Georgetown University Law Center

About: Georgetown University Law Center is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Supreme court & Public health. The organization has 585 authors who have published 2488 publications receiving 36650 citations. The organization is also known as: Georgetown Law & GULC.

An Originalism for Nonoriginalists

Abstract: In this paper, I claim that, far from being defeated in the 80's, originalism is the prevailing method of constitutional interpretation (Part I), but it is an originalism based on an objective original meaning rather than on a subjective original intent (Part II). The imperative for this form of originalism lies, not in consent or popular sovereignty, but in a two step analysis (Part III): First, a commitment to "writtenness" akin to that of written contracts begets a commitment to originalism. Second, we are bound to respect the original meaning of a constitution if the written text, properly interpreted, provides for a law making process which can claim constitutional legitimacy. Legitimacy, by my account, is the ability of lawmaking processes to provide an assurance that constitutionally valid statutes are also binding in conscience. I then explain (Part IV) how this form of originalism, justified in this way, responds to the criticisms that had, until now, persuaded me that I was not an originalist.

Copyright, Commodification, and Culture: Locating the Public Domain

Abstract: The relationship between increased commodification and the public domain in copyright law is the subject of considerable controversy, both political and theoretical. The paper argues that beliefs about what legal definition the public domain requires depend crucially on implicit preconceptions about what a public domain is. When considered in broader historical context, the term public domain has a specific set of denotative and connotative meanings that constitute the artistic, intellectual, and informational public domain as a geographically separate place, portions of which are presumptively eligible for privatization. This idea meshes well with the current push toward commodification in copyright. The paper then tests this metaphorical construct of the public domain against descriptive and theoretical accounts of the ways that forms of artistic expression develop, and argues that the metaphor in fact describes the public aspects of artistic, intellectual, and informational culture rather badly. Attention to the social parameters of creative practice suggests that the common in culture is not a separate place, but a distributed property of social space. The legally constituted common should both mirror and express this disaggregation. The paper offers a different organizing metaphor for the relationship between the public and the proprietary that matches the theory and practice of creativity more accurately: The common in culture is the cultural landscape within which creative practice takes place. This in turn suggests a need to recalibrate the doctrines that determine the scope of a copyright owner's rights during the copyright term, particularly those that establish the right to control the preparation and exploitation of copies and derivative works.

How Law Made Silicon Valley

Abstract: Explanations for the success of Silicon Valley focus on the confluence of capital and education. In this article, I put forward a new explanation, one that better elucidates the rise of Silicon Valley as a global trader. Just as nineteenth century American judges altered the common law in order to subsidize industrial development, American judges and legislators altered the law at the turn of the Millennium to promote the development of Internet enterprise. Europe and Asia, by contrast, imposed strict intermediary liability regimes, inflexible intellectual property rules, and strong privacy constraints, impeding local Internet entrepreneurs. The study challenges the conventional wisdom that holds that strong intellectual property rights undergird innovation. While American law favored both commerce and speech enabled by this new medium, European and Asian jurisdictions attended more to the risks to intellectual property rights-holders and, to a lesser extent, ordinary individuals. Innovations that might be celebrated in the United States could lead to jail in Japan. I show how American companies leveraged their liberal home base to become global leaders in cyberspace. Nations seeking to incubate their own Silicon Valley must focus not only on money and education, but also a law that embraces innovation.

Experimental Philosophy and the Philosophical Tradition

Abstract: The term “experimental philosophy” has no standard or widely agreed upon definition, and recent writers have proposed very different accounts of how the term should be used. On the usage we prefer, the term has a broad extension and very fuzzy boundaries: experimental philosophy is empirical work undertaken with the goal of contributing to a philosophical debate, though of course that may not be the only goal. During the last decade, the term “experimental philosophy” has often been used in a much more restricted way. On that more restricted interpretation, which we will adopt for this chapter, experimental philosophy is the empirical investigation of philosophical intuitions, the factors that affect them, and the psychological and neurological mechanisms that underlie them. This characterization of experimental philosophy immediately raises a pair of questions: 1. What are philosophical intuitions? 2. Why do experimental philosophers want to study them using the methods of empirical science? Our goal in this chapter will be to explore answers to these questions and explain how these answers link experimental philosophy to the philosophical tradition.