Coursepacks

The Supreme Court's Seminole Tribe decision did not have occasion to research the question, but in fact the 1990 Congressional revision to the Copyright Act, subjecting states and state officers to suits for copyright infringement in federal court, is based not only on congressional power under the Commerce and Copyright Clauses but also on section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment as well (ensuring that states will not deprive persons of property, as created by Congress under the Copyright Clause without due process of law). See S. Rep. No. 102-280, 1992 US Code Cong. and Adm. News 3087, 3093-94; and S. Rep. 101-305. Justice Stevens' warnings are therefore overstated (unless the Court were to hold that the the extension was predicated only on the commerce clause, an unlikely result).

Charles S. Sims
<0726+afs5%proskauer+_ny[_at_]mcimail.com> Received on Tue Apr 09 1996 - 16:31:23 GMT