Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1150_new_d18e.pdf
Page Number: 34

Cite as:  590 U. S. ____ (2020) 

13 

THOMAS, J., dissenting 

The majority does not confront this criticism head on.  In-
stead,  it  simply  repeats,  without  any  further  elaboration,
its unsupported conclusion that “[t]he Court long ago inter-
preted the word ‘author’ to exclude officials empowered to
speak with the force of law, and Congress has carried that
meaning  forward  in  multiple  iterations  of  the  Copyright
Act.”  Ante,  at  16.  This  wave  of  the  “magic  wand  of  ipse 
dixit” does nothing to strengthen the majority’s argument, 
and in fact only serves to underscore its weakness.  United 
States  v.  Yermian,  468  U. S.  63,  77  (1984)  (Rehnquist,  J., 
dissenting).5 

B 
In addition to its textual deficiencies, the majority’s un-
derstanding of this Court’s precedents fails to account for
the critical differences between the role that judicial opin-
ions play in expounding upon the law compared to that of 
statutes.  The  majority  finds  it  meaningful,  for  instance, 
that Banks prohibited dissents and concurrences from be-
ing  copyrighted,  even  though  they  carry  no  legal  force. 
Ante, at 15.  At an elementary level, it is true that the judg-
ment  is  the  only  part  of  a  judicial  decision  that  has  legal 
effect.  But it blinks reality to ignore that every word of a
judicial opinion—whether it is a majority, a concurrence, or 
a dissent—expounds upon the law in ways that do not map 
neatly  on  to  the  legislative  function.  Setting  aside  sum-
mary decisions, the reader of a judicial opinion will always
gain critical insight into the reasoning underlying a judicial
holding  by  reading  all  opinions  in  their  entirety.    Under-

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5 The majority’s approach is also hard to reconcile with the recognition 
in Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591 (1834), that annotations prepared by the 
Reporter of Decisions could be copyrighted.  Wheaton was paid a salary 
of $1,000, and it is difficult to say whether this salary funded his work 
on the opinions or his work on the annotations.  See id., at 614, 617 (ar-
gument).