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49 Duke L.J. 383 (1999-2000)
Whose Who - the Case for a Kantian Right of Publicity

handle is hein.journals/duklr49 and id is 397 raw text is: Duke LawJournal

VoLuME 49                  NOVEMBER 1999                      NUMBER2
WHOSE WHO? THE CASE FOR A KANTLAN
RIGHT OF PUBLICITY
ALICE HAEMMERLIt
ABSTRAct
Rapidly developing technological opportunities for unauthorized
uses of identity-from  virtual kidnapping to digitalcasting-coin-
cide with growing demand for a preemptive federal right of publicity
that can replace the existing welter of inconsistent state laws. Progress
is impeded, however, by intractable doctrinal confusion and academic
hostility to the right as allegedly inimical to society's cultural need to
manipulate celebrity images. Because the right of publicity is tradi-
tionally based on Lockean labor theory and analogized to intellectual
property in created works, it is vulnerable to such attacks; to date, no
serious attempt has been made to elaborate an alternative philosophi-
cal justification that can withstand them.
In this Article, Dean Haemmerli uses Kantian philosophy to justify
an autonomy-based right of publicity. In doing so, she challenges both
the traditional approach to the right of publicity and its postmodernist
critiques. First, the Article's proposed reconception of the right of
publicity rejects the existing doctrinal bifurcation of publicity and pri-
vacy rights and explicitly embraces both the economic and moral fac-
ets of the individual's need to control the use of his identity. Second,
t Dean of Graduate Legal Studies and International Programs, Columbia Law School.
A.B., Vassar College; M.Sc., London School of Economics; M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University;
J.D., Columbia Law School. Thanks to Mike Dorf, George Fletcher, Jane Ginsburg, Kent Gre-
enawalt, Ken Jones, John Manning, Henry Monaghan, Jeremy Waldron, and, in particular,
Robert Ferguson, for their helpful comments on various drafts, and to Jack Kernochan for his
encouragement.

383

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