The obligatory structure of copyright law: Unbundling the wrong of copying

Harvard Law Review

Volumn 125, Issue 7, 2012, Pages 1664-1690

  Balganesh, Shyamkrishna ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

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EID: 84861366541     PISSN: 0017811X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Note

References (166)

1. See, e.g., Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 429 (1984) (observing that the Copyright and Patent Clause of the Constitution is a means by which an important public purpose may be achieved" and "is intended to motivate the creative activity of authors and inventors by the provision of a special reward, and to allow the public access to the products of their genius after the limited period of exclusive control has expired").
2. William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, The Economic Structure of Intellectual PropertyLaw 85-123 (2003) (applying a formal economic model of copyright law to individual copyright law doctrines).
3. See generally Joseph P. Liu, Regulatory Copyright, 83 N.C. L. Rev. 87 (2004) (describing the regulatory turn in copyright law).
4. For leading accounts on the idea of legal normativity, see Lewis A. Kornhauser, The Normativity of Law, 1 Am. L. & Econ. Rev. 3 (1999).
5. Stephen A. Smith, The Normativity of Private Law, 31 O.J.L.S. 215 (2011).
6. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
7. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
8. see also Scott J. Shapiro, What Is the Internal Point of View?, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 1157, 1159-61 (2006) (offering a detailed taxonomy of the forms of analysis with which Hart contrasts the internal point of view).
9. See generally, e.g., Wendy J. Gordon, An Inquiry into the Merits of Copyright: The Challenges of Consistency, Consent, and Encouragement Theory, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 1343 (1989).
10. Karla M. O'Regan, Downloading Personhood: A Hegelian Theory of Copyright Law, 7 Can. J.L. & Tech. 1 (2009).
11. Jennifer E. Rothman, Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 463 (2010).
12. Lior Zemer, What Copyright Is: Time to Remember the Basics, 4 Buff. Intell. Prop. L.J. 54 (2006).
13. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
14. For a lucid explanation of this point, see Danny Priel, Sanction and Obligation in Hart's Theory of Law, 21 Ratio Juris 404 (2008).
15. See Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Foreseeability and Copyright Incentives, 122 Harv. L. Rev. 1569, 1573 (2009) (describing the instrumental account).
16. Neil Weinstock Netanel, Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society, 106 Yale L.J. 283, 285 (1996).
17. See 17 U.S.C. § 106 (2006) (delineating copyright's exclusive rights).
18. See, e.g., William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, 18 J. Legal Stud. 325, 326 (1989) (defining copyright protection as "the right of the copyright's owner to prevent others from making copies" (emphasis added).
19. Peter Cane, The Anatomy of Tort Law 12 (1997).
20. Jules L. Coleman, ThePractice of Principle 13-23 (2001) (referring to this concept as private law's "bilateralism").
21. Ernest J. Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law 63-66 (1995).
22. Hanoch Dagan, The Limited Autonomy of Private Law, 56 Am. J. Comp. L. 809, 809-18 (2008).
23. See Ernest J. Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law 3 (1995) (emphasizing the longstanding suspicion of the idea of private law in American legal scholarship). I happily acknowledge that there are overlaps between, on the one hand, my diagnosis of the state of private law theory and my account of some of the tenets of the New Private Law and, on the other hand, Weinrib's critique of functionalist accounts of private law and his defense of an internal approach. Nonetheless, important differences remain. Most obviously-and most saliently for mainstream legal scholars in the United States-I am claiming for private law the mantle of pragmatism, rather than what Weinrib describes as "formalism, "
24. See Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale L.J. 16, 30-32 (1913).
25. David Lyons, The Correlativity of Rights and Duties, 4 Noûs 45, 47 (1970) (describing the relationship as the "doctrine of correlativity").
26. Ronen Perry, Correlativity, 28 Law & Phil. 537, 539 (2009) (describing the relationship as the "correlativity axiom"). Correlativity is also referred to in other philosophical contexts as "bipolar normativity" or "bipolar deonticity. "
27. See Michael Thompson, What Is It to Wrong Someone? A Puzzle About Justice, in Reason and Value 333, 338-345 (R. Jay Wallace et al. eds., 2004).
28. See Ernest J. Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law 3 (1995) (emphasizing the longstanding suspicion of the idea of private law in American legal scholarship). I happily acknowledge that there are overlaps between, on the one hand, my diagnosis of the state of private law theory and my account of some of the tenets of the New Private Law and, on the other hand, Weinrib's critique of functionalist accounts of private law and his defense of an internal approach. Nonetheless, important differences remain. Most obviously-and most saliently for mainstream legal scholars in the United States-I am claiming for private law the mantle of pragmatism, rather than what Weinrib describes as "formalism, "
29. An anomaly worth noting here is copyright's provision for statutory damages. Copyright law's regime of statutory damages was never intended to operate as a punitive measure. The damages prescribed by the statute are thought to represent the approximate actual harm that a plaintiff is likely to sustain by virtue of the defendant's copying and are meant to do no more than aid in the process of computation. See Pamela Samuelson & Tara Wheatland, Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform, 51 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 439, 449 (2009).
30. See Ernest J. Weinrib, The Idea of Private Law 3 (1995) (emphasizing the longstanding suspicion of the idea of private law in American legal scholarship). I happily acknowledge that there are overlaps between, on the one hand, my diagnosis of the state of private law theory and my account of some of the tenets of the New Private Law and, on the other hand, Weinrib's critique of functionalist accounts of private law and his defense of an internal approach. Nonetheless, important differences remain. Most obviously-and most saliently for mainstream legal scholars in the United States-I am claiming for private law the mantle of pragmatism, rather than what Weinrib describes as "formalism, "
31. See generally, e.g., Wendy J. Gordon, An Inquiry into the Merits of Copyright: The Challenges of Consistency, Consent, and Encouragement Theory, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 1343 (1989).
32. Karla M. O'Regan, Downloading Personhood: A Hegelian Theory of Copyright Law, 7 Can. J.L. & Tech. 1 (2009).
33. Jennifer E. Rothman, Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 463 (2010).
34. Lior Zemer, What Copyright Is: Time to Remember the Basics, 4 Buff. Intell. Prop. L.J. 54 (2006).
35. Jeremy Waldron, From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property, 68 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 841, 844 (1993).
36. Jeremy Waldron, From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property, 68 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 841, 844 (1993).
37. See, e.g., Clarisa Long, Information Costs in Patent and Copyright, 90 Va. L. Rev. 465, 467 (2004) ("[C]opyright law prohibits only copying.... ").
38. See Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Demystifying the Right to Exclude: Of Property, Inviolability, and Automatic Injunctions, 31 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y 593, 611, 618 (2008).
39. See Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 Yale L.J. 16 (1913).
40. J.E. Penner, The "Bundle of Rights" Picture of Property, 43 UCLA L. Rev. 711, 724-25 (1996).
41. See J.W. Harris, Property and Justice 128-30 (1996) (describing property as characterized by a trespassory right that surrounds a set of use privileges).
42. J.E. Penner, The Idea ofProperty in Law 74 (2000) (describing exclusion and use as two sides of the same coin).
43. For a fuller treatment of this issue, see Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Debunking Blackstonian Copyright, 118 Yale L.J. 1126 (2009) (book review).
44. See Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 36 (2006).
45. Christopher S. Yoo, Copyright and Public Good Economics: A Misunderstood Relation, 155 U. Pa. L. Rev. 635, 645-50 (2007) (providing a useful description of copyright law's reliance on resource nonrivalry).
46. Negative freedom by its very nature is freedom from some kind of interference that may be brought about by some human agency. This concept stands in contrast to positive freedom, which involves the affirmative conferral of the ability to undertake an action. Scott J. Shapiro, Legality 61-62 (2011). This distinction is traditionally traced back to the work of Isaiah Berlin. See generally Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958).
47. Jeremy Waldron, From Authors to Copiers: Individual Rights and Social Values in Intellectual Property, 68 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 841, 844 (1993).
48. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
49. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
50. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
51. Joseph Raz, Voluntary Obligations and Normative Powers II, 46 Proc. AristotelianSoc'y 79, 81 (1972) (emphasis added).
52. See Gregory Klass, Three Pictures of Contract: Duty, Power, and Compound Rule, 83 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1726, 1741-42 (2008) ("First, the law must be designed in a way that underwrites an expectation of its purposive use-an expectation that persons will satisfy the law for the sake of the legal consequences. Second, that expectation must be the law's reason for attaching those legal consequences to acts of that type. ").
53. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
54. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
55. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
56. See Harry W. Jones, Law and Morality in the Perspective of Legal Realism, 61 Colum. L. Rev. 799, 799 (1961) (describing Justice Holmes as "the hero figure of the realist clan").
57. 209 U.S. 1 (1908).
58. 209 U.S. 1 (1908).
59. Somewhat ironically, in the world of tort law, Justice Holmes was known to be a duty skeptic, believing that the idea of a "duty" in law was devoid of normative significance and operated as little more than a prediction of likely legal consequences. See O.W. Holmes, Jr., The CommonLaw 144 (1881).
60. O.W. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 462 (1897);
61. see also John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Seeing Tort Law from the Internal Point of View: Holmes and Hart on Legal Duties, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 1563, 1566-76 (2006) (elaborating on Justice Holmes's duty skepticism and discussing Hart's critique of it).
62. Joel Feinberg, Duties, Rights, and Claims, 3 Am. Phil. Q. 137, 139 (1966).
63. For the distinction between "rights" and "claims, " see Joel Feinberg, The Nature and Value of Rights, 4 J. Value Inquiry 243, 249-57 (1970), observing that "[t]o have a right is to have a claim against someone whose recognition as valid is called for by some set of governing rules or moral principles.
64. Cf. Dale A. Nance, Guidance Rules and Enforcement Rules: A Better View of the Cathedral, 83 Va. L. Rev. 837, 858 (1997).
65. It is perhaps at this point that Justice Holmes's understanding of duties in nonrelational terms finds its place in his opinion in White-Smith. 209 U.S. at 19 (Holmes, J., concurring). In observing that copyright contains an abstract prohibition detached from person or res, he seemed to be suggesting that it operated as a simple legal directive not to copy.
66. For fuller accounts of relational legal directives in tort law, see John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Torts as Wrongs, 88 Tex. L. Rev. 917, 945-46 (2010).
67. Benjamin C. Zipursky, Civil Recourse, Not Corrective Justice, 91 Geo. L.J. 695, 744 (2003) [hereinafter Zipursky, Civil Recourse].
68. Benjamin C. Zipursky, Rights, Wrongs, and Recourse in the Law of Torts, 51 Vand. L. Rev. 1, 59-60 (1998).
69. Peter Birks, The Concept of a Civil Wrong, in Philosophical Foundations of TortLaw 29, 37 (David G. Owen ed., 1997).
70. Peter Birks, The Concept of a Civil Wrong, in Philosophical Foundations of TortLaw 29, 37 (David G. Owen ed., 1997).
71. See Peter Birks, Rights, Wrongs, and Remedies, 20 O.J.L.S. 1, 27 (2000).
72. See Peter Birks, Rights, Wrongs, and Remedies, 20 O.J.L.S. 1, 27 (2000).
73. See Peter Birks, Rights, Wrongs, and Remedies, 20 O.J.L.S. 1, 27 (2000).
74. See Peter Birks, Rights, Wrongs, and Remedies, 20 O.J.L.S. 1, 27 (2000).
75. see also Robert Stevens, Torts and Rights 320-25 (2007) (observing that tort law is parasitic on rights created elsewhere).
76. See Peter Birks, Rights, Wrongs, and Remedies, 20 O.J.L.S. 1, 27 (2000).
77. See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 218 cmt. e (1965). See generally Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Property Along the Tort Spectrum: Trespass to Chattels and the Anglo-American Doctrinal Divergence, 35 Common L. World Rev. 135 (2006).
78. See generally, e.g., Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, The Soul of Creativity (2010).
79. Julie E. Cohen, Creativity and Culture in Copyright Theory, 40 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1151 (2007).
80. See generally, e.g., Wendy J. Gordon, An Inquiry into the Merits of Copyright: The Challenges of Consistency, Consent, and Encouragement Theory, 41 Stan. L. Rev. 1343 (1989).
81. Peter Jaszi, Toward a Theory of Copyright: The Metamorphoses of "Authorship, " 1991 Duke L.J. 455.
82. See, e.g., William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, 18 J. Legal Stud. 325, 326 (1989) (defining copyright protection as "the right of the copyright's owner to prevent others from making copies" (emphasis added).
83. Neil Weinstock Netanel, Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society, 106 Yale L.J. 283, 285 (1996).
84. Barbara Friedman, Note, From Deontology to Dialogue: The Cultural Consequences of Copyright, 13 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L.J. 157 (1994).
85. See Stewart E. Sterk, Rhetoric and Reality in Copyright Law, 94 Mich. L. Rev. 1197, 1197 (1996) (inquiring "[w]hy give authors an exclusive right to their writings?" (emphasis added).
86. For an excellent overview of this process, see Marcus Boon, In Praise of Copying204-37 (2010).
87. See John W. Salmond, Jurisprudence 303 (2d ed. 1907) (noting that there can never be "any right without a basis of fact in which it has its root and from which it proceeds").
88. Richard A. Epstein, The Not So Minimum Content of Natural Law, 25 O.J.L.S. 219, 233 (2005) ("[W]hat lawyers do in practice is develop first a system of wrongs from which it is then possible to infer the outlines of an underlying system of rights. " (emphasis added).
89. See Tony Honoré, Responsibility and Fault 69-70 (1999).
90. Avihay Dorfman, Can Tort Law Be Moral?, 23 Ratio Juris 205, 205-06 (2010).
91. Stephen R. Perry, The Moral Foundations of Tort Law, 77 Iowa L. Rev. 449, 478-79 (1992).
92. O.W. Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457 (1897).
93. See Guido Calabresi, Some Thoughts on Risk Distribution and the Law of Torts, 70 YaleL.J. 499, 500-01 (1961).
94. See Richard A. Posner, A Theory of Negligence, 1 J. Legal Stud. 29, 32-33 (1972).
95. Gary T. Schwartz, Reality in the Economic Analysis of Tort Law: Does Tort Law Really Deter?, 42 UCLA L. Rev. 377, 378 (1994).
96. See John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, The Moral of MacPherson, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1733, 1777-98 (1998). As this observation implies, the same brass-tacks disposition that has fueled skepticism toward private law might well distort modern understandings of public law. I defer to scholars of public law on the extent to which it has done so and on whether there might be need of a new public law.
97. By "deontic perspective, " I mean the perspective that concerns moral obligations.
98. See Immanuel Kant, On the Wrongfulness of Unauthorized Publication of Books, in Practical Philosophy 23, 30, 33 (Mary J. Gregor ed. & trans., 1996).
99. See Immanuel Kant, On the Wrongfulness of Unauthorized Publication of Books, in Practical Philosophy 23, 30, 33 (Mary J. Gregor ed. & trans., 1996).
100. see also Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom 95 n.13 (2009).
101. For a more recent extension of this theory, see Abraham Drassinower, Copyright Infringement as Compelled Speech, in New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Intellectual Property (Annabelle Lever ed., forthcoming 2012) (manuscript at 3-4), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1954858 (describing all copyright infringement as involving a speech act).
102. See, e.g., William M. Landes & Richard A. Posner, An Economic Analysis of Copyright Law, 18 J. Legal Stud. 325, 326 (1989) (defining copyright protection as "the right of the copyright's owner to prevent others from making copies" (emphasis added).
103. The Supreme Court's observation that "[b]y establishing a marketable right to the use of one's expression, copyright supplies the economic incentive to create and disseminate ideas, " amply supports this theory. Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enters., 471 U.S. 539, 558 (1985) (emphasis added).
104. Benjamin C. Zipursky, Pragmatic Conceptualism, 6 Legal Theory 457, 474-78 (2000) (arguing that conceptual analysis can figure centrally in pragmatist legal analysis).
105. See John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, The Moral of MacPherson, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1733, 1777-98 (1998). As this observation implies, the same brass-tacks disposition that has fueled skepticism toward private law might well distort modern understandings of public law. I defer to scholars of public law on the extent to which it has done so and on whether there might be need of a new public law.
106. See John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, The Moral of MacPherson, 146 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1733, 1777-98 (1998). As this observation implies, the same brass-tacks disposition that has fueled skepticism toward private law might well distort modern understandings of public law. I defer to scholars of public law on the extent to which it has done so and on whether there might be need of a new public law.
107. Cf. Hanoch Dagan, The Distributive Foundation of Corrective Justice, 98 Mich. L. Rev. 138, 144-45 (1999) (making this point in relation to corrective justice theories).
108. See Henri Desbois, Le Droit D'Auteur en France 538 (1978).
109. Jane C. Ginsburg, A Tale of Two Copyrights: Literary Property in Revolutionary France and America, 64 Tul. L. Rev. 991, 992 (1990).
110. Rudolf Monta, The Concept of "Copyright" Versus the "Droit D'Auteur, " 32 S. Cal. L. Rev. 177, 178 (1959).
111. See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8 ("The Congress shall have Power... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.... ").
112. Jane C. Ginsburg, A Tale of Two Copyrights: Literary Property in Revolutionary France and America, 64 Tul. L. Rev. 991, 992 (1990).
113. This idea is famously captured in the phrase "rights as trumps. " Ronald Dworkin, Rights as Trumps, in Theories of Rights 152, 164 (Jeremy Waldron ed., 1984).
114. See Gary T. Schwartz, Mixed Theories of Tort Law: Affirming Both Deterrence and Corrective Justice, 75 Tex. L. Rev. 1801, 1815 (1997).
115. One might worry that the very characterization of copying as a wrong somehow privileges a moral theory for the institution. Recognizing and emphasizing that the wrong being identified is a "legal wrong" might go some distance toward alleviating this concern. Just as discussions of copyright's "rights" are today understood in positivist terms, so too-hopefully-will the idea of the wrong of copying.
116. Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340, 361 (1991).
117. See 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) (2006).
118. See 17 U.S.C. § 501(a) (2006).
119. Dane S. Ciolino & Erin A. Donelon, Questioning Strict Liability in Copyright, 54 RutgersL. Rev. 351, 351 (2002) (noting that liability in copyright law is strict and that "the infringer's faultlessness or culpability is of anomalously little relevance").
120. See Gregory C. Keating, Nuisance as a Strict Liability Wrong, 5 J. Tort L. (forthcoming 2012) (manuscript at 7 n.20), available at http://law.bepress.com/usclwps/lewps/art134.
121. Robert C. Osterberg & Eric C. Osterberg, Substantial Similarity inCopyright Law § 1:1 (2011).
122. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
123. See, e.g., Mag Jewelry Co. v. Cherokee, Inc., 496 F.3d 108, 117-19 (1st Cir. 2007).
124. Selle v. Gibb, 741 F.2d 896, 901 (7th Cir. 1984).
125. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. v. Dieckhaus, 153 F.2d 893, 899 (8th Cir. 1946).
126. Arnstein v. Porter, 154 F.2d 464, 468-69 (2d Cir. 1946).
127. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
128. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
129. See also Ty, Inc. v. GMA Accessories, Inc., 132 F.3d 1167, 1170 (7th Cir. 1997) (observing that when the similarity is extensive, the issue of access need not be proved).
130. See Ty, Inc., 132 F.3d at 1170 (discussing the inference that one may draw regarding copying). See generally Charles E. Carpenter, The Doctrine of Res Ipsa Loquitur, 1 U. Chi. L. Rev. 519 (1934).
131. William L. Prosser, The Procedural Effect of Res Ipsa Loquitur, 20 Minn. L. Rev. 241 (1936).
132. For a description of this confusion and an attempt to eliminate it, see Alan Latman, "Probative Similarity" as Proof of Copying: Toward Dispelling Some Myths in Copyright Infringement, 90 Colum. L. Rev. 1187 (1990).
133. See, e.g., Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Indus., 663 F. Supp. 706, 714 (S.D.N.Y. 1987).
134. Robert C. Osterberg & Eric C. Osterberg, Substantial Similarity inCopyright Law § 1:1 (2011).
135. See Shyamkrishna Balganesh, The Normativity of Copying in Copyright Law, 62 Duke L.J. (forthcoming 2012) (manuscript at 37-45), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2014395.
136. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
137. See Richard A. Epstein, Pleadings and Presumptions, 40 U. Chi. L. Rev. 556, 567-68 (1973) (describing the common law's system of pleading defenses in response to a prima facie case).
138. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
139. Melville B. Nimmer & David Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright § 13.03[A] (2011).
140. For a recent account of the doctrine and its evolution, see PatriciaAufderheide & Peter Jaszi, Reclaiming Fair Use (2011).
141. See generally Christina Bohannan, Copyright Harm, Foreseeability, and Fair Use, 85 Wash. U. L. Rev. 969, 991-1002 (2007) (arguing that several leading Supreme Court fair use opinions reveal a concern with the idea of harm).
142. H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 65 (1974), reprinted in 1976 U.S.S.C.A.N. 5659, 5679;
143. see also Folsom v. Marsh, 9 F. Cas. 342, 348 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841) (No. 4,901).
144. Defeasibility as an idea is usually traced back to Hart as well. See H.L.A. Hart, The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights, 49 Proc. Aristotelian Soc'y 171, 174-75 (1949).
145. For more recent work on the idea, see generally Frederick Schauer, On the Supposed Defeasibility of Legal Rules, 51 Current Legal Probs. 223 (1998).
146. Richard H.S. Tur, Defeasibilism, 21 O.J.L.S. 355 (2001).
147. See Richard A. Epstein, Pleadings and Presumptions, 40 U. Chi. L. Rev. 556, 567-68 (1973) (describing the common law's system of pleading defenses in response to a prima facie case).
148. Cf. Bruce Chapman, Pluralism in Tort and Accident Law: Toward a Reasonable Accommodation, in Philosophy and the Law of Torts 276, 308-16 (Gerald J. Postema ed., 2001) (showing how the defeasible structure of tort law contributes to its value pluralism).
149. See 17 U.S.C. § 102 (2006) (describing the subject matter of copyright).
150. See Gregory Klass, Three Pictures of Contract: Duty, Power, and Compound Rule, 83 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1726, 1741-42 (2008) ("First, the law must be designed in a way that underwrites an expectation of its purposive use-an expectation that persons will satisfy the law for the sake of the legal consequences. Second, that expectation must be the law's reason for attaching those legal consequences to acts of that type. ").
151. See Hal R. Varian, Copying and Copyright, J. Econ. Persp., Spring 2005, at 121, 134-36 (documenting alternatives to copyright and noting that the current system is not socially optimal).
152. H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law 79-88 (1961).
153. See Christopher Sprigman, Reform(aliz)ing Copyright, 57 Stan. L. Rev. 485, 491-99 (2004) (describing how U.S. copyright law moved away from a system of mandatory formalities as a precondition to copyright protection). See generally Jane C. Ginsburg, The U.S. Experience with Mandatory Copyright Formalities: A Love/Hate Relationship, 33 Colum. J.L. & Arts 311 (2010) (providing an overview of the conceptual foundations of copyright formalities and examining the U.S. position on them).
154. See John Rawls, Two Concepts of Rules, 64 Phil. Rev. 3, 3 (1955). Rawls, of course, readily admitted that he was not the first to identify and use this distinction.
155. For an account applying a similar distinction to contract law, see Jody S. Kraus, Reconciling Autonomy and Efficiency in Contract Law: The Vertical Integration Strategy, 11 Phil. Issues 420, 422-26 (2001) (explaining how the autonomy and efficiency justifications of contract law can be reconciled through the "[l]exical [o]rdering of [c]ompeting [t]heories, ").
156. For an account applying a similar distinction to contract law, see Jody S. Kraus, Reconciling Autonomy and Efficiency in Contract Law: The Vertical Integration Strategy, 11 Phil. Issues 420, 422-26 (2001) (explaining how the autonomy and efficiency justifications of contract law can be reconciled through the "[l]exical [o]rdering of [c]ompeting [t]heories, ").
157. See John Rawls, Two Concepts of Rules, 64 Phil. Rev. 3, 3 (1955). Rawls, of course, readily admitted that he was not the first to identify and use this distinction.
158. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics 99-100, 109-10 (Lewis W. Beck ed., Liberal Arts Press 1950) (1783) (arguing that people cannot have knowledge of objects in themselves but that they can have important knowledge of objects as they appear).
159. T.M. Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other 151-52 (1998).
160. See John Rawls, Two Concepts of Rules, 64 Phil. Rev. 3, 3 (1955). Rawls, of course, readily admitted that he was not the first to identify and use this distinction.
161. For an account applying a similar distinction to contract law, see Jody S. Kraus, Reconciling Autonomy and Efficiency in Contract Law: The Vertical Integration Strategy, 11 Phil. Issues 420, 422-26 (2001) (explaining how the autonomy and efficiency justifications of contract law can be reconciled through the "[l]exical [o]rdering of [c]ompeting [t]heories, ").
162. For an analogous account in tort law, compare Ernest J. Weinrib, Deterrence and Corrective Justice, 50 UCLA L. Rev. 621, 624-26 (2002).
163. Jules L. Coleman, Risks and Wrongs 8 (1992) (describing a top-down approach).
164. Richard Craswell, In that Case, What Is the Question? Economics and the Demands of Contract Theory, 112 Yale L.J. 903, 919 (2003) (explaining middle-level concepts and describing them as "interpretive" in nature).
165. Benjamin C. Zipursky, Pragmatic Conceptualism, 6 Legal Theory 457, 474-78 (2000) (arguing that conceptual analysis can figure centrally in pragmatist legal analysis).
166. Richard Craswell, In that Case, What Is the Question? Economics and the Demands of Contract Theory, 112 Yale L.J. 903, 919 (2003) (explaining middle-level concepts and describing them as "interpretive" in nature).