Maryland Lawyers for the Arts is marking its 25th anniversary with a “Conference on Creativity & Law” tomorrow afternoon at the American Visionary Art Museum. The conference is free and open to non-lawyers, but you need to RSVP here.

Marcia Semmes, MLA’s executive director (pictured left), called it a “do-it-your-self copyright event,” featuring discussions on copyright law and a screening of “Copyright Criminals,” a documentary about music sampling that will be followed by a talk from filmmaker Kembrew McLeod.

“We think all of the pieces are there for an interesting afternoon,” Semmes said.

That MLA is celebrating its 25th birthday is an interesting story in itself. The organization existed in name only by the late 1990s until it re-launched in 2006. Two years later, MLA started “Arts Brief,” a quarterly e-newsletter that now has more than 10,000 subscribers. Semmes said she received a call from an artist in Washington State this week asking if Saturday’s conference will be available online. (It won’t, she added, but future events might.)

Semmes said MLA still wants to increase its reach beyond the Baltimore region, where most of its volunteers and artists reside. It will also be planning an event this fall to formally celebrate 25 years.

“We face the same challenges as any non-profit, but, knock on wood, we’re as stable as we’ve ever been,” she said.

Appellate attorneys who delight in citing legislative history to make their cases will lose a kinsman this summer with the retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

During oral arguments, Stevens often asks attorneys about what was said during congressional debates that preceded the enactment of federal statutes. These debates help clarify ambiguous language in the laws and indicate what the legislators intended for the statutes to accomplish, according to Stevens.

Stevens’ view has been sharply at odds with that of Justice Antonin Scalia, who discounts the significance of congressional ”debates.”

Rarely are all 435 representatives and 100 senators present in their respective chambers when legislation is being discussed, making it difficult to determine what the lawmakers intended, according to Scalia. Thus, the only true way to interpret the meaning of a law is to examine its words and not try to read the minds of lawmakers, Scalia says.

The disagreement between Scalia and Stevens has been apparent to me and other Supreme Court reporters — and even noted by the two justices — during many oral arguments at the high court.

This dispute over the role of legislative history in statutory interpretation will undoubtedly continue at the Supreme Court beyond this term – but without Stevens.