Belt v Lawes and the Meaning of Authorship

Abstract

The 1882 Belt v. Lawes libel trial centered around aesthetic questions, of precisely the kind that judges usually seek to avoid. The trigger for the dispute was an article in Vanity Fair by Charles Lawes, asserting that Richard Belt, a sculptor and member of the Royal Academy of Arts, relied on his assistants to do his work. At trial, Lawes proposed an artistic skills test of sorts, suggesting that Belt verify his abilities by executing a sculpture in the courtroom. This evidentiary drama, and the aesthetically-freighted arguments mustered by the parties at trial, make it a fruitful historical episode to study conceptions of authorship and the artistic process, the development of modern copyright doctrine, and the status of expert artistic testimony in the law.