Justice Breyer Reflects on 40th Anniversary Of His Law Review Article on Copyright Law

A 1970 law review article written by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer when he was a law professor at Harvard University was the focus of a one-day symposium at George Washington University Law School Nov. 4. During a luncheon address, Breyer recounted his effort, under the guidance of such Harvard luminaries as copyright expert Benjamin Kaplan and then law school dean, Derek Bok, to trim down his 200-page draft to a more manageable 22 pages—with 30 pages of footnotes.

Written at the dawn of what are now familiar technological challenges to copyright law, and when Congress was ...