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Benjamin Kaplan

By Lawrence Solum

It is with regret and sadness that I report the passing of Benjamin Kaplan.  Here is an excerpt from Harvard's press release:

Benjamin Kaplan, the Royall Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School and a former justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, died August 18, 2010.

A pre-eminent copyright scholar, Kaplan co-wrote the first casebook on copyright, with Yale Law Professor Ralph Brown ?57 in 1960. His 1967 seminal text, ?An Unhurried View of Copyright,? grew out of a series of lectures on copyright he delivered at Columbia as part of the James S. Carpentier Lectures series. Kaplan served on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court from 1972-1981 and later on the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

"Ben Kaplan was a towering giant in the law with legendary wisdom and analytic precision,? said Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow. ?The generations of students and litigants guided by his work as professor and justice ensure that his legacy will long endure.?

I have many fond memories of the Copyright class Kaplan taught at Harvard in the early 1980s.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on August 23, 2010 (boomark / email).