Comment on Are there resources for learning about the development of legal systems?
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 week agoThere is not nearly enough history of law in law school, and absolutely zero required classes placing law and legal language in their proper historical and linguistic context. You read and discuss a few foundational cases at the beginning of each first year course, and then the power of the pure legal mind, unmoored from idle distractions like “history” or “science”, is all the reasoning one needs.
TootSweet@lemmy.world 1 week ago
That’s interesting to hear.
I’ve got a major tangent to go on here quick. You know the YouTube channel “Legal Eagle”? (I think he’s also on Nebula.)
I have a lay interest in law, particularly contract and IP law, and sometimes the YouTube algorithm recommends Legal Eagle. I watched something random about how “Disney might lose the rights to Spiderman”. Seemed interesting and all.
But in the middle of the video he totally confuses the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) passed in 1998. He said the Copyright Act of 1976 was “the life’s work of Sony Bono”. The CTEA was the life’s work of Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono had, so far as I’ve been able to determine, nothing to do with the Copyright Act of 1976.
And I knew enough about the CTEA and Copyright Act of 1976 to catch the error immediately. And honestly, I’ve tried to steer clear of Legal Eagle. If he can get something as basic as that wrong (despite being a professional lawyer, mind you) then how can I be sure I’m not getting BS every time I watch his content. Or at least so my reasoning went.
And I’m super interested in the human story around these laws. For instance, did you know that the CTEA was introduced posthumously (as in, after Sonny Bono’s death)? By his widow Mary Bono who ran for and won the seat that Sonny’s death left vacant? And it was introduced only 9 months after his death? And that Mary Bono advocated for continuing to extend the term of copyright forever? And in the court case Eldred v. Ashcroft which challenged the constitutionality of the CTEA, Lawrence Lessig was the lawyer for the petitioner? Who called the CTEA the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” in reference to Disney’s strong lobbying for the CTEA? And Aaron Schwartz testified to the SCOTUS in that case on the side of the petitioner? At the age of 14?
That stuff is super interesting to me, and Legal Eagle getting something as simple and basic as that wrong made it seem like he really didn’t care to get such details right, which made me reticent to want to expose myself to much more of his content.
Anyway. Super tangent, but your comment about how law school doesn’t seem to value knowledge of history explains a bit, I think.
wjrii@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I am familiar with legal Eagle, and I generally like him, though this underlines that these are entertainment videos and not law review submissions (which by the same progression aren’t generally sophisticated academic history papers).
I reckon either Devin or whoever else wrote the script was going off memory, and it all got conflated. It’s a miss, to be sure, but if I were inclined to cut him some slack, the CTEA was basically an amendment to the Copyright Act of 1976, and the whole Sonny Bono thing is more of an aside in the much longer video. Frankly, calling it Bono’s major policy accomplishment is a bit off in general, as Bono was just a co-sponsor on a similar bill, probably because the the entertainment industry backed his campaigns, and he had passed away by the time final version of the CTEA further extended 1976’s similar extension.
I would say just be careful with Legal Eagle, and view it as informational but not unimpeachable. In the videos I’ve watched, I haven’t seen anything that makes me think he’s communicating in bad faith or regularly being sloppy in how he analyzes issues. He of course has an agenda to serve his audience and to get content out in between whatever real legal work and firm management he does. I do feel pretty smug that I was complaining about law school not putting things into historical context, and here we see that’s exactly where our friendly neighborhood popularizer drops the ball.
Seriously, there is virtually no discussion of how language changes over the decades, how events of the day influence legislators and judges, and how all of that impacts future interpretation. The rise of “originalism” and “textualism” is specifically because law students are taught that they’re equipped to understand 250 year old texts just as well as the original drafters, and that the drafters were invariably operating with what we would consider acceptable morality. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that pretending to do so gives you the necessary cover to interpret the thing in exactly as retrograde a way as you need to satisfy conservative elites.