Law Commons^™

Defamation Per Se: Defamation By Mistake?, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

Defamation is a complicated tort, due in part to the differing rules that govern libel and slander, the two branches of the tort. The focus of this essay is on “defamation per se,” its origins in Minnesota, and the consequences of its misapplication. The essay opens with a short statement of standard defamation principles, followed by a short statement of the prevailing United States Supreme Court decisions, imposing First Amendment limitations on common law defamation claims, and the Minnesota cases that follow them. The next part analyzes a string of Minnesota cases that establish the foundation for Minnesota defamation law, …

Silencing John Doe: Defamation And Discourse In Cyberspace, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons — some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat …

The Constitutionality Of Copyright Term Extension: How Long Is Too Long, Jane C. Ginsburg, Wendy J. Gordon, Arthur R. Miller, William F. Patry

Faculty Scholarship

I am Professor William Patry of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. I will be the moderator of this star-studded debate on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

This panel will try to determine, on the great continuum of limited times that the Constitution prescribes for copyright in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, the term of protection that Congress has actually fixed. In other words: How long is too long? Sonny's bill establishes a term of protection of life plus seventy years for individual authors for works created on or after January 1, 1978. The bill retroactively …