Law Commons^™

Draft Of The Concept Of "Harm" In Copyright - 2013, Wendy J. Gordon

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This essay examines the tort of copyright infringement. It argues that the ideas of "harm" and "fault" already play a role in the tort’s functioning, and that an ideally reformulated version of the tort should perhaps give a more significant role to “harm.” The essay therefore examines what “harm” can or should mean, reviewing four candidates for cognizable harm in copyright law (rivalry-based losses, foregone fees, loss of exclusivity, and subjective distress) and canvassing three philosophical conceptions of “harm” (counterfactual, historical-worsening, and noncomparative). The essay identifies the appropriateness vel non of employing, in the copyright context, each harm-candidate and each …

Workshop Draft For Reading The Mind Of The Private Law - 1995, Wendy J. Gordon

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Eventually, I hope to produce an article or book called "Reading the Mind of the Private Law." In this project I hope to do three connected things: to simplify the underlying patterns of the common law and associated statutes to make them more comprehensible to newcomers; to provide a more accurately descriptive and more normatively attractive' story' than Posner's notion of value-maximization; and to make sophisticated lawyers' understanding of legal patterns more complete by including an explicit focus on benefits. (Traditional jurisprudence focuses more on harms than on benefits; even the practitioners of economic analysis, which technically speaking should be …

Letter From Louis Michael Seidman, Louis M. Seidman

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Dear Wendy:

Thanks for sending me your piece on intellectual property and the restitutionary impulse. As always with your work, I found it fascinating. I'm happy to give you my comments, but I doubt that they will be very useful to you. This is an area I know nothing about, so many of my problems reflect my lack of understanding, rather than any defects in your arguments. With that caveat, and for what it is worth, here are some reactions (many of which, as you will see, are quite trivial):

Symposium Draft For Tragic Choices In Everyday Life - 1990, Wendy J. Gordon

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In the age of high technology, ordinary life situations often demand tragic choices: kidney dialysis, new pesticides, and even simple legal contracts can pose excruciating choices for people from all walks of life and inescapable dangers for innocent victims. This human dilemma-facing a world in which some innocents will die- is paralleled by the central Christian mythos of a willing crucifixion. Law and myth help us clarify the human situation.

Notes Of Reference To The Common Law, Wendy J. Gordon

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Also, when one looks at the common law, one finds throughout an attempt to protect persons who change position in reliance on other's actions from being harmed by such persons' withdrawal; similarly, the common law gives a great deal of protection from harm even when the parties have had no prior dealings.