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Page Number: 40.0

2 

GEORGIA v. PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG, INC. 

GINSBURG, J., dissenting 

judicial opinion-drafting process in its entirety—including
the drafting of headnotes and syllabi, in jurisdictions where 
that is done by judges—falls outside the reach of copyright 
protection.

One might ask: If a judge’s annotations are not copyright-
able, why are those created by legislators?  The answer lies 
in the difference between the role of a judge and the role of
a legislator.  “[T]o the judiciary” we assign “the duty of in-
terpreting and applying” the law, Massachusetts v. Mellon, 
262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923), and sometimes making the appli-
cable law, see Friendly, In Praise of Erie—and of the New 
Federal Common Law, 39 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 383 (1964).  See 
also Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803) (“It is
emphatically the province and duty of the judicial depart-
ment to say what the law is.”).  In contrast, the role of the 
legislature encompasses the process of “making laws”—not 
construing  statutes  after  their  enactment.    Mellon,  262 
U. S., at 488; see Patchak v. Zinke, 583 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) 
(plurality opinion) (slip op., at 5) (“[T]he legislative power is
the power to make law.”).  The OCGA annotations, in my 
appraisal, do not rank as part of the Georgia Legislature’s 
lawmaking process for three reasons. 

First, the annotations are not created contemporaneously
with the statutes to which they pertain; instead, the anno-
tations  comment  on  statutes  already  enacted.    See,  e.g., 
App. 268–269 (text of enacted laws are transmitted to the 
publisher for the addition of commentary); id., at 403–404 
(publisher adds new case notes on a rolling basis as courts
construe  existing  statutes).1    In  short,  annotating  begins 

—————— 

1 For example, OCGA §11–2A–213 was enacted, in its current form, in
1993.  See 1993 Ga. Laws p. 633.  The case notes contained in the OCGA 
summarize  judicial  decisions  construing  the  statute  years  later.   See 
§11–2A–213 (2002) (citing Griffith v. Medical Rental Supply of Albany, 
Ga.,  Inc.,  244  Ga.  App.  120,  534  S. E.  2d  859  (2000);  Bailey  v.  Tucker 
Equip. Sales, Inc., 236 Ga. App. 289, 510 S. E. 2d 904 (1999)).