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On the 19th of September Senator Notcom sponsored the introduction of a bill written by Chief Justice Sparty to the Senate, the Judicial Public Domain Act of 2025. The law would have required all judges to voluntarily agree to their writings (verdicts, writs, concurrences, etc) being published under the CC0 license, meaning they would be released into the public domain where anyone could use them freely for any purposes without restrictions.
The President signing the act on the 22nd of September was another step forward in Sparty’s long-ongoing plan to print out SimDemocracy’s Case Law Index, a personal project of his he couldn’t realize if the writings therein were protected by individual copyright.
While he himself admits that the issue of older judges who have left SimDemocracy a long time ago being uncontactable (i.e. he cannot get their consent) cannot be solved, his law attempted to solve the problem of currently serving judges potentially not agreeing to having their writings in the public domain by threatening termination of their employment subject to relevant employment laws, an unenforceable provision as the Constitution very clearly states that judges serve for life until either resignation or impeachment.
As a reaction to this, three separate judges have decided to petition the Supreme Court for a judicial review of the legality of the Judicial Public Domain Act as well as immediate injunctions blocking it from coming into effect. While the Chief Justice has kindly decided to recuse himself from all three cases due to him being the law’s author and having a vested interest in it staying in effect, he has also at multiple points expressed the opinion that it was still legal, even if the rest of the Supreme Court may disagree, due to the Senate themselves holding the right to impeachment and the employment termination still being subject to the provisions of relevant employment laws which - in this case - would be the Constitution, i.e. the provision would be unenforceable but still legal.
But it seems as though even despite the recent waves of various judicial reforms, the courts will still be outpaced by the Senate’s speed and none of the three petitions will be heard. Most Senators have already voted aye on Senator Fede’s motion to repeal the Judicial Public Domain Act which only leaves us with the unanswered question of why they even passed it in the first place.