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 1761–1770 of 2202
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Appointment of Retired Reserve Officers to the National Selective Service Appeal Board
4/28/2020
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Applicability of the durational provisions of §14(a)(l)(B) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act to two statutory advisory committees of the Atomic Energy Commission.
4/28/2020
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Congressional Request for Departmental Documents Raising Issue of Executive Privilege
4/28/2020
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Permissible scope of disclosure of radio communications monitored by Commission employees.
4/28/2020
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The Authority of the Federal Communications Commission to Render Certain Assistance to State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies
4/28/2020
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Conflicts of Interest - HEW research grants
4/28/2020
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The applicability of 22 U.S.C. § 2321b(a) to the President
4/28/2020
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Residence requirement for U.S. Attorneys
4/28/2020
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Proposed Waiver Request
This opinion considers whether the Council of Economic Advisers' work includes the resolution of a "particular matter," which would trigger the conflict-of-interest provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 203(a). The opinion concludes that the Council might conceivably conduct such work, and therefore considers the application of the statute to Alan Greenspan, who sought a waiver in connection with his appointment to chair the Council of Economic Advisers. 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://justice.gov/olc/page/file/1009441/download.
7/10/1974
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Effect of 1974 Supreme Court Decisions (Wheeler and Marburger) on Federal Aid to Parochial Schools [includes follow-up memorandum explaining typographical error]
4/28/2020