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A law gets passed. Years later, a court case comes up about it that changes the way that the law is usually interpreted. There's nothing in the law itself that
by khedoros1 10y ago
A law gets passed. Years later, a court case comes up about it that changes the way that the law is usually interpreted. There's nothing in the law itself that links those two occurrences, but the legal case has essentially clarified and/or rewritten the original law. The annotations would link those. Sure, you could read through both parts of the law (the codes and the court cases), and presumably that's what Lexisnexis did, but it doesn't seem like the unannotated state law would be practically useful, because it won't transparently reflect what the actual controlling version of the law is.
- jcranmer 10y agoThe same is true even when the official version of the law is unannotated. The annotations themselves have no legal bearing, but they are immensely useful for tracking down court cases and (presumably) the legislative sources and discussions about the law to divine legislative intent. That's why lawyers have annotated copies of law on their shelves instead of unannotated ones, even if the annotated text isn't technically the controlling copy.