A “Guest Editorial” (sort of)

If you receive this newsletter, that means you probably care about Free Law in America–or at the very least you’ve benefited enough from it in your personal or professional lives to become acquainted with us in a way that distinguishes you from our other 38 million annual users.  

This term, the United States Supreme Court will hear Georgia vs. Public.Resource.Org.  That link will take you to the case page on our Oyez Project website. 

State’s asserting copyright in their laws has been a problem since the dawn of online legal research–if not longer.  In 2011, Fastcase CEO Ed Walters penned a blog post for our Vox Populii blog he titled, “Tear Down This (Pay)Wall:  The End of Private Copyright in Public Statutes.”  

Since it turns out that posts on geeky blogs, no matter how well-reasoned and impassioned, tend not to bring about major structural changes in our legal system, Ed (now also known as “Professor Walters” based on his adjunct gigs at both Cornell Tech and the Georgetown University Law Center) re-worked and re-published that article in 2019 in this post from Medium.  

If you want to see free legal resources, access to justice projects, and legal technology thrive in this country, you should be aware of this case.  Needless to say, we at the LII share Ed’s point-of-view. We hope you’ll take a minute to read the two linked pages above and learn about this issue that impacts the LII and our friends in the Free Law Community.