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).

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 1741–1750 of 2202

10/8/1974
Powers of the Presidential Clemency Board

4/28/2020
10/7/1974
Emergency Proclamations of 1950 and 1971, upon which E.O. 11810 relies, were not prompted by the same conditions which call for the presently contemplated controls [opinion re: implementation of export controls on Soviet grain commodities]

4/28/2020
10/1/1974
Extension of furlough for individuals who apply to the Presidential Clemency Board

4/28/2020
9/26/1974
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Witness Fees and Expenses

4/28/2020
9/20/1974
Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime

4/28/2020
9/20/1974
Mississippi Junior Colleges - enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

4/28/2020
9/11/1974
Informal views on the applicability of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 to impoundments which were effected prior to July 12, 1974, the date the Act was signed by the President.

4/28/2020
9/10/1974
Qualification of deserters under "amnesty" program for VA benefits.

4/28/2020
9/6/1974
Papers and other historical materials retained by the White House Office during the administration of former President Richard M. Nixon and now in the possession of the United States or its officials.

4/28/2020
8/28/1974
Conflict of Interest Problems Arising out of the President's Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller to be Vice President under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution

4/28/2020