Law Commons^™

The Relationship Between Foundations And Principles In Ip Law, Robert P. Merges

San Diego Law Review

In my book Justifying Intellectual Property (JIP), I wrote about what I call the “foundations” of the field of intellectual property (IP) law. I tried to distinguish between a foundational level of discourse and another level, the level of basic principles. In the San Diego conference at which my book was discussed—and in several other settings as well—the most frequent and persistent line of questioning about my book centered on the relationship between these two levels. That is what this brief Article is about.

Managing The Intellectual Property Sprawl, Shubha Ghosh

San Diego Law Review

Professor Merges, despite the centrality of creative persons to his argument, organizes a set of ideas that are conducive to refocusing intellectual property law on users. I present this user-focused argument in this Article through the following five Parts. Part II explains my suggested approach to questions about the design of intellectual property law—an approach based on the new institutional economics and the work of Ronald Coase. Part II also addresses objections to this approach. Part III identifies the user in Professor Merges’s high-level principles grounded in Locke, Kant, and Rawls. Part IV follows this argument with a closer examination …

Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay develops an ideal of public legal reason--a normative theory of legal reasons that is appropriate for a society characterized by religious and moral pluralism. One of the implications of this theory is that normative theorizing about public and private law should eschew reliance on the deep premises of deontology or consequentialism and should instead rely on what the author calls public values--values that can be affirmed without relying on the deep and controversial premises of particular comprehensive moral doctrines.

The ideal of public legal reason is then applied to a particular question--whether welfarism (a particular form of normative …

Pluralism And Public Legal Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What role does and should religion play in the legal sphere of a modern liberal democracy? Does religion threaten to create divisions that would undermine the stability of the constitutional order? Or is religious disagreement itself a force that works to create consensus on some of the core commitments of constitutionalism--liberty of conscience, toleration, limited government, and the rule of law? This essay explores these questions from the perspectives of contemporary political philosophy and constitutional theory. The thesis of the essay is that pluralism--the diversity of religious and secular conceptions of the good--can and should work as a force for …

Constructing An Ideal Of Public Reason, Lawrence B. Solum

San Diego Law Review

In deciding to what ideal citizens should aspire in political debate, some people contend that an ideal of political morality should mirror the freedom of expression. This Article undertakes the construction of an ideal of public reason. It begins with an investigation of the term "public reason." The author considers various possibilities for an ideal or normative standard of public reason. As each option is considered, some possible formulations are discarded and additional specifications are added. He concludes with the ideal that is constructed through this process of elaboration, evaluation, and elimination.