A willingness from the justices to speak plainly, forcefully, and almost directly to the public about why Supreme Court's decisions matter is exactly what's needed now.
Many years ago (lord, more than 40!) my law review article was on fair use and parody. At the time, most--nearly all--cases denied fair use for parody AND most of the cases, perhaps all, involved fairly obscene parodies. I don't know if people just didn't object if the parody was fairly benign. My argument, as I recall, involved allowing it if the parody had a "critical purpose"--akin to a redeeming social value. (It did let me be the first to have the Law Review print the word "cunnilingus" as in "The Cunnilingus Champion of Company C," one of the cases. )
I haven't followed up to see the situation now--but I did note that one of the arguments Warhol et al used was that there use was a parody. It appears the court didn't go with that. But the use certainly didn't seem parodic in intent, so I don't know if the court actually got to the point of analyzing it AS parody.
The importance of Sotomayor and Kagan's dueling Warhol case opinions
Many years ago (lord, more than 40!) my law review article was on fair use and parody. At the time, most--nearly all--cases denied fair use for parody AND most of the cases, perhaps all, involved fairly obscene parodies. I don't know if people just didn't object if the parody was fairly benign. My argument, as I recall, involved allowing it if the parody had a "critical purpose"--akin to a redeeming social value. (It did let me be the first to have the Law Review print the word "cunnilingus" as in "The Cunnilingus Champion of Company C," one of the cases. )
I haven't followed up to see the situation now--but I did note that one of the arguments Warhol et al used was that there use was a parody. It appears the court didn't go with that. But the use certainly didn't seem parodic in intent, so I don't know if the court actually got to the point of analyzing it AS parody.