Powers and Duties of Commission Generally

  1. Law
  2. Georgia Code
  3. General Assembly
  4. Code Revision Commission
  5. Powers and Duties of Commission Generally

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The commission is authorized:

  1. To select and contract with a publisher to conduct a revision, codification, or recodification of the Code and laws of Georgia, provided that any such contract requiring the expenditure of state funds shall be contingent upon the General Assembly appropriating the necessary funds therefor;
  2. To formulate with the publisher all the details associated with the codification or recodification of the Code and laws of Georgia;
  3. To take such action as is necessary to effectuate Code revision;
  4. To carry out the functions required of it in any contract entered into between the commission and the publisher;
  5. To negotiate and establish the price at which the Code or any volume, replacement volume, pocket part, index, or related material may be sold to governmental or private purchasers, or both;
  6. To determine when volumes of the Code may be revised and republished;
  7. To adopt and implement a system for arranging, numbering, and designating material within the Code;
  8. To adopt rules of style and grammar for use in the Code;
  9. To prepare, or provide for the preparation of, and to include in the Code such annotations, historical notes, research references, notes on law review articles, cross-references, summaries of the opinions of the Attorney General of Georgia, editor's notes, Code Revision Commission notes, comments, commentaries, rules and regulations, indexes, tables, and other material as the commission determines to be useful to users of the Code;
  10. To provide for the publication of annotated or unannotated versions of the Code, or both;
  11. To provide for the publication of volumes containing the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of Georgia, and an index of local and special laws, general laws of local application, and home rule ordinances;
  12. To review, approve, or disapprove the work of the publisher in preparing, supplementing, indexing, or revising the Code or any volume, pocket part, or portion thereof;
  13. To grant exclusive or nonexclusive publication and sales rights to the Code or portions thereof to the publisher;
  14. To grant rights to governmental agencies and others to reprint and distribute portions or excerpts of the Code;
  15. To register the copyright claim in all materials in the Code and any supplements thereto, to protect, enforce, and preserve all claims in such materials, to bring and defend actions in any court in connection therewith, and to negotiate and grant licenses or rights, on behalf of the state, to use such material upon such terms and conditions as the commission shall determine to be in the best interest of the state;
  16. To seek the advice and assistance of members and committees of the State Bar of Georgia, the law schools of the state, the Attorney General or members of his staff, state and local public officials and employees, and others with expertise or interest in the laws of Georgia;
  17. To provide for the preparation and introduction of one or more bills to revise, modernize, and correct errors or omissions in the Code or the laws of Georgia or to repeal portions of the Code or laws which have become obsolete, have been declared to be unconstitutional, or have been preempted or superseded by subsequent state or federal laws;
  18. To provide for procedures for the implementation or execution of its powers and duties; and
  19. To take such other action or exercise such additional powers as may be necessary or convenient to carry out the purposes of this chapter, the duties and powers of the commission, or any contract entered into under this chapter.

(Code 1981, §28-9-3, enacted by Ga. L. 1985, p. 197, § 1.)

Editor's notes.

- Ga. L. 2013, p. 141, § 54(d)/HB 79, not codified by the General Assembly, provides that: "For purposes of publishing volumes, replacement volumes, and supplements to the Official Code of Georgia Annotated pursuant to Chapter 9 of Title 28: legislation enacted at the same session of the General Assembly and amending the same statutory provision shall be considered in pari materia, and full effect shall be given to each if that is possible; Acts enacted during the same session shall be treated as conflicting with each other only to the extent that they cannot be given effect simultaneously; in the event of such a conflict, the latest enactment, as determined by the order in which bills became law with or without the approval of the Governor, shall control to the extent of the conflict unless the latest enactment contains a provision expressly ceding control in such an event; and language carried forward unchanged in one amendatory Act shall not be read as conflicting with changed language contained in another Act passed during the same session." This provision was later codified by Ga. L. 2014, p. 866, § 28/SB 340, as subsection (b) of Code Section 28-9-5.

For Acts reenacting the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, see the Editor's notes to § 1-1-1.

Law reviews.

- For article, " Code Revision Commission v. Public.Resource.Org and the Fight Over Copyright Protection for Annotations and Commentary," see 54 Ga. L. Rev. 111 (2019). For discussion of the work of the Code Revision Commission in making the Code, see 18 Ga. St. B.J. 102 (1982).

JUDICIAL DECISIONS

Purchasing procedures.

- Code Revision Commission is not subject to procedures for state purchasing under T. 50, C. 5, A. 3, P. 1. Harrison Co. v. Code Revision Com., 244 Ga. 325, 260 S.E.2d 30 (1979).

Effect of adoption of Code by General Assembly.

- Adoption of a Code by the General Assembly, which was prepared for the legislature by a Code commission, was a legislative act which gave force and effect of law to the entire contents of such Code and cured any alleged defect in such content. Central of Ga. Ry. v. State, 104 Ga. 831, 31 S.E. 531 (1898).

Whether Code sections are taken from statutes of the state or otherwise, when they are incorporated in a Code adopted by the legislature of this State, they have the effect of statute law. Lumpkin v. Patterson, 170 Ga. 94, 152 S.E. 448 (1930).

Substantive amendment not related to object of Code reviser bill unconstitutional.

- 1989 amendment to O.C.G.A. § 34-9-13(e), which greatly limited availability of workers' compensation benefits to surviving spouses but was enacted in Code reviser bill that had the object and title reflecting a purpose of correcting only grammatical errors and to modernize language in various statutes, violated Ga. Const. 1983, Art. III, Sec. V, Para. III. Sherman Concrete Pipe Co. v. Chinn, 283 Ga. 468, 660 S.E.2d 368 (2008).

Non-profit association lacked standing to pursue quo warranto against Commission members.

- Non-profit association with the purpose of focusing on public interest matters of self-defense and gun laws of the State of Georgia was not a "person" which could claim to have an interest in the offices held by the Georgia Code Revision Commission members for purposes of pursuing a writ of quo warranto under O.C.G.A. § 9-6-60. No association standing was shown because the interests the association sought to protect were not shown to be germane to its purpose. Georgiacarry.org, Inc. v. Allen, 299 Ga. 716, 791 S.E.2d 800 (2016).

OPINIONS OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Authority to license Code publications.

- The Code Revision Commission is authorized to grant an exclusive or nonexclusive license to the publisher, other than the book publisher, to publish the Official Code of Georgia Annotated on CD-ROM, which includes use of the annotations, indexes, notes, and other material written and typeset by the book publisher. 1994 Op. Att'y Gen. No. U94-16.

The effect of sales by multiple licensees of the CD-ROM edition of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated on the book edition is an appropriate matter for the Commission to consider in negotiating and granting licenses on behalf of the state. 1994 Op. Att'y Gen. No. U94-16.

The decision to limit the number of licenses to be issued for publication of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated is a matter within the sound discretion of the Code Revision Commission guided by its duty to negotiate and grant licenses in Code materials "upon such terms and conditions as the commission shall determine to be in the best interest of the state." 1994 Op. Att'y Gen. No. U94-16.

RESEARCH REFERENCES

Am. Jur. 2d.

- 16A Am. Jur. 2d, Constitutional Law, §§ 371, 374, 377. 73 Am. Jur. 2d, Statutes, §§ 112 et seq., 131 et seq., 215 et seq.

C.J.S.

- 82 C.J.S., Statutes, § 330 et seq.


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