Expertise
Sexual Orientation & the Law
Biography
Jennifer E. Rothman holds the William G. Coskran Chair and is Professor of Law at LMU Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She will be a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law in 2021. Rothman is an elected member of the American Law Institute and an adviser on the Restatement of the Law (Third) of Torts: Defamation and Privacy. She is also an affiliated fellow at the Yale Information Society Project at Yale Law School. Rothman joined Loyola after serving on the faculty at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. She is the 2019-2020 recipient of the David P. Leonard Faculty Service Award for outstanding teaching and service.
Professor Rothman is nationally recognized for her scholarship in the intellectual property and constitutional law fields, and is the leading expert on the right of publicity. Her book, The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World, was published in 2018 by Harvard University Press. The book has been described by reviewers as “indispensable” and the “definitive biography of the right of publicity.” Rothman’s essays and articles regularly appear in top law reviews and journals. Her most recent article, The First Amendment and the Right(s) of Publicity is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal. She also created Rothman’s Roadmap to the Right of Publicity, www.rightofpublicityroadmap.com, the go-to website for right-of-publicity laws and commentary.
Rothman received her A.B. from Princeton University where she received the Asher Hinds Book Prize and the Grace May Tilton Prize. Rothman received an M.F.A. in film production from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where she directed an award-winning documentary. Rothman then worked in the film industry, including a position in feature production at Paramount Pictures.
Rothman received her J.D. from UCLA, where she graduated first in her class and won the Jerry Pacht Memorial Constitutional Law Award for her scholarship in that field. Rothman served as law clerk to the Honorable Marsha S. Berzon of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.
Publications, Research and Related Material
Courses Taught
- Trademarks & Unfair Competition
- Copyright
- First Amendment
- Intellectual Property Theory
- The Right of Publicity
- Legal Issues in Reality and Non-Fiction Works
- Privacy
- Torts
Education
- AB, Princeton University
- MFA, University of Southern California
- JD, University of California, Los Angeles
Book
The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World (Harvard Univ. Press 2018)
Selected Articles
- “The First Amendment and the Right(s) of Publicity,” 130 Yale Law Journal __ (2020) (forthcoming)
- “The Right of Publicity’s Intellectual Property Turn“, 42 Columbia Law & the Arts 277 (2019) (adapted from keynote lecture)
- “Commercial Speech, Commercial Use, and the Intellectual Property Quagmire,” Virginia Law Review (2015)
- “Copyright’s Private Ordering & ‘The Next Great Copyright Act,'” 29 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1595 (2014)
- “Copyright, Custom and Lessons from the Common Law,” in Intellectual Property and the Common Law (Ed. Shyamkrishna Balganesh) (Cambridge University Press 2013)
- “The Inalienable Right of Publicity,” 101 Georgetown Law Journal 185 (2012)
- “Sex Exceptionalism in Intellectual Property,” 23 Stanford Law & Policy Review 119 (2012)
- “Liberating Copyright: Thinking Beyond Free Speech,” 95 The Cornell Law Review 463 (2010)
- “Sex In and Out of Intimacy,” 59 Emory Law Journal 809 (2010) (co-authored with Laura A. Rosenbury)
- “The Questionable Use of Custom in Intellectual Property,” 93 Virginia Law Review 1899 (2007)
- “Initial Interest Confusion: Standing at the Crossroads of Trademark Law,” 27 Cardozo Law Review 105 (2005).
- “Copyright Preemption and the Right of Publicity,” 36 UC Davis Law Review 199 (2002).
- “Freedom of Speech and True Threats,” 25 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 283 (2001).
Selected Essays and Book Chapters
- Valuing the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom to Compete in Defenses to Trademark and Related Claims in the United States, in Handbook on International and Comparative Trademark Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2020) (eds. Jane Ginsburg & Irene Calboli) (forthcoming)
- In the Shadow of the Law: The Role of Custom in Intellectual Property in Research Handbook on the Economics of Intellectual Property Law (eds. Peter Menell & Ben Depoorter, Elgar Publ’g 2019)
- The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for New York?, 36 Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Journal 573 (2018) (adapted from featured lecture)
- The Other Side of Garcia: The Right of Publicity and Copyright Preemption, 39 Columbia Journal of the Law & the Arts 441 (2016)
- “Copyright, Custom and Lessons from the Common Law,” in Intellectual Property and the Common Law (ed. Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Cambridge University Press 2013)
- “Best Intentions: Best Practices Statements for Fair Use,” 57 Journal of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A 371 (2010)
- “Custom, Comedy and the Value of Dissent,” 95 Virginia Law Review In Brief 19 (April 2009)
- “Why Custom Cannot Save Copyright’s Fair Use Defense,” 93 Virginia Law Review In Brief 243 (2008)
Contact
Burns 416
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
(o) 213.736.2776
(f) 213.380.3769