The OLC's Opinions
Opinions published by the OLC, including those released in response to our FOIA lawsuit
This Reading Room is a comprehensive database of published opinions written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). It contains the approximately 1,400 opinions published by the OLC in its online database and the opinions produced in Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by the Knight Institute, including opinions about the Pentagon Papers, the Civil Rights Era, and the War Powers Act. It also contains indexes of unclassified OLC opinions written between 1945 and February 15, 1994 (these indexes were created by the OLC and intended to be comprehensive). We have compiled those indexes into a single list here and in .csv format here. This Reading Room also contains an index of all classified OLC opinions issued between 1974 and 2021, except those classified or codeword-classified at a level higher than Top Secret (the OLC created this index, too, and intended it to be comprehensive).
Some opinion descriptions were drafted by the OLC, some were prepared by Knight First Amendment Institute staff, and some were generated using AI tools.
The Knight Institute will continue updating the reading room with new records. To get alerts when the OLC publishes a new opinion in its database, follow @OLCforthepeople on Twitter.
Showing 1–10 of 2214
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Validity of Congressional Subpoena That Would Prevent the Secretary of State from Fulfilling the President’s Directive to Represent the United States at a Major Diplomatic Event
A congressional committee’s subpoena for the Secretary of State’s appearance on a date that would prevent the Secretary from fulfilling the President’s directive to represent the United States at a major diplomatic event would unconstitutionally interfere with the President’s authority to conduct the Nation’s foreign affairs. The subpoena requiring the Secretary’s appearance on that date is invalid and lacks legal effect, and the Secretary may not be punished by civil or criminal means for failing to appear on that date.
12/9/2024
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Application of the Randolph-Sheppard Act to the United States Mint
Although the Randolph-Sheppard Act generally requires federal agencies to give a preference to blind vendors when authorizing vending facilities on property they control, Congress in 31 U.S.C. § 5136 exempted the relevant operations of the United States Mint from that requirement. The regulations of the Department of the Treasury implementing the Act, which predate 31 U.S.C. § 5136, also do not require the Mint to follow the Act’s preference requirements.
11/14/2024
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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Use of the Collateral Source Rule in Federal Sector Discrimination Cases
When the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission awards past pecuniary damages against a federal agency pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-16(b), it may apply the collateral source rule to decline to deduct insurance benefits that a claimant received through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program.
9/6/2024
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Allocation of Settlement Proceeds to the National Credit Union Administration
Under the Miscellaneous Receipts Act, the Department of Justice must deposit into the general fund of the Treasury the proceeds of a settlement under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989. Although this settlement in part reflected losses by the National Credit Union Administration’s Share Insurance Fund, the “refunds to appropriations” exception to the Miscellaneous Receipts Act does not apply.
11/14/2024
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Applicability of the Federal Credit Reform Act to Political Risk Insurance of Debt Issued by the United States International Development Finance Corporation
The organic statute of the United States International Development Finance Corporation does not impliedly exempt DFC’s political risk insurance of debt from the budgeting and accounting rules imposed by the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990.
6/4/2024
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Questions Related to the Potential Rescheduling of Marijuana
The approach that the Drug Enforcement Administration currently uses to determine whether a drug has a “currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States” under the Controlled Substances Act is impermissibly narrow. An alternative, two-part inquiry proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services is sufficient to establish that a drug has a “currently accepted medical use” even if the drug would not satisfy DEA’s current approach. Under 21 U.S.C. § 811(b), a recommendation by HHS that a drug has or lacks a “currently acceptable medical use” does not bind DEA. In contrast, the scientific and medical determinations that underlie HHS’s “currently acceptable medical use” recommendation are binding on DEA, but only until the initiation of formal rulemaking proceedings to schedule a drug. Once DEA initiates a formal rulemaking, HHS’s determinations no longer bind DEA, but DEA must continue to accord HHS’s scientific and medical determinations significant deference, and the CSA does not allow DEA to undertake a de novo assessment of HHS’s findings at any point in the process. Neither the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs nor the CSA requires marijuana to be placed into Schedule I or II of the CSA. Both the Single Convention and the CSA allow DEA to satisfy the United States’ international obligations by supplementing scheduling decisions with regulatory action, at least in circumstances where there is a modest gap between the Convention’s requirements and the specific restrictions that follow from a drug’s placement on a particular schedule. As a result, DEA may satisfy the United States’ Single Convention obligations by placing marijuana in Schedule III while imposing additional restrictions pursuant to the CSA’s regulatory authorities.
5/16/2024
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Whether the United States Postal Service Bears Responsibility for the Cost of Certain Civil Service Retirement Benefits Paid to Its Employees
The United States Postal Service is responsible for the full cost of retirement benefits owed to its employees under the Civil Service Retirement System attributable to pay increases that USPS granted on and after the date it was established, including with respect to increases in benefits accrued during those employees' years of service at USPS's predecessor, the Post Office Department.
4/16/2024
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Application of the Statutory Pay Cap on Administratively Determined Pay in 5 U.S.C. § 5373 to the National Science Foundation
The statutory pay cap on administratively determined pay in 5 U.S.C. § 5373 applies to the salaries that the National Science Foundation Director fixes under 42 U.S.C. § 1873(a)(1). Because some NSF employees are currently receiving salaries above section 5373’s cap, NSF must promptly take steps to come into compliance with the pay cap. NSF lacks the authority to continue to pay salaries above the cap for the purpose of mitigating the effect that implementing the cap will have on its employees.
12/1/2023
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Index of OLC opinions from February 14, 1974 to January 14, 2021
This is an index of classified opinion titles written by the Office of Legal Counsel between February 14, 1974 to January 14, 2021. The largely-unredacted document offers a look into the topics on which the OLC was advising the executive branch during these decades.
11/17/2023
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Retaining Private Counsel to Represent the DHS Secretary in Impeachment Processes
This opinion considered whether the Department of Homeland Security may contract with and pay for private counsel to represent itself and the DHS secretary in impeachment proceedings. Although no impeachment inquiry was pending, in an earlier session of Congress, there had been a resolution to impeach the secretary by people critical of his immigration policy. The OLC concluded that the Department of Homeland Security may retain private counsel to assist the department in representing itself and the secretary in impeachment proceedings aimed at decisions or actions within the scope of the secretary’s official duties and unaccompanied by any allegations of personal misconduct. The OLC does not provide release dates for its opinions, so the release date listed is the date on which the opinion was authored. The original opinion is available at https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-02/2023-01-04-dhs-impeachment-representation.pdf
1/4/2023