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 (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. Her scholarship focuses on

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive 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, education ...

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

, and

false advertising False advertising is defined as the act of publishing, transmitting, or otherwise publicly circulating an advertisement containing a false claim, or statement, made intentionally (or recklessly) to promote the sale of property, goods, or servic ...

. In addition to her general scholarship, Tushnet is known for her

fanfiction Fan fiction or fanfiction (also abbreviated to fan fic, fanfic, fic or FF) is fictional writing written in an amateur capacity by fans, unauthorized by, but based on an existing work of fiction. The author uses copyrighted characters, settin ...

-related scholarship and her legal advocacy work for the

Organization for Transformative Works The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) is a nonprofit, fan activist organization. Its mission is to serve fans by preserving and encouraging transformative fan activity, known as " fanwork", and by making fanwork widely accessible. OT ...

, a nonprofit

fandom A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...

-related project that supports fanworks (such as

) through preservation and advocacy.

Biography

Education

Tushnet was a

policy debate Policy debate is an American form of debate competition in which teams of two usually advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government. It is also referred to as cross-examinat ...

r at Harvard, getting to finals of the

National Debate Tournament The National Debate Tournament is one of the national championships for collegiate policy debate in the United States. The tournament is sponsored by the American Forensic Association with the Ford Motor Company Fund. History of the NDT Th ...

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 (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by ''U ...

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

Career

Tushnet served as a law clerk to Judge

Edward R. Becker Edward Roy Becker (May 4, 1933 – May 19, 2006) was a United States federal judge, United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for ...

of the

United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (in case citations, 3d Cir.) is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts for the following districts: * District of Delaware * District of New Jersey * Ea ...

and later for Justice

David Souter David Hackett Souter ( ; born September 17, 1939) is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1990 until his retirement in 2009. Appointed by President George H. W. Bush to fill the seat t ...

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 involve a point o ...

. She practiced at

Debevoise & Plimpton Debevoise & Plimpton LLP (often shortened to Debevoise) is an international law firm headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1931 by Harvard Law School alumnus Eli Whitney Debevoise and Oxford-trained William Stevenson, the firm was original ...

. Tushnet then entered teaching, first at NYU School of Law (2002–04), then at

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

(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 Mark Victor Tushnet (born 18 November 1945) is an American legal scholar. He specializes in constitutional law and theory, including comparative constitutional law, and is currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law Sch ...

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 a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

. Her sister

Eve Tushnet Eve Tushnet (born 1978) is an American lesbian Roman Catholic author, blogger, and speaker. In addition to publishing books, she has a blog and writes regularly for several major magazines, among them '' The American Spectator'', ''Commonweal'', ...

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 143 ...

''. 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 The ''Yale Law Journal'' (YLJ), known also as the ''Yale Law Review'', is a student-run law review affiliated with the Yale Law School. Published continuously since 1891, it is the most widely known of the eight law reviews published by students ...

'' 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 The ''Boston College Law Review'' is an academic journal of legal scholarship and a student organization at Boston College Law School. It was established in 1959. Until 1977, it was known as the ''Boston College Industrial & Commercial Law Review'' ...

'' 1 (2000) ;Casebooks *''Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases & Materials'' (2014 ed.), with

Eric Goldman Eric Goldman (born April 15, 1968) is a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. He also co-directs the law school's High Tech Law Institute. and co-supervises the law school's Privacy Law Certificate. Career overview Goldman is ...

(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 Trademark attorneys 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