Rebecca Tushnet (born April 4, 1973) is an American legal scholar. She serves as the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...

. Her scholarship focuses on

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

, First Amendment, and false advertising. In addition to her general scholarship, Tushnet is known for her fanfiction-related scholarship and her legal advocacy work for the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit fandom-related project that supports fanworks (such as fanfiction) through preservation and advocacy.

Biography

Education

Tushnet was a policy debater at Harvard, getting to finals of the National Debate Tournament in 1992 and 1995, she received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1995, and earned her J.D. from

Yale Law School Yale Law School (YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824. The 2020–21 acceptance rate was 4%, the lowest of any law school in the United ...

in 1998.Tushnet CV
, University of Chicago. Retrieved November 24, 2019.

Career

Tushnet served as a law clerk to Judge Edward R. Becker of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and later for Justice David Souter of the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

. She practiced at Debevoise & Plimpton. Tushnet then entered teaching, first at NYU School of Law (2002–04), then at

Georgetown University Law Center Georgetown University Law Center is the Law school in the United States, law school of Georgetown University, a Private university, private research university in Washington, D.C., United States. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law ...

(2004–16), and most recently at

. In practice, Tushnet has represented fans in copyright and trademark disputes with rightsholders.

Personal life

Her father is Mark Tushnet and her mother is Elizabeth Alexander, who directs the National Prison Project of the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

. Her sister Eve Tushnet is a lesbian Catholic author and blogger.

Selected scholarship and casebooks

; Articles *"Worth a Thousand Words: The Images of Copyright Law", 125 ''

Harvard Law Review The ''Harvard Law Review'' is a law review published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School. According to the ''Journal Citation Reports'', the ''Harvard Law Review''s 2015 impact factor of 4.979 placed the journal first out of ...

''. 683 (2012) *"Gone in 60 Milliseconds: Trademark Law and Cognitive Science", 86 ''Texas Law Review''. 507 (2008) *"Legal Fictions: Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law", 17 ''Loy. L.A. Ent. L.J.'' 651 (1997) *"Copy This Essay: How Fair Use Doctrine Harms Free Speech and How Copying Serves It", 114 '' Yale Law Journal'' 535 (2004) *"Copyright as a Model for Free Speech Law: What Copyright Has in Common with Anti-Pornography Laws, Campaign Finance Reform, and Telecommunications Regulation" 42 '' Boston College Law Review'' 1 (2000) ;Casebooks *''Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases & Materials'' (2014 ed.), with Eric Goldman (the first casebook on this topic)

Awards

*1997 Nathan Burkan Prize for best paper in the field of copyright ("Legal Fictions") *The Copyright Society of the USA awarded her the 2014 Seton Award for Performance Anxiety: Copyright Embodied and Disembodied, 60 ''Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A.'' 209 (2013) . *2015 recipient of Public Knowledge's IP3 Award in the area of intellectual property *In 2016, her blog was inducted into the ABA Journal's "Blawg 100 Hall of Fame."

References

External links

Rebecca Tushnet's 43(B)log
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tushnet, Rebecca 1973 births Living people American legal scholars Copyright scholars Jewish American academics Intellectual property lawyers False advertising law First Amendment scholars Harvard University alumni Yale Law School alumni Georgetown University Law Center faculty Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews American women legal scholars People associated with Debevoise & Plimpton