Screenwriter David Mills Dies

David Mills, screenwriter and blogger, has died of a brain aneurysm. He was co-executive producer of the HBO series Treme, set in New Orleans, and had worked on the series ER and The Wire. Mr. Mills died in New Orleans Tuesday.

Who Wrote Shakespeare?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, discussion of a new book on William Shakespeare that takes up the "who wrote Shakespeare" debate. The book: Contested Will. The author: James Shapiro.

Biennial Literature and Law Conference at John Jay College

John Jay College is hosting the Second Biennial Literature and Law Conference, April 16, 2010.

JOHN JAY COLLEGE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE’S SECOND BIENNIAL LITERATURE AND LAW CONFERENCE

Friday April 16, 2010

8:30-9:00 AM Check In: Lobby next to Rm. 630
Continental Breakfast

9:00-9:15 AM Welcoming Address: Jeremy Travis, President John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Introduction: Margaret Tabb, Chair of English Department. Rm. 630


FIRST SET OF PANELS: 9:30-10:45

Panel 1: Creativity and the Law, Rm. 636
Panel Chairs: Bettina Carbonell, Veronica Hendrick, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Debra Jackson, Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Their Books Will Give Character to Their Laws: Antebellum Literature and Law in the Fight for Civil Equality”
R. B. Bernstein, New York Law School, “Enlightenment And Experiment In American Revolutionary Constitution-Making: The Cases Of John Adams And Thomas Paine”
Carla Spivack, Oklahoma City University School of Law , “‘To Deceive the Deceiver is No Deceit:’ The Legal Creativity of Madam Mary Carleton”
Commentator: Harold Sumner Forsythe, Independent Scholar

Panel 2: Law as Literature, Rm. 630
Panel Chairs: Mucahit Bilici and Anisa Hélie, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Raffaele Ruggiero, University of Bari, “Enlightenment theories about the origin of criminal law in Italy”
Candace Barrington, Central Connecticut State University, “Legal Rhetoric in John Gower’s Trentham Manuscript”
Elliot Visconsi, Yale University. “Islam, Race, and the Limits of Pluralism in Contemporary England”

Panel 3: Literature, Law, and the Middle Ages, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair: Jay Gates, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Daniel O’Gorman, Loyola University of Chicago,
“Memorialization or Ossification? Accumulating Earlier Law Codes in 11th-Century Anglo-Saxon England”
Karl B. Shoemaker, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Sanctuary Law and a Strong Anglo-Saxon State?”
Sara McDougall, New York University School of Law, “Bigamy Stories from Medieval France”

Panel 4: Literature, Law, and Property Rights: Rm. 603
Panel Chair, Eric Lane, Hofstra Law School
Robert Spoo, University of Tulsa College of Law, “Copyright Asymmetries and the Modernist Publishing Scene”
Jamie L. McDaniel, Case Western Reserve University, “‘Her house was no longer hers entirely:’ Legal Classification and the Law of Intestacy in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando”
Katherine Gilbert, Drury University, “‘There is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life:’ George Eliot’s Felix Holt (1866)”

10:45-11:00 Break Coffee/Tea

SECOND SET OF PANELS 11:00-12:15

Panel 1: Literature, Law and Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: Roundtable, Rm.630
Moderator: Jon-Christian Suggs, Emeritus Professor of English, City University of New York
John V. Orth, William Rand Kenan, Jr., Professor of Law, School of Law, University of North Carolina
Heather Dubrow, Rev, John Boyd, S.J.Chair in English, Fordham University
Andrew Majeske, John Jay College, CUNY

Panel 2: Literature, Law, and Globalization-Cosmopolitanism, Rm. 636
Panel Chair: Baz Dreisinger, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Stephen L. Bishop, University of New Mexico, “Jean-Marie Teno: The Legal Outsider of Cameroonian Cinema”
M. Neelika Jayawardane, State University of New York-Oswego, “Clash of the Fong-Kong Civilisations: Containing Tricky Bodies in the Age of Mobility in Imraan Coovadia’s Green-eyed Thieves”
Simone Glanert, Kent Law School, UK, “Europeanization of Law and Weltliteratur: A (Strong) Case for Indiscipline”

Panel 3: Literature, Law, and Race, Rm. 603
Panel Chair: Jonathan Gray, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Christopher M. Brown, University of Maryland, “Incommensurable Subjects: Patriots, Traitors, and the African American Literary Tradition”
Courtney Marshall, University of New Hampshire, “Law, Literature, and the Construction of a Black Female Subject: Zora Neale Hurston as Legal Storyteller”
Kevin Maillard, Syracuse University College of Law, “A Preposterous Story: Interracial Pretext in Faulkner and Chesnutt”

Panel 4: Literature, Law, and Genre/Form, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair:Adam McKible, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Noemi Yovel, Yale University, "Autobiography and trial: substitution and exchange"
Karen Petroski, Saint Louis University School of Law, “Statutory Genres”
Christiane Wilke, Carleton University, “Making the Past a Foreign Country (while keeping an eye on the ghosts)”

12:15-1:15 Lunch Multi Purpose Room (Second Floor of North Hall, across from cafeteria)

1:30-2:15 Featured Speaker, Rm 630
Julie Stone Peters, Harvard University “ʽLaw’ and ʽLiterature’ in the Mediasphere.”

2:15-2:30 Break

THIRD SET OF PANELS/ROUNDTABLE 2:30-3:45

Panel 1: Literature, Law, and Gender, Rm 636
Panel Chair: Allison Pease, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Ruthann Robson, City University of New York School of Law, “Who Owns Antigone?: Democracy, Naming, and Sisterhood”
Hilarie Lloyd, University of Rochester, “Subversive Storytelling: Alternative Narrations of Justice in Toni Morrison’s Love”
Barbara Kreps, University of Pisa, “Much Ado About Nothing, Sexual Slander, and the Law of Evidence

Panel 2: Literature, Law and Comedy–A Panel Discussion, Rm. 603
Panel Chair: Jon-Christian Suggs, Emeritus Professor of English, City University of New York
Laura Little, Temple University, “Regulating Funny: Humor and the Law”
William Gleason, Princeton University, “Law, History, and Comedy in Colson Whitehead's Apex Hides the Hurt”
Sascha Auerbach, University of Northern British Columbia, “‘Playing Hamlet in a Barn:’ Comedy, Tragedy, and Drama in the London Police Courts, 1890–1930”

Panel 3: Modern Environmental Law and The Faerie Queene, Rm. Library Classroom
Panel Chair: John Staines, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Charles S. Ross, Purdue University, “Annoying Noises in The Faerie Queene”
Jason Lotz, Purdue University, “The Art of Being Green: Spenser's Case for a More Temperate Union”
Edward Plough, Purdue University, “‘The saluage beast embost in wearie chace:’ Blood-Sport as Dramatic Poetry in The Faerie Queene”
Russell L. Keck, Purdue University, “The Law of Stewardship in Spenser's Fairyland”

Literature, Law, and Islam: Dante’s Inferno and Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. A Roundtable Discussion, Rm 630
Moderator: Andrew Majeske, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Panelists: 1) Hamid Dabashi, Hegop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, 2) Teodolinda Barolini, Da Ponte Professor of Italian, Columbia University, 3) Noha Radwan, Columbia University, 4) Sadia Ashraf, Central Asia Institute

3:45-4:00 Break

4:00-5:00 Keynote Address, Rm. 630
John Matteson, “‘The Terrible Freedom’: Law, Literature, and the Struggle for the
Soul in the Age of Emerson”


5:00-6:00 Reception in the lobby adjoining Rm 630.

6:00-7:00
SPECIAL POST CONFERENCE EVENT (open to the public): Presentation by Sadia Ashraf on the work of the Central Asia Institute (CAI). The CAI is an NGO founded by Greg Mortenson that constructs and supports schools and other educational and vocational initiatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan, especially for young girls and women. His work is celebrated in the bestselling books Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools. Rm. 630

Law and the Humanities Institute Presents a Symposium

Law & Humanities Institute, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Program in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, and the
Louise and Arde Bulova Fund

present

The Risks of Interpretive Flexibility When Basic Traditions Are
Challenged by an “Emergency”

August 11, 2010
at
Prospect House
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey 08544

Registration 8:30am to 9:00am Program 9:00am to 5:30pm

Panelists:


Richard Weisberg
Event Co-Chair,
President, Law & Humanities Institute,
Walter Floersheimer Professor of Constitutional Law and Founding Director, Program for Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Elaine Scarry
Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Values, Harvard University

Marci Hamilton
Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Peter Brooks
Event Co-Chair,
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar,
Professor in Comparative Literature and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University



Sanford Levinson
Charles Tilford McCormick Professor Law, University of Texas
Author of Torture the Debate






This program examines why professional communities have yielded their finest traditions to a perceived sense of “emergency.” The results are often disastrous, as in the case of the French legal community during World War II, and perhaps with the equivocal redefinition and application of “torture” in our own country. This program brings the methods, sources, and readings of the Humanities to a focused inquiry into the reasons lawyers, theologians, and many other professional communities have so often lost their way. A panel and public discussion will delve into the inquiry of professional communities in an “emergency.” CLE credit will be available. Please RSVP to stephanie.spangler@gmail.com with intention of attendance and CLE option.

This program was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

Fan Fiction of the Eighteenth Century and IP

Elizabeth F. Judge, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law (Common Law Section) has published "Kidnapped and Counterfeit Characters: Eighteenth-Century Fan Fiction, Copyright Law and the Custody of Fictional Characters," at Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment 22-68 (Reginald McGinnis ed.; Routledge, 2009). Here is the abstract.

Analyses of the intellectual history of eighteenth-century copyright typically focus on unauthorized printed editions (that is, the entire copying of another author’s works verbatim) and the associated copyright case law in the literary property debates, such as Millar v. Taylor and Donaldson v. Becket, which tested the status of authors’ common-law rights. This chapter turns to eighteenth-century fan fiction, to import today's term for referring to newly written fiction by fans featuring fictional characters created and made famous by another author, and especially online publication of fan fiction, in order to examine the early relationship of readers and authors to fictional characters, rather than to printed works, and the ongoing custodial interests that both readers and authors felt toward fictional characters in this period. While seemingly an anachronistic pairing to speak of “fan fiction,” which has been so strongly associated with the internet, and the eighteenth century, the characteristics that define internet fan fiction appositely describe the eighteenth-century phenomenon, excepting the medium of dissemination. As with fan fiction today, which has been at the locus of cultural and legal debates around the meanings of authorship, originality, interests, and rights, fan fiction in the eighteenth century was a focal point for unresolved and evolving views on those same issues, especially the nature of authorship, and originality, the integrity of fiction, and the reader’s role. This chapter examines the cultural discourse around fan fiction in the eighteenth century in order to shed light on eighteenth-century interpretations of originality and imitation, and the extent to which copyright law shaped (and was shaped by) cultural perceptions about the ownership and care of fictional characters and how competing interests in fictional characters contributed to the debate on copyright law. It re-considers the role that author’s rights, in the sense of moral rights and the droit d’auteur tradition played in English copyright history. Well-documented examples of extensive reader response to fictional characters that became cultural phenomena, including Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, spawning numerous unauthorized sequels in novels, plays, and short stories, lively correspondences between fans and the author, satires by rival established authors, and character merchandising, illustrate how appealing fictional characters who reach iconic status within a culture are subject to competing claims of ownership as well as competing affections. The chapter focuses especially on when and why popular, creative, and often even affectionate inclusions of these eighteenth-century fictional characters into works by other people were, more often than not, treated by the original authors as akin to legal wrongs against a person - ravishing, counterfeiting, and kidnapping - and treated analogously to the word-for-word copying of entire works that was condemned as “pirating,” despite the lack of legal foundation in eighteenth-century English copyright law to underlie these assertions.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Who Dat Logo?

Sharp-eyed Dr. Who fans perked up when the newly minted UK Space Agency debuted its logo. Did some Dalek infiltrate and supply the logo for the Dr. Who Space Rocket Group, dating from circa 2005? Hmmm. Read more here.

"The Dark Knight," Counterterrorism, and Law

John Ip, University of Auckland Faculty of Law, has published The Dark Knight’s War on Terrorism. Here is the abstract.

This article considers Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film, The Dark Knight, as a reflection on legality and security in the post-9/11 era. The article examines how the film depicts three specific counterterrorism policies associated with the war on terrorism (namely rendition, coercive interrogation and warrantless surveillance), and argues that none of the film’s depictions of these actions can properly be seen as endorsement of their Bush Administration-era equivalents.

Accordingly, the film is better viewed as something other than an endorsement of the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism. This article contends that, unusually for a film about a superhero, The Dark Knight is ultimately about the importance of law, legal institutions, and popular courage.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Darkness at Noon

Roger Berkowitz, Bard College, has published "Approaching Infinity: Dignity in Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon,"in Philosophy and Literature (October 2009). Here is the abstract.

Human dignity underlies human rights and is a pillar of liberal politics. Yet what is dignity? And what is the place of dignity in politics? Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon is a searing inquiry into the conflict between dignity and reason as opposing grounds of politics. Koestler shows how a rationalist politics corrodes dignity. In response, he imagines dignity as a countermeasure to reason. Political action, he suggests, must be informed by a non-rational and non-religious appeal to the infinite that is the one guarantee of a human politics. There is no justice, Koestler argues, divorced from infinite justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Extreme Views: They're Ready For Prime Time

From the new issue of Newsweek: the new look of prime time. It's white power, as exemplified by series such as FX's Justified, which features a character created by Elmore Leonard. More about Mr. Leonard here.

Play Verified As Shakespeare's (And Fletcher's)

According to experts, that "literary hoax" that Alexander Pope made fun of in The Dunciad is a hoax no more. It really is by Shakespeare--well, partly by the Bard, and partly by John Fletcher, who was no slouch himself when it came to writing works for the stage. Double Falsehood, in which Shakespeare actually meets Miguel de Cervantes, the man who shares his death year (1616) and possibly his death date (April 23), depending on how one calculates it, turns out to be a play in which the Bard of Avon had a hand. The Royal Shakespeare Company will perform it in 2011, the first time in four hundred years that audiences have been able to enjoy it.

History of Spanish Copyright Law

Jhonny Antonio Pabon Cadavid has published "Approximation to the Copyright History: Normative Antecedents (Aproximación a La Historia Del Derecho De Autor: Antecedentes Normativos)," at 13 Revista La Propiedad Inmaterial 59 (2009). Here is the abstract.

The legal protection of literary and artistic works has been institutionalized since the advent of the printing press. Prior to the copyright system we know today, there was a model of administrative privileges, which was set in the public law; so therefore it turned into an institution called literary property, which is in the private law. This study goes over of the legal protection developments that intellectual works have had, considering an important variety of conditions, regarding factors of spread, changing and understanding of the law notion. Above all we study the European models, to display its subsequent move toward America in the post independence period, with emphasis on the Latin American reception inthe first half of the Nineteenth Century, with a different schemes accord to the philosophical and politics projects of the new American republics. Highlighting the participation of the Colombian José María Torres Caicedo in the formation of the Berne Convention, and the English tradition of privileges placed in Colombia, similar to the Statute of the Queen Anne in the 1710th, which remained until the late Nineteenth Century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jane Austenisms

From the Chronicle of Higher Education, a consideration of all that derivative Jane Austen literature by Amy Leal.

Teaching Storytelling In Law Schools

Nancy B. Rapoport, William S. Boyd School of Law (UNLV), has published "Where Have All the (Legal) Stories Gone?" at M/E Insights 7 (Fall 2009). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines whether law schools are doing a good job of teaching the art of storytelling to law students.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Law in "Deadwood"

Michael B. Kent Jr., and Lance McMillian, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, have published "The World of Deadwood: Property Rights and the Search for Human Identity." Here is the abstract.

The year is 1876. Gold has been discovered in the fledgling camp of Deadwood, bringing hordes of new arrivals each day seeking to strike it rich. The allure of wealth is coupled with the allure of complete autonomy. There is no law. Although part of the United States, Deadwood is unaffiliated with any existing territorial government. It is free. Or is it? From this backdrop, HBO’s highly-acclaimed drama Deadwood springs forth. Series creator David Milch is frank about his mission behind the story: to explore how order arises from chaos. The assignment and protection of property rights play central roles in this journey from anarchy to law. In the world of Deadwood, where ownership of land can be worth millions, law’s promise and law’s pitfalls are both on full display. The stakes are high; the lessons are many.

Stories are powerful teaching tools because they marry information and context. Film and television also supply a picture of law in action, marshalling the power of the visual to make law more real, less abstract. Because of its rich complexity and invocation of ancient debates over what property is and who rightly can be deemed to own it, the three-season run of Deadwood provides fertile ground for this type of interdisciplinary study. Deadwood demonstrates that the interrelationship between property and law is complex, with many moving pieces and many valid points and counterpoints. Property has both naturalist and positivist attributes, it both pre-exists and coexists with the state, it is about economic power and personal identity, it supports both an individualist and communitarian mindset. Accounting for all of these strands in a balanced way is a lot to ask of legal institutions, especially inasmuch as the strands often are in competition with one another. Deadwood suggests that, while law is certainly a component piece in the puzzle of human relations, it alone cannot do all that we ask of it. And therein may lie the ultimate lesson: Law can be a blessing, but the human condition requires more.

Summer School--Cultural Study of the Law

*Synergies: Law, Language and Culture*
The Second International Osnabrueck Graduate Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law August 4th-August 18th http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture

*Invitation*

The Second International Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law will be held from this August 4th to August 18th in Osnabrueck, Germany.
Hosted by the Institute of English and American Studies, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, the Birkbeck School of Law at the University of London, York University, Toronto, and the European Legal Studies Institute at the University of Osnabrueck, the summer school seeks to bring together graduate students from around the world to promote and examine the interdisciplinary study and research of law and culture.

Graduate students pursuing a PhD in the humanities and advanced students of the law who are interested in the interdependence and interaction between law and culture are invited to apply. During the two week program, students will partake in a unique experience of scholarly collaboration and exchange through workshops, public lectures, panel discussions, excursions and a final symposium. Participating faculty in this year's summer school include:

*Rosemary J. Coombe (York University, Toronto) *Helle Porsdam (University of Copenhagen) *Fiona Macmillan (Birkbeck School of Law, University of London)

with more faculty to be announced in the upcoming weeks.

The School will offer a total of four workshops for 20-25 international graduate students over a two-week period. The first workshop will be concerned with basic theories, concepts and perspectives within the emerging field of cultural legal studies, focusing specifically on the range and potential of interdisciplinary studies and approaches. The remaining three workshops will focus on key areas of critical inquiry that have been central to the dynamic development of the field and are of particular importance within an European context:

-->The relation between human rights and cultural rights

-->Historical development and current debates about culture as heritage,
property and as a resource and its legal definition and regulation (including concepts like copyright, intellectual property and authorship)

-->The cultural presence and representation of the law and the possible
emergence of a transnational legal culture


*Participant Eligibility*

Doctoral candidates in literature, the law, the arts, the humanities, and the related social sciences are invited to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as the L.L.B). Young scholars or junior faculty members who have received a Ph.D. or corresponding degree in the last five years are also eligible. There are openings for approximately 25 students to participate in the summer school.

*Application Process*

Applicants should complete:

-->An application form, indicating preferred workshop that can be found
at: http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture/admission/
-->A statement of purpose no more than two pages long, describing
-->current
scholarly interests, previous research, and plans for how the Summer School would specifically further these interests and plans.

-->An up-to-date curriculum vitae.

Students interested in taking part in the Summer School should submit their applications no later than April 30, 2010. Detailed information about the school, the workshops, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at:

http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture

*Questions*

Questions about the Osnabrueck Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law may be directed to any of the Summer School Coordinators:

*Devin Zuber, Coordinator for the Humanities, Faculty Contact and Institutional Cooperation

*Matt Lemieux, Coordinator for Legal Studies

*Nadja Hekal, Assistant Coordinator

Gender and Reproductive Rights Talk

Lia Alexandra Mandaglio, currently a law student at the George Washington Law School, has posted Speaking Across the Divide: A Functional Grammar Analysis of Feminist and Masculist Reproductive Rights Rhetoric in the United States on SSRN. Here is the abstract.

This paper applies Systemic Functional Grammar and Critical Discourse Analysis to assess the linguistic choices of feminist and masculist reproductive rights rhetoric in the United States. It explains these methodologies and provides a discursive history of the reproductive rights movement. Publications of advocacy groups and the mass media are analyzed as data of current rhetorical trends. These interpretations conclude that female-affirmative rhetoric offsets contemporary feminist efforts by marginalizing men and excluding considerations of paternity. This paper suggests that in solely emphasizing women’s procreative rights, such feminist rhetoric potentially renders women to the role of primary parental agent, reinforces traditional sex-stereotypes, and incites inter-sex antagonism.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. Ms. Mandaglio is also the author of earlier interesting work, including Hannah More, the Conventionalist, and Mary Robinson, the Radical: Differing Feminist Perspectives on 19th Century Women's Progress, Purity and Power, 2 Lethbridge Undergraduate Research Journal (2007).

And check out this odd "6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon" sort of connection. I blogged about Hudson Taylor, the wrestler/magician elsewhere a few weeks ago, based on a piece in the Washington Post, without paying any particular attention to the name or occupation of his fiancee. As I did a search on Ms. Mandaglio's name while preparing this post to turn up what else she might have written, what other info should appear but yes--that article about Hudson Taylor, the wrestler/magician, and his fiancee, Lia Mandaglio, GW law student. Ah, magicology!

Summer Seminar Announcement

DAAD Faculty Summer Seminar
"Violence and the Law in German Cultures of Modernity"
Directed by Prof. Isabel V. Hull, Cornell University
June 14-July 23, 2010

The application deadline for this exciting seminar has been extended to March 15 because of an unfortunate oversight in the original announcement! The correct seminar dates are June 14-July 23 (not July 30).

All applications received by March 15 will be given full consideration, and electronic submissions are welcome. Completed applications should be sent directly to Prof. Isabel V. Hull, Dept. of History, 450 McGraw Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 14853 or by e-mail to .

A seminar description, application instructions, and relevant forms can be found at the DAAD Website .

Conference Announcement

American University Washington College of Law’s
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Women and the Law Program, and Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

present

IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
Gender and Invention

Friday, April 16, 2010
9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Washington College of Law, Room 100
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20016

Registration: www.wcl.american.edu/secle/registration
Webcast: http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm


Christine Haight Farley
Associate Dean and Professor of Law, Washington College of Law
Welcome
Ann Shalleck
Professor of Law and Director
Women and the Law Program
Washington College of Law & Michael Carroll
Professor of Law and Director
Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
Washington College of Law
Opening Remarks

GENDERED HISTORY– 9:30 AM -11:30 AM

Dr. Rayvon Fouché
Associate Professor of History
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign & Sharra Vostral
Associate Professor, Gender Studies and History,
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Selling Women: Lillian Gilbreth and Gendered IP
Annette I. Kahler
Director, Center for Law & Innovation, Albany Law School
Examining the Right to Exclude: Historical, Social, and Economic Perspectives on Women and Invention
Dan Burk
Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine
Comments

GENDERED DOCTRINE – 11:30 AM -12:30 PM

Kara W. Swanson
Associate Professor, Earle Mack School of Law, Drexel University
Merry Widows: Egbert v. Lippman and the Corset as Patented Technology

Ann Bartow
Professor of Law, University of South Carolina School of Law
Gender, Innovation and Inventorship: Every Patent Tells a Story

Shubha Ghosh
Professor of Law, University of Wisconsin Law School
Comments

GENDERED GOALS: LUNCHEON & KEYNOTE – 12:30 PM -2:30 PM

Joshua Sarnoff
Professor of the Practice of Law, Washington College of Law
Introduction

Zorina Khan
Associate Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College
What Do Intellectual Property Rights Promote? Innovation Among Women Inventors in the 19th and 20th Centuries

GENDERED PRODUCTION– 2:30 PM -4:30 PM

Bernardita Escobar
Instituto de Políticas Públicas‐ Expansiva UDP, Santiago, Chile
Women and Science Production in Developing Countries: Chile in the 1990‐2008 Period

Dr. Shlomit Yanisky Ravid
Head of the Comparative Legal Research Center, Faculty of Law, Ono Academic College, Israel
Patents and Gender: The Exclusion of Women Inventors from IP Rights

Laurel Smith-Doerr
Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston University
Gendering Science, Gendering Ethics: The Intersecting Production of Knowledge, Gender and Ethics

Mario Biagioli
Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University
Comments

CLOSING & ADJOURNMENT

Victoria Phillips
Professor of the Practice of Law, Washington College of Law
Closing Remarks

Storytelling and Rape Law Reform

Jeannie Suk, Harvard Law School, has published "'The Look in His Eyes': The Story of State v. Rusk and Rape Reform," in Criminal Law Stories (Robert Weisberg and Donna Coker eds.; 2010). Here is the abstract.

This chapter for Criminal Law Stories (Robert Weisberg & Donna Coker eds., 2010), tells the story of State v. Rusk through the lens of rape law reform. Beginning in the 1970s, under the influence of feminism, some prevailing attitudes and expectations about sex between men and women started to change. Edward Rusk, like many guys, didn’t think he just had to stop because a girl who seemed interested said she didn’t want to have sex. He was convicted of rape at the cusp of legal transformation, when sexual behavior that had been socially commonplace was rapidly in the midst of being recast as criminal. Drawing on many interviews with lawyers, judges, and other people involved in the case, I tell the story of when and how a set of social norms of sex and dating became unacceptable. This is a story of the legal role and consequences of that social change.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Influence of Narrative In Judging

Kenworthey Bliz, Northwestern University School of Law, is publishing "We Don't Want to Hear it: Psychology, Literature and the Narrative Model of Judging," in the University of Illinois Law Review. Here is the abstract.

The “narrative” model of legal judging argues that legal decision makers both do and should render judgments by assembling sensible stories out of evidence (as opposed to using Bayesian-type, linear models). This model is usually understood to demand that before one may judge a situation, one must give the parties the opportunity to tell their story in a manner that invites, or at least allows, empathy from the judger. This Article refers to this as the “inclusionary approach” to the narrative model of judging. Using psychological research in emotions and perspective-taking and the more intuitive techniques of literary criticism, this Article challenges the inclusionary narrative approach, arguing that, in practice, the law gives equal weight to an “exclusionary approach.” That is, in order to render sound, legitimate legal judgments, the law deliberately limits the sort of stories parties are allowed to tell – and does so on moral grounds, not, or at least not only, to improve the “accuracy” of the legal judgment. That is, as both a descriptive and normative matter, impoverished narratives can be better than enriched ones in leading decision makers to morally acceptable legal judgments.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.