The Register of Copyrights is not a _quasi_ judicial officer, as is the Commissioner of Patents, and he does not undertake to make decision as to the right of the claimant, this question being one for determination by the courts in specific instances. In cases of doubt, however, he may in practice, for the sake of convenience and of clearness of record, call the attention of the claimant to such doubt and invite explanation, but he probably would not be justified in refusing to register the application for a claimant who asserted his right to such entry. A former Librarian of Congress, then directly the copyright officer, used to say that he would enter copyright for any one on the Bible in King James' version if formal application were made to him, thus emphasizing the statement that he had no judicial authority. In the case of Everson _v._ John Russell Young, then Librarian of Congress, Judge Cole in 1889, while refusing the mandamus asked for, asserted incidentally that "the Librarian had no discretion." Where a second application is made for the entry of the same copyrightable work by a second party, the copyright officer would not decline to register the second application, if the claimant insisted on his right, after the fact of the first registration had been brought to the second claimant's notice, and the question of ownership would have to be brought before the courts. It is only in the case of works evidently not copyrightable, or in the case of claimants not entitled to apply for registration, as a citizen of a foreign country with which the United States has no copyright relations, or in other cases evidently beyond the scope of the law, that the copyright officer would exercise discretion and decline to make the record. {Sidenote: Employer as author}