Law Prof Appointed to Copyright Case Sees Parallels to Erin Brokovich
Ohio State University law professor Deborah Jones Merritt didn’t shy away from media interviews about her first Supreme Court argument.
She told the Columbus Dispatch how she practiced before large photos of the nine justices. She confessed to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times that she felt like “the Erin Brockovich of the Supreme Court” since so many lawyers represented the other side.
Merritt was appointed to defend an appeals ruling on freelance copyrights that none of the parties wanted to defend. Her mission was to persuade the justices that courts have no jurisdiction over a settlement of infringement claims against online publishers filed by freelancers who never registered their articles for copyright. That position—taken by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—didn’t get the support of either the copyright claimants or the publishers, the BLT reports.
After the argument, Merritt bounded down the Supreme Court steps and told some law students who watched her argument, “I don’t think we won,” according to the Columbus Dispatch. SCOTUSblog didn’t necessarily agree with her assessment, saying Merritt turned in “a strong performance.”
“She offered a full-scale defense, suggesting that the restriction at issue was jurisdictional but, even if it was not, there was no reason for the justices to overturn the 2nd Circuit,” according to SCOTUSblog.
The Columbus Dispatch was also impressed with the performance by Merritt, a former law clerk for now retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she was a federal appeals judge.
“During her presentation, Merritt spoke in a clear and controlled voice, often gesticulating with her left hand,” the newspaper reported. “She even managed to get the words ‘Ohio State University’ into part of her argument.”
