At 10:11 AM -0500 3/4/07, dhbailey wrote:
One thing I find amusing among all these apparently conflicting decisions is that the newer era of intellectual property and copyright law is still a wide-open frontier and all the judges are trying to come up with the definitive ruling, paying less attention to case law than other older, more well established areas of the law. Each judge wants to be the one who all future cases turn to and all future judges use as a basis for their rulings. So no judges want to be seen as following other judges in this area, not yet. It's sort of an alpha-dog/beta-dog fight among the judges, in my opinion.
Sure, there's some of that. It's just human nature. But I suspect it's also human nature that no judge wants to be slapped on the wrist by a higher appeals court, so they CAN'T ignore the law. With luck, checks and balances actually do work.
It may seem weird, but I draw a parallel with the world of beauty pageants. The judges in the Miss Virginia pageant don't just want to pick the best Miss Virginia, they want to pick the person who will be the next Miss America because that's where the prestige is.
And in order for that precedent-setting ruling to be solidly established, it has to convince the appeals courts all the way up to and including the Supremes. That's how our multi-level court system is SUPPOSED to work! And a rash of contradictory lower court rulings is part of the process.
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
