The Institutionalist Turn In Copyright

Abstract

It was a few minutes after 10 a.m. on October 9, 2002, a brisk Wednesday morning inWashington, D.C. Some of the crowd that had begun lining up outside the Court before daybreak to hear oral argument had successfully obtained seats in the visitor’s gallery, where they now waited with great anticipation for the Court to call its first case. In short order, Chief Justice Rehnquist announced that the Court was ready to hear arguments in the case of Eldred v. Ashcroft, and Professor Lawrence Lessig began presenting the case for the petitioner, arguing that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s lawmaking power.