Fatal postpartum spontaneous liver rupture: case report and literature review

Maternal hepatic rupture is a rare complication of pregnancy that can be fatal to both mother and child. This phenomenon is most often associated with preeclampsia/eclampsia and/or HELLP syndrome, which is defined by a collection of clinical features including hemolysis (H), elevated liver enzymes (EL), and a low platelet count (LP). These disease processes are typically identified and treated during pregnancy, often in the last trimester. The described case is unusual in that the decedent had no known history of preeclampsia/eclampsia or HELLP syndrome during this pregnancy, and she died suddenly several days postpartum of liver rupture with massive intraperitoneal hemorrhage following a routine cesarean section delivery and an uneventful hospital course. Similar cases are infrequent in the literature, which is reviewed in this report.     

First Amendment Protection for Online Platforms

The United States is home to some of the largest online platforms in the world, in part due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. Section 230 provides platforms with extraordinarily broad immunity from lawsuits arising from user content. The statute is under unprecedented scrutiny, and Congress already has amended the statute to weaken its protections. This Article examines the First Amendment protections that would remain for online platforms if Congress were to entirely eliminate Section 230. After reviewing pre-Internet cases involving offline distributors such as bookstores and newsstands, this Article concludes that although the First Amendment would offer some protections to platforms, these protections would be limited and likely would require platforms to significantly alter their operations and business models.     

Relationship Religiosity,Adult Attachment Styles,and Courtship Violence Experienced by Females

This study assesses the association between adult attachment styles, religiosity, and courtship violence as experienced by females. The sample was composed of 299, 18 to 24-year-old females attending junior level Human Development and Family Studies courses at a midwestern state university. Statistical analyses evaluated interactional effects and mean-level differences for both victimization and perpetration of courtship violence. Additionally, structural equation models were generated. Results indicate significant relationships between adult attachment styles and religiosity on reports of victimization from intimate partners. In general, the results suggest that females with low religiosity and insecure attachment styles report experiencing more courtship violence than females reporting high religiosity and secure attachment styles. The analyses also provide support for a multidimensional conceptualization of religiosity. Indicators of `relationship' religiosity were more strongly linked to lower reports of courtship violence than personal and private relationship measures. The findings suggest that future studies evaluating the effects of religiosity on courtship violence should include measures of `relationship’ religiosity.     

Should Legal Empiricists Go Bayesian?

Bayesian empirical approaches appear frequently in fields suchas egineering, computer science, political science and medicine,but almost never in law. This article illustrates how such approachesmight be very useful in empirical legal studies. In particular,Bayesian approaches enable a much more natural connection betweenthe normative or positive issues that typically motivate suchstudies and the empirical results.