Official Code of Georgia Annotated

The ''Official Code of Georgia Annotated'' or ''OCGA'' is the compendium of all laws in the state of Georgia. Like other state codes in the United States, its legal interpretation is subject to the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Code, the Code of Federal Regulations, and the state's constitution. It is to the state what the U.S. Code is to the federal government.

An unusual feature of the ''OCGA'' is that, as stated in section 1-1-1, the privately prepared code annotations are officially merged into the official copy and are published under the authority of the state. The state held that it retained sole copyright in the code and that the authorized publisher held copyright to the annotations, though the laws of the state were the combination of the code and the annotations. Thus, the publisher would charge for reproductions of the ''OCGA'', with a portion of the fee being returned to the state as a licensing fee. This longstanding feature goes back to the Code of 1872. In 2018, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the OCGA is not copyrightable, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that holding in April 2020.

History

The ''OCGA'' is the descendant of the first successfully enacted attempt in any English-speaking jurisdiction at a comprehensive codification of the substance of the common law, the Code of Georgia of 1861. The enactment of the Code predated the enactment of civil codes in 1866 in Dakota Territory and 1872 in California based on the work of New York-based law reformer David Dudley Field II. In 1889, Field expressly conceded that point in a written article; he credited his lack of awareness of the contemporaneous Georgia project "to the breaking out of the Civil War."

Unlike the relatively race-neutral Field civil code, (At p. 154.) large portions of the original Code of Georgia were drafted by the pro-slavery Confederate lawyer Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, so that the Code was shot through with Cobb's strong bias in favor of slavery and white supremacy. For example, as originally enacted, it contained a presumption that blacks were ''prima facie'' slaves until proven otherwise. After the Civil War (in which Cobb died at the Battle of Fredericksburg), the Code had to be heavily revised in 1867 to eliminate portions that were obviously incompatible with the Thirteenth Amendment. The Code has been further revised and reenacted many times since.

Copyrightability

In 2013 the State of Georgia, specifically the Georgia Code Revision Commission, threatened to sue Carl Malamud for copyright infringement over the posting of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated on the website Public.Resource.Org. In 2015, the State of Georgia filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia. The State of Georgia claimed a copyright in the Code, and that Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.Org had violated that copyright. Public.Resource.Org claimed that since the state has chosen to make the Official Code of Georgia Annotated the official and authoritative code of the entire state, the Code should not be subject to copyright law, and should be freely available for all citizens to read and access. The Code also holds, in denoting the ''annotated'' code as the "official code," that authorship and copyright remains with the State and not with the publisher.

In October 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that the Official Code of Georgia, Annotated, is not copyrightable. The Code Revision Commission, established by the Georgia General Assembly, appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court. The Court heard the oral arguments on December 2, 2019. The case, '' Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc.'', decided the question:

Whether the government edicts doctrine extends to – and thus renders uncopyrightable – works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated.

In April 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the appeals court ruling by holding that the code annotations were ineligible for copyright protection.

Titles

The ''OCGA'' is divided into 53 titles:
# General Provisions
# Agriculture
# Alcoholic Beverages
# Animals
# Appeal and Error
# Aviation
# Banking and Finance
# Buildings and Housing
# Civil Practice
# Commerce and Trade
# Commercial Code
# Conservation and Natural Resources
# Contracts
# Corporations, Partnerships, and Associations
# Courts
# Crimes and Offenses
# Criminal Procedure
# Debtor and Creditor
# Domestic Relations
# Education
# Elections
# Eminent Domain
# Equity
# Evidence
# Fire Protection and Safety
# Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics
# Game and Fish
# General Assembly
# Guardian and Ward
# Handicapped Persons
# Health
# Highways, Bridges, and Ferries
# Insurance
# Labor and Industrial Relations
# Law Enforcement Officers and Agencies
# Local Government
# Mental Health
# Military, Emergency Management, and Veterans Affairs
# Minors
# Motor Vehicles and Traffic
# Nuisances
# Penal Institutions
# Professions and Businesses
# Property
# Public Officers and Employees
# Public Utilities and Public Transportation
# Retirement and Pensions
# Revenue and Taxation
# Social Services
# State Government
# Torts
# Waters of the State, Ports, and Watercraft
# Wills, Trusts, and Administration of Estates

See also

* Government of Georgia (U.S. state)
* Constitution of Georgia (U.S. state)
* Law of Georgia (U.S. state)

References

Further reading

*

External links

Official Code of Georgia Annotated
from LexisNexis (Must be initially accessed from th
Georgia General Assembly
site under "Legislation & Laws" tab to function correctly, and may require clearing cookies.)

Official Code of Georgia Annotated
from Public.Resource.Org

Bulk Access to Official Code of Georgia Annotated
(HTML, .rtf, Open Document file formats)
Georgia State Codes
from Socratek

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Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state) law
Georgia (U.S. state) statutes