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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Legal Internalism In Modern Histories Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Taisu Zhang
Legal Internalism In Modern Histories Of Copyright, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Taisu Zhang
Faculty Scholarship
Legal internalism refers to the internal point of view that professional participants in a legal practice develop toward it. It represents a behavioral phenomenon wherein such participants treat the domain of law (or a subset of it) as normative, epistemologically self-contained, and logically coherent on its own terms regardless of whether the law actually embodies those characteristics. Thus understood, legal internalism remains an important characteristic of all modern legal systems. In this Review, we examine three recent interdisciplinary histories of copyright law to showcase the working of legal internalism. We argue that while their interdisciplinary emphasis adds to the conversation …
The Immanent Rationality Of Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
The Immanent Rationality Of Copyright Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh
Faculty Scholarship
Why does copyright treat certain kinds of copying as legally actionable? For nearly a century, American copyright thinking has referenced a core consequentialist dogma to answer this question: incentivizing the production of creative expression at minimal social cost in an effort to further social welfare. This rationale, routinely traced back to the Constitution’s seemingly utilitarian mandate that copyright law should “promote the [p]rogress” of the sciences and useful arts, has come to dominate modern copyright jurisprudence and analysis.2 By classifying specific acts of copying as a wrong, and thereby recognizing a “right to the use of one’s expression,” copyright is …