Petherbridge and Schwartz (2013)
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Source Details
| Petherbridge and Schwartz (2013) | |
| Title: | The End of an Epithet? An Exploration of the Use of Legal Scholarship in Intellectual Property Decisions |
| Author(s): | Petherbridge, L., Schwartz, D. L. |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Citation: | Petherbridge, Lee and Schwartz, David L., The End of an Epithet? An Exploration of the Use of Legal Scholarship in Intellectual Property Decisions (February 8, 2013). Houston Law Review, Vol. 50, No. 2, 2013; Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2013-8. |
| Link(s): | Definitive |
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| About the Data | |
| Data Description: | The dataset includes information from all Supreme Court decisions issued between 1949 until 2009. The cases were located using The Supreme Court Database, which contains substantial information about each Supreme Court decision. |
| Data Type: | Primary data |
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| Cross Country Study?: | No |
| Comparative Study?: | No |
| Literature review?: | No |
| Government or policy study?: | No |
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Abstract
The argument that the Federal Circuit is an insular court lacking in intellectual curiosity has invaded academic discourse about the court and its jurisprudence. It is rarely used as a compliment. It is rather used as an epithetic description intended to have broad explanatory power for nearly any of the many and glaring limitations that speakers and commentators contend exist in the court’s body of law. The empirical basis for the argument comes from a single finding: that between 1996 and 2000 the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals referenced legal scholarship in their decisions in trademark and copyright cases nearly four times as often as the Federal Circuit referenced legal scholarship in its decisions in patent cases. While scholars and others have relied upon this finding to assert that the Federal Circuit’s performance is intellectually deficient, there are reasons to question whether that inference is proper. For instance, it stands in contrast to other observations that suggest the Federal Circuit behaves a lot like the regional circuits when it comes to its relationship to legal scholarship.
In this study, we explore the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of legal scholarship in its patent, trademark, and copyright jurisprudence. We report evidence of striking differences in the use of scholarship that depend on whether a decision concerns patent, trademark, or copyright law. The Court uses scholarship in patent decisions at a rate of 28%, but uses it around twice as often in its copyright (67%) and trademark (53%) decisions. While, moreover, the rates at which the Court uses legal scholarship in its copyright and trademark decisions are some of the highest observed in the Court’s entire jurisprudence, the rate at which the Court uses legal scholarship in its patent decisions is among the lowest observed. This Article discusses the significance of these observations to the empirical basis for the epithetic argument that the Federal Circuit is more insular and lacking in intellectual curiosity than other circuit courts of appeals.
Main Results of the Study
This article argues against the epithetic accusation that that Federal Circuit judges are insular and lacking in intellectual curiosity. More specifically, this paper shows that:
- Empirical support for the chain of reasoning linking differential citation to intellectual deficiency is weak, if not extremely weak.
- Differential use of legal scholarship is a more natural phenomenon that may be unconnected, at least in many instances, from a courts intellectual connectedness to ongoing law and policy discourse.
Policy Implications as Stated By Author
Coverage of Study
Datasets
| Sample size: | 7.730 |
| Level of aggregation: | Court Decisions |
| Period of material under study: | 1949-2009 |
