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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Copyright And The First Amendment: Comrades, Combatants, Or Uneasy Allies?, Joseph P. Bauer
Copyright And The First Amendment: Comrades, Combatants, Or Uneasy Allies?, Joseph P. Bauer
Journal Articles
The copyright regime and the First Amendment seek to promote the same goals. Both seek the creation and dissemination of more, better, and more diverse literary, pictorial, musical and other works. But, they use significantly different means to achieve those goals. The copyright laws afford to the creator of a work the exclusive right to reproduce, distribute, transform, and perform that work for an extended period of time. The First Amendment, on the other hand, proclaims that Congress "shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech or of the press," thus at least nominally indicating that limitations on the reproduction …
Substantive Canons And Faithful Agency, Amy Coney Barrett
Substantive Canons And Faithful Agency, Amy Coney Barrett
Journal Articles
Federal courts have long employed substantive canons of construction in the interpretation of statutes. For example, they apply the rule of lenity, which directs that ambiguous criminal statutes be interpreted in favor of the defendant, and the avoidance canon, which directs that statutes be interpreted in a manner that prevents the court from having to address serious constitutional questions. They also apply so-called “clear statement” rules — for example, absent a clear statement from Congress, a federal court will not interpret a statute to abrogate state sovereign immunity. While some commentators have attempted to rationalize these and other substantive canons …