Page:Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org SCOTUS slip opinion.pdf/28

Rh Court’s conclusion that the “authentic exposition and interpretation of the law … is free for publication to all.” Banks, 128 U. S., at 253.

Finally, concerns of fair notice, often recognized by this Court’s precedents as an important component of due process, also may have animated the reasoning of these 19th-century cases. As one court put it, “[t]he decisions and opinions of the justices are the authorized expositions and interpretations of the laws, which are binding upon all the citizens. … Every citizen is presumed to know the law thus declared, and it needs no argument to show that justice requires that all should have free access to the opinions.” Nash v. Lathrop, 142 Mass. 29, 35, 6 N. E. 559, 560 (1886) (cited in Banks, 128 U. S., at 253–254); see also American Soc. for Testing and Materials v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 896 F. 3d 437, 458–459 (CADC 2018) (Katsas, J., concurring).

Allowing annotations to be copyrighted does not run afoul of any of these possible justifications for the government edicts doctrine. First, unlike judicial opinions and statutes, these annotations do not even purport to embody the will of the people because they are not law. The General Assembly of Georgia has made abundantly clear through a variety of provisions that the annotations do not create any binding obligations. OCGA §1–1–7 states that “[a]ll historical citations, title and chapter analyses, and notes set out in this Code are given for the purpose of convenient reference and do not constitute part of the law.” Section 1–1–1 further provides that “[t]he statutory portion of the codification of Georgia laws … is enacted and shall have the effect of statutes enacted by the General Assembly of Georgia. The statutory portion of such codification shall be merged with annotations … and other materials … and shall be published by authority of the state.” Thus, although the materials