Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-869_87ad.pdf
Page Number: 76.0

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

25 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

block even the use of a work to fashion something quite dif-
ferent.  Or  viewed  the  other  way  round,  the  decision  im-
pedes non-copyright holders’ artistic pursuits, by prevent-
ing them from making even the most novel uses of existing
materials.  On either account, the public loses: The decision 
operates to constrain creative expression.8 

The effect, moreover, will be dramatic.  Return again to
Justice  Story,  see  supra,  at  11–12:  “[I]n  literature,  in  sci-
ence and in art, there are, and can be, few, if any, things” 
that  are  “new  and  original  throughout.”    Campbell,  510 
U. S.,  at  575  (quoting  Emerson,  8  F. Cas.,  at  619).    Every
work “borrows, and must necessarily” do so.  510 U. S., at 
575.  Creators  themselves  know  that  fact  deep  in  their 
bones.  Here is Mark Twain on the subject: “The kern[e]l, 
the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk,
the actual and valuable material” of creative works—all are 
“consciously  and  unconsciously  drawn  from  a  million  out-
side sources.”  Letter from M. Twain to H. Keller, in 2 Mark 
Twain’s Letters 731 (1917); see also id., at 732 (quoting Ol-
iver  Wendell  Holmes—no,  not  that  one,  his  father  the 
poet—as  saying  “I  have  never  originated  anything  alto-
gether myself, nor met anybody who had”).  “[A]ppropria-
tion, mimicry, quotation, allusion and sublimated collabo-
ration,”  novelist  Jonathan  Lethem  has  explained,  are  “a 
kind of sine qua non of the creative act, cutting across all 
forms and genres in the realm of cultural production.”  The 

—————— 

8 No worries, the majority says: Today’s decision is only about the com-
mercial  licensing  of  artistic  works,  not  about  their  “creation”  or  their 
other uses.  See ante, at 21, and n. 10.  So, for example, if Warhol had
used his Prince silkscreen “for teaching purposes” or sought to “display
[it]  in  a  nonprofit  museum,”  the  first  factor  could  have  gone  the  other 
way.  Ante, at 21, n. 10; ante, at 6 (GORSUCH, J., concurring).  But recall 
what Samuel Johnson said about “blockheads”: Unless an artist is one, 
he makes art for money.  See supra, at 21.  So when the majority denies 
follow-on  artists  the  full  reward  of  their  creativity,  it  diminishes  their 
incentive to create.  And as should go without saying, works not created
will not appear in classrooms and museums.