April 27th marked the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of open access to the law in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org. So it seems like a good time to examine how that ruling has influenced subsequent litigation relevant to Free Law efforts.To recap, the Supreme Court examined the Government Edicts Doctrine and in a 5-4 vote held that the annotations prepared by LexisNexis at the direction of the Georgia Legislature and adopted as part of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated could not be the subject of copyright because the legislature, vested with the power to make law, could not be an “author” for the purpose of the copyright statute. The Court explained at length why legislators cannot claim copyright in their “non-binding legal works” just as they cannot hold copyright in the statutes themselves.
As is often the case with Supreme Court decisions, many questions remain. One issue, already the