Law Commons^™

Property Rights & The Demands Of Transformation, Bernadette Atuahene

Bernadette Atuahene

The conception of property that a transitional state adopts is critically important because it affects the state’s ability to transform society. The classical conception of real property gives property rights a certain sanctity that allows owners to have near absolute control of their property. But, the sanctity given to property rights has made land reform difficult and thus can serve as a sanctuary for enduring inequality. This is particularly true in countries like South Africa and Namibia where—due to pervasive past property theft— land reform is essential because there are competing legitimate claims to land. Oddly, the classical conception is …

Blues Lives: Promise And Perils Of Musical Copyright, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

The application of copyright law to music has long been fraught with complexities and continuing problems. Problems in the application of copyright to blues music have come to pass, in part, as a result of the peculiar ways in which copyright has been applied to nonvisual technologies of musical creation and reproduction. In the nineteenth century, music creation and reproduction reflected a live performance tradition, within a commercial context in which sheet music was the dominant form of fixed musical reproduction. Although copyright has been an inexact fit for music generally, in a world in which sheet music was the …

Law School & The Web Of Group Affiliation: Socializing, Socialization, & Social Network Site Use Among Law Students, Eric M. Fink

Eric M Fink

Online social network sites (“SNS”) have emerged as a significant socio-technical phenomenon in the past several years. Scholars from various disciplines have examined these sites to develop a better understanding of their social significance and implications from a variety of perspectives. Within the burgeoning field of SNS studies, one strand of work focuses on the place of SNSs in students’ educational experiences and the potential pedagogical applications of SNSs. However, the SNS phenomenon generally, and its educational/pedagogical significance in particular, have received scant attention from legal scholars. This article examines the place of SNSs within the contemporary law school experience, …

Paradigm Shifts In Products Liability And Negligence, Alani Golanski

Alani Golanski

The Unrecognized Dominance Of Law In Morality: The Case Of Promises, Ronit Donyets-Kedar

Ronit Donyets-Kedar

Abstract The commonplace view is that moral thinking has significantly influenced legal theory, but law has had very little theoretical effect on morality. In this article, I attempt to show this is not so. Taking the inverse course in tracing the interrelations between law and morality – investigating morality from the perspective of law rather than examining law from the perspective of morality– I show, through the case of promises, that legal theory has greatly affected dominant strands of moral thought. By bringing to the fore the robust legal elements that guide some of the prevailing moral theories, my aim …

Youtube, Ugc, And Digital Music: Competing Business And Cultural Models In The Internet Age, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

Olufunmilayo B. Arewa

YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and other websites that contain user-generated content (UGC) have become key reference points in broader debates about copyright in the digital era. UGC websites and other digital era players have created much destruction of cultural industry business models. The rise of Web 2.0 thus poses significant challenges to pre-digital era cultural industry business models, particularly because UGC may contain copyright protected content. The challenges of YouTube and other websites containing UGC and video content follow experiences in the music arena. The music industry was the first of the cultural industries to con- front the digital era, and …

Seeing The State: Transparency As Metaphor, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster