Assistant Professor of Law
B.A. Columbia University
J.D. Columbia Law School
Eva E. Subotnik joins the St. John’s faculty as Assistant Professor
of Law. She teaches Copyright, Introduction to Intellectual
Property, and Trusts & Estates.
Professor Subotnik’s scholarship and research interests focus on
copyright law and policy in the context of changing notions of the
professional and amateur in the digital age. She has written about
originality, authorship and ownership issues arising in the areas
of the visual arts, sound recordings, and other media, and she is
currently at work on an ethnographic study of the role of copyright
as an incentive among photojournalists. Prior to her appointment at
St. John’s, Professor Subotnik was an Intellectual Property Fellow
at the Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law
School.
Professor Subotnik received her B.A., summa cum laude,
from Columbia University in 1997 and her J.D. from Columbia Law
School in 2003. While at Columbia, she was an editor of the
Columbia Law Review. Following graduation, she clerked for
the Honorable Bruce M. Selya of the United States Court of Appeals
for the First Circuit and the Honorable Alvin K. Hellerstein of the
Southern District of New York.
Professor Subotnik practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in
New York. She was an associate in both the Corporate and Litigation
departments, representing clients in telecommunications,
entertainment, insurance and energy transactions and cases.
Selected Publications:
- Constitutional Obstacles? Reconsidering Copyright
Protection for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings, Columbia Journal of Law & the
Arts (forthcoming Spring 2014) (with June M.
Besek).
- Speaking of Moral Rights, A Conversation, 30 Cardozo
Arts & Ent. L.J. 91 (2012) (with Jane C. Ginsburg).
- Originality Proxies: Toward a Theory of Copyright and
Creativity, 76 Brook. L. Rev. 1487 (2011).
- Past Violence, Future Danger?: Rethinking Diminished
Capacity Departures Under Federal Sentencing Guidelines Section
5K2.13, 102 Colum. L. Rev. 1340 (2002).