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This paper investigates the responses to the 1968 My Lai Massacre, and the subsequent trial of the atrocity's chief perpetrator, Lieutenant (Lt.) William Caley. The focus of this inquiry will be centered on the reactions to the massacre and trial within contemporary American public discourse. To this end, the paper relies predominantly on the ways in which the responses to the massacre and trial were represented within the national press. These responses will be shown to highlight the divisions within American society that characterized the final years of the Vietnam War. Utilizing these sources, a substantial segment of this paper's analysis will be dedicated to revealing the ways in which a divided American public responded to the details of the massacre after they became widely known. Finally, this paper will address the Calley trial and argue that it was the unique political and cultural realities of the time that allowed the majority of the American public to serve as apologists for the disgraced Lieutenant – regardless of whether they condemned or defended the conflict in South East Asia.

Following the federal government's requirement that electric utilities must allow other power generators to use their transmission lines, investment in the United States electric grid has faltered. The effects of underinvestment in the grid have limited the proper function of competitive energy markets and stifled investment in renewable energy sources. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ("FERC") has allowed states belonging to planning regions that coordinate transmission development to create multiple methods for allocating the costs of new facilities crossing state lines. Many of these methods use models to forecast which customers in each state benefit from the facility, and then assign costs based on those determinations. This Note argues that the fluid nature of the modern grid defies attempts to assign costs so specifically. Instead, FERC should require the costs of high-voltage interstate transmission facilities to be spread equally among all customers in a planning region. Only then, with this socialized cost allocation method, can cost allocations comply with the requirement that rate determinations be "just and reasonable."