Source: https://www.thefacultylounge.org/2017/07/page/2/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:03:35+00:00

Document:
Historians, political scientists, and indeed many other scholars in the humanities and social sciences have long relied on archives to help them craft their dissertations and theses, round out a monograph that needs just one more primary source to complete an argument, and to end an episode of the BackStory podcast with the “Footnotes” segment. These are the obvious reasons archives are important; they provide us with the primary source material necessary to make cogent arguments about history using a plethora of materials. But, archives also serve many other scholarly purposes that might not be readily apparent, yet may serve scholars well.
Recently I was fortunate enough to visit two archives with the help of two competitively selected grants: the Tupac Amaru Shakur Archive at Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library and the Khalaf Al Habtoor Archive at Illinois College. Both experiences were rewarding and both helped emphasize that archives were not simply about producing traditional historical scholarship.
There are several benefits to archives research that help scholars become better. The first, and one that might be the most important, is that archives help scholars make institutional arguments about the importance of their programs as well as question campus problems that might have deep historical roots. The Georgetown Slavery Archive is one great example of the latter.
When academic programs are under pressure from increased calls for accountability and the increasing neoliberalization of education, explaining a department, center, or program’s larger role over the years might help significantly to stem pressure to trim budgets or cut staff. The same holds true for law schools where various centers, clinical programs, and even extracurricular options may be under pressure from administrators or donors. When I visited the Khalaf Al Habtoor Archive at Illinois College I was hoping to learn more about the long history of debating at Illinois College. The College had both a history of public speaking and debating with its literary societies, which still exist today, as well as supporting competitive debate for decades. Yet, there was relatively little information or institutional knowledge about the 1990s. Wanting to tell a more complete history that emphasized debate’s role over the years, I hoped to fill in the gaps so that debate didn’t become simply a fad of the 2000s or 2010s that was mere nostalgia for the Illinois College Debate Team’s glory days in the 1940s and 1950s. Rather, I hoped that recognizing the debate team as alive and well in the 1990s would help explain its continued importance the College today.
To that end, rather than producing a monograph or research note, I hoped to develop the College’s institutional memory to better position a current program in the campus community. Of course, this involved countless time looking through course catalogs, student newspapers, and yearbooks, but in the end I discovered a much richer history than anyone at the College seemed to understand. Similarly, scholars who run centers or are in charge of programs (or sponsor student organizations) would be well served to research in their college’s archives to explain why beyond the last year or last strategic plan, what they do matters to the college. It is easy to assume that everyone on campus “get’s it” or that there is something self-evident about historical research or campus traditions, but that’s not true in a world of academic silos and constant newsfeeds.
Law schools often have robust archives that house information concerning faculty, students, funding, scholarship, and more. For example, Harvard, Stanford, Minnesota, Penn, and Georgetown all have archives. Important research questions might be: Why was this program founded and do we still support those goals? What has been the history of community relations for this school and how could it be improved? What problems have faced this school in terms of X, Y, or Z, and how can we avoid them as we expand campus, change course offerings, etc.? There’s much to be learned from archives.
A second reason archives are important beyond scholarly work is that they can teach scholars new skills. I’m well aware that many scholars might scoff at the idea that a law or humanities student needs to learn these skills because of course they developed them in their undergraduate, masters programs, or in a specialized legal research, writing, or history course. But, that’s simply not true. Scholars too might have limited experience with visual imaging software, online information repositories, various types of scanners, etc. In an age of digital evidence and increasing technology in the courtroom, archives might help students, scholars, and even practitioners develop skills that directly translate to e-discovery practice and not simply that help a legal history syllabus or final paper.
A third reason archives are important is that they connect you with people you need as a scholar even if they aren’t directly related to your research interests. The world of archives management and librarianship (these are, in fact, two different fields) is interesting and each a rigorous professional and academic community in their own right. Depending on one’s institution, the archive might be managed by an archivist, librarian, or both. They both have their own online communities, conferences, and researchers. Connecting with these professionals can be an invaluable resource as they work with you by sending you new conferences, new collections, etc.
Lastly, and one perhaps more germane to a school’s vitality, is that archives give scholars and students a broader understanding of their institution, potentially increasing the connection to that place. Events become complicated, actors conflicted, and policies open to interpretation. Perhaps one might discover a particular social justice mission that motivated the law school in years past, or perhaps one gains a better understanding of a school’s leading role in training people of color, or supporting veterans. All of this is to indicate that schools looking to enhance feelings of affiliation might benefit from exposing scholars and students to their history.
Today scholars must face the realities of shrinking budgets, changes in curricula, and calls for accountability that may very well miss the mark of a department, program, or center’s importance to scholars, students, and the college community. Yet, archives can bolster the case for the work do in ways beyond the highly-touted monograph. Indeed, there are strong institutional reasons for incorporating archives into teaching, strategic planning, and even donor and alumni relations. It’s time to dust off those leather covers and get to work.
The ever-popular Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) annual conference has added a new dimension this year: a conference within a conference focused on mindfulness in law. There will be varied panels on the role of mindfulness in teaching, scholarship, the legal profession and the student experience. Congressman Tim Ryan will be the keynote. Information about the mindfulness conference is here. This event is being organized by a subcommittee of the AALS and the Mindfulness in Law Society.
In this article on Science Based Medicine, Dr. Harriet Hall sets out the significance of the Number Needed to Treat (NNT) as a measure of the benefit of a medical intervention (drug, procedure, or other therapy). In brief, the NNT represents the total number of patients that must be treated for one person to benefit (on average, of course). Not too surprisingly, it turns out that most patients do not benefit (or do not benefit much) from most therapies. Hall uses the example of statins for heart disease, explaining that "60 people without heart disease have to be treated with statins for 5 years to prevent one heart attack. For people who already have heart disease, the NNT to prevent one non-fatal heart attack is 39, and the NNT to save one life is 83." That is actually a fairly low NNT, which makes statins a good choice for people with any risk factors at all.
Hall's article links to a fascinating website that provides the NNTs, as well as the associated risk factors, for hundreds of therapies, arranged by medical specialties from cardiology to urology. It also lists the studies on which the NNTs are based. I pulled up a couple of examples at random: Antibiotic treatment for acute sinusitis has an NNT of 15; zinc for the common cold has an NNT of 5; aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke has an NNT of 1667, and an NNT of 50 for those with known heart disease or a prior stroke. Most interesting are some of the better known screening procedures. PSA screening for prostate cancer has an infinite NNT (that is, "none were helped," in the sense of statistically reduced mortality); while CT scanning for lung cancer has an NNT of 217 (among high-risk subjects).
I am not aware of any comparable studies for legal procedures, but some can be figured pretty easily. The NNT for certiorari petitions, for example, seems to be somewhere around 100. But what is the NNT for the common motions in trial courts, such as motions to suppress (in criminal cases) or summary judgment (in civil cases)?
They are looking for jurors who not only have no viewpoints on the case, but also little exposure to the subject matter, who don’t follow the news, haven’t traveled to the places discussed at trial and have pastimes as innocuous as possible.
An ignorance so shining and conspicuous as yours--now I have it--go on a jury. That is your place.
The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must continue to use a worthless system because it was good a thousand years ago...I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall be defeated--every effort I make to save the country "misses fire."
The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.
Twain had many complaints about jurors, but he was especially concerned that they had to be "people who do not read newspapers."
Earlier this summer, I taught a three-week class on United States intellectual property law at Jilin University in Changchun, China, as part of a program created by the Confucius Institute at the University of Kentucky. I was the first professor from the College of Law to participate in the program. I had an excellent experience and was very impressed by my Chinese students. The College of Law recently published a short article in which I described my experiences, which you can read here.
In any case, friends with experience teaching in China gave me a lot of helpful advice. In particular, several people noted that it was unrealistic to expect many of my Chinese students to be able to read and understand United States judicial opinions, especially given the short time-frame. Many of my students were undergraduates, many of them were not law students, and the Chinese legal system is significantly different from the United States legal system. In light of those observations, I prepared a reader, summarizing United States intellectual property doctrine and providing abstracts of relevant cases for discussion. I have posted the reader to SSRN with a CC0/public domain license. You can download it here.
My students were very happy with the reader and seemed to find it quite useful. I hope others will be able to use it as well. Of course, I welcome comments and suggestions for improvements.
SFMOMA recently launched a wildly popular new feature called "Send Me SFMOMA." As SFMOMA explains, "Text 572-51 with the words 'send me' followed by a keyword, a color, or even an emoji and you’ll receive a related artwork image and caption via text message." For example, I texted "send me cats," and received the above image in reply, Andrea Modica's photograph "Treadwell, New York" (1987).
But I found the reason SFMOMA created the feature every bit as interesting as the feature itself. According to Jay Mollica, SFMOMA’s "creative technologist," the idea was to provide public access to the 95% of the SFMOMA collection that isn't on public display - and in some cases may never be.
SFMOMA is hardly alone. Most museums can show only 2-4% of their collection at any one time. Why do museums maintain such large collections - at significant expense! - of works they can't display? There are many reasons, but one is "deaccessioning rules." The professional organizations governing art - in particular, the Association of Art Museum Directors - have adopted professional norms governing when and how art museums can "deaccession," or sell or otherwise dispose of artworks in their collections. These "deaccessioning norms" typically provide that museums may sell artworks only in order to raise funds to purchase new artworks, and may not sell artwork to raise funds to cover other expenses, including operations and capital expenses.
Defenders of deaccessioning norms typically argue that they reflect an "ethical" obligation imposed on museums that hold artworks in the "public trust." But as Donn Zaretsky of The Art Law Blog has observed over and over and over and over, this argument is just incoherent. Deaccessioning norms permit museums to sell artworks, and only restrict how museums can use the proceeds from those sales. Museums can sell artworks in order to buy new artworks, but can't sell artworks to, say, prevent themselves from going bankrupt or enable themselves to eliminate admission fees. In other words, artworks are held in the "public trust" only when the "deaccessioning police" want them to be.
What can account for this peculiar set of rules, which seem to prevent museums - typically charitable organizations - to take actions that are not only consistent with, but would often seem otherwise mandated by their charitable purposes? Michael Rushton has offered some potential explanations, based on aligning the incentives of the management and board.
Perhaps I am excessively cynical, but I am inclined to follow the money. What is the effect of deaccessioning norms? To maintain the scarcity of works on the secondary art market. Once an artwork goes to a museum collection, it is effectively off the market forever. Or at least, if it ever does go on the market, it will only be to remove other (typically higher value) works from the market. In other words, deaccessioning norms effectively prevent museums (charitable organizations) from claiming any capital gains in the value of their assets, and reserve those gains for private collectors. Viewed in this light, deaccessioning norms are a way for private collectors to steal from the charitable sector and dress up their theft as "ethics."
I have written about this issue previously in a blog post and in an article on the DIA in the Detroit bankruptcy. Look for a future article, tentatively titled, "Deaccessioning Norms are Unethical."
The AALS Section on Law & Religion is once again soliciting papers for consideration for its annual Award for Excellence in Scholarship, to be given at the AALS Annual Meeting next January. All fellows at AALS Member Schools, as well as faculty members with ten years or less experience as faculty members, are eligible. The award is given annually to a paper either published or to be published by July 15 of this year, that has made an outstanding scholarly contribution to the field of law and religion.
Any faculty member at an AALS member school can nominate up to one paper for the award. Nominations should be sent directly to Professor Haider Ala Hamoudi (hamoudi@pitt.edu) as Chair of the Prize Committee. Nominations must be received by August 15.
Charles Murray, the controversial scholar whose speech drew violent reaction at Middlebury, has spoken at Yale Law School twice during the past few years. Students and faculty engaged with him, and students held a separate event to protest and discuss the implications of his work. But he spoke without interruption. That's exactly how a university is supposed to work.
There may be a reason why law students haven't resorted to the extreme tactics we've seen on college campuses: their training.
In law schools we don't just teach our students to know the weaknesses in their own arguments. We demand that they imaginatively and sympathetically reconstruct the best argument on the other side.
The rituals of respect shown inside and outside the courtroom come from this training. Those rituals are so powerful that they can trump even the deepest divides.
I agree with Dean Gerken about the virtues of legal education, which emphasizes the importance of listening and responding to disagreeable arguments, but I think she is over claiming a bit. Law students are self-selected. Most of them come to law school because they are already inclined to listen to multiple sides of an argument or to accept the need for formal give and take. We teach them how the process works, and how to be effective, but most of them do not need us to convince them of the importance of hearing out the other side (or at least not interrupting).
There are also demographic factors. The median law student is probably five to seven years older than the median undergrad. They are also much busier, with more demanding classes and often part-time jobs. And most important, law students are intensely career focused, and therefore risk averse. Students in other professional schools share these characteristics, and I am not aware of disruptive demonstrations at medical, business, pharmacy, journalism, theology, engineering, or veterinary schools.
Still, the campus disrupters would do well to listen to Dean Gerken's admonition: "Lawyers learn to see the world as their opponents do, and nothing is more humbling than that."
Following up on the last trivia question about a school (and later an African American church) on park land, the house at right is part of a park that is on land that was once a Native American reservation. As I understand the story, in the very early eighteenth century some Native American people were moved to a 500 acre reservation. (This park has about 180 acres of that reservation.) And by the middle of the 1730s they had moved further west. Obviously this house was built after this was no longer a reservation. One report I saw claims this was the first Native American reservation, though I find that hard to believe because I thought that Virginia was by the late seventeenth century already locating Natives on property that was held in trust for them. And the trustees were prominent white men in the Virginia community. But at any rate, this was one of the first reservations if not the first. It is an incredibly beautiful setting. I'd love to know more about the history of the relocation of Native people here and their experience once they got here.
So the question is, where is this and what's the name of the reservation. Now that Owen has identified this, I want to post a picture of a monument to this reservation. The monument was put up in 1924.
Michigan State University College of Law seeks to hire a tenured or tenure-track faculty member to serve as Director of the College’s nationally recognized Legal RnD program. The successful candidate will teach in and build on the program’s established reputation. The Law College seeks applicants with a commitment to excellence in teaching and scholarly achievement (or significant promise) in artificial intelligence and the law, computational methods, empirical legal studies, information privacy and security law, legal analytics, technology and the delivery of legal services, or related fields of study. Lateral and entry-level candidates are encouraged to apply.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published a front-page story titled Paying Professors: Inside Google’s Academic Influence Campaign, alleging that professors - most of them law professors - had accepted substantial amounts of funding from Google to produce research papers helpful to Google's interests, and in some cases had not disclosed that funding. The article was based largely on information provided by the "Google Transparency Project," a "research initiative of "Campaign for Accountability," which is itself a "501(c)3 project." Of whom, it is unclear.
Of course, reasonable people can differ as to whether it is ethical for professors to accept research funding from private individuals or organizations, especially if the donor may have an interest in their conclusions. I would personally be uncomfortable accepting such funding. And professors should certainly disclose any such funding, if they should accept it.
However, some of the information provided by the Google Transparency Project is sloppy, to put it charitably. For example, the Google Transparency Project inaccurately listed some scholars as not having disclosed Google funding. Even worse, it listed some scholars as having received "Google funding" based on Google-funded academic fellowships. And some of the scholars listed could not plausibly be described as having received "Google funding" under any interpretation. While Google Transparency Project is entitled to question the objectivity of scholars who receive Google funding, I think it has an ethical obligation to ensure that its accusations are accurate before it makes them. Questioning the impartiality of a scholar is a serious charge.
Ironically, the source of funding for the Google Transparency Project and the Campaign for Accountability is itself quite opaque. While 501(c)(3) organizations are entitled to keep the identities of their donors private, in this case it smacks of hypocrisy. Especially given that the accusations against Google and its affiliated scholars could benefit Google's competitors, some of whom may be donors. I question whether it is appropriate for a charitable organization to engage in a media campaign that may benefit the financial interests of its donors, or consistent with the requirements of 501(c)(3).
UPDATE: Apparently, The Wall Street Journal did its own research, rather than relying on the information provided by the Google Transparency Project, because the information was so inaccurate and unreliable. In addition, Oracle (one of Google's competitors) has disclosed that it is a donor to the Google Transparency Project. I think that raises concerns about whether its parent organization the Campaign for Accountability is improperly providing a private benefit.
I also thought I would provide a link to the Open Letter on Ethical Norms in Intellectual Property Scholarship (which I signed) drafted by Robin Feldman, Mark A. Lemley, Jonathan S. Masur, and Arti K. Rai.
When President Trump released a 2018 budget that proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts ("NEA"), the art world was unsurprisingly apoplectic. It was a slap in the face, for what amounted to a pittance: $300 million of $1.1 trillion in discretionary spending. But for conservatives, it was symbolic. The NEA was a poster child for government support of deranged, anti-American radicals. Of course, the overwhelming majority of NEA grants actually fund community arts in all 50 states: youth orchestras and repertory theater, not wacky New York performance artists. But that's not the perception, and perceptions matter.
In any case, Trump soon got distracted, and Congress put the NEA back into the budget, even proposing a $2 million increase in funding. But the same debate is likely to recur next year, and the year after that. If the art world wants to ensure that the NEA has a secure budget, it should consider looking to a dedicated revenue source, rather than annual appropriations.
Luckily, there is a ready candidate: a resale royalty tax. In the late 19th century, French artists agitated for and eventually obtained a droit de suite or "resale royalty right" that entitled them to a percentage of the resale price of their artworks. Gradually, many other countries created a similar right. But the United States was not among them. In the 1970s, as American art dominated the international art world, American artists began to demand a similar right, proposing one federal law after another, without success. While California did create a state resale royalty right, it was enforced almost entirely in the breach, and is on the verge of being vacated as unconstitutional.
Many people have weighed in on the merits of creating a resale royalty right: artists and practitioners typically in favor, and scholars typically against. Supporters of a resale royalty right tend to rely on equity and fairness, arguing that artists lack bargaining power and that it is unfair for collectors to profit on resales, but not artists. Detractors point out that artists often have more bargaining power than participants in similar markets, collectors take on significant risk when purchasing artworks, and resale royalty right proposals tend to give artists all of the upside and none of the downside, even though only a tiny fraction (less than 1%!) of artists have a secondary market for their works. There are a panoply of options, but I especially appreciate the brevity of Guy Rub's essay The Unconvincing Case for Resale Royalties.
I think there is another, even deeper problem with the equity-based argument for resale royalties: it is actually profoundly inequitable. At best, resale royalties can only benefit the tiny fraction of artists who are fortunate enough to become sufficiently commercially successful to have a secondary market for their work. And at worst, it causes a wealth-transfer from unsuccessful artists to successful artists, by inducing collectors to pay less on the primary market, anticipating lower profits in the secondary market.
Luckily, it's a problem we can solve, and protect the NEA at the same time. There is no reason that resale royalties have to go directly to artists. In fact, it would be far easier and more efficient to administer a resale royalty tax on art transactions. And there is no reason that the proceeds from such a tax should be used to benefit already successful artists. On the contrary, it would be a perfect dedicated source of revenue for the NEA, which provides support to arts organizations (and indirectly artists) that are not commercially successful. In other words, the NEA could be funded by the very people who claim value its goals, and resale royalties could be used for purposes that are actually equitable.
If you are interested in further reading on this proposal and other related proposals, I wrote a paper titled Equitable Resale Royalties, which I presented at AALS last year, and which will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law.
About Columbus: The Ohio State University campus is located in Columbus, the capital city of Ohio. Columbus is the center of a rapidly growing and diverse metropolitan area with a population of over 1.5 million. The area offers a wide range of very affordable housing, many cultural and recreational opportunities, excellent schools, and a strong economy based on government as well as service, transportation, and technology industries (see http://columbusregion.com/). Columbus and its many suburbs have consistently been rated as one of the Top U.S. places for quality of life. Additional information about the Columbus area is available here.
assessment and which they can assess in a timely manner.
or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the journal.
something constitutes a relevant interest.
• decline to review if they feel unable to provide a fair and unbiased review.
• decline to review if they have been involved with any of the work in the manuscript or its reporting.
under consideration at another journal.
and in fairness to the authors.
basically sound and clear; suggestions for changes that improve clarity are, however, important.
associates’ work; suggestions must be based on valid academic or technological reasons.
It seems obvious that problems arise in peer review -- such as libel and impersonation -- that we just don't see in law reviews.
You can read the entire COPE Ethics Code here.
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, LAS VEGAS—WILLIAM S. BOYD SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for tenure-track Associate Professors or tenured full Professors of Law. UNLV Law, one of the nation's leading public law schools, is a community of engaged scholars, teachers, and recognized community leaders. As the only law school in Nevada, UNLV Law enjoys strong state support and sustained engagement with communities across the state, including the judiciary, federal, state, and local government, and the non-profit and business sectors. Working in one of the most diverse cities in the country, members of the faculty have unique opportunities to impact their communities.
Applicants for law school faculty positions should submit a letter of interest along with a detailed resume, at least three professional references, and cites or links to published works. With respect to our clinics and legal writing program, please note that UNLV Law has a unified tenure track; accordingly, professors who teach clinics or legal writing have all of the privileges and scholarly expectations that are associated with tenure. We anticipate hiring as many as two new faculty colleagues, although of course the number of available positions is contingent on funding. We invite applications from rising and accomplished scholars in all areas. Applications are considered on a rolling basis, and appointments would likely begin with the 2018-2019 academic year.
Contact: Please send application materials to the Appointments Committee Coordinator, Teri Greenman, Faculty Appointments Committee, UNLV—Boyd School of Law, 4505 South Maryland Parkway – Campus Box 451003, Las Vegas, NV 89154-1003 or by email to 2018Appointments@law.unlv.edu. The Appointments Committee members are Francine Lipman (chair), Rachel Anderson, Ian Bartrum, Mary Beth Beazley, Lydia Nussbaum, and Jeff Stempel.
UNLV is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity educator and employer committed to excellence through diversity.
In light of Alfred Brophy's recent post on issues arising in relation to Edward Albee's estate, I thought I'd mention two recent articles addressing the relationship between intellectual property and trusts & estates law, both of which I found quite interesting.
To what extent should authors be able to control what happens to their literary, artistic, and musical creations after they die? Viewed through the lens of a number of succession law trends, the evidence might suggest that strong control is warranted. The decline of the Rule Against Perpetuities and rise of incentive trusts reflect a tightening grip of the dead hand. And yet, an unconstrained ability of the dead to determine future uses of literature, art, and music is a fundamentally troubling notion. This Article evaluates the instructions authors give with respect to their authorial works against the backdrop of the laws and policies that govern bequests more generally. In particular, it considers the enforceability of attempted artistic control through the imposition of a fiduciary duty. In balancing the competing interests, this Article considers the demands of both state trust laws and federal copyright policy. In the end, this Article argues that authorial instructions must yield to the needs of the living. Such a view requires that, to the greatest extent possible, some living person(s) be authorized to decide how works of authorship are used—even if that means overriding artistic control by the dead.
I had the privilege of reading and commenting on this article while it was in draft form, and was very impressed by its measured take on the merits and demerits of testamentary control over artistic estates. It's a great read, especially because of the colorful anecdotes Subotnik uses to illustrate the various issues. No one does crazy like artists!
Death is an inevitably disruptive event. When a famous artist or public figure dies, the fallout can be particularly complex and contentious. An artist’s surviving family and close friends frequently seek privacy and solitude as they process a deeply personal loss, while millions of fans, by contrast, seek to widely share, rework, and celebrate the decedent’s archive of work. When these very different mourning processes intersect, intellectual property laws play a pivotal role in deciding how an artist is mourned, commemorated, and remembered.
This Article reexamines the interests of an artist’s families, friends, and other heirs (“IP estates”) within the IP system. Previous scholarship has been nearly uniformly critical of IP estates: IP estates “jealously guard” their ancestor’s legacy, “sit back and collect rent,” and put a “stranglehold” on the public domain. This Article, by contrast, reveals a more diverse and sympathetic set of motivations. Although IP estates do often try to restrict fair use and free speech, they also seek to vindicate interests otherwise celebrated in our legal culture: remedying exploitation, protecting family privacy, and maintaining the dignity of the deceased. For the families and friends of individuals in creative fields, IP can serve as a valuable tool in managing the messy tasks of mourning and moving forward.
This Article excavates the role of IP in mediating the diverse interests of families and fans as they process the death of an artist. Even if the conduct of IP estates can be highly questionable from a social welfare perspective, recognizing the interests that animate their disputes nonetheless can lead to (1) greater common ground among the various stakeholders negotiating an artist’s cultural legacy and (2) improved use of estate planning to reduce the likelihood of conflict.
While I am strongly inclined to be skeptical of the efficiency of both IP estates and "dignitary" claims to IP control, Gilden offers plausible policy reasons to at least take them into account. I do wonder whether there is a chicken and egg problem: Do families need IP control in order to manage mourning, or do families use IP to manage mourning because they have it? Also, while I love the rhyming title, I can't help but channel philosopher of trademarks Ed Timberlake, and note that not only is "IP" not a helpful term, but also the issues addressed in this article really only implicate copyright (and maybe the right of publicity?). Nevertheless, I highly recommend this iconoclastic and beautifully written article.
Amelia Earhart is much in the news lately, including this oped in today's New York Times.
On June 10, 1858, the Attorney General issued an opinion titled Invention of a Slave, concluding that a slave owner could not patent a machine invented by his slave, because neither the slave owner nor his slave could take the required patent oath. The slave owner could not swear to be the inventor, and the slave could not take an oath at all. The Patent Office denied at least two patent applications filed by slave owners, one of which was filed by Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who later became the President of the Confederate States of America. But it also denied at least one patent application filed by a free African-American inventor, because African-Americans could not be citizens of the United States under Dred Scott.
Slave owners objected to the Attorney General’s opinion, arguing that they were entitled to own all of the fruits of the labor of their slaves, whether physical or mental. Abolitionists objected to its application by the Patent Office, arguing that free African-Americans were citizens of the United States, entitled to patent their inventions. Slave owners unsuccessfully tried to amend the Patent Act to enable slave owners to patent the inventions of their slaves, which the Patent Act of the Confederate States of America explicitly permitted. By contrast, abolitionists successfully convinced the Attorney General to issue an opinion concluding that free African-Americans were citizens of the United States, entitled to patent their inventions, among other things.
Today, the Attorney General’s opinion in Invention of a Slave is forgotten for the best reason: it was abrogated by the Reconstruction Amendments. Nevertheless, it illuminates peculiar contradictions in the ideology of slavery and its application. Slave owners justified slavery by denying the humanity and creativity of African-Americans, but still wanted to claim ownership of valuable inventions created by their slaves. They rationalized that contradiction by claiming that slaves were more creative than free African-Americans, implicitly characterizing slavery as humanitarian. By contrast, the Attorney General and the Patent Office relied on the ideology of slavery to prevent slave owners from patenting inventions created by their slaves, but ironically also prevented free African-Americans from patenting their inventions.
The article relies on primary source documents collected from many different archives and libraries. There are some documents I am still trying to obtain. And some that have proven quite elusive! In particular, on December 16, 1861, Senator Sumner of Massachusetts objected on the Senate floor that a patent application filed by one of his constituents, a free African-American, had been rejected under the Attorney General's opinion. I have not yet been able to identify the inventor in question, and would greatly appreciate any thoughts on where to look!
In any case, I hope this draft is of interest, and I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions. This paper is part of a larger project on antebellum African-American intellectual property, which I plan to pursue in an "episodic" fashion for the time being. So, more of the same to come.
Thanks to Al Brophy and the other bloggers on the Faculty Lounge for the opportunity to guest blog for a spell. I'm heading to the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP) Workshop 2017 in Toronto tomorrow morning, so I plan to share my experiences of the panels and papers presented there, all of which look very interesting.
In the meantime, I'll make a brief mention of the "Forgotten Intellectual Property" workshop I recently attended on April 22, as well as the paper I presented there. The workshop was the brainchild of Zvi Rosen, and was organized by Shubha Ghosh of Syracuse University College of Law, at Syracuse's conference center in Washington, D.C. The participants were Sam Ernst of Golden Gate University Law School, Jessica Kiser of Gonzaga Law School, Amelia Smith Rinehart of Utah Law School, Zvi Rosen of Hofstra Law School and the Copyright Office, Bob Brauneis of George Washington Law School, Bruce Boyden of Marquette Law School, and myself.
The idea behind the conference was for each participant to identify an intellectual property-related case that has been forgotten, for one reason or another, and explain why that case actually remains interesting or important.
It grew out of a question that Zvi Rosen asked on Facebook: Why is Baker v. Selden, 101 U.S. 99 (1880) the leading case on copyright's idea-expression dichotomy, rather than Perris v. Hexamer, 99 U.S. 674 (1879), which was decided a year earlier? The outcome seems especially peculiar because the subject matter of Perris, which involves the colors and symbols used on fire insurance maps, are in many respects a better fit for the idea-expression dichotomy than the system of accounting at issue in Baker. Zvi had many interesting theories, but I won't spoil the surprise. For my part, I'm tempted to make the switch, as I think Perris is probably a clearer and more readily teachable case.
Shubha Ghosh saw Zvi Rosen's question and the subsequent expressions of interest in participating in a workshop, and decided to organize the symposium. I found all of the papers fascinating.
Sam Ernst wrote about Boyden Power Brake Co. v. Westinghouse, 170 U.S. 537 (1898) and how it is (largely) forgotten because the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals has (effectively) written the "reverse doctrine of equivalents" out of existence, a follow-on to his previous work on the subject.
Jessica Kiser wrote about Wallpaper Mfrs., Ltd. v. Crown Wallcovering Corp., 680 F. 2d 755 (CCPA 1982) in relation to "unintentional trademark abandonment," arguing that it reflects a shift in the purpose of trademark law (for better or worse) from consumer protection to protecting business investment. I was especially impressed by her extensive interviews with the parties to the case, which helped her explain why the facts of the case are so misunderstood.
Amelia Smith Rinehart wrote about Bement v. National Harrow Co., 186 U.S. 70 (1902) and the Harrow Trust. Her paper provided a fascinating window into late 19th century business practices. I was especially surprised by her observation that objections to the trust focused on the avalanche of lawsuits it filed against dealers and customers, rather than manufacturers, in order to force compliance with its demands.
Bob Brauneis wrote about Columbia Broacasting System, Inc. v. Loew's Inc., 356 U.S. 43 (1958), a Supreme Court case that is forgotten, in large part, because it was never decided, as the court deadlocked when Justice Douglas was forced to recuse himself. The case involved a Jack Benny parody of the 1944 movie Gaslight (especially timely given the newfound popularity of the term "gaslighting"). Brauneis observed that if it had been decided, it probably would have affected the drafting of the Copyright Act of 1976, and especially the codification of the fair use doctrine.
And Bruce Boyden wrote about Palmer v. Daly and copyright in "stage directions," which appear less and less present in the actual works in question, the more closely they are examined.
For my own part, I wrote about an 1858 Attorney General opinion titled Invention of a Slave, which is happily forgotten because it was abrogated by the Reconstruction Amendments. But more on that in another post!
The papers presented will all be published in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Syracuse Law Review, which should be available soon. Keep an eye out!

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