Cite as 906 F.3d 1229 (11th Cir. 2018)
each regular session of the General Assembly one or more bills to reenact and make corrections in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated.” O.C.G.A. § 28-9-5. In this way, the statutory portions of the OCGA are voted on at least twice, once when they are voted on as individual bills after having gone through the regular legislative process, and once as part of the Georgia legislature’s vote to reenact the updated OCGA as prepared by the Commission. By contrast, the annotations are prepared by the Commission outside of the normal channels of the legislative process in the manner we have detailed, and are not voted on individually in the way that Georgia session laws are.
However, it is also the case that the Georgia General Assembly voted to adopt the annotations as prepared by the Commission as an integral part of the official Code. See O.C.G.A. § 1-1-1. Further, it did so through a legislative act that necessarily passed both Houses of the legislature and was signed into law by the Governor. Moreover, and significant for our purposes, the General Assembly votes each year to amend the OCGA and reaffirm its status as the official codification of Georgia’s laws.
Under the American system of government, the essential hallmarks of legislative process are bicameralism and presentment. See I.N.S. v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 103 S.Ct. 2764, 77 L.Ed.2d 317 (1983); see also Ga. Const. Art. V, § II, Para. IV; Ga. Const. Art. II, § V, Para. V. While legislative processes may ordinarily include the introduction of an individual bill and its passage through the relevant committee before it receives a vote of the full House, those are not the essential steps that endow the bill with its legal status. Rather, the vote of both Houses of the legislature, and presentment to an executive are the defining moments in an exercise of the sovereign authority. This is so even when the legislature adopts as its own a work authored outside the normal channels of the legislative process. See Veeck, 293 F.3d at 799 (“Even when a governmental body consciously decides to enact proposed model building codes, it does so based on various legislative considerations, the sum of which produce its version of ‘the law.’ In performing their function, the lawmakers represent the public will, and the public are the final ‘authors’ of the law.”).
That the process by which the OCGA annotations were created is similar to the ordinary process by which laws are enacted also is relevant to our inquiry. The importance of this consideration is apparent from well settled procedural mechanisms by which the power to make and interpret the law is exercised, and from the observation that deviating from the process may deprive the edict of its legal effect. As we’ve noted, bicameral passage of a bill and its presentment to the executive are the ordinary means by which a legislative body exercises the sovereign power entrusted to it. See Chadha, 462 U.S. at 957, 103 S.Ct. 2764 (invalidating a purported exercise of the legislative power that failed to adhere to “the standards prescribed in Article I” for the exercise of such power); U.S. Const. art. I, § 7, cl. 2. Similarly, the judicial power to propound the meaning of the law must be exercised according to established procedures. In particular, judges issue official interpretations of the law as part of deciding a case or controversy, after considering the arguments made by both parties to the case. See Hayburn’s Case, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 408, 1 L.Ed. 436 (1792). An exposition on the meaning of a law, even if written by a judge, would obviously not qualify as an exercise of the sovereign power to interpret law if it were written outside the ordinary procedural channels by which that power is exercised. See Correspondence of the Justices (1793) (found in 3
