social norms

I have long been a fan of Professor Roberta Rosenthal Kwall’s work. Her thoughtful consideration of issues at the intersection of creativity and spirituality has done much to provide an important counterbalance to the law and economics scholarship that has emerged as a commanding voice in intellectual property law. Her book, The Soul of Creativity: Forging a Moral Rights Law for the United States (2009), cemented her reputation as an IP scholar who, earlier than many, recognized the need for a more expansive view of copyright’s incentive story to include creativity motivated by internal desire and self-fulfillment rather than economic exploitation. Although we often approach issues from different perspectives, we share an interest in thinking about whether intellectual property law should pay greater attention to widely shared interests that relate to such intrinsic motivations, such as attribution and reputation.

Absent the author’s name, I admit I would not have been likely to read The Cultural Analysis Paradigm: Women and Synagogue Ritual as a Case Study, which is forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review and available here. As a nonreligious individual, I am woefully underread in literatures addressing the nature and practice of religious tradition. But I knew that Prof. Kwall, who is not only the Founding Director of the Center for Intellectual Property Law at the DePaul College of Law but also the co-director of its Center for Jewish Law and Judaic Studies, would have something insightful to say about the intersection of religious ritual and cultural analysis that would speak to issues in which I have a particular interest. And I was not disappointed:   Her article both provided me with a lens into a world with which I was not familiar and made that world relevant to my own work.