In 2016, the Ukrainian Constitutional Court (UCC) went through internal institutional reform where the court amended the constitution to grant additional review powers and changed the procedure for the appointment of judges. These institutional changes were essential for the court to gain independence and legitimacy. This research paper examines how and why these institutional reforms impacted participation in the Ukrainian judicial system. I hypothesize that these reforms expanded societal access to the court which increased participation, accountability and enforcement of constitutional rights. To examine these questions, this analysis engages in a case law analysis of judgments of the UCC between 1997 and 2019. I mainly focus on the judicial review by individual and assess how the court has ruled in these cases. In this research, I expand our understandings of democratic participation to include society engaging with the judicial branch and bringing constitutional rights claims. Preliminary findings suggest that these new institutional reforms will broaden access to the UCC, which will increase participation within the Ukrainian judicial system. Implications of the research arise around the history of corruption and a legacy of distrust towards the Ukrainian government, and the possibility of a new avenue of democratic participation that may enhance and expand societal trust in government.

Legal theorists have studied the advantage third party actors have in courts due to their powerful social and political presence. Third parties are interveners outside of the defendant and plaintiff that can provide comparative research, expertise, or assert a political opinion on a case. This study examines if, how, and why third parties affect international court decisions by expanding the development and protection of rights. I hypothesize that the presence and participation of third parties can lead to an expansion in the scope of treaty rights and findings of a violation. To examine these questions, I utilize the European Court of Human Rights Database (ECHRdb), focusing on cases including third party interveners in a single area of law, Article 8 (right to private and family life) between 1984 and 2014. The analysis codes interpret the types of organizations participating, and the ways in which the decisions expand or redefine convention rights. The preliminary findings of this research explicate the increase of particpation by third parties in international courts over time and how their presence can impact court jurisdiction. The results of this study are relevant for scholars and practitioners concerned with the growing role of the third party interveners in international legal processes and the impact of their actions on rights development and protection. 

Recognition of LGBTIQ+ rights has expanded rapidly over the last few decades, yet remain contentious in many countries. Debates over the religious, moral and political stakes of acknowledging these human rights have persisted on a global scale. The purpose of this study is to understand how international legal systems are responsive to LGBTIQ+ legal claims. This is done through examining LGBTIQ+ rights complaint cases before the United Nations (UN) treaty-based bodies to analyze the degree to which LGBTIQ+ rights have expanded in scope and what factors impacted this expansion. The UN complaints procedures allow individuals or groups to assert claims and challenge the denial of rights by the State outside of their own national court systems. While committee decisions are not binding, they can be valuable advocacy tools that can empower domestic actors, validate claims of rights, and provide guidance for State action. The extent to which complaints processes are being used to assert the rights of LGBTIQ+ people has not yet been comprehensively examined. This paper will review decisions and state party reports published in the UN Jurisprudence Database and Treaty Body Database to consider how rights and politics have influenced treaty body verdicts, and then conclude that while broad language and increased political traction can lead to expansions of rights, narrow phrasing and controversial issues, such as family life, can restrict treaty body decision-making. Although the focus of this paper is on LGBTIQ+ rights, this study provides a general framework for utilizing complaint cases to analyze how specific human rights have progressed at the UN.

The Constitutional Court of Taiwan (Court) has been the subject of extensive research in the field of comparative judicial politics, recognized for its protection of civil rights and curtailment of Taiwan’s authoritarian government in the 1990s. However, the literature does not continue its examination of the Court into the 21st-century, and little is known about the Court’s ongoing role within the new democratic government of Taiwan. My research fills this gap in the literature by examining the activity of the Constitutional Court over the last two decades and its engagement with constitutional questions. What role has the Court played in the new, democratic polity of Taiwan? Has the Court progressively developed the body of constitutional law in Taiwan, or has it adjudicated conservatively over political and individual rights issues? To examine these questions, I analyze a number of cases from 1985-2017, coding Court decisions to determine the subject, frequency, and trend of its decisions. I also draw from existing literature to investigate these cases’ context and significance. Preliminary findings suggest that the Court has exercised judicial restraint when faced with constitutional questions involving salient political questions or institutional government powers, and deferred to other state bodies in fear of damaging its own legitimacy. In contrast, the Court has actively developed the constitution in individual rights issues and expanded civil liberties. My findings suggest that constitutional courts in new democracies cannot be categorized simply as either activist or constrained. Instead, judges selectively address constitutional questions and issue judgments that strike a balance between restraint and activism to strengthen their legitimacy.

Courts are a critical institution in democratic societies. Yet their role of protecting minority voices and clarifying executive and legislative power, forever place these institutions in a legitimacy crisis. Place this court in a transitioning democracy and the challenges of balancing political and societal interests are even greater. The Hungarian Constitutional Court (HCC) is my experiment. During the first period of the HCC (1990-1998), the Court relied heavily on activist constitutional interpretation and the use of abstract review through actio popularis participation in order to create legitimacy as a new institution and as a protector of the new Hungarian democracy. Through the following period, 1998-2010, the Court became much more moderate and the use of actio popularis decreased steadily. The purpose of this study is to test how changes in the HCC's methods of constitutional interpretation and access to the HCC affected the legitimacy and power of the HCC and how that legitimacy and power connects to the protection of a new democracy. To answer these questions, I engage in a historical analysis examining the criticism of the court during the first twenty years of the HCC, including an in-depth analysis of cases that use activist or text-based interpretation constitution and their negative impact on the HCC's legitimacy. I also construct a data set of the trends in the use of actio popularis within the court and an analysis of its effect of different levels of access on the Court's perceived legitimacy. Preliminary findings suggest that inconsistencies with the methods of constitutional interpretation used by the Court and decreased access to the HCC have decreased the Court's legitimacy to the point that the Court is no longer a powerful institution and no longer able to protect Hungarian democracy.

With rapid technological advances, robots, unmanned vehicles, and other artificial intelligence (hereby referred to as AI) – simulation of human behavior on a computer - entities proliferate into everyday lives. Increasingly, the military is using AI to put troops out of harm’s way; however, a question of criminal liability arises when certain weapons and drones could cause damage on a grand scale, at a distance, and with higher propensity. Who is to be held responsible for the potentially widespread war offenses of these automated systems when there is not necessarily someone controlling those systems on the ground: the manufacturer, the programmer, or the AI entity itself? While questions of such caliber have fanned the flames of widespread opposition to autonomous weapons, the purpose of this study is to determine ways for adjudicating them as used in war scenes instead of banning them, and to that end, this project turns towards International Laws (specifically Criminal Law) and explores the precedence set by past trialed cases to establish an understanding of responsibility as attached to certain individuals in mass violations. It further moves on to examine the types of adjudicated crimes and review statistical data surrounding the summoning of each of International Criminal Law’s provisions in individual cases as to develop a definition of prosecutable criteria in terms of weapons and destruction in order to find an outlet with jurisdiction to assess the admissibility of autonomous weapons. Preliminary findings bolster a greater demand for the International Criminal Court (that prosecutes grand scale murder and war crimes) as a candidate for trying individuals for AI-related violations. With the presence of such institution’s already well-defined regulations that can be expanded to encompass criminal liability for unlawful use of AI, this paper comes to the conclusion that fully autonomous weapons could be indeed of positive consequences.

The responsibility of the European Court of Human Rights [ECtHR] is to supervise the enforcement of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Convention on Human Rights is an international convention to protect human rights and political freedoms in Europe. Among the cases that the ECtHR decides are legal framings of women’s rights as human rights. Although the literature on women’s rights in a human rights context is of abundance in the academy, there is a gap in understanding what an international judicial body like the ECtHR does for women’s rights. The purpose of this study is to fill this academic chasm by analyzing if, how, and why decisions made on cases involving violence against women either expand or narrow women’s rights on a global scale. I hypothesize that when the ECtHR decides cases on violence against women, there is a positive relationship between the actions of the ECtHR and the narrowing of women’s rights. To do this, I employ an original data set of compiled case law on violence against women rulings from the ECtHR from 1997-2019. Preliminary findings suggest a dominant understanding that there is a positive relationship between rulings on violence against women and the narrowing of women’s rights. These findings introduce the question of whether the ECtHR exercises a gendered legal consciousness, bringing us to a more robust understanding of how human rights law might overlook violations that disparately impact women.

Ethnic democracies exist as a paradoxical form of government: democratic institutions are present, but they are challenged by a dominant ethnic majority, often with little voice for ethnic minorities. This research examines this paradox through a case study of judicial politics in Israel. Since Israel's 1948 establishment as a democratic and Jewish state, the fundamental question of what exactly constitutes an Israeli identity has been a constant source of debate within this ethnic democracy, one even the Israeli Supreme Court struggles to answer. Israeli Arabs are 1/5 of the country's population yet they continue to experience discrimination in state institutions. Due to the Court's reputation as a defender of constitutional rights, minority activist groups have utilized the Court to advance minority rights protections. This paper examines the question of what role the Court takes in protecting and developing Israeli Arab equality rights. When and how does the Court rule in cases where the Israeli government infringes on Arab rights? Drawing from the law and courts scholarship, I hypothesize that given the Court's expansive review powers, it will not hesitate to expand and uphold minority rights protections in the face of state discrimination, but will not do so in cases that directly challenge government authority as a Jewish state. To answer these questions, I created a dataset of the Court's case law regarding Arab minority rights protections and coded the cases for the rights invoked, the type of claims, and the outcome of decisions to examine how the Court balanced Israeli state interests and Arab minority rights. The broader implications of this research problematize how minority rights are protected within the confinements of a dominant state ethnic identity and provide further understanding of the paradoxical elements of ethnic democracies. 

Oral swab analysis (OSA) is an alternative to sputum testing for tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis. Sputum is a viscous material coughed up from human airways and the most common human specimen used to test for TB. However, obtaining sputum can be difficult for some patients and occupationally hazardous for whoever is collecting the sample. Oral swabs can be collected rapidly and non-invasively, and do not require extensive processing for analysis. A larger quantity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) DNA can be detected using tongue swabs as compared to cheek swabs. Measurements of oral microbiota have been found to align with this trend when measured using quantitative PCR (qPCR) for bacterial DNA genes encoding conserved regions of the 16S rRNA subunit, which are common across a large variety of bacterial species and useful for comparison of relative abundance using universal bacterial qPCR. Bacterial DNA as quantified by universal qPCR was used to test whether the capacity and efficiency for biomass collection and release of alternative swab types are significantly better than previously used swabs. The qPCR protocol was identified and validated through literature review, comparing different primer sets, and testing different conditions. Tongue swab samples were collected from healthy Seattle-based volunteers, spiked with an avirulent lab-strain of Mtb (H37Ra), and processed with the QIAGEN QIAamp DNA mini kit. Alternative swab types were tested via the aforementioned qPCR protocol. The swab product that collects the most bacterial DNA are subsequently used in clinical evaluations of OSA conducted on TB patients. Data are currently being collected for analysis, and we anticipate that qPCR will determine the effectiveness of different sampling methods for the quantification of universal bacterial 16s rDNA. It is expected that this study will lead to improved OSA-based diagnostic tests for the detection of tuberculosis.

Microneedles are an effective method for transdermal delivery of a variety of pharmaceutically active agents primarily because of their ability to puncture the stratum corneum. Tissue puncture using microneedles also has potential to improve drug delivery at mucosal sites such as the buccal mucosa, where topical dosing is limited by a thick epithelial layer and continuous salivary flow. However, the low tissue stiffness and wide variance in epithelial thickness present in the oral mucosa preclude direct translation of currently available transdermal microneedle application methods. Further studies of microneedle drug delivery in the oral mucosa require methods for complete and reproducible microneedle application. This project aims to address this need with a device that can apply microneedles to the buccal mucosa with reproducible penetration depth and force, metrics which are correlated with delivery efficiency. The device is designed to be tunable to accommodate microneedle arrays with various dimensions and mechanical properties. Physical parameters of the device are optimized in silico via finite element analysis simulation of tissue puncture with a microneedle array. A prototype of the device is then evaluated using a tissue phantom model to assess penetration depth and force. Performance of the lead candidate device is then validated in tissue explants. This project provides insights for future improvements to microneedle application in the oral mucosa.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder that causes challenges with speech and nonverbal communication, social interaction and repetitive behaviors. It is hypothesized that ASD is caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors such that symptoms and behaviors present differently between individuals. Given variability in causes and symptoms of ASD, it is important to look at the effectiveness of treatments for individuals with specific genetic and behavioral profiles, including individuals with rare genetic mutations linked to ASD. Recommended treatments include biomedical, behavioral, speech, and occupational therapies, which can be expensive and time consuming for families. Speech-language therapies and other services can be provided through a school district or through private providers, but the effectiveness of these services for individuals with rare ASD-associated genetic mutations is currently unknown. The aim of this project is to compare satisfaction with school-based versus private speech-language therapy for individuals with mutations to DYRK1A or SCN2A, which are associated with ASD and language delay. In this study, participants included individuals with a disruptive mutation to either DYRK1A (n=28, ages 4-24 years) or to SCN2A (n=23, ages 3-21 years). Treatment history interviews will be analyzed to assess caregivers’ perceptions of treatment effectiveness. We hypothesize that there will be greater satisfaction with private speech-language therapy than with school-based services, as these services may allow for greater communication and coordination with parents. We also hypothesize that satisfaction with speech therapy will be highest in the DYRK1A group, as increased medical complications in SCN2A (e.g., severe seizures) may lead to reduced response to speech therapy. This study will contribute to better understanding of effective treatments and parents’ satisfaction with current services for individuals with rare genetic mutations associated with ASD, which may inform future treatment choices and recommendations.

Gender violence is an extreme manifestation of bias. More and more, research suggests that attitudes surrounding such manifestations are likely the product of a combination of objective psychological mechanisms and more obvious reactions to socialization. This same body of work shows that understanding the combination is key to any attempt to effectively target biased behaviors. When it comes to gender violence and societal attitudes surrounding specific instances, psychological research barely scratches the surface of this interplay. The nearest researchers have come is in studies pertaining to power dynamics and reactions to stereotypes, with a few related tangents in courtroom-based studies and analyses of masculine identity. Database and library searches for research in the fields of group theory, gender identity and stereotype formation and maintenance confirmed the paucity of study and revealed an as-yet unexplored intersection between these fields. This literature review suggests exploring that intersection beginning with research that views gender as a group. Studies of gender salience in children show that where an expectation of gender duality is imposed, group-like behaviors emerge. Similar research into the behavior of minority students when a fellow minority student displays a negative trait demonstrates that when a group member is forcibly reminded of group membership, one of several in-group behaviors emerges. This appears to remain true in the case of a dominant group identity, though this area has yet to be thoroughly explored. This and related research suggests that the stark reminder of gender duality that is gendered violence may also bring psychological behaviors related to group membership into play. This makes the various theoretical frameworks posited for viewing group identity a potentially fruitful place to start identifying the social-psychological interplay at work in this area, providing the basis for deeper work on topics across the spectrum of gender.