Harvard Law Research Articles

Review: Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society, by David Arditi

Book Review| June 01 2023 Review: Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society, by David Arditi David Arditi. Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society. Palgrave Macmillan: Cham, 2020. 256 pages. Jabari Evans Jabari Evans University of South Carolina Jabari Evans is an assistant professor of race and media at the University of South Carolina in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) and visiting professor at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media within the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University's Law School. His research focuses on the digital subcultures that urban youth and young adults of color develop and inhabit to understand their social environments and identity development and to pursue their professional aspirations in creative and cultural industries. As a recording artist and musician, he has enjoyed a 20-year career in hip-hop, collaborated with multiple Grammy-award winning artists, and served on the board of governors for the Chicago chapter of The Recording Academy. Email: JE27@mailbox.sc.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Email: JE27@mailbox.sc.edu Journal of Popular Music Studies (2023) 35 (2): 116–118. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.116 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jabari Evans; Review: Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians, and Power in Society, by David Arditi. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 June 2023; 35 (2): 116–118. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.116 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Popular Music Studies Search In Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians and Power in Society, sociologist David Arditi disproves many misconceptions about signing recording contracts as a marker of success by demystifying various myths about record deals’ social, economic, and legal implications. He accomplishes this by weaving the voices and biographies of artists he interviewed or observed with his own insider perspective as a working musician. Arditi methodically historicizes the record deal as an ideological construct before emphasizing that music production, marketing and distribution’s digital turn only served to deepen the precarity of “being signed” within the recording industry. According to him, “Record contracts are ideology because they represent success at the same time that they limit the vast majority of signees’ capacity to earn a living. Record contracts are ideology in action; they do not convince people of an ordered world, but rather they create the order—they make the social relations of production... You do not currently have access to this content.

Practical Applications of The Tax Benefits of Direct Indexing: Not a One-Size-Fits-All Formula

In <ext-link><bold><italic>The Tax Benefits of Direct Indexing: Not a One-Size-Fits-All Formula</italic></bold></ext-link>, from the Summer 2022 issue of <bold><italic>The Journal of Beta Investment Strategies</italic></bold>, <bold>Nathan Sosner</bold> and <bold>Stanley Krasner</bold> (both at <bold>AQR Capital Management</bold>), and <bold>Michael Gromis</bold> (a student at <bold>Harvard Law School</bold>), explore the magnitude and sources of the tax benefit of a direct-indexing tax-loss-harvesting strategy. The authors note that capital losses realized by loss-harvesting strategies are most valuable when investors use them to offset short-term capital gains from other investments and that investors most likely to experience regular short-term capital gains are high-net-worth investors with allocations to hedge funds and derivatives. In fact, they show that only this subset of investors is situated to enjoy a long-run tax benefit from direct indexing that comes from the difference in short-term capital gains and long-term capital gains tax rates—what the authors call a <italic>character benefit</italic>. More typical investors, with mostly long-term capital gains from other investments, can only enjoy a deferral component of the tax benefit, which declines to zero as the strategy portfolio appreciates. However, the authors show that the deferral benefit is still available in the long run to those investors who make systematic contributions to their portfolios. Furthermore, the future tax liability that results from gain deferral can be reduced by combining the direct-indexing strategy with a charitable-giving program. Absent regular short-term losses or systematic contributions to the portfolio, the tax benefits of direct indexing decay and disappear after five years, on average. Given these nuances, it is important that advisors deepen their understanding of the tax-loss-harvesting strategies as platforms for implementing the strategies become more popular and widespread.

American Legal Realism and the Revitalization of Literary Realist History

American Legal Realism and the Revitalization of Literary Realist History

The Extent of Gender Stereotypes and Hegemonic Masculinity Within Film Characters

Within the film, Legally Blonde, female stereotypes further encourage hegemonic masculinity through the implementation of differing female types and the placement of the men in power positions. The research paper explores specific camera angles and attire worn by the female characters along with the gender's behavior towards the other. The continuos representation of interactional cultural expectations highlights the concept of trading power for patronage between the protagonists of the film. The research also draws connections with the female characters and their categorization of desiring one-dimensional love. Overall, the female chacater's need to attend Harvard Law School with the goal to obtain marriage fuels the dialogue of hypersezualization and hegemonic masculinity in relation to women.

James Bradley Thayer i problem „niekonstytucyjności ponad wszelką wątpliwość”

The main purpose of this paper is the presentation of Harvard Law School scholar James Bradley Thayer and his famous article The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law, published in Harvard Law Review in 1893. Thayer formulated therein his theory of judicial restraint based on the formula unconstitutionality beyond reasonable doubt. This theory influenced such eminent judges and scholars like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Learned Hand and, last but not least, Felix Franfurter, and is still broadly discussed in contemporary American constitutional jurisprudence. In conclusion the author proposes to make American experiences in this area useful for the current debate concerning Polish constitutional crisis.

The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike

The Red Thread: The Passaic Textile Strike

Demystifying Myths About the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: A Critique of Preconceptions at Harvard Law School.

Demystifying Myths About the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: A Critique of Preconceptions at Harvard Law School.

Student Edited Law Journals: Strengthening the Creativity of Law Students in a Challenging Era

Harvard Law School (HLS) is one of the world's leading law schools. HLS graduates have had a significant impact on the development of international law. The HLS dialectics and academic climate grew through various student discussion forums, one of which was the student journal forum. At HLS, student edited journals are one of the routine activities of students at all levels, both undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral programs. Many student edited journals at HLS are included in the category of reputable international journals (either Scopus or Web of Science). The governance of student journals at HLS can be traced transparently on the HLS official website and it is very possible to be adopted and modified in the governance of law student journals at the State University of Semarang. Nevertheless, there is a big challenge to be faced, namely the quality of human resources. So that this service program aims to develop human resources in the management of student journals by adopting and modifying the management style of student edited journals at Harvard Law School. This program is in collaboration with UKM Lex Scientia, a unit that focuses on research and publication activities for law students. The output of this program is expected to create a proposed model for the management of an ideal law student journal within the State University of Semarang. In addition, through this program, it is hoped that there will be an increase in the quality of human resources in the management of law student journals. This program will have direct implications for improving the quality and quantity of student publications and will directly affect the achievement of the University's IKU and the level of UNNES ranking on an international scale.

Interview with Gerard Quinn

Gerard Quinn is the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he founded and directed the Centre for Disability Law &amp; Policy at the National University of Ireland for many years. He sat as a member of the Council of Europe's treaty body on social rights and served as a civil servant in the European Commission, where he drafted European Union disability policies. He has conducted many large studies for the UN, including a 2002 Study that helped launch the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. He led the delegation of Rehabilitation International during the drafting of the treaty. He has received many lifetime awards for his work on international disability law from the US International Council on Disability, the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities and Rehabilitation International. He was conferred with an honorary doctorate for his worldwide disability law work by Lund University in 2022. He has held honorary positions at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR; Hyderabad, India), Wuhan University (China), Fudan University (Shanghai), University of New South Wales (Sydney), Deakin University (Melbourne), Harvard Law School and Haifa University (Israel). He served on the Council of State in Ireland where he advised the President on constitutional law matters. His hobbies include folk music and storytelling.

About the Authors

About the Authors

Midwestern Studies Meets Critical Race Theory: Notes on Imagining the Heartland

Midwestern Studies Meets Critical Race TheoryNotes on Imagining the Heartland Jon K. Lauck Britt E. Halvorson and Joshua O. Reno, Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 218 pp. $85.00 (hardcover), $29.95 (paper). As readers of this journal know better than anyone, the last decade has witnessed a concerted effort to promote and revive Midwestern studies. As consumers of the news in recent years know, the ideas underpinning Critical Race Theory have increasingly been debated in the public square after years of mostly percolating underground in the academy and adjacent institutions. Now comes a direct meeting of the worlds of Midwestern studies and Critical Race Theory in the form of a book published by the University of California Press, which is based in Oakland, California. It is titled Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest and was authored by two anthropologists, one at Colby College in Maine and the other at Binghamton University in New York. In a bit of stage-setting, the University of California Press announces in the book that it "publishes bold progressive books … with a focus on social justice issues—that inspire thought and action among readers worldwide."1 Imagining the Heartland affords an opportunity to consider whether Critical Theory generally, and Critical Race Theory (CRT) in particular, can help us understand the Midwest more completely and accurately or if the reverse is true. At this stage of the discussion, the CRT approach to the study of the Midwest, if this book is a reliable guide, suffers from weaknesses that will cloud our ability to see the region in its fullness and complexity. It serves as a broader warning about the problems associated with Critical Theory more generally and should be a reminder of the importance of relying on more [End Page 126] fruitful ways of examining the history of the Midwest. These include, most importantly, a dedication to collecting and examining the particular facts on the ground when interpreting the Midwestern past and placing them in historical and comparative context with limited use of theories which can predetermine conclusions. At a minimum, before it is widely adopted, CRT and its application in Midwestern studies should be the subject of a robust discussion which can begin in this journal. This discussion will continue in future issues. It should be explained up front that Imagining the Heartland does not rely on original research nor the kind of ethnographic study once-common to anthropology. The book relies on secondary publications, from academic studies to media reports to aspects of popular culture, and analyzes them through the lens of Critical Theory and seeks to explain and critique how other writers and artists have imagined or talked about the Midwest. Critical Theory is not the same as thinking critically about evidence when interpreting the past, an exercise we should all embrace.2 Critical Theory, for the uninitiated, was primarily developed by the Marxists who organized the Frankfurt School of social analysis in Germany in the early twentieth-century and who later, to escape the Nazis, moved its operations to the United States.3 During the last third of the twentieth century, Critical Theory in its various forms became highly influential in humanities and social science departments at American universities. From the general debates and ideas within Critical Theory emerged the more focused CRT, which was made prominent by Derrick Bell at Harvard Law School, in addition to other law professors. Bell and his allies promoted activism and, for them, CRT recognized that "revolutionizing a culture begins with a radical assessment of it" and predicted that "scholarly resistance will lay the groundwork for wide-scale resistance."4 A deep background in the adoption and development of Critical Theory in the academy and an understanding of these goals are helpful when reading this book because that is the source of its ideas and language. This grounding in Critical Theory is important to understand when delving into Imagining the Heartland because the book is quite distinct from some of the research that takes place in Midwestern studies. A good deal of the work in Midwestern history is grounded in studying...

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note David N. Myers The study of jewish law has deep roots in Jewish history. With due respect to philosophers and mystics, halakhists assumed a position of millennial dominance in Jewish intellectual culture from the destruction of the Second Temple to the Paris Sanhedrin in 1808. The study of Jewish law did not disappear but became a subsidiary field of the larger project of modern Jewish studies—from the Wissenschaft scholars Zecharias Frankel, I. H. Weiss, and D. Z. Hoffmann to the adepts of mishpat ‘ivri such as Asher Gulak and later Menachem Elon, to a diverse network of global scholars today, including Suzanne Stone and her charges at the Center for Jewish Law and Contemporary Civilization (who are amply represented in this forum). Meanwhile, the study of Jewish history became the central axis of modern Jewish scholarship, exemplified and enabled by the macrohistorians Jost, Graetz, Dubnow, and Baron—and enriched by the evolution of many subfields including intellectual, political, economic, social, gender, and global branches. While the study of Jewish law indeed had deep roots in Jewish history, its encounter with the modern discipline of history was episodic and unsystematic. Recent decades, however, have yielded a far more textured meeting of the subfields of Jewish law and Jewish history, in no small part instigated by the pathbreaking impetus of the late Yale legal theorist Robert Cover. The present JQR forum is the result of a collaboration between the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at the Harvard Law School. The Katz Center is in the midst of a two-year cycle of seminars devoted to Jewish legal cultures that brings together historians and legal scholars, among others. The Julis-Rabinowitz Program has burst onto the scene with great energy, hosting a wide range of events on themes in and around Jewish law; in January 2022, the Julis-Rabinowitz Program cosponsored with JQR and the Katz Center a symposium on the [End Page 599] encounter between Jewish legal theory and Jewish history. This forum draws on the ideas and participants of that symposium. We are grateful to Noah Feldman, director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program, for providing an introduction. [End Page 600] Copyright © 2022 Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies

Attack by a Turkey: Learning to Write History from Bernard Bailyn

Attack by a Turkey: Learning to Write History from Bernard Bailyn

BENJAMIN SACHS INTERVIEWED BY MARTHA MINOW

BENJAMIN SACHS INTERVIEWED BY MARTHA MINOW

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

INTRODUCTION

The American Journal of Law and Equality stemmed from a determination on the part of the founding editors to do something to contribute to efforts to analyze injustices and offer useful responses. We decided to start a journal in the summer of 2020, during that period after the horrific murder of George Floyd when millions of people around the world raised their voices to show solidarity with those who are mistreated by the very officials who are supposed to protect them. Seeking to meet the imperatives of that moment and encouraged by Dean John Manning, professors at Harvard Law School created new offerings to address the dramatic upsurge in student demand for exploration of various social pathologies including racism and kindred prejudices, class deprivation, and all other sorts of unfairness. My co-editors and I decided to assist by creating a journal focused on the broad and vexing subject of equality.When we began, we had no blueprint. We did not even have a title. We had only a conviction that it would be productive and fun to organize on an annual basis a volume that would bring together writings exploring problems involving equality, particularly dilemmas that confront lawyers, judges, and legislators. We are open to various genres. We invite the participation of commentators across the ideological spectrum. We particularly enjoy facilitating debates and try as much as possible to stage disciplined contestation in our pages.This second issue includes articles, book review essays, and an interview, exploring issues of equality and inequality ranging across antitrust, taxation, Native American lands, labor and employment, structural features of the economy, uses of genetic science, policing, animals, and access to civil justice. Topics include judicial interpretations undermining the constitutional and statutory powers redressing racial inequality, the loss and potential revival of democracy as opportunity, relations between a past wrong and subsequent existence, and uses and abuses of history.We would very much appreciate receiving your comments, questions, or objections regarding the volume as a whole or discrete pieces within it. We can be reached at jle@harvard.law.edu.Thank you for your attention.

Influence Without Impeachment: How the Impeach Earl Warren Movement Began, Faltered, But Avoided Irrelevance

Influence Without Impeachment: How the Impeach Earl Warren Movement Began, Faltered, But Avoided Irrelevance Brett Bethune (bio) Introduction As visitors filed into the Indianapolis Speedway on Memorial Day in 1965, they were greeted by a massive billboard declaring, “Save Our Republic! Impeach Earl Warren.”1 Earlier that year, just outside the city of Selma, Alabama, observers and participants in the historic civil rights march that took place there were confronted by a similar billboard calling for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the United States. Both billboards displayed the name of the group responsible for their conspicuous placement: the John Birch Society.2 By 1966, there were hundreds of similar signs placed on streets, roads, and highways all across the nation. While not every billboard, sign, or pamphlet bore the name of the group, it was clear that the campaign to impeach Earl Warren was a project driven by the John Birch Society.3 Despite being one of the most prominent, well-funded campaigns ever to advocate for the impeachment of a Supreme Court justice, there has been little scholarship—legal or otherwise—examining the Impeach Earl Warren movement. Although Warren was never impeached, it is a mistake to treat the movement as nothing more than an interesting yet inconsequential chapter in the history of public criticisms of the Supreme Court. As this article argues, lots of people, including members of Congress and news reporters, misunderstood critical aspects of the Impeach Earl Warren movement, which led many to dismiss it.4 However, a clearer understanding of the movement helps better evaluate both its impact and its historical significance. This article examines three lesser known aspects of the Impeach Earl Warren movement. First, although the John Birch Society can most readily be identified [End Page 142] with anti-Communism, the group’s campaign to impeach Chief Justice Warren originates in the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Second, the John Birch Society’s leadership and tactics significantly impeded widespread acceptance of the Impeach Earl Warren movement into the mainstream conservative movement, despite a shared opposition to Brown, and may even have been counterproductive. Finally, what the John Birch Society sought to accomplish with its campaign to impeach Warren was more complicated and nuanced than simply removing the Chief Justice from the Court. I A. Robert Welch and the John Birch Society The John Birch Society persists as an organization with a stated mission to support the Constitution and bring about “less government, more responsibility, and—with God’s help—a better world.”5 The group is headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, hometown of former Senator and anti-Communist zealot Joe McCarthy. It offers a variety of membership packages that connect members to local chapters through field coordinators. However, the group remains secretive about how many local chapters exist and refuses to divulge membership size of the organization. Despite its persistence as an organization, it is hardly controversial to say that the group’s most recognizable characteristic is its connection to the anti-Communist movement of the 1960s, which flourished around the time the group was founded by Robert Welch. On December 1, 1899, Robert Welch was born on a farm in Chowan County, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Welch attended the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but he graduated from neither. While it is clear that Welch’s foray into the legal field did not end with a degree, it is less certain whether Welch’s departure from Harvard Law School without graduating was a choice of his own or the result of poor performance. According to the current John Birch Society website, Welch left HLS because “he had had enough of the school and Marxist Professor (and later Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter.”6 Indeed, Welch later told his biographer that when he took Frankfurter’s labor law class he found the professor was overly sympathetic toward labor and progressive tendencies.7 However, there are reasons to doubt that Welch left HLS on his own volition. First, the only evidence that Welch left Harvard because of his frustration with Frankfurter’s ideology comes from the John Birch Society...

Between Exception and Normality: Schmittian Dictatorship and the Soviet Legal Order

AbstractThis article addresses Schmitt’s concept of sovereign dictatorship—a departure from the normal legal order aiming to bring about a new mode of legality—as applied to the Marxist, and then Soviet, “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Unlike Schmitt, Marx and Engels, as well as Soviet legal theorists, saw the space for law even while aiming to dispense with the legal form on the road to communism. This is best explained by Schmitt’s failure to recognize the importance of legal systems not only for controlling social conflict, but also for coordination, the need for which does not disappear in extraordinary circumstances.*This article was initially written as part of my LLM studies at Harvard Law School. I thank my supervisor, Professor Adrian Vermeule, for his guidance and advice, as well as other friends (and enemies) for motivating my project. I am also grateful to the Ratio Juris production team for their exceptionally thorough editing of my original text. Any mistakes remain my own.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) Ethically Sharing Truth through a Sustainable Marketing Communication Strategy

Critic Race Theory (CRT) emerged in the 1970s as part of research conducted by Harvard Law School students. Their study investigated deeply embedded systemic racism in America's institutions. The research revealed racism and discriminatory practices in education, employment, housing, health care, law, and the criminal justice system. The impact of CRT on African Americans is enormous; however, members of the White race vehemently deny responsibility for past wrongs. This paper examines sustainable marketing communication as a strategy for improving relationships between people of color. To eradicate systemic institutional racism, Generation Z emerges as a relevant target for influencing and implementing a strategy to restore trust among stakeholders. Plausible remedies address efforts to improve human capital, invest in education, eradicate poverty, provide healthcare for the poor, integrate recidivism into the legal criminal justice system, and reform policing in minority communities. Moreover, secondary data related to education, incarceration, life expectancy, and health care supports claims concerning deep-seated institutional racism.

A Learning and Teaching Method for the Online Environment that Delivers: Coupling a Soft Socratic Method with a Humanistic, Nurturing Approach

There is limited literature on soft Socratic methods of teaching in Law and limited literature on effective teaching methods for the online environment. With the movement of learning and teaching online by universities in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant lockdowns, one question became important – what is a successful pedagogical method for the online environment? While universities initially saw this as a temporary, emergency measure, learning and teaching online now looks to be more of a permanent change in tertiary education. This article evaluates the effectiveness of a student-focused teaching method, which couples a soft version of the Socratic Method with a Humanistic, nurturing approach, that I observed in Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law Noah Feldman and Ropes &amp; Gray Professor Alvin C Warren Jnr’s classes at Harvard Law School in 2013, and then adapted for the online environment and refined between 2016 and 2018. The evaluation is made using the four lenses from Stephen Brookfield’s book Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. Those lenses are: contextualisation in theory; students’ eyes; colleagues’ perception, and self-reflection. For the theoretical lens, the article analyses the traditional Socratic Method and the wide-ranging criticisms of it. The article then presents data collected from student surveys, peer reviews and self-reflection as a preliminary study. It is hoped that this article will assist other academics who are navigating online learning and teaching, and are curious about techniques and methodologies that have grown out of institutions in the United States of America. While this method was developed to teach Tax Law at a postgraduate level in groups of between 18 and 50 students, the technique could easily be applied in teaching: undergraduate students; students in other courses in Law, and in other disciplines.