Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Readers' Copyright, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

My goal in this project is to reclaim copyright for readers (and listeners, viewers, and other members of the audience). I think, and will try to persuade you, that the gradual and relatively recent disappearance of readers’ interests from the core of copyright’s perceived goals has unbalanced the copyright system. It may have prompted, at least in part, the scholarly critique of copyright that has fueled copyright lawyers’ impression that “so many in academia side with the pirates.” It may also be responsible for much of the deterioration in public support for copyright. I argue here that copyright seems out …

The Invention Of Common Law Play Right, Jessica D. Litman

Articles

This Article explores playwrights' common law "play right." Since this conference celebrates the 300th birthday of the Statute of Anne, I begin in England in the 17th Century. I find no trace of a common law playwright's performance right in either the law or the customary practices surrounding 17th and 18th century English theatre. I argue that the nature and degree of royal supervision of theatre companies and performance during the period presented no occasion (and, indeed, left no opportunity) for such a right to arise. I discuss the impetus for Parliament's enactment of a performance right statute in 1833, …

Nonprofits And Narrative: Piers Plowman, Anthony Trollope, And Charities Law, Jill R. Horwitz

Articles

What are the narrative possibilities for understanding nonprofit law? Given the porous barriers between nonprofit law and the literature about it, there are many. Here I consider two. First, nonprofit law and nonprofit literature are each enriched and made fully explicable by reference to the other. Nonprofit law has grown in parallel with literature. It may even be that important legal texts, texts about doing and being good, were imported directly from literary sources into law. Second, in writings ranging from sensational journalism to high literature, nonprofit laws and the scandals involving their violations have captured the public imagination for …

Regulating The Poor And Encouraging Charity In Times Of Crisis: The Poor Laws And The Statute Of Charitable Uses, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

National crises such as September 11th and Hurricane Katrina resulted in an unprecedented outpouring of charitable generosity by Americans, which was encouraged by the government through tax incentives. This paper examines an earlier period of crisis, Tudor England (1485-1603), where the state encouraged philanthropy as a tool of social and political policy. Certain charitable activities were favored and others disadvantaged to spur private sector resources to resolve public problems.

The article discusses the evolution of the laws regulating the poor, which culminated in the Poor Law Legislation of 1601, a process that developed attitudes toward the poor and concepts of …

Legal Fictions In Pierson V. Post, Andrea Mcdowell

Michigan Law Review

American courts and citizens generally take the importance of private property for granted. Scholars have sought to explain its primacy using numerous legal doctrines, including natural law, the Lockean principle of a right to the product of one's labor, Law & Economics theories about the incentives created by property ownership, and the importance of bright line rules. The leading case on the necessity of private property, Pierson v. Post, makes all four of these points. This Article argues that Pierson has been misunderstood. Pierson was in fact a defective torts case that the judges shoe-horned into a property mold …

Charity Scandals As A Catalyst Of Legal Change And Literary Imagination In Nineteenth Century England, James J. Fishman

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Nineteenth century England, often called the age of reform, was a period of enormous political, social, and economic change. In the first two decades came an increase in the rate of transformation of the economy, the polity and society and a greater stir and movement in all spheres of public activity caused by more “rational and purposeful” control based upon measuring, counting and observing. Political, economic and governmental institutions developed modern structures and approaches. Charitable regulation reflected these trends. As part of a broader movement of inquiry, supervision and statutory reform, and in an effort to remedy the social evils …

The Trouble With Hairdressers, Donald J. Herzog

Articles

Why should hairdressers, of all unlikely candidates, have come to exemplify equality, to be a cultural obsession of sort? Suffice it to say that hairdressers happened to occupy a social position that made it possible to demonize them.

A Gauntlet For The Glove: The Challenge To English Boxing Contracts, Steve Greenfield, Guy Osborn

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

Strings Attached--Violin Fraud And Other Deceptions, Carla J. Shapreau

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Violin Fraud: Deception, Forgery, Theft, and the Law by Brian W. Harvey