Our new Litigant Portal is a tool that will support the many people who come to court without a lawyer. To guide its development, our Justice Initiatives team visited courts across the country to see firsthand the challenges these litigants face. free.law/2026/10/05/a...
![A screenshot from the summary of the argument in the PDF:
“[N]o one can own the law. ‘Every citizen is presumed to know the law,’ and
‘it needs no argument to show . . . that all should have free access’ to its
contents.” Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 590 U.S. 255, 265, (2020) (citation
omitted). So too for judicial opinions. Id. (“[Judges] cannot be the ‘author[s]’ of the
works they prepare ‘in the discharge of their judicial duties.’”). The same should be
true of the headnotes at issue in this case, which serve a discrete and limited purpose
as often near-verbatim summaries and verbatim quotes that faithfully and accurately
describe a specific point of law from a judicial opinion.
Individual headnotes are uncopyrightable because they lack the originality
required for copyright protection, and the district court erred in finding to the
contrary. And, because there are no or only a few other ways to concisely and
precisely express the specific individual legal points stated in an opinion, the
expression in a headnote cannot be distinguished from the underlying legal idea it
aims to convey. The district court therefore also erred by rejecting the merger
defense.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:p6yq6roev2vlkpgw2i5h5c4a/bafkreiej2zaryfglh4vp4v6e2q6kaeaih3j4tqhfpobj4y57flpjlc2x6m)
