Taylor’s Version (of the Law) Rules in Student-Led Reading Group
Hillary Browning ’25 took her first course on trusts, wills, and estates and fell in love.
“I was already interested in tax law, but this was tax law with a touch of family drama and group dynamics,” she said.
Two semesters later, Browning expressed her enthusiasm for the subject with a 21-slide PowerPoint presentation titled “What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Estate Planning.”
She had an eager audience for her work: a group of about 15 fellow law students who met weekly by parsing the legal issues raised by pop star’s career and life.
The venue was “The Law and Management of Global Fame,” a spring 2024 reading group centered around Swift and the law. Conceived by students Grace Kier ’25 and Briana Thompson ’25, the course was based on the premise that a person can be famous enough to influence legal doctrine. Like The Tortured Poets Department, Swift’s album that dropped in April, the reading group was a detailed study of the recording artist’s experience with fame.
Swift’s relevance to the world of copyright law and artists’ rights is well-known. Her rerecording of her first six albums to ensure ownership rights to the new recordings — dubbed “Taylor’s Version” — is the subject of at least one course in U.S. law schools. But the Yale Law School reading group extends to areas of law without an obvious connection to music.
During the semester’s 10 weeks, the group covered copyright infringement and song lyrics, children and contracts in the recording industry, and ticket scalping. By the new album’s release — an occasion students marked with a listening party in Baker Hall — the reading group had also discussed sexual assault and defamation.
(Reading Groups Fill a) Blank Space
Reading groups at Yale Law School are an opportunity for students to explore topics not covered in other courses. Students work with a faculty member to design a syllabus on their selected subject. A faculty member supervises the group, but students organize the meetings and lead the discussions.
The reading group on Swift grew out of conversations between Kier and Thompson, friends and classmates who had talked about how Swift’s music and celebrity intersected with the law. They decided the topic merited further examination.
“You don’t have to have an opinion on her or have a positive opinion of her to realize that there is a phenomenon there and think that studying that phenomenon is important,” Kier said.
(A Learning Opportunity) Where Sparks Fly
Sterling Professor of International Law Harold Hongju Koh overheard Kier and Thompson talking about their idea at dinner last fall and soon offered to be the reading group’s faculty sponsor.
“Everything should give you an opportunity to learn about law,” Koh said. “And studying law should be fun, not a chore. So my pedagogical approach has always been that if students are excited about something, that creates a learning opportunity.”
Koh, a leading expert on international law and human rights, said he was dimly aware of Swift at the time. But he did his research. He watched a few videos, listened to some songs, and read media accounts of Swift. He was impressed by Kier and Thompson’s proposed syllabus, which drew from academic journals, the popular press, podcasts, and Swift’s music itself. Statutes and case texts were also woven throughout. Assignments for each meeting averaged about 75 pages, or roughly three hours of reading and listening time, according to the syllabus.
“It made me realize that Taylor Swift is more than just a great performer and songwriter,” Koh said. “She has changed the legal game as well, by how she has taken control of all aspects of her global fame, especially her intellectual property, and integrated all aspects of her public persona to become a cultural phenomenon.”
Kier and Thompson both see connections to Swift in their legal interests. Kier, who has studied U.S.-Russia policy, pointed out that where Swift performs worldwide is in part a reflection of international politics. Thompson is interested in representing survivors of sexual violence and sexual assault; Swift won a well-publicized civil jury trial after suing a former radio host for groping her at a fan event.
When putting together the course outline, Thompson saw it as a chance to discover other areas of the law, like IT and copyright law.
(Guest Speakers Explain Law) All Too Well
Koh also saw an opening to introduce students to areas of law they may not have otherwise studied by inviting leading practitioners to speak to the group.
Jared Freedman ’97, former Litigation Director of the Recording Industry Association of America, discussed the law and economics of the music streaming business. Peter Carfagna, a sports lawyer and Harvard Law School lecturer whose clients have included LeBron James and Venus and Serena Williams, spoke about the legal challenges presented by global celebrity.
Another hot topic in law also inevitably came up for discussion: artificial intelligence. The technology, which has already prompted recording industry lawsuits, could allow anyone to create Taylor Swift–style songs.
“It raises really interesting questions about art and artistry and what is art and who owns art,” Kier said.
AI-generated deepfake images of celebrities — which are sometimes pornographic — also cause legal headaches for celebrities like Swift. Ellen P. Goodman, a Rutgers Law professor specializing in information policy law, broached the topic while covering what it means to own one’s name, image, and likeness.
The syllabus also left room for students to lead a class meeting on a topic of their choice. For Browning, that was wills and estates. Her starting point was the music video for Swift’s song “Anti-Hero.”
“The video is like a mini law school exam hypothetical,” she said.
In the video, an older Swift dreams about her own funeral and will reading, attended by her fictional family. One of her sons accuses a daughter-in-law of killing Swift so she can inherit Swift’s money. Everyone is stunned when the will reveals that Swift has left her fortune to her cats and her sons inherit just 13 cents each.
Among the legal questions the video raises, according to Browning: Can a person inherit money if they kill someone? Can in-laws inherit? Can someone leave money to a cat? And when can a will be contested?
In her presentation, Browning explained that animals cannot inherit but that someone could create a trust to provide for their cats. Swift’s sons might contest the will by arguing that leaving money to cats is a sign of diminished capacity. But Browning concluded that their attempt would likely fail because the standard for capacity to create a will is relatively low.
Fearless (Teaching)
Matthäus Uitz ’24 LLM was immediately intrigued when he learned about the reading group. His research focuses on the international dimensions of private law, including contract law and intellectual property law — all topics covered in the course. Uitz also admires Swift’s business savvy and feminism.
“Her entrepreneurial brilliance piqued my scholarly interest years ago, because her willingness to question and ultimately break the conventions of established institutions to create space for positive change is a trait that should encourage all aspiring academics to maximize societal welfare through innovation,” he said.
For Uitz, the reading group was a novel way to explore differences in how the U.S. and the European Union treat certain legal issues. He noticed how the recording industry has often pushed to have intellectual property cases heard in the country music capital of Nashville — even when the facts of a case would not necessarily place it in that city.
“Unlike the legal system of the European Union, the U.S.-American civil procedure laws seem to tolerate forum shopping to a much larger extent,” he said. “This legal gateway to strategic litigation continues to fascinate me.”
Uitz, now in Austria, said the course also showed him something about teaching.
“Our class confirmed my belief that creative approaches to lecturing are essential for motivating students to actively participate in class discussions, which is an observation that will shape my future teaching endeavors back home in Europe,” he said.
Koh agrees that it helps to be inventive, explaining complex legal concepts with athletes like Jackie Robinson (who wore 42, the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure that governs severance and consolidation), songs like “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” (the policy rationale for the civil procedure doctrine of res judicata), and films like 12 Angry Men (jury deliberations) and A Few Good Men (military justice and cross examination).
Everything should give you an opportunity to learn about law. And studying law should be fun, not a chore.”
—Professor Harold Hongju Koh
Enchanted (with the Law)
Kier and Thompson now hear their legal education at work when they listen to Swift’s music. The song “No Body No Crime,” in which a woman is murdered by a cheating husband? It’s about evidence. The same with “All Too Well,” a rumination on a failed relationship. Thompson listens and wonders if Rule 403, which guides what evidence should be excluded from federal trials as prejudicial, would apply if the lyrics were testimony.
“She is an ingenious storyteller and that is something I think a lot of lawyers can benefit from,” Kier said. “Artists and storytellers, I think some would argue, are not doing something all too different from what lawyers are doing when they are telling a story, especially in trial setting.”
As for Koh, supervising the reading group might have made him a Swiftie. Outside of the course, he even included a Swift-related hypothetical — about litigation stemming from her global tours, including the Justice Department investigation of Ticketmaster's owner — in his first-year procedure exam.
“The Beatles, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan come along maybe once in a decade,” Koh said. “When they explode into our consciousness, we need to study and understand how they achieved it, not simply ignore or mock it. But if this kind of course gets mocked, well, shake it off.”
