Judicial decisions and statutes cannot be copyrighted and are considered in the public domain.  Judicial decisions may be copied at will.  However, judicial opinions may be part of a compilation and can be protected by copyright.  There is no rule excluding legal case arrangement from copyright protection.  The arrangement in each case has to be evaluated in light of originality and intellectual creation standards.  A state or an individual cannot obtain a copyright on what is in the public domain.

In addition, according to the Copyright Act of 1976 copyright protection is not available for any work of the United States government.