About GamesLaw
What is GamesLaw?
GamesLaw.net was created as an offshot of Wikilaw, which was a multi-faceted blog covering wikis, the Wikimedia Foundation and its project Wikipedia, law school, and major news in the legal world. Over time, as the author, GamesLaw Executive Director Dan Rosenthal, began focusing more on the gaming industry, the blog’s content began to shift over to a more gaming law focus.
And so it was that GamesLaw was born. One day, Dan stumbled across Stropp’s World, and was inspired by the design. With the significant help of Stropp, GamesLaw’s current design was crafted. Thanks Stropp, we couldn’t have done it without you.
So what is GamesLaw? Simply put, it’s the very best of news and analysis on issues facing the gaming industry, focusing on legal, financial, and business content. Though it says “Law” in the title, the fact is that business and finance are so inextricably tied to both the games and legal industries, that they’re impossible to separate.
Who is GamesLaw?
GamesLaw is:
* Dan Rosenthal, Executive Director
* Jessica Davis, Senior Editor
* Elizabeth Surette, Contributing Writer
* Kelly Ohlert, Contributing Writer
* Eric Ford, Contributing Writer
* You? We’re looking for news posters and content writers, so if you’re interested in video game law, especially if you are an attorney, law student, or business student, we’re looking for you.
What is our philosophy?
Our philosophy comes from various philosophies of law, including Legal Realism, Legal Formalism, Legal Positivism, Legal Process, Structuralism, Textualism, and Langdell-ism. (I’m not sure that the last is actually considered its own philosophy, but rest assured that Langdell is a powerful influence on us). We seem to most closely identify with the intersection of Legal Formalism, Positivism, and Realism — that is, we respect the realist ideals that the law is what it is; we respect the formalist ideal that law consists of meaningful rules, and that these rules can be applied to facts, and that substantive application of subjective standards instead of the application of formal legal rules to facts hurts the integrity of the common law; and the positivist ideal that law begins for the judiciary once it is enacted, and the concepts of how and why it was developed are functions of the legislature, not the judiciary.
A summary can be found in this quote from the Massachusetts Constitution: “[T]he judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them; to the end [that Massachusetts' government] may be a government of laws, and not of men.”
GamesLaw respects the following viewpoints, and integrates them into much of our thought:
* Operation of Law: The Wikipedia article on Legal Realism succinctly sums up our view: “Notwithstanding the merit of a given rule, one cannot comprehend the causes that underlie the operation of the law, nor improve that operation, until one honestly faces the manner in which the law does in fact operate.” In short, it is impossible to question why the system works a certain way, or how to fix it, without first ascertaining what the system is, and how it does, in fact, work in the real world. It is pointless to argue about what the law should or should not do, or quibbling over theory, without first recognizing what the law actually is in practice.
*Rule of Law: The judicial system must support adequate remedies sufficient to ensure that all fundamental legal and equitable principles are vindicated.
*Institutional Settlement: Again, Wikipedia sums up our position. “Law should allocate decisionmaking to the institutions best suited to decide particular questions, and the decisions arrived at by those institutions must then be respected by other actors in the system, even if those actors would have reached a different conclusion” Notwithstanding this position, the rule of law must be inviolable. Respect and deference for other actors within the system must only stretch to the boundaries of the law, and equitable justice. If actions exceed these boundaries, it is the role and duty of the courts to provide redress.
* “Reasoned Elaboration.” Judges do, in fact, make law, and ajudication is not merely the mechanical deduction from precedent and statutory texts. While the judicial role is irreducibly creative in some respects, it is limited to the reasoned elaboration of principles and policies that are ultimately traceable to more democratically legitimate decisionmakers.” Judges should reason from the totality of the legal materials at issue to reach their conclusions, and while “raw judicial will” sometimes happens, as a matter of observable reality, it is deprecated. In short, while judges may use reasonable interpretation and elaboration and are not completely bound by precedent and statute, they must be careful and restrictive when they do so, since this hedges into the responsibility of democratically elected legislators.
* Supremacy of the Constitution, Federalism, and Separation of Powers: This should go without saying, but the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and we affirm both the Constitution’s supremacy and the system of federalism in our country. Laws that go against the letter and spirit of the Constitution are repugnant to our free society, and should be eliminated, either through the legislature, or via judicial review. Inherent in this viewpoint is the separation of powers: to each branch their own role, and not to exceed it into that of the others. For instance, the role of regulating games lies with the legislature. It is not for the President to decide to regulate games. That power lies with Congress via the Commerce Clause, and such legislation must satisfy the First Amendment, and if it does not, it is the role of the judiciary to strike it down.
–
Keep in mind, however, that philosophies are merely outlooks, and neither can, nor should, bind a person into a specific manner of thinking. As human beings, we are free to think in any way we see fit, and though we have particular lenses through which we choose to view the law, we retain, as humans, the inalienable right to swap out these lenses when the principles of equity and justice require us to, or just because we feel like it. If you didn’t understand any of the above, we can summarize it as this: “We have a set of principles, but we reserve the right to view things however we want, even if they go against our principles”.
Popularity: unranked [?]