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

It is a useful coincidence that the 119th anniversary of Emile Zola’s J’Accuse occurs exactly a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. As viewed by the greater French writer, Anatole France, the trumped-up Alfred Dreyfus case (Zola ris