is still no standardised system for expressing the date on Mars. Establishing a standard epoch-at a specific time of year on Mars, and a specific Martian year-should be the next priority in Martian timekeeping as a minimal system required for the physical sciences. More elaborate ideas, including the number and length of weeks and months, and names thereto, can be deferred for the present, but may become important considerations in coming years. r

The authors report the results of an ongoing study that investigates the effects of crew size, composition, mission duration, and mission interval on behavior and performance among polar and space expeditions. The standardized rates for a behavior/performance indicator constructed during the pilot study displayed distinctive patterns across different crew profiles and settings. Then, a further analysis over the missions in the pilot sample found compelling information suggesting that several factors created specific differentials between outside (baseline) groups (e.g., mission controllers, "folks back home") and groups in extreme environments. These differentials reflected how the passage of time was subjectivized by crews and how the expeditionary situation was otherwise defined differently from baseline. These analyses suggest that the definition of the longduration mission, such as a mission to Mars, likely involves more than the issue of real-time duration. Also, crew size and composition of such ventures need to be examined in light of social and behavioral information that can be obtained from the expeditionary record. These analyses hold important implications for habitat and workplace design in extreme environments, such as those to be deployed for Mars surface operations.

A U.S. President is once again reevaluating American space policy. The direction the Obama Administration will take with respect to its current program, Constellation, is unclear. Many options lay before President Obama, and several groups have once again put forth a new set of proposals for the reorganization of NASA. This paper evaluates two policy proposals that call for the reorganization of American space policy. These are: Maximizing NASA's Potential in Flight and on the Ground:

The primary author coined the phrase "globalization of space" in the 1990s in lectures and presentations, thus the term was conceived in the sociological record. And, though texts and journal articles on sociology are full of studies of the phenomenon of globalization, sociologists are not serious about the study of those aerospatial events that made possible the extent of modern globalization. And, although it is in their purview, they do not keep track of advancements in the aerospace industry that can provide clues to where globalization is taking human societies.

The Darian calendar is a complete timekeeping system for the 24-hour, 39-minute, 35.244-second sol and the 668.5907-sol vernal equinox year on Mars. Features include: Dudley-Rowley 2006). No other design incorporates all of these features. Calibration tables showing equivalent dates and times in Earth and Mars for equinoxes, solstices, and perihelions from 1874 to 2127, and oppositions and conjunctions of Mars from 1610 to 2099, are provided. Intercalation precision and annual perturbations are discussed, as well as the solar equation of time throughout the year.