Edict of government is a technical term associated with the United States Copyright Office's guidelines and practices that comprehensively includes laws (in a wide sense of that term), which advises that such submissions will neither be accepted nor processed for copyright registration. It is based on the principle of public policy that citizens must have unrestrained access to the laws that govern them. Similar provisions occur in most, but not all, systems of copyright law; the main exceptions are in those copyright laws which have developed from English law, under which the copyright in laws rests with the Crown or the government.
The concept of an "edict of government" is distinct from that of a work of the United States government, although a given work may fall into both categories (e.g., an act of Congress). The impossibility of enforcing copyright over edicts of government arises from common law, starting with the case of Wheaton v. Peters (1834), while the ineligibility of U.S. government works for copyright has its basis in statute law, starting with the Printing Act of 1895.[1]
In the UK, the right of the government to prevent printing of the law was established by at least 1820, and formalized by the Copyright Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo. 5. c. 46).