Law Commons^™

The Folklore And Symbolism Of Authorship In American Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh

Faculty Scholarship

Despite its formal commitment to “authorship,” American copyright law pays surprisingly little doctrinal attention to understanding the concept. Originality, taken to be modern copyright law’s proxy for authorship, has come to assume a life of its own, with little regard to the system’s supposed ideals of authorship. What role then does authorship play in modern American copyright law? This Article argues that authorship is best understood as a form of folklore and symbolism in copyright law. Drawing on the anthropological strand of Legal Realism advanced and developed by Thurman Arnold, the Article argues that authorship serves an important symbolic purpose …