The dead poets society: The copyright term and the public domain, by Matthew Rimmer.
“This paper…advocates a critical theory of copyright law, which highlights the gap between the symbolic significance of legislation, and its instrumental effects in terms of economic impact and cultural costs. It demands a greater scrutiny of the politics and the rhetoric of Congress, the judiciary, and the public domain. This paper claims that the case of Eldred v Ashcroft offers a lens through which a disciplinary pattern can be discerned. It is interested in how copyright lawyers have analysed the dispute and certain kinds of assumptions. This paper evaluates the relative influence of the various intellectual disciplines at play on the decision of the Supreme Court.”
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See Lawrence Lessig’s response to the article here.