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 1751–1760 of 2202
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Former President Nixon's retirement rights other than as a former president of the United States and his rights to life and health insurance.
4/28/2020
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Whether Governor Rockefeller, if appointed as Vice President, is required to execute a blind trust in order to avoid possible violation of 18 U.S.C. 208
4/28/2020
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Dissemination to the Government Printing Office of Bureau records concerning either the Government Printing Office or its employees.
4/28/2020
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Possible Sanctions against Chairman Robert D. Timm, Chairman, CAB [Civil Aeronautics Board], for Permitting United States Aircraft Corporation, one of the subjects of a CAB Investigation, to Pay Airfare and Hotel Bills for Himself and Wife on Weekend Trip
4/28/2020
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Whether the Administrative Conference of the United States is an "establishment of the Federal Government" within the meaning of Treasury Regulation 301.6103 (a)-1(f), which governs the disclosure of confidential tax information between the IRS and other
4/28/2020
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Views concerning whether the benefits accruing to a former President of the United States under the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 (hereafter PTA) (P.L. 88-277, March 7, 1964, 78 Stat. 153) and the Former Presidents Act of 1958 (hereafter FPA) as ame
7/27/2020
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Ability of Intermittent Consultant to United States to hold similar position under a foreign government
4/28/2020
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Views on the legality, in light of 18 U.S.C. 336, of the private issuance of penny scrip, redeemable only in merchandise and only at stores under single ownership or franchise.
4/28/2020
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Presidential or Legislative Pardon of the President
Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself. If under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment the President declared that he was temporarily unable to perform the duties of the office, the Vice President would become Acting President and as such could pardon the President. Thereafter the President could either resign or resume the duties of his office. Although as a general matter Congress cannot enact amnesty or pardoning legislation, because to do so would interfere with the pardoning power vested expressly in the President by the Constitution, it could be argued that a congressional pardon granted to the President would not interfere with the President's pardoning power because that power does not extend to the President himself. 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 www.justice.gov/file/20856/download.
8/5/1974
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Whether, under Executive Order 11652, authority to exempt classified information and material from the general declassification schedule can be granted to an official independent of "Top Secret" classification authority?
4/28/2020