Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

Graffiti Museum: A First Amendment Argument For Protecting Uncommissioned Art On Private Property, Margaret L. Mettler

Michigan Law Review

Graffiti has long been a target of municipal legislation that aims to preserve property values, public safety, and aesthetic integrity in the community. Not only are graffitists at risk of criminal prosecution but property owners are subject to civil and criminal penalties for harboring graffiti on their land. Since the 1990s, most U.S. cities have promulgated graffiti abatement ordinances that require private property owners to remove graffiti from their land, often at their own expense. These ordinances define graffiti broadly to include essentially any surface marking applied without advance authorization from the property owner. Meanwhile, graffiti has risen in prominence …

The Dialectic Of Obscenity, Brian L. Frye

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Until the 1960s, pornography was obscene, and obscenity prosecutions were relatively common. And until the 1970s, obscenity prosecutions targeted art, as well as pornography. But today, obscenity prosecutions are rare and limited to the most extreme forms of pornography.

So why did obscenity largely disappear? The conventional history of obscenity is doctrinal, holding that the Supreme Court’s redefinition of obscenity in order to protect art inevitably required the protection of pornography as well. In other words, art and literature were the vanguard of pornography.

But the conventional history of obscenity is incomplete. While it accounts for the development of obscenity …

Sampling, Looping, And Mashing . . . Oh My!: How Hip Hop Music Is Scratching More Than The Surface Of Copyright Law, Tonya M. Evans

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

This article examines the deleterious impact of copyright law on music creation. It highlights hip hop music as an example of a genre significantly and negatively impacted by 1) the per se infringement rule applied in some instances to cases involving unauthorized sampling of sound recordings; and 2) traditional (and arguably erroneous) assumptions in copyright law and policy of independent creation and Romantic authorship. For decades hip hop producers have relied on the innovative use of existing recordings (most of which are protected by copyright), to create completely new works. Specifically, cuttin’ and scratchin’, digital sampling, looping and (most recently) …

Stolen Art, Looted Antiquities, And The Insurable Interest Requirement, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

Trafficking in stolen art and looted antiquities is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Stolen art and looted antiquities are ultimately sold to museums or private collectors. Sometimes the purchasers acquire them in good faith. But other times, the purchasers know, suspect, or willfully blind themselves to the possibility that the piece was stolen or illegally excavated and exported up the chain of title.

This problem is compounded by customs and course of dealing in the art and antiquities trade. Dealers generally decline to provide meaningful information to prospective purchasers about the provenance of a piece, and sophisticated purchasers customarily acquiesce in …

Trespassory Art, Randall Bezanson, Andrew Finkelman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The history of art is replete with examples of artists who have broken from existing conventions and genres, redefining the meaning of art and its function in society. Our interest is in emerging forms of art that trespass-occupy space, place, and time as part of their aesthetic identity. These new forms of art, which we call trespassory art, are creatures of a movement that seeks to appropriate cultural norms and cultural signals, reinterpreting them to create new meaning. Marcel DuChamp produced such a result when, in the early twentieth century, he took a urinal, signed it, titled it Fountain, and …

Imagining The Law: Art, Christine Haight Farley

Contributions to Books

Law’s relations to art--to its creation, its production, and dissemination, its restriction as well as to commercial and contractual agreements about art works—are as multiform and complex as the category of art itself. Acknowledging that there is no discrete body of law that governs art, the author defines art law as “the survey of legal issues raised by art, artist, and the art world” and surveys four central themes: the law as art, the law of art, the law of creativity, and the collision of art and law. Any legal dispute about art usually evokes a plea for special legal …

The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael D. Mann

ExpressO

This Comment discusses how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order create heightened juror expectations. This will be published in the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal's 2005-2006 issue.

Shades Of Grey: Can The Copyright Fair Use Defense Adapt To New Re-Contextualized Forms Of Music And Art?, Nicholas B. Lewis

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Judging Art, Christine Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What is art? Surprisingly, this question is addressed in various places in the law. At these junctures, courts typically attempt to avoid making a judgment. Indeed, the law generally resists any definition of art. The reasons given for this are that these determinations are too subjective for the courts and that judges lack proper training and expertise. Thus, the doctrine of avoidance is the most stable and explicitly stated proposition to be found in these encounters. However, the question of whether an object is a work of art for treatment under the law is often unavoidable. This question gets resolved …

Fine Art Online: Digital Imagery And Current International Interpretations Of Ethical Considerations In Copyright Law, Molly A. Torsen

ExpressO

This writing explores the fast-changing intersection of law, technology and ethical considerations related to the visual arts. My paper explores differences in domestic intellectual property laws as well as regional considerations in moral rights law application.

The Lingering Effects Of Copyright's Response To The Invention Of Photography, Christine Farley

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

In 1884, the Supreme Court was presented with dichotomous views of photography. In one view, the photograph was an original, intellectual conception of the author-a fine art. In the other, it was the mere product of the soulless labor of the machine. Much was at stake in this dispute, including the booming market in photographs and the constitutional importance of the originality requirement in copyright law. This first confrontation between copyright law and technology provides invaluable insights into copyright law's ability to adapt and accommodate in the face of a challenge. An examination of these historical debates about photography across …

Gallery Of The Doomed: An Exploration Of Creative Endeavors By The Condemned, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This Article examines creative expressions produced by the death row faction of the incarcerated population. Looking at these works provide insights about what it means to live as a condemned person in our society, and about the people who occupy the death rows across our nation. After reviewing and analyzing a substantial amount of the enormous body of work of this genre, it became apparent that the condemned's creative endeavors reflect how they address and handle serious issues such as their executions and the ways spirituality influences their life. When the individual issues are examined, two general themes are evident: …

Art & Atrocity: Cultural Depravity Justifies Cultural Deprivation, Jack Achiezer Guggenheim

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

When It’S Ok To Sell The Monet: A Trustee-Fiduciary-Duty Framework For Analyzing The Deaccessioning Of Art To Meet Museum Operating Expenses, Jennifer L. White

Michigan Law Review

Contrary to the view adopted by current codes of ethics, this Note argues that courts should approve a museum director's use of proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned art to meet operating expenses if the director's conduct comports with the duties of trustees under the law of trusts. Part I explores possible organizational structures for museums, including the charitable trust and the nonprofit corporation. Part I also compares the fiduciary duties of museum managers under trust and corporate law. Part II argues that courts should apply trust-law principles both to trustees of charitable trusts and directors of charitable corporations26 because …

The Writing On Our Walls: Finding Solutions Through Distinguishing Graffiti Art From Graffiti Vandalism, Marisa A. Gómez

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note argues that outlawing graffiti completely is not an effective solution. The only effective means of controlling graffiti is to develop laws and policies which accommodate graffiti art while discouraging graffiti vandalism and which attack the root causes of graffiti. Part I briefly outlines the origins of graffiti. Part II describes the different types of graffiti and the motivations of their respective creators. Part III analyzes the arguments for and against the legalization of certain types of graffiti and concludes that, because of the multitude of different types of graffiti, both graffiti proponents and opponents have meritorious arguments that …

Law, Art, And The Killing Jar, Louise Harmon

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

On The Author Effect: Contemporary Copyright And Collective Creativity, Peter Jaszi

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As exemplified by the articles in this volume, recent scholarship on "authorship" reflects various influences. Among the most important are Michel Foucault's article, What is an Author?, and Benjamin Kaplan's book, An Unhurried View of Copyright. Since the late 1960s, these two texts have influenced work in literary and legal studies respectively. Only recently, however, have the lines of inquiry that Foucault and Kaplan helped to initiate begun to converge.

Legal Modernism, David Luban

Michigan Law Review

What are the roots of Critical Legal Studies? "The immediate intellectual background . . . is the . . . achievement of early twentieth century modernism ... ," writes Roberto Unger in his CLS manifesto; he elaborates this modernist connection in his deep and subtle book Passion. Other CLS members also draw parallels between their endeavor and artistic modernism.

Obviously, CLS is first and foremost a movement of left-leaning legal scholars; it is also associated with distinctive theoretical claims about law. But it should be equally obvious that CLS involves sensibilities and affinities that are strikingly similar to those …

Thinking About The Elgin Marbles, John Henry Merryman

Michigan Law Review

In the early nineteenth century, a British Lord removed much of the sculpture from the Parthenon and shipped it to England. Housed in the British Museum and named after their exporter, the Elgin Marbles have become a source of international controversy. The Greeks wish to see the Marbles returned to the Acropolis and their position is supported by a growing movement seeking the repatriation of cultural property. The Elgin Marbles are representative of the many works of art in the world's museums and private collections that could be subject to repatriation. Rejecting the emotional appeal of the Greek position, Professor …

Copyright And The Art Museum, Marshall A. Leaffer, Rhoda L. Berkowitz

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Artists, Art Collectors And Income Tax, Alan L. Feld

Faculty Scholarship

The federal income tax law treats artists and art collectors differently. Similar transactions concerning artworks produce disparate income tax results, depending on whether they involve the artist or the collector. On balance, these results seem to favor the collector over the artist. But notwithstanding the dismay of some artists and their advocates, the differences in result flow, in the main, from the differences in the source of the taxpayer's investment in the work.

The collector buys the work with after-tax income. Any gain is properly treated as an investment return and is eligible for capital gain benefits.' The collector, however, …