Many law school courses require the purchase of a statutory or rule supplement. Some courses that come to mind are Civ Pro, Evidence, Bus Orgs, etc. The irony of such supplements is that even though they cost $30 to $40 or more, they are often filled with nothing more than public domain materials. For instance, under United States copyright law, works of the United States government are in the public domain. See 17 U.S.C. 105. That makes them, as Justice Brandeis once said, “free as the air.” INS v. AP, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).
Thomas Jefferson himself said it beautifully in a letter to Issac McPhereson in 1813:
That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
Note that Jefferson thought that the default of nature is that ideas were free, unless society—i.e., the law—built “property” fences around them. Patent and copyright laws are examples of fences that society builds around ideas to turn them into a type of property. And even though Jefferson felt that the default state of nature was that ideas were free, he nevertheless was the first person to examine a patent, something he did as one of the initial Patent Commissioners while he also served as George Washington’s Secretary of State.
But patents are one thing. Public domain statutes and rules are another: the law makes clear that such materials are free, “like the air in which we breathe.”
Therefore, I’ve put together a free supplement for Civ Pro students with relevant provisions from the Constitution, judicial statutes, the FRCP, and more. Download it, print it out (I’d recommend double-sided). It’s unprotected, so you can also annotate it on your computer or a tablet. Read ’em and enjoy!
Now yours for the low, low closeout price of $0.00 at this link. Or see it embedded below.