As part of a settlement agreement reached in our Freedom of Information Act case against the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Francis v. DOJ, the OLC has agreed to release lists of all unclassified opinions the office authored between 1945 and February 1994, and to process for release 230 of those opinions. We are publishing the lists of opinions as we receive them, and we’re now soliciting public input on which OLC opinions we should ask the OLC to release. 

Just this week, we published the titles of 1,965 opinions authored by the OLC in the 1970s and 1980s. They cover some of the most pressing and wide-ranging issues facing the American political system then and now. They include opinions on the use of force (for example, a 1986 opinion is titled “War Powers Resolution and Military Action Against Libya”), surveillance (“Interception of Privileged Oral and Wire Communications During Hostage Situations,” 1973), secrecy (“The Intelligence Oversight Board’s Amenability to Congressional Demands for Information and to the Freedom of Information Act,” 1976), equal rights (“Legality of Executive Branch Boycott of States which have not Ratified the ERA,” 1980), religion (“School Prayer Amendments,” 1984), and the separation of powers (“Constitutionality of Bills Limiting Supreme Court Jurisdiction,” 1982).

To help us identify the most important OLC opinions from this era, or our earlier productions spanning 1945 through 1972, have a look at the indexes of opinion titles on our OLC Reading Room, then please email [email protected] with the opinions you’d like processed and a sentence or two explaining why.