Judge Paves Way for Challenges to DOJ Opinion Secrecy
By Britain Eakin, Courthouse News, Oct. 9, 2017
Resolving a transparency catch-22, a federal judge dismissed a case about legal opinions from the Justice Department but affirmed the power of courts to intervene in more specific circumstances.
The Campaign for Accountability brought the underlying complaint last year, accusing the government of failing to comply with what are known as the reading-room provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Though the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has made more than 1,300 of its opinions available to the public on its website, the campaign argued that FOIA’s reading-room provisions require affirmative production, without the need for a prior request.
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