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[00:00:00] Marlene Gebauer: Welcome to The Geek in Review, the podcast designed to cover the legal information profession with a slant toward technology and management. I’m Marlene Gebauer.
[00:00:18] Greg Lambert: And I’m Greg Lambert. Well, Marlene, with the end of the U.S. Supreme Court session, we thought we’d take a look at one of the biggest issues for legal information professionals that’s coming up in the next term. And that’s the state of Georgia versus the legal.resource.org case. So we brought in the U.S. Supreme Court expert Tom Gaylord from Northwestern Law School in Chicago to discuss the case with us this week. And I know that most, if not all of our peers are hoping that we’ll once and for all get the states barred from placing copyright protection on state statutes. But you know, sometimes things just don’t work out the way we think they will.
[00:00:59] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I really don’t know how this is going to pan out after speaking with Tom, but there is a lot of discussion around this case. So, you know, we’re hoping to end speculation soon.
[00:01:11] Greg Lambert: So before we get started, happy Independence Day, Marlene. Thank you.
[00:01:15] Marlene Gebauer: Happy Fourth of July to you as well.
[00:01:17] Greg Lambert: Thank you.
[00:01:18] Marlene Gebauer: I’ll be eating some hot dogs and drinking beer at my in-laws in Oklahoma and watching some fireworks out at Fort Sill.
[00:01:25] Greg Lambert: So are you headed to the shore?
[00:01:28] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, I certainly hope so if the weather holds. So sand and sun and sea breezes for me, rides and cotton candy for the kids. My dad may also make burgers and dogs on the grill that he stole from me for Father’s Day.
[00:01:41] Greg Lambert: All right, well, happy Father’s Day to your dad.
[00:01:44] Marlene Gebauer: Thanks. So without further ado, let’s get to this week’s information inspirations. So my first inspiration is from Carolyn Elephant on myshingle.com, who talks about whose legal data is it anyway? Well, this article focuses on how client data is being harvested with consent to use for the benefit of other clients. So the article highlights the Atrium Client Portal, which aggregates and anonymizes client business documents in one place. And using online templates that customers fill out, Atrium can recommend the best clauses and setups. So that sounds good, right? Well, maybe not. The author suggests that the client should be compensated for the value of the data. She supports the argument by highlighting recently introduced legislation that, if passed, will require organizations such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon to be publicly transparent about the value of the data that they gather. Now, I’m not sure I would equate the value of client data in law firms the same way as you would with the Googles of the worlds. In the Google and Facebook world, it’s customer behavior that’s marketable. In this instance, attorneys are actually doing the drafting and using their smarts in each situation to determine what legal product works best in a given situation. So since law firms are partnerships, what’s wrong with using the collective experience to benefit existing and future clients? It’s almost like it’s bad not to do that.
[00:03:27] Greg Lambert: Right.
[00:03:27] Marlene Gebauer: And I don’t think sharing data is only about generating more revenue. It’s about making smarter decisions for clients and offering relevant business services, and not necessarily ones that cost money. based on firm insights. And I mean, isn’t that what clients want and are willing to pay for? I’m not sure that ignoring the ability to draw insights from the collective experience of a firm makes sense from a legal business and client service perspective.
[00:03:54] Greg Lambert: All right, Marlene, my first information inspiration is called First Our Books and Now Our Jobs.
[00:04:03] Marlene Gebauer: What?
[00:04:03] Greg Lambert: I know. That’s intense. Yes, it is. And it’s a little bit clickbaity too. So Patrick D. Domenico of Ogletree Deacons and James Lee of Legalmation wrote this article in AALL Spectrum magazine that just came out. And they talk about how AI tools are actually going to help the information professional, at least those who are prepared, and that the AI offers greater opportunities to grow as a profession. So we all worry about losing our jobs to automation, but as with any shift in the industry structure, there’s usually greater opportunity for those who understand how the technology works and can leverage it to become a more valued player in the industry. So D. Domenico and Lee put it this way, and they asked the question, so how does all of this talk about AI and automated document generation comport with their earlier advice to relax and not worry about jobs? So they say it’s because there’s a difference between your job and the tasks that make up your job. Advanced technology tools will do some of the tasks that you now do manually, and newer, more efficient methods of doing some work will continue to develop, and automation will continue to streamline tasks and eliminate some of them altogether. So in other words, this allows you to bring a higher level of value to your organization, But as with anything, it’s up to you to decide what that value is.
[00:05:44] Marlene Gebauer: But just to be devil’s advocate here for a minute, if the tasks that compose your job are being automated and streamlined, then unless you start doing something differently, and I’m not suggesting that job responsibilities and skills shouldn’t adjust to AI and what it can do in the workplace, but it will take away jobs. Different jobs may replace them, and maybe there’ll be as many or maybe there won’t be as many, but it’s still going to take away jobs. It’s still going to take away things that people are doing. And as that pool shrinks, you won’t need those people anymore. Am I wrong in this?
[00:06:41] Greg Lambert: You have gone to the dark place.
[00:06:44] Marlene Gebauer: Oh, I’m going to get letters and stuff.
[00:06:51] Greg Lambert: At least from Dee Domenico and Lee.
[00:06:53] Marlene Gebauer: Yeah, well, I like them both. I like you both. So Greg?
[00:06:59] Greg Lambert: Yes.
[00:07:00] Marlene Gebauer: You have to queue up the dark place music.
[00:07:02] Greg Lambert: I think I’ve queued it up once already.
[00:07:04] Marlene Gebauer: OK, well, you got to queue it up again.
[00:07:06] Greg Lambert: All right.
[00:07:07] Marlene Gebauer: So you know how when you open up your browser and it offers recommended articles for you? Well, I find that mine is like spot on. And so I looked at this one about how a trivial cell hack is ruining lives. So this article was about SIM swap attacks. So how this works is the bad guys convince your service provider to port your number and associated phone account to a device in their possession. Then they lock you out of your account, break into all your connected accounts, then change the access codes, set up email forwarding in case you get them back, then look for cloud store documents for things of value. So two people were showcased in this article. One, a tech writer, lost $100,000 out of his bank account.
[00:08:03] Greg Lambert: Wow.
[00:08:04] Marlene Gebauer: So if that isn’t awful enough, Google, T-Mobile, and AT&T were reported to be quite unhelpful to these men, having them fill out online forms and I love this quote, sending them into the abyss of auto response because no, we’ve never been there, right? Yeah, never, never. Now only the tech writer recovered his accounts, and he actually wrote about this a couple of times. And he said this was only because he was someone who was connected. He had friends at Google and other places, and he was able to get his accounts restored. But for normal folk like you and me, not so lucky.
[00:08:44] Greg Lambert: Not so lucky. Yeah, this SIM swapping thing is scary. I heard a podcast on, I think it was Reply All, that talks about SIM swapping and how easy it is for people to do that. So scary stuff. Well, Marlene, we’ll be talking with Tom Gaylord in a few minutes about the Georgia legislature. But my inspiration is about the Georgia court system getting hit by this ransomware. The Rook ransomware virus infected the court’s computer system. And this is the same ransomware that got a Florida village council in Key Biscayne, and they had to pay $460,000 to pay off the ransomware. And there’s no telling how much this is going to cost the state of Georgia.
[00:09:33] Marlene Gebauer: And in the meantime, they’re just shut down.
[00:09:35] Greg Lambert: And as far as I know, they’re still shut down as of when we’re recording this. So well, and you know, part of this, and it’s just a common thing, is that the courts, especially their technology systems, are so underfunded. They, you know, there’s some of the, it wouldn’t surprise me how many courts are probably still running Windows 7. And in fact, I would probably almost guarantee you that there’s some court out there that still has like a Windows 2000 or even an XP system that’s out there running somewhere. And I bet they’ve got some servers that are well out of date. So they’re just primed for the picking. All right, well, that’s a wrap for this week’s Information Inspirations. So Marlene, we have a great guest this week who’s going to walk us through how he thinks things are going to go with the Georgia v. LegalResource.org case on the issue of whether states can copyright its statutes.
[00:10:52] Marlene Gebauer: Tom Gaylord is the faculty service and scholarly communications librarian at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, as well as the editor for the Law Library Journal. Tom, welcome to the Geek in Review.
[00:11:03] Tom Gaylord: Hi, it’s nice to be here.
[00:11:06] Greg Lambert: Hey Tom, let me cut to the chase. So we asked you to be on the show because you have, I guess I’ll call it a passion for US Supreme Court.
[00:11:16] Marlene Gebauer: I might call it an obsession.
[00:11:18] Tom Gaylord: It’s probably closer to an obsession, maybe.
[00:11:22] Greg Lambert: Do you mind telling us about your obsession, sharing that with us?
[00:11:25] Tom Gaylord: So right when I first started practicing law, as soon as I was out of law school, I started reading every Supreme Court case. So this was October term, 1998. And to this day, I have continued to do it. I’ve also gone back and surveyed about 600 pre-1998 cases that, you know, I had to have all that knowledge, even though I’ve read a lot of excerpts of those in law school. So I’m currently just past the 2,600 opinion mark.
[00:11:58] Greg Lambert: Just out of curiosity, do you have a favorite?
[00:12:00] Tom Gaylord: A favorite opinion?
[00:12:01] Greg Lambert: Yeah.
[00:12:02] Tom Gaylord: I actually do, which is weird. And it’s not one that’s big on anyone.
[00:12:06] Greg Lambert: This whole thing is weird.
[00:12:08] Marlene Gebauer: We’re not judging, no. We’re not judging.
[00:12:12] Tom Gaylord: It’s not one that’s very high profile. It’s Hawaii Housing Authority versus Midkiff, which is from, I want to say, 1984. And it was an O’Connor opinion upholding Hawaii’s use of eminent domain to break up large land holdings and redistribute it to Native Hawaiians and others. So it was a really, really interesting takings case. I had it in my property law class, my first year of law school. And I don’t know, I just found that one kind of fascinating.
[00:12:43] Greg Lambert: I wouldn’t have picked that one.
[00:12:45] Marlene Gebauer: You wouldn’t have guessed that one, that that was his favorite?
[00:12:49] Tom Gaylord: No, no one would. I do like a lot of the cases that have to pull in old English common law stuff. Those are always kind of interesting, the ones that have a lot to do with legal history.
[00:13:00] Greg Lambert: Well, you’ve got another side project going on other than your day job in reading Supreme Court cases. And you’re the editor of the Law Library Journal, fairly new appointment for that.
[00:13:14] Marlene Gebauer: Can we first take a second to explain to people what the Law Library Journal is in case they don’t know?
[00:13:19] Tom Gaylord: Sure. It’s the flagship scholarly peer-reviewed journal of the American Association of Law Libraries. We’re now in our 111th volume, so it’s been around for over a century now. Yeah, it’s really fun to be a part of it.
[00:13:38] Marlene Gebauer: I remember writing for the Law Library Journal years ago, doing the book reviews.
[00:13:43] Tom Gaylord: The book reviews are always a lot of fun, and it’s a really good way for people who haven’t done any scholarly writing yet to jump in.
[00:13:50] Marlene Gebauer: Exactly right.
[00:13:51] Tom Gaylord: All they have to do is read a book. They don’t have to come up with an original concept. They’re not going to be preempted by something someone else has written. So yeah, it’s a really good way to dip your toe in the water.
[00:14:02] Greg Lambert: And so again, are you going to be doing anything at AALL to let people know what’s going on?
[00:14:08] Tom Gaylord: Yes, I will be at Connell to introduce myself and the journal and the concept of publishing to the new law librarians and newly minted librarians. Then I will be at the Connell Marketplace with a sign-up sheet for people who want to do book reviews. We always do that and get a bunch of the new kids to get into it.
[00:14:29] Greg Lambert: Very cool. And Connell, again, is for the newer law librarians.
[00:14:32] Tom Gaylord: Yes, the Conference of Newer Law Librarians.
[00:14:34] Greg Lambert: Yeah, and if anyone, if this is your first AALL, my suggestion is if you didn’t sign up for Connell this year, do it for next year. It’s something that really helps newer law librarians.
[00:14:47] Tom Gaylord: It does, and you meet a lot of people and they kind of become your librarian classmates.
[00:14:52] Marlene Gebauer: So Tom, can you discuss the Georgia versus LegalResources.org case and the reasoning behind SCOTUS’ granting of cert for the upcoming session?
[00:15:02] Tom Gaylord: Sure. So this is a case that came out of the 11th Circuit, obviously, because it’s Georgia. Georgia’s official statutes, the official code of Georgia annotated, is somewhat rare in that the official code includes the annotations. In a lot of states and, you know, with the U.S. code, the official version isn’t annotated. And this goes back to when they started revising it back in the late 70s and then published it in 1981. Mickey was the publisher then, which is now owned by Lexis and Reed Elsevier and all that. But the Code Revision Commission of Georgia asked Mickey to include certain annotations. These cases had to be in there. These attorney general opinions had to be in there and so on. So they did that and the Code Revision Commission approved them. And then the new code got enacted into law by the Georgia General Assembly. So enter all these years later, public.resource.org. They are trying to put primary law up on the web freely so people can have greater access to it. And they scanned the entire official code of Georgia annotated and posted it on their website. So the state sued asserting copyright in the non-law parts of the code. So all of the, and in fact, they don’t, they don’t assert copyright over all of the annotations, but they certainly do over some of them. And the district court granted summary judgment in favor of the state. The court of appeals for the 11th circuit unanimously, which isn’t odd for the court of appeals, most court of appeals don’t issue too many dissents. But the 11th Circuit issued a pretty lengthy 58-page opinion reversing the district court and saying that even though the annotations do not have the force of law, this is so much like the law in this instance that there is no copyright to be asserted. And what this is based on is a common law doctrine called the government edict doctrine, which says that you can’t have copyright in the law, basically. And that’s what makes states unable to copyright their laws, at least the public acts, which some people don’t think is the case because the Copyright Act, the Federal Copyright Act, only restricts the federal government specifically.
[00:17:28] Greg Lambert: Yeah, a lot of people are confused by that one.
[00:17:30] Tom Gaylord: Yes, yeah. But because we have this common law doctrine, and in order to change the common law, Congress has to be very specific that they’re doing that. And since they did not specifically exempt the states, then presumably the government edict doctrine still applies to the states so that they cannot copyright their own government edicts.
[00:17:50] Greg Lambert: Now, I was going to say, I can state that there’s a number of different states that have official codifications that have some type of copyright. When I was working with the Supreme Court in Oklahoma, one of the odd things was the state, the legislature would put out new laws, and those would be turned over to Thomson Reuters, or it was West at the time. And West would actually create a title for the section that was not part of the statute. And so they wouldn’t claim copyright on the text of the statute itself, but they claimed copyright to the title of it. So if anyone tried to reproduce it and they use that title, they would then sue them for using the title. So this is not an uncommon thing that goes on with states and the copywriting on the statutes.
[00:18:52] Tom Gaylord: Well, according to the petitions, the petition and the response, there are 20 some, 20 to 22 states that assert copyright. What I did not know before I got into these briefs is that the Copyright Office, as a policy, will not register a copyright for state statutes. So they are asserting copyright, but they can’t register it.
[00:19:16] Marlene Gebauer: Even though the annotations are written by somebody and are not actually the rule of law.
[00:19:21] Tom Gaylord: That’s what makes this case interesting, because it is stamped with the state seal. It’s called the official code. West can’t put the state seal on their version of the Georgia Code. And one thing that the 11th Circuit pointed out over and over again, the degree of control asserted by the Code Revision Commission was so great as to make it a public document, more so than a usual annotation. They tell Lexis which cases to include, which not. They review it. They can make whatever changes they want to. They don’t pay Lexis for this work. Lexis instead gets a license to sell copies of it. And then the Georgia General Assembly each year passes a law merging the new, and they use that word over and over again, the law uses that word, merging the annotations and all the other material into the statutory text. The 11th Circuit thought that was a big deal. I’m less inclined to think the merger language is going to be a big deal because the Supreme Court will often say a legislature can call anything what it wants. It doesn’t necessarily change its character.
[00:20:34] Marlene Gebauer: It almost feels like, given your description, that Lexis as a publisher is sort of a mere conduit for what the state wants. But if annotations are part of the official code and are not protected by copyright, does that make them law then?
[00:20:53] Tom Gaylord: It doesn’t because the official code also says nothing in here that is not the law is law. So the law itself says the annotations are not law, but yeah, but it’s still there.
[00:21:05] Greg Lambert: It’s still there in the official code. I was having to hold that one back. I know that some of the key players in this, there’s Carl Malamud with Resource.org. I know Ed Walters from Fast Case has been writing on this. On the other side, we have Lexis. We have CaseMaker, which has a license to redistribute that. So there’s a lot of good players in here. Now, I’ve read some of the things that Ed Walters has written about it, and one of this, and I think Marlene touched on it, is he goes into agency law and says that the state itself cannot claim a copyright on this, but they are essentially assigning their work to Lexis, and thus Lexis is getting a benefit that is extended to them from the state, but they’re also being able to claim copyright.
[00:22:14] Tom Gaylord: Except the copyright is being claimed by the state. Lexis is not a party. Bender has an amicus brief, but yeah, Lexis doesn’t claim copyright in it. The state does.
[00:22:25] Greg Lambert: This is very interesting. So it sounds simple, Tom. Sounds like the court’s going to uphold this, and life will go on, and no state will be able to claim copyright, and librarians across the world would be happy, right?
[00:22:40] Tom Gaylord: We’ll see. So the Supreme Court has dealt with the government edict doctrine three times, but not since 1888, and each of those three times it had to do with judicial opinions, not statutes, and it had to do with things added by the reporter of decisions. So the most recent case is out of Ohio, and that was an 1888 case. The reporter added his own syllabus to the materials. Then a different reporter came along who publishes. He wasn’t the official court reporter. He was just some guy who wanted to do it and wrote his own syllabi, and the court held that the opinions themselves can’t be copyrighted, but the official reporter, even though he was doing it in his capacity as a state employee, could assert copyright over his syllabi. That said, the second comer was not using that guy’s syllabi. The only thing that were the same were the opinions themselves, so he ultimately won. One reason I was wondering about why cert was granted here was because there’s not ΓÇô so the state says there is a circuit split now because of the 11th Circuit ruling. Respondents say there is not, that all the cases that Georgia says it is split are actually quite distinguishable, or even if there is not a split. It’s certainly interesting that the court took this case if the court doesn’t think there’s a split. But Public Resource did not object to cert being granted. In fact, their responsive brief to the petition asked for cert to be granted, saying that it’s been since 1888 since the court has said anything. States don’t know if they have copyright.
[00:24:20] Greg Lambert: People like us are threatened with lawsuits all the time. So they wanted clarification. They want the court to come down and say yes or no.
[00:24:29] Tom Gaylord: Right. Now, how is the court going to do that? This is a court, especially among the five conservatives, that like bright-line rules. They want to rein in judges, give them rules that are easy to administer. I see a couple of places where there could be bright-line rules here. The fact that Georgia enacts this into law could be a bright-line rule and thus makes it non-copyrightable. Or they could fall back and say only stuff that has the force of law is non-copyrightable. That is less easily administrable, but is probably administrable enough. So we’ll see. It’s a pro-business court, so that’s pro-copyright. But I could also see Gorsuch put on his libertarian hat and rule against the state with the four liberals. It’s interesting.
[00:25:14] Marlene Gebauer: And I kind of wonder what the publishers will do, given how the court rules. I mean, how are they going to and will they get around it?
[00:25:22] Tom Gaylord: I think there are a few states that include the annotations as part of their official codes. I believe Montana does, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of others that do. I mean, Georgia explicitly does, and that is what kind of makes this one different. The other thing that concerned me about the cert grant here was that this hasn’t, as far as I knew, this hadn’t been an issue that had been on the court’s radar. I mean, obviously, they haven’t decided a case since 1888. I found out that’s not entirely true. It hasn’t been on the radar recently. But in the late 90s and then again in 2002, similar cases came up, and it got to the point where the court called for the view of the solicitor general in each of those cases. The second one from 2002, it’s a long title case, but one of the parties was VECK. It’s V-E-E-C-K. I’m assuming it’s a VECK like Bill VECK, the former owner of the Chicago White Sox and the Oakland A’s. But anyway, they called for the views of the solicitor general. Solicitor general both times said you should deny cert, and the court did. And now 17 years after that, the court has said we’re going to take it up. So if I had to guess, I would say I think it’s going to be a reversal, but we’ll see.
[00:26:36] Greg Lambert: That would be interesting. And I think the other case was the pagination case. Was that right, where West was claiming copyright on the page number?
[00:26:47] Tom Gaylord: Yeah, because Lexis would use the star pagination for stuff from West’s reporters.
[00:26:52] Greg Lambert: Yeah.
[00:26:52] Tom Gaylord: West lost on that, as they should have, because then if I’m citing to something, can I not use the pages from F3rd?
[00:27:04] Greg Lambert: So if it does get overturned, I’ve got a couple of questions for you. The first one will be, is this going to be then a, is this going to open the doors for states to work with publishers, make some money, and copyright official annotated statutes?
[00:27:26] Tom Gaylord: Maybe, maybe not. Another thing I found out is that Georgia keeps the price on this pretty low. The OCGA only sells the entire set.
[00:27:36] Greg Lambert: which is, I believe, 28 volumes for $404. Yeah, that’s not much money for that set.
[00:27:43] Tom Gaylord: West’s is just shy of three grand.
[00:27:45] Greg Lambert: Yikes.
[00:27:46] Tom Gaylord: Yeah. Now that begs the question, with such a wide divide in cost, obviously people are buying, I’m saying obviously people are buying the West version because why would they be publishing it? Although it was only in the last 20 years that West decided they had to have their own version of all 50 state statutes. So it could just be that, they could be losing money on it, I don’t know. But it seems to me the fact that the West version is out there and sells for a huge chunk more than the official set, that might be an argument against copyright, because what’s being protected if there’s this other one out there that’s selling at such a high rate?
[00:28:29] Greg Lambert: Well, the other question I had was, will this cause any repercussions to administrative law where, say, for example, the state outsources a medical or fire or standards to professional organizations and those organizations maintain copyright to those administrative codes?
[00:28:58] Tom Gaylord: Yes. So that’s something that comes up in the briefs quite a bit. And some of the cases in the circuit courts are, and there’s one currently in the D.C. Circuit against public resource that has to do with industry standards because they were adopted by, I believe in this case, the District of Columbia as part of their municipal code. Public resource threw them up on their website and then the industry association sued them claiming copyright. Most courts, including the D.C. Circuit, have said, once it’s the law, it’s the law. A third party can’t assert copyright and keep the law out of the hands of the public. What that then leads to, I think, which is not raised in the briefs. Does that mean if Illinois enacts the Model Penal Code, did we just commit a taking? By virtue of adopting an industry standard or a uniform code, you have basically taken it out of copyright. So does that affect a takings claim? Not raised in the briefs because unnecessary. Maybe an amicus raised it, I don’t know. I didn’t read the amicus briefs. There’s definitely a lot of other issues, related issues surrounding this. The other thing I noticed in the briefs were clues, or maybe not clues, but cues, perhaps, where you can tell they were aiming at certain justices, like the petition, the state referring to this as a novel invocation of law, like the courts, they presume, or at least five justices, they presume, don’t like anything that’s novel.
[00:30:31] Marlene Gebauer: I wonder if someone is using AI to figure out what their arguments are and which way they’re going to go. See, they have to rely on something.
[00:30:44] Tom Gaylord: Right. One thing I took a little bit of issue with in the petition was a statement that Georgia has implemented a cost-effective system for providing its statutes to people. I mean, yeah, it’s cheap for a 28-volume set, but Georgia has, what, 200-some counties? They send out CD-ROMs, who wants to use those, to 60 libraries. Wow. And the free online version that they provide, Lexis gets to strip the annotations out of that. So, right.
[00:31:22] Greg Lambert: Yeah. Well, I hope, I guess I’ll put a little personal preference in here. As a librarian, I don’t like laws being copyrighted. As someone who used to work for the courts, I can kind of see the point in working with the vendors and having them develop some of the more technical aspects, compiling this, and the benefits that can come with that, aka money for the courts. Courts are always underfunded, and so I’m always reluctant to take any type of funding away. I think my librarian hat overrules my administrative court hat and hope that at least five of the justices say, can’t copyright this. But after talking to you, I don’t know how it’s going to go, Tom.
[00:32:14] Tom Gaylord: Yeah, I don’t either. One other interesting tidbit, or at least interesting to me, given my fetishes, there are attorneys who are heavily involved in SCOTUSblog on each side. So, for the state is John Elwood, who writes the Relist Watch blog post for SCOTUSblog. And then on the other side is Eric Citron and SCOTUSblog founder Tom Goldstein for publicresource.org. So you don’t often see stuff like that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two SCOTUSblog people on opposite sides. I’m sure it’s probably happened.
[00:32:49] Greg Lambert: All right. Well, this has been very interesting. I don’t know if I’m happy or sad, though. This is almost like going through a law school class and having someone brief the discussion and taking both sides. So thank you, Tom.
[00:33:06] Tom Gaylord: You’re welcome. Let me throw out one more thing to maybe make you not feel so bad. All right. So 538, either this morning or yesterday, released their statistics for the Supreme Court term. And here’s why you never know exactly. First of all, Justice Kavanaugh agreed with Justice Kagan at the exact same rate as he agreed with Justice Gorsuch at about 70.3 percent. So there’s been some very interesting decisions where Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have been on opposite sides, and I could definitely see this one being Gorsuch and the liberals in favor of public resource. Yeah.
[00:33:44] Greg Lambert: Well, Tom, thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. This has been very fascinating.
[00:33:49] Tom Gaylord: Thanks for inviting me. It was fun.
[00:33:51] Greg Lambert: All right. We’ll talk to you later.
[00:33:53] Tom Gaylord: Bye-bye.
[00:33:59] Greg Lambert: All right. Well, that was a lot of fun. Tom is such an interesting guy to talk to about these sorts of issues because he just loves this sort of thing.
[00:34:08] Marlene Gebauer: You can really tell.
[00:34:09] Greg Lambert: Yeah. I could never bring myself to read that many Supreme Court decisions, but I’m glad he does.
[00:34:15] Marlene Gebauer: So people didn’t see, but when we were on the video doing the recording, he’s got a whole collection of the Supreme’s bobbleheads on his shelf, which I thought was excellent. And I agree with you. I am so glad that he has this passion, and not just because it clearly offers him satisfaction, but also because him sharing his knowledge makes us all smarter and more thoughtful as well.
[00:34:35] Greg Lambert: Yeah. I don’t know how it’s going to go.
[00:34:40] Marlene Gebauer: but I feel at least a little more informed now. Exactly. Exactly.
[00:34:44] Greg Lambert: Well, happy 4th of July to all of you in the U.S. and safe travels.
[00:34:49] Marlene Gebauer: Lay off the fireworks and keep your pets inside and cuddled up in blankets and t-shirts.
[00:34:54] Greg Lambert: So if you are visiting family or friends, safe travels. Hopefully, you’re listening to this podcast on your trip.
[00:35:01] Marlene Gebauer: Well, I hope they are listening to the podcast on their trips. We had to rush this out to make sure they could listen in time.
[00:35:08] Greg Lambert: Amen. So, well, if you are not listening on your trip, make sure you subscribe to the podcast and take us on your next road trip. And review and rate us if you like what you hear.
[00:35:19] Marlene Gebauer: And remember that you can contact us at any time by tweeting us at at GayBowerM or at Glambert, or you can call the Geek & Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a message. We’d love to hear some ideas you’d like us to cover in future episodes.
[00:35:36] Greg Lambert: And as always, the great music you hear on the podcast is from Jerry David Deseca. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Jerry. All right. I’ll talk to you later, Marlene.
[00:35:44] Marlene Gebauer: Okay. Ciao for now. Sound of the earth on the way to a house at the Devil’s Backbone Bar. Hey, don’t take me away. I can walk home by the North Star. But I fail to notice that it’s still daylight inside the Devil’s Backbone Bar.