I recently began work on a book about plagiarism and the law. Given the subject’s lively controversy in this digital age of “everything’s up for grabs” – consider the lawsuit against Led Zeppelin for supposedly appropriating the music to “Stairway to Heaven”; the resignation of a memb

News item: Trump press secretary calls lies “alternative facts” I have mixed feelings about saying this: the law has long lived with “alternative facts.” And it’s lawyers and judges more than politicians who create them. Legal fictions, and fact-warping legalese, have been with us sin

[The following post derives from work on my forthcoming book, Legal Fictions & Presumptions, and Constructive, Deemed, Implied, and Imputed Entities: An Encyclopedic Desk Reference on Their Status at Law] It used to be that our law distinguished between attempts that were impossib