III.
The ultimate inquiry posed by the rule in Banks is thus whether a work is attributable to the constructive authorship of the People, which is to say whether it was created by an agent of the People in the direct exercise of sovereign authority. Statutes and judicial opinions are the most obvious examples of what falls within the ambit of the rule. See Veeck, 293 F.3d at 796 (“Banks represents a continuous understanding that ‘the law,’ whether articulated in judicial opinions or legislative acts or ordinances, is in the public domain and thus not amenable to copyright.”)
This does not mean that statutes, judicial opinions, and other texts that carry the clear force of law are the only works that may be subject to the rule. For one thing, relying, as the district court did, on a bright line distinction between edicts that have the force of law and those that do not to apply the Banks rule simply does not work in some cases. This is one of them. It is clear to us that there exists a zone of indeterminacy at the frontier between edicts that carry the force of law and those that do not. See Jean v. Nelson, 711 F.2d 1455, 1480–83 (11th Cir. 1983), on reh’g, 727 F.2d 957 (11th Cir. 1984), aff’d, 472 U.S. 846, 105 S.Ct. 2992, 86 L.Ed.2d 664 (1985). In this small band of cases a government work may not be characterized as law, and yet still be so sufficiently law-like as to implicate the core policy interests undergirding Banks.
Statutory texts are the kinds of works most obviously subject to the rule announced in Banks. Because statutes are the prototypical works to which the rule applies, we rely on the statutory example as the lodestar for our inquiry. Whether or not a work is subject to the rule is dependent on whether the work is the law, or sufficiently like the law, so as to be deemed the product of the direct exercise of sovereign authority, and therefore attributable to the constructive authorship of the People. Basing the inquiry on whether a work is similar enough to the law so as to be attributable to the People, of course, does little to diminish the difficulty of applying the Banks rule in the unique circumstances presented here. See John G. Danielson, Inc. v. Winchester-Conant Properties, Inc., 322 F.3d 26, 38 (1st Cir. 2003) (“[The] straightforward general rule [of Banks] has proven difficult to apply when the material in question does not fall neatly into the categories of statutes or judicial opinions.”). But it does point us toward the right way of structuring our analysis.
Put simply, there are certain things that make the law what it is. The law is written by particular public officials who are entrusted with the exercise of legislative power; the law is, by nature, authoritative; and the law is created through certain, prescribed processes, the deviation from which would deprive it of legal effect. Each of these attributes is a hallmark of law. These characteristics distinguish written works that carry the force of law from all other works. Since we are concerned here with whether a work is attributable to the
Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 109 S.Ct. 2166, 104 L.Ed.2d 811 (1989); United States v. First Tr. Co. of St. Paul, 251 F.2d 686, 690 (8th Cir. 1958); see also H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 at 58 (1976) (“Although the wording of the definition of ‘work of the United States Government’ differs somewhat from that of the definition of ‘work made for hire,’ the concepts are intended to be construed in the same way.”). Similarly, under our view of Banks, the People are the master, and therefore the owners of the works created by their legislative and judicial agents. See Veeck, 293 F.3d at 797 (“Banks refers to the source of the judges’ salary in order to explain that it is the public at large, not the judges, who have the ‘pecuniary interest or proprietorship’ in ‘the fruits of their judicial labors.’ ”).
