More than any other of Emerson’s essays, “Experience” shows us a succession of states, moods, and “regions” of human life. It is not a “carpet” essay in Adorno’s sense, in which a set of themes is woven into a core idea, but a journey essay, which moves from region to region, and portrays life as a set of moods through which we pass. Like a piece of music, “Experience” is in motion. It provides an exemplary case of the essay as Montaigne describes the form: “something which cannot be said at once all in one piece.” Chapter 7 considers whether “Experience" is to be seen as what Cavell calls a “journey of ascent” – as in the journey up and out of the cave in Plato’s Republic; as a version of Plato’s myth of Er; or, with its praise of “the midworld,” as a return to the ordinary as Wittgenstein thinks of it.

Chapter 9 considers Emerson’s first revolutionary book of 1836, Nature. Even in this first book, Goodman argues, Emerson presents a nascent epistemology of moods. The discussion then turns to the moody swings of “Nature,” from the Essays, Second Series, in which Emerson finds the natural world either bountifully present or just missed, and as taking two opposing forms: a stable finished form he calls natura naturata, and a dynamic form he calls natura naturans. At the end of the essay, Emerson abandons this main set of oppositions in a leap to a metaphysical conclusion. The Coda considers Emerson’s attraction to Michael Faraday’s idea that “we do not arrive at last at atoms, but at spherules of force.”

Emerson describes a range of experiences that constitute friendship: titanic battles between beautiful enemies; conversational brilliance and expansion; a joyful solitude, as if someone has departed rather than arrived; a generalized benevolence toward people in the street to whom one does not speak; the warm sympathies and household joy one shares with a familiar friend; the disappointment of a friend outgrown. His account shows an intense focus on moral perfection – on our unattained but attainable self, alone and with others – but an equally intense awareness of what he calls in “Experience” “the plaint of tragedy” that sounds throughout our lives “in regard to persons, to friendship and love.” The chapter’s coda charts the opposition in “Love” between love as the experience of being “swept away” and a skeptical vision of marriage as a prison, from which sex, person, and partiality have vanished.

Chapter 1 uses three examples of expression with substantial inherent value that should arguably not be registered as a trademark, or should only have a narrow scope of trademark protection regardless of whether it has acquired distinctiveness in an industry. The first example focuses on words that provide information about products. DC Comics and Marvel Characters have obtained trademark registrations for “Super Heroes” for comic books and other products that feature superhero characters, and “Super Hero” for masquerade costumes. The second example focuses on trademark rights claimed in popular terms or designs displayed on expressive merchandise. Lifeguard Licensing Corp. registered “Lifeguard” and a white Greek cross symbol (similar in shape to the red cross symbol) as a mark for T-shirts and other goods. The third example focuses on intrinsically decorative product features, such as three-dimensional shapes that represent things in nature. Globefill Inc. owns trademark registrations for a human-skull-shaped bottle for alcoholic beverages sold under the brand name “Crystal Head Vodka”, and a copyright registration and design patent for this sculpture.

The Conclusion provides an overview of the topics discussed throughout the book. First, it encourages governments to refuse to register expression with substantial inherent value or only provide a narrow scope of trademark protection to such marks. Then it reviews the free speech framework for trademark law, and the proposed reforms of trademark registration and enforcement laws discussed in Chapter 7. Finally, it discusses why these proposed reforms of trademark law are feasible. Many of the reforms proposed in this book are already included in current trademark laws or model trademark laws. Members of the International Trademark Association and other attorneys, academics, and commentators agree that the free expression right imposes some limits on trademark registration and enforcement laws. International obligations to protect trademarks in treaties and trade agreements do not prevent the United States, countries in Europe, and other members of the World Trade Organization from protecting the right to freedom of expression in trademark law. Governments also have obligations to protect this fundamental right in treaties and constitutions.

Chapter 4 begins by tracing some reappearances and interconnections of Emersonian themes, in what Goodman calls paths of coherence in Emerson’s philosophy: not a complete system, but ways that his thoughts hang together. The chapter focuses on “Nominalist and Realist,” where Emerson sets out the competing metaphysics of particulars and universals without reconciling their opposition. Near the end of the essay, he draws a skeptical lesson from his epistemology of moods. “I am always insincere,” he writes, “as always knowing there are other moods.” This might be cause for despair, but Emerson’s tone in this final paragraph is more in tune with ancient skepticism and Montaigne. He ends “Nominalist and Realist” by withdrawing from the dispute, but this does not mean that he gives up inquiring. Skepticism can be both a withholding of final judgment, and, as Herwig Friedl observes, “a constant looking around, without any attempt at closure.”

Chapter 6 explains how the concept of inherently valuable expression can help inform potential reforms of trademark law. Governments concerned about protecting expressive values and fair competition in trademark law are encouraged to pay more attention to whether the subject matter claimed as a mark had pre-existing communicative value in the marketplace or community before it was adopted or first used as a trademark. The chapter discusses evidence to consider when evaluating whether a proposed mark has substantial inherent informational, expressive, or decorative value unrelated to the party claiming trademark rights, or only some inherent value, minimal inherent value, or no inherent value. Examples of marks with substantial inherent value include words and symbols that provide information about the goods or services; political, social, and religious messages and other common words and designs claimed as marks for expressive merchandise; subject matter with pre-existing value to groups of people in a certain community or geographic area; colors; certain creative works formerly or currently protected by copyright law; and brand parodies and other expressive uses of another’s mark.

Chapter 3 provides details about the proposed free speech framework for trademark law. Legislators and courts should (1) identify the purpose of this specific trademark law – not the general purposes of trademark law, trademark theories, or a trademark’s functions – and determine whether it is sufficiently important (e.g., preventing misleading uses of trademarks, promoting fair competition, helping members of the public identify the source of goods or services, or discouraging the registration or use of hate speech); (2) evaluate whether that particular trademark law directly and materially furthers its purpose; and (3) determine whether this trademark law endangers free speech, and ensure that it suppresses or chills protected expression no more than necessary in pursuit of that important purpose. It is generally best to avoid constitutional analysis of trademark laws, so legislatures should consider making speech-protective and pro-competitive changes to problematic trademark statutes. In addition, courts and other government decision-makers should interpret provisions in trademark laws in a manner that protects expressive values and promotes the law’s important purpose(s).

Historian Carl Becker once said that every generation rewrites history to suit its needs and according to its perspectives. This twenty-first-century collection of essays on the Declaration partly validates his claim and partly does not. Probably the chief way in which this collection differs from earlier efforts is in its broadened horizons. There is a systematic effort to consider the Declaration in relation to groups and concerns that received little attention in the past – women, labor, Native Americans, the international resonances of the document. But there are familiar themes as well, though these are mostly treated differently from the past. The intellectual roots of the Declaration is indeed a familiar topic, but the century or so since Becker’s book has enriched and deepened our grasp of the intellectual sources and, perhaps even more deeply, of their meaning. Not often emphasized in previous treatments are the religious and theological influences. Themes like the relation of the Declaration to the political context from which it emerged, the legal basis of the document, its main ideas, the Declaration and slavery – these are all topics that have a long history but which receive new treatment here based on new scholarship.

Chapter 4 considers whether trademark registration laws adequately protect expressive values and fair competition. First, it provides information about the types of subject matter capable of trademark registration and protection in many countries, including words, names, logos, product packaging designs, and “non-traditional” marks like colors, shapes, and creative works currently or formerly protected by copyright law. Then it discusses the process for obtaining a trademark registration using the United States Patent and Trademark Office as an example. Next, this chapter evaluates the requirements for trademark registration and protection under the free speech framework. This includes the rule that a trademark must be distinctive and used in commerce or genuinely used in the course of trade with the products; rules prohibiting registration of matter that is deceptive, a false statement, or likely to cause confusion with a prior mark; and bans in some countries on registration of functional matter, merely informational or ornamental matter not perceived as a source-identifying trademark, and marks likely to dilute another’s mark that is famous or which has a reputation.

American presidents have actively participated in the process that transformed the Declaration of Independence into a fully constitutive document. Many presidential citations are either ceremonial or express shared values. All presidents, however, claim the Declaration supports at least some of their favored policies on civil rights, governmental powers, the culture wars, and immigration. Liberal and conservative presidents dispute whether the Declaration supports regulation in the public interest or limited government. Presidents in the culture wars engage in parallel play, with more progressive presidents citing the Declaration when supporting the rights of LGBTQ persons, gun control, and liberal immigration policies, and conservative presidents citing the Declaration for bans on abortion, a greater place for religion in the public sphere, and crime control measures.

This chapter re-examines slavery and abolition in the writing and reception of the Declaration of Independence. Far from being marginal parts of the nation’s founding document, as previous generations of scholars asserted, both slavery and abolition proved to be essential to the making and meaning of the Declaration. Indeed, during and after the American Revolution, the Declaration testified to the nation’s high abolitionist ideals and the enduring problem of slavery in American statecraft. By examining not only Jefferson’s ideas about black freedom in the Revolutionary era but a wide range of reformers who meditated on it as well – including African American writers and reformers like Benjamin Banneker – this essay argues that the Declaration itself remains a testament to the conflicted nature of emancipation in the American mind.