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TOP LINE
This week. The Senate is in; the House is out. This week, much attention will focus on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on SCOTUS nominee Hon. Ketanji Brown Jackson. Last week was packed with Sunshine Week programming — we’ve got recaps below.
Sunlight on secret laws. A bill requiring the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to publicly disclose its binding legal opinions was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Duckworth and Leahy last week. Demand Progress organized a letter in support of the legislation, noting how OLC’s secrecy threatens Americans rights and Congress’s legislative and oversight roles; luminary Democratic lawyers cataloged these threats in this 2020 statement. The DOJ OLC Transparency Act would bring to light OLC promulgated secret law, mitigate Executive branch overreach, and allow for a congressional response to abuses committed under the aegis of results-oriented OLC opinions. More from us here.
FOIA is the topic of a belated memorandum issued by Attorney General Garland, who on Tuesday instructed agencies reviewing FOIA requests to adopt a presumption of openness, make proactive disclosures, remove barriers to access, and remediate backlogs. All this came after extended requests from civil society and Members of both parties. Does it go far enough? GovExec’s Courtney Bublé summarizes the memo and our own Ginger Quintero-McCall highlights the need for: commitments to “greater resources to FOIA offices, […] supporting legislative reforms including a public interest balancing test, rolling back the harmful Argus Leader Supreme Court ruling, and ensuring transparency of Office of Legal Counsel opinions.” In an essay, Quintero-McCall lays out three ideas for improving FOIA implementation.
Continue reading “First Branch Forecast for March 21, 2022: Not the Supremes”