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No, they didn't. In Roe v. Wade they made up a legal test which they can do, and they interpreted existing laws in terms of their constitutionality. However, as
by SamWhited 6y ago
No, they didn't. In Roe v. Wade they made up a legal test which they can do, and they interpreted existing laws in terms of their constitutionality. However, as far as I can tell that's not what's happening here. They just took a law that applies to the judiciary and said "yah, that applies to the legislature too now". Again, not a lawyer, so the way in which they reached their outcome may not be as bad as it seems to me since I don't really have the knowledge to evaluate it properly. Just because the decision is good though doesn't mean it doesn't have other bad consequences.
- rmilk 6y agoI would not agree with your assessment. The legislature wrote the laws, which are not copyrighted. But they went a step further in this case to add that the ACTUAL law to be applied in the State is the Annotated version, not the original unannotated version. Or in other words, the only way to obtain the actual law is through the version that was copyrighted. (See the Ars Technica article that has some good background on the history of the case). I still see the case as being about the legislature creating law but then assigning the copyright to that law to someone else. That was decided long ago in the government edicts precedents. Without this overturned decision, this leaves you in the position that you cannot access the Official Laws without being forced to go to the owner of the copyright for access.