It's Halloween. I'm not dressing up or doing anything Halloween-ey; it's a nice holiday but it's not my favorite. I have a test tonight, and I'll go swing by my grandmother's on the way home, but I have no big plans.

However, when reading through the articles at slate.com, I found this article and thought it sounded interesting. The law has always interested me; that's why I'm in the Criminal Justice field.

The crux of the article is that legally, politicians and celebrities cannot sue for using their likeness as Halloween costumes or tee-shirts or other items like that. Part of the reason is because there is a bit of distortion - you know it's the person, but there's a change there. It isn't a dead on replica.

As the article states, there is the Right of Publicity, but that only states that the public figure has the right to keep their likeness out of such things as advertising campaigns. You could be Hillary Clinton for Halloween, but you can't slap a sticker of her face on a billboard for Cingular and have her trying to talk you into buying cell phones. Not unless she had endorsed the product.
Basically, only when attached to a product commercially can you not use a public figure's face. Which makes sense to me.

I still wouldn't dress up like Hillary Clinton for Halloween, though.