Melville Bernard Nimmer (June 6, 1923 – November 23, 1985) was an American lawyer and law professor, renowned as an expert in freedom of speech and United States copyright law.

Nimmer graduated from UCLA, UC Berkeley, and Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the California State Bar in January 1951. He was professor at the UCLA School of Law from 1962. One year later, he published the two-volume treatise that would become the leading secondary source on copyright law, Nimmer on Copyright. In 1984, he published a one-volume treatise on freedom of speech, titled appropriately Nimmer on Freedom of Speech: Treatise on Theory of First Amendment.

As a lawyer, he was best known as the winning attorney in the 1971 case Cohen v. California. In Cohen, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a 5-4 vote in an opinion written by Justice Harlan, held that a state cannot criminalize speech absent a "particularized and compelling reason." The Court struck down the conviction of a 19-year-old man who had walked into the Los Angeles courthouse with a shirt reading "Fuck the Draft." Cohen became one of the leading cases interpreting the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protection of freedom of speech.

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Often referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records. His contribution to music, dance, and fashion, along with a much-publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1964, and began his solo career in 1971.

In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. The music videos for his songs, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller", were credited with transforming the medium into an art form and a promotional tool, and the popularity of these videos helped to bring the relatively new television channel MTV to fame. Videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" made him a staple on MTV in the 1990s. Through stage performances and music videos, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive musical sound and vocal style influenced numerous hip hop, post-disco, contemporary R&B, pop and rock artists.